Jessica

hit credits in saints row 2022 and felt very sad seeing all these names of people who've lost their jobs, did give a big middle finger as the embracer group brass scrolled past though

and uh contrary to the popular narrative it's… a pretty damn good Saints Row game?

to be fair Steam has only had patch versions 1.5 and 1.6 so the reported launch window bugs are probably minimised, but it's stable, I've only had one mission softlock in 22 hours of play

the "cringe" characters? they're pretty fun, interesting, and well written. the voice acting is good. the tongue-in-cheek humour is there in spades, the world is well designed and interesting to navigate, there's a lot to see and do

I spent a good forty minutes in character customisation because there was so much to tweak (a good thing), and it was one of the most expressive character customisers I've seen. Each facial feature can be chosen from some individual presets and tweaked from there, which makes it pretty easy to find features that suit and then adjust, a truly innovative and clever way to avoid slider hell.

Even better, you can adjust any time. Did you pick a weird set of eyelashes in the intro because the lighting was a bit weird? Well, pull out your phone and fix it. Cute, clever, and easy. Image As Designed can stay dead.

Weird how the game which is the locus of a reactionary review bomb campaign turns out to be… good actually?