History Videogame / SaintsRowIV

* NotTheIntendedUse: In TK Mayhem you're supposed to use telekinesis to pick up and throw balls to do damage, but with the no ragdolls, fire immunity and health upgrades, you can just sprint around letting the ball smash into stuff ahead of you.

* TextAdventure: Taking a [[JustForPun page]] from the popular example of the third game, you have to go through one to get to Matt. There are bonus ones where Zinyak and Future!Shaundi explain how they came to power and destroyed Christmas respectively, with the former snarking and mocking while the latter takes the silliness in her stride and shows incredible patience. [[NotSoAboveItAll Mostly.]]

* BoobsOfSteel: As with Third, the option exists for female protagonists to have breasts the size of the Goodyear Blimp should the player so choose.
** Shaundi, in particular the future Shaundi of How the Saints Save Christmas.

''Saints Row IV'' is an August 2013 WideOpenSandbox game developed by Creator/{{Volition}}. Due to Creator/{{THQ}}'s bankruptcy, Creator/DeepSilver took up publishing duties for the game.

* BroughtDownToBadass: Almost every main story and loyalty mission strips the Boss of their super powers and removes access to the best alien weapons (basically, any device that qualifies for the Experimental Tech achievement).

** The Tiny Pistol is a {{hitscan}} HandCannon that can found as soon as the player enters The Simulation [[spoiler:in the secret room in Let's Pretend]]. What prevents the gun from becoming a DiscOneNuke are massive knockback, low charge capacity (can only get four shots off before the gun's charge is depleted), and an ''insanely'' long recharge time.

** During Ben King's loyalty mission, the Boss does a sexy dance in a skimpy cowboy costume on a strip club [[MakesAsMuchSenseInContext due to be under the influence of a virus]]. In a meta sense, this can be either fandisservice or outright {{fanservice}} depending on how you created your character and your personal tastes. In-universe, Matt Miller (who was watching the simulation) will see it as the former regardless.

* HerCodeNameWasMarySue: Boss thinks Matt's Nyteblayde simulation is a MarySue fanfic, but Matt insists it's not. [[spoiler:Whether it actually is remains unknown, as Zinyak hacks the program and changes the ending, forcing Matt and Boss to kill the virtual Nyteblayde, and Matt take over the role.]]

* BoxedCrook: The Zin Wardens were all prisoners guilty of crimes against the Zin Empire which were allowed into the simulation by Zinyak with one goal: break the Boss completely.

** The vehicle system has been greatly expanded, adding several new and unique vehicles including tri-wheel motorcycles, retro 50s trucks and sedans, and freakin' monster trucks. You also don't have to lug cars to a specific spot to save them, you just get in and hit the reload button and its yours forever. A great expansion all around... made almost entirely pointless the moment you gain the Super Sprint power, which without upgrades still lets you run faster than any car without risk of crashing or other bodily harm. Once you fully upgrade your speed you can outrun any vehicle at all, even jets, and with the addition of Super Jump, Super Glide and Wall Sprint, helicopters become the ''least'' convenient option for ascending tall buildings. Even travelling long distances cross-town becomes trivial once more gateway/portal locations are unlocked.

* CrutchCharacter: The evisirator is this. It's unique upgrade is infinite ammo, otherwise it's just a decent ranged weapon. Early game this can be quite useful as you don't have access to all the ammo upgrades yet, but once you do its lack of a gimmick outside of ammo and the fact you can purchase infinite ammo for every other weapon will see it lose use quickly.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking:
** The presidency carries with it a great amount of power, such as weapons in every nook and cranny of the White House and the freedom to cold-cock uppity politicians.
** Zinyak himself is no slouch. He commands an entire empire, has awesome psychic powers, and has physical strength in line with his size; his head is about the size of your chest.

-->'''The President:''' This is for Lady Liberty! This one's for Uncle Sam! And this one's... just because I want to!!

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority:

Has a stand-alone ExpansionPack with Johnny and Kinzie fighting TheLegionsOfHell, titled ''VideoGame/SaintsRowGatOutOfHell''. The game was remastered for UsefulNotes/XboxOne, UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, and UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch and is bundled with ''Gat Out of Hell'' in the form of ''Saints Row 4: Re-elected''.

* EverythingIsBetterWithDinosaurs: You thought Enter The Dominatrix couldn't get any more batshit insane? [[spoiler:Cue the spaceship of velociraptors. Oh, and "the song of [their] people"? "Walk The Dinosaur" by Was/Not Was.]]

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: During the ending of Enter the Dominatrix, as their rewards, [[spoiler: Pierce wants a [[EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs dinosaur with guns]], Kinzie wants [[BestServedCold vengeance]], Shaundi wants to be [[ItMakesSenseInContext Queen of the Dinosaurs]] and [[PlayerCharacter The Boss]] wants to go bowling.]]

