Review in progress: ‘Saints Row’ is all about the Benjamins so far

Stilwater was getting stale and Steelport was showing signs of wear. After numerous sequels that followed the Boss, “Saints Row” needed a fresh vision and new blood, and that’s come in the form of a reboot.

The previous titles created a trajectory for the series and the developer, Volition, followed it to its conceivable end as the Saints crew battled bigger and more nonsensical villains, and the Boss received crazier powers.

The advantage of a reboot is that the developers have a clean slate. Not bound by the past they can do something radical. From what I’ve played so far, Volition takes a few steps in the right direction. The new city of Santo Ileso is a drastic departure from previous locales. It feels as though it has more of an identity compared to past games. Imagine if Florida and Texas had a baby, gave it up for adoption and it was raised by Las Vegas and Austin and Santo Ileso would be that maladjusted offspring.

With that said, “Saints Row” does have its problems with bugs that hurt the overall experience. I ran into a mission where enemies spawned atop an overpass and I had to eliminate them. Unfortunately, I was constrained to a finite area and that made finding ways to clear the spawns a pain.

Here are four other thoughts from my 10 hours with the game so far.

Players enter the Idols camp in “Saints Row.” (Koch Media)  1. Money is power: Cash ruled everything around me when I was playing through the campaign. Because you have to build the gang from the ground up, players need plenty of capital and that’s obtained through missions and through ventures, which are side businesses that open up side missions.

Everything costs money to unlock in “Saints Row” and a lot of the game is spent grinding through missions so that businesses earn money faster. With the money, players can buy all sorts of clothes, unlock more ventures, buy upgrades to cars and purchase more weapons.

Just like in real life, everything you want in life, all the best toys, requires players to put their nose to the grindstone. Unfortunately, not all the side missions are enjoyable and they do get fairly repetitive over the course of the campaign.

“Saints Row” can be beautiful at times as players build their crime empire, but the journey will take lots of money, lots and lots of money. (Koch Media)  2. Don’t worry levels are still important: Progress isn’t only measured through cash. Players also earn experience points and leveling up earns players more skills. These are special moves that require flow points to activate. Flow is essentially a meter that grows in combat.

Actions such as tossing grenades or healing is activated through this. If you’re a fan of the recent “Assassin’s Creed” titles, then this acts like adrenaline and skills with which you can outfit the hero.

All of this makes the combat a bit more complex. Players will die a few times in the early game, but as they get adjusted to ducking (which uses the D-pad) and rolling to avoid attacks and give players time to reload, they’ll find gunplay that’s a step above past games. It definitely has more depth with players switch skills out.

They also have perks, which are slots that players must pay for. (That pesky money problem again.) The perks offer slight stat boosts or minor tweaks that give players an advantage during certain situations. There’s a perk to boost sneak attack damage or one that lets players gather more ammo from downed foes. That’s helpful if you find yourself always running bullets midmission.

Players will face off against three major gangs in “Saints Row”: The Idols, the Panteros and the Marshall private military coproration. (Koch Media)  3. It’s not explained well but the camera is important: The device serves two purposes during gameplay. The first is that it’s how players accomplish certain collection tasks and side missions. Players have to press Up on the D-pad and that brings up the camera. That’s how players collect different directions scattered throughout the world and use them at their “Saints Row” base, which is obviously in a church.

That’s not all. The camera is also how players activate Fast Travel points throughout the map. The big problem is that getting into range can be dumbfounding at times. There’s a sweet spot that players have to be in order to get it to work and that’s sometimes not as intuitive as it should be. Pay attention to the picture attached to the Fast Travel marker and that will give players a general idea of the distance and angle of the ideal activation image.

Like a lot of elements in “Saints Row,” it takes a while to figure out, but once players get the hang of it, they’ll be searching out different parts of Santo Ileso so that they can make jumping from one point to another more convenient and speedier.

“Saints Row” can still be over the top, but the humor is more grounded in what’s going on right now. (Koch Media)  4. The humor is more grounded: Those looking for the absurdist humor of the past games will have to look elsewhere. The humor in the “Saints Row” reboot is more grounded as players begin at the bottom with three other roommates who are struggling to make ends meet while also trying to escape the life of crime they’re attached to.

The jokes don’t always hit the mark, but “Saints Row” does have moments, in which players say to themselves, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” For me, that came when I was hauling toxic waste across the city and each time I accidentally hit a vehicle or if that vehicle hit me, I would have to haul my way to the dump-off location.

Because this “Saints Row” feels more grounded, those moments seem funnier instead of something like “Tom and Jerry” cartoon gag.

Gieson Cacho is the video game columnist for the Bay Area News Group. He lives in Berkeley, roasts his own coffee and drinks craft beer.