Verdict: Saints Row 4 Trailer

Deep Silver put out a trailer announcing Saints Row IV (that's FOUR to you people who can't read Roman) yesterday! It launches on 20th August 2013 in the US and 23rd August 2013 in the boring parts of the world. Me and Ye Olde Man Gillen had a look at it with a cynical eye, KG's cat gently humping him on the leg throughout.

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Cara: I hope it has dildoes.
Kieron: Have we started? If we haven't I approve, as clearly that's the idiom we're working with.
Cara: No we haven't. Shall we start?
Kieron: I have found the video!
Cara: Well I mean there is a warning for The Children at the start.
Kieron: I am probably shocked and horrified or something.
Cara: Oh I thought that was just your expression.
Kieron: I may have been having a stroke. It's common for men of my age.

Cara: Okay so it has a lot of guitars. Is that natural for these trailers? I am Saints Row newb.
Kieron: You are? Oh man, do you have a treat for you. It's basically an autobiographic game.
Cara: Well I played the demo of the first one and thought it was TERRIBLE but you could make a man's face look like a banana. Or was that the second. I played the third a bit. I made a lady look like the Jolly Green Giant. And she went around smacking people with dildoes.
Kieron: That certainly is Saints Row. And a thing you can do.
Cara: BUT APART FROM THAT I have not seen their trailers before.
Kieron: It's a lot like what I hear they had planned for the new Sim City. But they decided to cut out the Dildos. And instead put questionable modelling of stuff and things.
Cara: Oh KG you ARE topical.
Kieron: Like Doctor Dre, I still have love for the PC Gaming streets.

Cara: Actually maybe I should write to Maxis with this trailer: You Should Have Done This.
Kieron: "Dear Maxis - why isn't Sim City like this?"
Cara: Dear Maxis: no dildos? A mistake.
Kieron: "You have managed to offend the fanbase in a very easy and lazy way. It's no fun. If you made Sim City 5 like this, it would have been worth it for entertainment value alone."
Cara: You do still get to punt your shit to your neighbour though.
Kieron: This is true!
Cara: I mean let's be fair to Maxis here.

Kieron: Anyway - 0:03 in and an 18 PEGI rating. Which probably means that Her From Mad Men thinks it's jolly rude.
Cara: Oh yes she is positively blushing. Unless she is in The West Wing in which case she is sleeping with the cutest guy on the show. In any case, in this trailer we seem to have Adam Ant to begin.
Kieron: Is it Adam Ant? He looks like Him From Deus Ex to me.
Cara: Well that guy did look like Adam Ant. A shit one.
Kieron: Yeah, he heard that, as 0:09 his feet have exploded with sparklers.
Cara: This is all very David Bowie.
Kieron: You're right, actually. It's oddly reminding me of The Nomad Soul.
Cara: Can they not just make a David Bowie Saints Row.
Kieron: Except with wanking instead of being wanky. (The Matrix pastiche at 0:10 appears to be 15 years too late.)
Cara: Oh yeah that is odd... why are they harking back to that?

Cara: Light cycles!
Kieron: Hmm. I know!
Cara: THEY HAVE GONE 80S!
Kieron: It's just a big list of their favourite stuff... I know you're young enough to think that anything pre-00s was 1980s, but the Matrix wasn't 80s, Cara.
Cara: Did that lady at 0:17 just punch someone in the crotch? I like crotch punching in a game.

Kieron: 0:11 VOLITION. I always think that they should be called VIOLATION for Saints Row and embrace it. (There was an old Spectrum shooter called VIOLATOR which was an incredibly bad call for a name. (EDIT: Actually, the game Kieron was thinking about, as pointed out by TossrStu in the comments, was the equally badly named PENETRATOR. VIOLATOR was actually an Amiga Codemasters' game, with a very bad name.)
Cara: Oh dear.
Kieron: Yeah, good crotch punch!

Kieron: Er... being serious for a second, doesn't think look like Crackdown?
Cara: Yeah it does.
Kieron: Or that other game that ripped off Crackdown? It was probably on the other Console Toy. The Sony one.
Cara: Which one are we talking here? The one about a super guy.
Kieron: Yeah. That one.
Cara: Super person... like a super…. man?
Kieron: Honestly, I'm pretending to care, but I don't care at all.
Cara: Okay good because there is a pink robot at 0:18

Kieron: May just be a dude in a suit.
Cara: That I am hoping is a sexbot... Oh well just spoil it.
Kieron: Yeah. Some dudes totally dress up as robots knowing that ladies dig robots. It's sneaky.
Cara: It's a known PUA tactic.
Kieron: It probably is. "BOTTING"
Cara: The bot is like "NEGATIVE you look shit" - bot negging (that is a joke for anyone who knows about pick up artists at all if not sorry ignore and NEVER look at any of their forums). Well there are certainly bikes and explosions.

