I wanted to start a forum for people who haven't played SR4 until today, when you can try it for free.

I honestly was uninterested in the idea of a sequel to The Third. First of all, I had enough of that silliness, and the fact that it was an overblown DLC-made-full-game (as rumor had it) wasn't conducive to catching my attention.

Boy was I wrong. This game is fucking amazing. I'm an hour in and while I've yet to get into the "open-world" balls deep (if you will) the 'raditude' is overflowing. A great example of people literally having fun making a video game. I thought it would be saccharine, artificial and focused on hitting that dopamine button, but it's so much more than that. I honestly was surprised that people brought it up for GOTY discussion after radio silence for half a year, but I see what they mean now.

@ch3burashka: You dare underestimate Saints Row? =O

I don't know, I far preferred Saints Row The Third. The city in IV was really bad and I didn't find it as funny (I thought it was TOO over the top, no subtlety at all).

But, hey, it's great for free.

@demoskinos: It seemed like a gimmick that worked for one game, that the cracks would show if you tried it again. Guess I was wrong. Or they're just comedic geniuses.

They've been doing it since the 2nd one really. Did you play that one? Because its also pretty great. Albeit I wouldn't play the PC version as its a horrible port.

I agree that it wasn't quite as funny as SR3 was but I personally found the gameplay far more entertaining in SR4.

I would argue the humor in SR IV is stronger, but the missions are weaker.

Saints Row IV is fucking glorious. It actually even managed to make up for Saints Row The Third largely being a rather grave disappointment for me. Guess this'll at least be a good chance to see how this thing'll run on my PC, too. I played it on console unfortunately, and while it was playable, it was certainly less than ideal and would pretty frequently crash.

Seems pretty dumb to put a single player 10 hour game on a free weekend thing.

Why are they doing a Saints Row IV free weekend? Won't people just beat it over the weekend and never have a reason to buy it?

Yeah, I was also kinda hesitant to play it, since I've played every SR game before, but only found 3 to be kinda alright/good (but notably not nearly as great as folks around here). But this one I'm enjoying pretty much from the first second so far. The humor is spot on for me and gameplay wise it's better at being crackdown than crackdown games ever were.

looks fun...but i still wont download it, i have sworn not to play any game from deep silver after the epic "ride to hell retrebution"

With a coop partner you can blaze through the short story during the weekend.

Also, Saints Row 4 sucks. It's like Prototype with a different title.

That's my plan.

That's stupid, misguided, backwards thinking. Your loss.

So Deep Silver saves Volition and the Saints Row franchise from non-existing but you won't play it because of some other game they released? Fucked up.

Volition is certainly aware that people will play through it without paying anything, but hopefully they'll still buy it if they like it enough(also on sale for $20). It seems more like a nice gesture and maybe just to get all the people that thought it wasn't anything more than glorified DLC to get on board.

Saints Row IV is my favorite of the series, hands down. Just a straight love letter to fans of that series. SO GOOD.

@counterclockwork87: It's the same city as the third, tho?

I enjoyed this one so much I feel bad for not paying for it. Probably topped The Third on my list. I found this one to be just as funny as III, if not more so, on top of being a funner game to play with the power abilities that make you cruse around the world in ridiculous ways.

i dont know i've never really had the urge to play saints row, it looks fun but eh.

finished it during the free weekend, the game was a blast but it wears out its welcome somewhere near the end, feels like a whole lot of filler, still worth the price of admission.

I also finished it and I wouldn't say it wears out it's welcome... I would argue that the parts where you don't have superpowers at the end were the weakest parts.

I vastly prefer 3. I should probably go back and play 4 again at some point.

I also prefer 3, i liked that vehicles have a purpose in that world and thats kind of what i want.

I'm 15 hours into SR4 and only 50% of the game has been completed. Took the opportunity to buy some cheap DLC on the weekend.

Agreed. The super powers were cool and all but they trivialize the open world in a way. I actually really enjoyed the driving physics in SR3 and had a ton of fun flying jets and driving fast cars. SR4 made driving really pointless which kind of only leaves the shooting and combat gets tiresome after a while.

Had fun playing it, but definitely felt like a grind towards the end whereas I had a ton of fun with SR3 all the way through.

I managed to finish the entire game (including all activities) during this free weekend. I didn't buy it at first because it didn't look like it improved that much on The Third, but ended up vastly preferring this game to Saints Row 3. The super powers are pretty fun and I found the story and humor much better than in SR3. Overall I would probably rank the games 4 > 2 > 3. If the PC port of 2 wasn't so awful it would probably be equal (or better) than this game.

I'm probably going to end up buying the game and the story DLC mostly to support it.

ahhhhhhh, I feel better waiting for free weekends, but man does the game feel like DLC with the same city.