First of all before I go into the review for this game I just want to put a couple of things out there. When this game was announced I was actually super hyped because I loved Saints Row 2, 3 & 4 and I had been excited to play it ever since. I ended up buying this game recently during the Steam Summer Sale 2015 at 50% off (£7.49) and because I had not looked into this game very much except seeing it announced plus a trailer, I wasn’t aware that this was actually a Standalone DLC for Saints Row 4.

So the review, unaware that this is Standalone DLC I jump into the game and start the story and it has all the usual Saints Row characters and humor etc etc. I found that incredibly early into the game you were able to fly assuming you have the stamina (which is upgradable in the exact same manner as Saints Row 4) so I was free to do whatever I wanted in this open world city inside Hell and I’m able to fly.

The first thing I see to do is collect Soul Clusters which are also the same collectables found in Saints Row 4 (possibly with different name, I can’t remember) and I decide to collect all of the visible ones of these while flying around exploring Hell. After collecting in the region of 300 of these Soul Clusters (out of 940) I had also found a couple of Audio Tomes which are humorous audio logs from some of the characters within the game including Satan.

I was then pulled unwillingly into a story mission due to having pissed off Satan enough for the story to progress. I won’t spoil all the details for this game but to give you an idea as to where this is going, I had around 920 Soul Clusters just from flying around right off the bat when I was able to finally shoot Satan in the face thus ending the story for this game. At this point I thought to myself ‘is that it for the story?’, so in total I think there were around 5 story missions.

This for me was mildly disappointing but there is so much else still to do within the game such as collecting all the Audio Tomes, Soul Clusters and also Commentaries (similar to Audio Tomes but for the TWO playable characters – Gat & Kinzie). Plus there are challenges, activities and achievements to complete, which for me has taken 28 hours of taking my time while playing. Having read various comments and reviews both during and after this time, it seemed some people were able to achieve around 97% in about 6 hours, but I’m assuming this is mostly 100% takeover of the city by completing activities and the main story missions since the collectables and challenges were only a couple of percentage.

A couple of things I should also note is that the highest level you can achieve in this is 20 and considering I put 28 hours into this first playthrough I could have achieved level 50+ since I hit level 20 so early into the game. Also one of the challenges in the game is to upgrade ALL of your weapons to maximum capabilities, which is fine but the only way you seem to be able to make enough money late game is to kill enemies over and over again because either there aren’t enough paying story missions or activities or the upgrades cost too much. So I spent alot of time after completing the story and activities killing enemies for all the challenges and to make enough wages to spend on upgrades.

Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is also the first game in the series that allows you to play as more than one character. You can switch between either Johnny Gat & Kinzie Kensington as often as you like, both of these characters also have their own commentaries which are quite funny to hear.

The upgrade system for both Health, Stamina and Arcane Powers are exactly the same as the previous game which for me is a bonus because it works really well and the prices for each of the upgrades is very well balanced for the length of the game. The powers themselves from what I can remember of playing Saints Row 4 are fairly similar but I feel like I had alot more fun playing through this game with these powers and even gave myself a mighty shock at one point using summoning powers, which made me literally laugh at myself not realizing what I had done. The powers do seem more powerful than the previous game too but having used all of them for completing all the challenges I think they work really well for the game.

All in all, for the price I paid and unaware until pretty much after completing the story, that this was Standalone DLC, if you are a fan of the previous Saints Row games I think this is a fantastic game despite how short it might be and I would definitely recommend it.

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