** After being captured by Zinyak, the Boss wakes up in a luridly colourful suburb reminiscent of 1950s-era sitcoms, complete with bouncy music, enthusiastically overpolite townsfolk and even canned laughter. Violence is initially out of the question, dangerous driving is impossible, swearing is censored, and the Boss is initially brainwashed into enjoying every minute of it - to the point that [[TheMeanBrit Male Voice 3]] goes from gravelly Cockney to chirruping Received Pronunciation the moment he arrives. Eventually, the brainwashing breaks down and townsfolk begin randomly dissolving into pixels, revealing that the Boss has been trapped in a Zin Mind Prison specifically designed to torture them. The only way to break out is to cause enough chaos to break the scenario, resulting in the music winding down and glitches creeping into the program.

->''"It's one thing to be revered as a hero, it's another to be a hero. And that, my friends, is where our journey begins..."''
-->-- '''The opening cinematic[[labelnote:spoiler]]narrated by Creator/JaneAusten.[[/labelnote]]'''

Five years after ''VideoGame/SaintsRowTheThird'', the Boss has been elected leader of the number one gang in the world: [[{{Eagleland}} the United States of America]]. Unfortunately, this is followed by an AlienInvasion. Captured and trapped in a bizarre LotusEaterMachine world, the Saints must escape their virtual prison and save the human race, [[UpToEleven in the most insane ways possible]].

** Certain missions take this UpToEleven, completely changing the genre yet again. For example, Johnny Gat's personal simulation is a 2D, sidescrolling BeatEmUp with three levels and two boss fights.

* WhyAmITicking: The Explosion element for your powers if you get one of the DownloadableContent packs. Turns any human, alien, or vehicle you use it on into a bomb. With the infectious upgrade for the Blast power, it will also turn everything that your first bomb blows up into a bomb. [[UpToEleven And everything they blow up...]]

* YouAllLookFamiliar: Most minor characters, such as Warren Williams are simply re-used pedestrians. Brought UpToEleven with the Zin who all have the same class-specific skin.

* TakeThat: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMAbpoolm_s The Game Australia Doesn't Want You To Play]]"

* GoldenSnitch: There's no Forgive and Forget, and no hopping into stores to lose your notoriety. Notoriety will eventually decay to nothing, but to make it end instantly (especially at higher levels where all manner of alien and cop is after you), you must chase down a golden orb using super speed; catching and destroying it instantly removes all your notoriety. It's almost certainly a reference to the TropeNamer. This reference is lampshaded by Male Voice 3 (the British one), who asks if he needs a broomstick when Kinzie explains the orb's purpose, and Male Voice 1 who asks if he gets points for catching it. The game provides an achievement award for catching 100 of the things, which becomes more difficult if the player installs notoriety-decay speed upgrades.

* RantInducingSlight: The Saints took a lot of the crap Zinyak threw at them [[spoiler:(up to, and including, Earth's destruction)]] in stride, but butchering Biz Markie? [[BerserkButton That's just heinous]]!
--> '''Boss (Male Voice 2)''': "What...hey...aw, hell no! Hell no! No, man! Fuck that motherfucker, you don't do that shit! You don't do that fucking shit!"\\
'''Boss (Creator/NolanNorth)''': ZINYAK! Zinyak, you leave Biz Markie alone! YOU LEAVE MARKIE OUT OF THIS! Uggggh, you sunuvabitch! I'm gonna fucking kill you! '''''IT'S NOT OPERA!!!'''''"

* SupernaturalIsPurple: You glow purple when using your superpowers.

* GuideDangIt: If you've done the Loyalty Missions and sidequests but still haven't gotten the "do everything for your Homies" Achievements to unlock, well, you need to Romance them too.

** The 'Merica gun from the "Commander-in-Chief" DLC pack has incredibly high damage-per-second, but it eats rifle ammo for breakfast, produces copious muzzle flash that obscures your aim, and you have to combat constant muzzle climb due to its high rate of fire.

* BroughtDownToBadass: Almost every main story and loyalty mission strips the Boss of their super powers and removes access to the best alien weapons (basically, any device that qualifies for the Experimental Tech achievement). In fact, this was [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]]'s main complaint: that the developers give the player all these awesome toys and then spend the rest of the game preventing them from using them.

Has a stand-alone ExpansionPack with Johnny and Kinzie fighting TheLegionsOfHell, titled ''VideoGame/SaintsRowGatOutOfHell''. The game was remastered for UsefulNotes/XboxOne and UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, and is bundled with ''Gat Out of Hell'' in the form of ''Saints Row 4: Re-elected''.