5 Reasons Why Saints Row IV Will Blow GTA V Out Of The Water
1. The Total Package
This article has been mostly jokes, and I don't regret that, because, in truth Saints Row is a comedy at its heart. It does everything with a self-aware tongue-in-cheek that keeps that suspension of disbelief pumping through my veins. In the same way that The Man Who Knew Too Little did.
But, there is one very serious, very important aspect of Saints Row that the entire series has been hands down better than all GTA games in, minigames. GTA San Andreas was the first edition of the game to really play up the minigames, but you'd be crazy to think they were much fun. Players were mostly able to break in to houses at night, play crappy basketball, play Dance Dance Revolution with your lowrider, or race cars, none of which were fun after one or two tries at it. GTA 4 wasn't all that much better. You could go on dates, play darts, bowl, and the pool game was improved. But, I was still totally disappointed. The lack of engaging things to do around the world made the game feel linear, despite its depth and size. I found myself just following the quest lines, never going out of my way, because there really wasn't much reason to do so.
Saints Row, on the other hand, knows how to make a minigame. Everything from flinging yourself in front of moving vehicles for insurance money to spraying poo at police cars from a septic truck with a fire hose on it. The minigames made the world seem alive with possibility. Now, as those of you who played Saints Row the Third probably know, the minigames were toned down a bit to make room for a longer story mode. However, producers have made it clear that Saints Row 4 is going to be so chalk full of awesome minigames that you might have trouble actually playing the story.
See that picture up there? That's you operating a classic turret defense game. They've got a Starfox style tunnel shooter. There's mech piloting. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet of mayhem. Now, it's pretty well understood that GTA 5 is going to be massive. The standards have just plain changed since games like Fallout 3, Just Cause 2, and Far Cry 3. But, without the minigames to keep me engaged, I may as well be on a train leading to the next mission while I stare at my minimap.