Kieron: :( 0:25: NOT PENIS.
Cara: I feel like this is the biggest tragedy of all that there are very few ACTUAL penii in games where there are boobs galore.
Kieron: Doesn't cutting from penis to BLEW seem a little fellatio nod? Also, there's a police man being expanded next, which plays into the inflation fetishist market. And that's an ever expanding market.
Cara: Yeah let's not let them go unpraised for that cut to.
Cara: ....I'm sorry
Cara: .....I have just paused on the not penis section
Cara: and I cannot bring myself to press play
Kieron: SURPRISE

Kieron: 0:30 THE KING OF ALL CROTCH KICKS.
Cara: Yeah, and before that there was a splendid bondage lady. Thing is... Someone should have told the Hitman guys that if they'd made their men as fetishised as the women in their trailer you can get away with EVERYTHING.
Cara: Also crotch kicks.
Kieron: I think that Saints Row 4 should steal Preacher's joke and have a character who has a scar in his bald head which makes him look like a dong.
Cara: Or we could just get Hitman to make his head look like a dong.
Kieron: That's what I meant. A Hitman parody character in SR4 with a dong for a bald head.
Cara: Excellent. And there is a man dressed as a hotdog. Is that a dong joke or are we just talking about dongs a lot...
Kieron: It's in the idiom of the game. Don't worry.
Cara: There is someone here who looks like The Phantom at 0:42 that is not dong related.
Kieron: ROBOT! Not a sexy lady pleasing robot. A big dirty ED-209 ROBOT.
Cara: Cars, robots, chases, PURPLE EXPLOSION! Purple….rain?

Kieron: Yes - more 80sism (0:44 Another crotch punch).
Cara: There were a lot of ladies crotch punching. This is dongcentric.
Kieron: Yeah.
Cara: Is this my perfect game?
Kieron: It's interesting in that despite all the clear playful offense they're being careful to sidestep imagery which people are going to describe in misogynistic terms. I'm sorry. I'm being serious for a second.
Cara: Yes. I think that the people on this dev team are very conscious of these issues.
Kieron: No, I'd agree with that entirely. (I'm a little more surprised the PR are too.)

Aside: Deep Silver are responsible for "torsogate" so they are no stranger to selling lewd stuff to us.

Cara: I think they were careful to make the sexy slider bars on char creation equally as gross (at least they were in 3) and I appreciate that as someone who is tired of not seeing man ass/parts/whatever...
Kieron: - I do too -
Cara: ....or any allusions to penises existing in games - but having my own parts constantly put on screen in naked ways. Okay that came out weird.
Kieron: In the grim future of the 41st millennia, there are not enough space marine buttocks
Cara: Yes. ASSLESS CHAPS etc.
Kieron: No, I gets. It's a cheerfully egalitarian - often even utopian - game in terms of its sexual politics, for a certain value, etc.
Cara: I just think this is cool: they are having fun with sexuality in a non-harmful way.
Kieron: ... I mostly go with that.
Cara: Usually the focus is ladies ladies ladies. And how big their jugs are.

Kieron: God, let's get back to the nob gags. We're taking them seriously, which I'm sure is the last thing they'd want.
Cara: I hope lots of buildings are knob shaped.
Kieron: The london dildo basically needs to come to the town of Saints Row.
Cara: FUCKING THE SKY.
Kieron: That's the climax. Some kind of space vagina attacks and they have to launch a skyline of cock at it.
Cara: 'climax'
Kieron: "A skyline of cock" is probably the article header. If RPS were a different site.
Cara: Wait. RPS is not the site where that would happen?
Kieron: I think this piece is being influenced by our new cat spending all the time I'm talking to you trying to have sex with my leg.

Cara: You have a new cat?
Kieron: I do!
Cara: Also a cat is attracted to you?
Kieron: She's in heat, as she hasn't been attacked by a surgeon.
Cara: Does your leg look like a man cat.
Kieron: She is trying to hump every other object in the house. I'm not taking it as a compliment.
Cara: Oh right.
Cara: Well I guess you and her need to discuss platonic terms.
Kieron: You know, now the comment thread is going to be full of people giving medical advice to this, etc, etc. In advance: I KNOW. Anyway - anything else in the trailer?
Cara: Hmm. I guess it will be mainly about light cycles? There are a lot of bikes.
Kieron: Yeah.
Cara: And the man in the suit seems to be a thing.
Kieron: Really, it's the superhero stuff that seems to stand out. There's lots more of that kind of thing.
Cara: Yeah, I think Saints Row is becoming mainly about the power trip. Even empowerment in a way. I like that it WANTS to be ridiculous. It WANTS to let you do all these mad things.
Kieron: Yeah. I mean, that's theme of the last few. The only worry is that they'll push it too far. Though I'm not sure that "too far" even exists.
Cara: It's like they just realised games are for letting you do everything that you ever did in a weird fucked up dream.
Kieron: Part of me does wonder how you could take it further. When I wrote about SR3 I wrote about how the opening could only be made better if you made a few people explode with orgasms. Dare you, Volition. I double dare you.

Cara: I think if there are no orgasms or allusions to orgasms in this game we will feel very let down.
Kieron: Has it come to this, etc.
Cara: The climax of the story etc etc. Anyway KG thank you for taking time out to look at a silly trailer.
Kieron: IT IS MY PLEASURE!
Cara: What else is on your radar these days with games? I hear you are setting crew members on fire in FTL.
Kieron: I am playing FTL, Space Simulator [I think he means Space Engine] and Far Cry 3. I'm a pretty cool gamer, circa 2012.
Cara: You are very With It.
Kieron: Daddio.
Cara: Dad dad daddio.
Cara: Okay this is weird.
Cara: Signing off.

Actually, now that I have slowed down the trailer frame by frame there are actually tons of barely-dressed women hiding in this trailer compared to very dressed dudes - so that is not quite so cool as I thought. Still. We'll see.

PS. If you have KG cat advice below would be the place to put it. Meanwhile, I will be posting catnip through his letterbox.