Saints Row IV Re-Elected Is Free On Epic

Monday, we got the penultimate round of Game Pass of the year. Tuesday, Monster Hunter Rise is coming to platforms beyond Nintendo and PC. Wednesday, Halo Infinite continues to update and still not entirely hitting the expectations of fans. Thursday, Jedi Souls 2: Stabby Light Sticks had its release date leaked online ahead of the official reveal at the Game Awards last night. As I’ve said countless times now, it is that time of year when the news doesn’t happen, or what little there is ends up lost in the shuffle.

Moving on to this week’s games on the Epic Games Store, Let’s start with the magenta-colored dungeon crawler that looks pretty, though I’ve got several of them already. Wildcat Gun Machine, no I don’t understand the meaning behind the name either. It is about as memorable as a collection of letters on Countdown. The art style is pretty if a little Chibi/Funko-pop-esque with 10CCs of personality injected back into the characters. After releasing back in May and having mixed reviews on steam, this might be a twin-stick shooter/dungeon crawler to check out over Christmas.

The Saints Row series is one I hold dear to my heart, as it has some of the best storytelling in an open world. Sadly, it also has the tripe that is Saints Row IV. IV wasn’t jumping the shark, it was constructing a mechanical shark that breathes fire and using that to jump a shiver of sharks. Yes, that’s the grouping name for a group of sharks. It had Aliens, death, becoming the president, and recycling the world from The Third. That doesn’t even mention its origins as a piece of DLC originally called Enter The Dominatrix. A majority of what Saints Row IV does is already in The Third with a little bit of DLC.

Crackdown with the personality of a child raised entirely on Family Guy clips and energy drinks, Saints Row IV never lived up to the hype of something new and exciting. It is just more of what we had before, and before we had a phallic bat I could beat pensioners to death with. After playing Saints Row The Third for many hours, being plopped into this world again but being told it is a simulation doesn’t excite me. I’ve seen it, you’ve done nothing interesting to freshen it up (aside from a couple of reskins), and made it perpetually dusk/dawn.

All this week you can pick up Wildcast Gun Machine and Saints Row IV Re-Elected until the 15th of December. Moving on to next week, I don’t have anything to say. No, this isn’t a bit about something I hate like Kingdom Hearts or something else, next week is the start of the mystery games once again. As has been the tradition for at least two years now, around Christmas Epic does a mystery game once a day for two weeks while everyone is home, stuffed like the bird they had their hand up a few hours before. Sometimes it offers interesting games and other times it gives another bloody dungeon-crawling Rogue-like/lite.