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It feels strange to say it, but Saints Row has to be chalked up as one of the success stories of the current console generation. It's an unlikely kind of triumph: what began as little more than a poor man's GTA has evolved into a kind of anything-goes sandbox action game, but it's hard to pick out a defining characteristic beyond the fact that it lets you do stupid stuff.Four games in and it's reinventing itself again. Cars are no longer for stealing; they're far better used for throwing. Yes, we're in superhero territory, the ground occupied by the likes of Prototype and inFamous, and a potentially tricky area for a series as famously chaotic as Saints Row to attempt to conquer. Happily, Volition has made it work, hitting that sweet spot between empowerment and vulnerability.
It finds that balance partly in a fitting threat level. Saints Row's pimps and gangsters just aren't going to cut it any more, not least because, at the outset, it turns out the Saints' influence has spread as far as the White House. Your protagonist doesn't have long to enjoy his presidency, though, because no sooner have you passed a bill to cure cancer or end world hunger (a jab at Fable 3's moral dilemmas, perhaps), a race of alien invaders beams down and kidnaps all your friends, imprisoning you in a simulation of Steelport, the fictional city we saw in the last game.
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