Saints Row IV

Saints Row IV was officially unveiled in March 2013 and released in North America on 20 August 2013 and worldwide shortly after on 23 August. The game is set five years after the events of Saints Row: The Third. After the Saints stop a terrorist attack by Cyrus Temple on the United States, the Saints leader has been elected president. Soon after, an alien invasion occurs and the earth is overrun. The majority of the game is set in a simulation of Steelport created by the aliens to break the Saints' wills. In this simulation the Saints must fight against the enemy gangs of their past and their own worst fears.

Tropes used in Saints Row IV include:

• Action Bomb: During the last fight, Zinyak summons exploding CIDs to swarm the Boss once he's at half health. The Boss grabs them with Telekinesis and throws them back at his force shield to damage it until they stop spawning.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Actor Keith David appears as a character. Some characters instantly notice his resemblance to Julius (who he played), others can't see it even when it's pointed out. His loyalty mission involves him fighting Roddy Piper; they acted together in They Live.
  • Ben King is told the actor who played him in the movie version of his biography "sounds nothing like you".
  • In the Gat Is Back trailer, Gat says "You thinking I wanted to go to Hawaii or something?", a reference to Daniel Dae Kim's role in Hawaii Five-0 and Lost, as well as his current residence. Not to mention the rumour that Gat "died" in the previous game because Kim was too occupied with Hawaii Five-0 to provide more lines, which he later debunked.
  • The line Female Voice 1 says while doing the "Quarter Circle Forward + A" taunt is "Spinning Bird Punch!". Laura Bailey also voices Street Fighter's Chun-Li, who possesses a Spinning Bird attack, albeit one that's a kick.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Somehow, Earth art and literature became regarded by many alien species all over the universe as some of the greatest to ever be created, despite Earth totally lacking in intergalactic travel and not even being aware of alien life.
• Alien Invasion: What drives the plot.
• Alternate Continuity: Enter the Dominatrix is a fourth wall breaking example. Even the Saints seemed shocked by how crazy the plot is.
• Always Night: The simulation is perpetually locked at night until during the last mission when it becomes day as the simulation is crashing. As the game progresses and the Saints destabilise the simulation, it gradually turns brighter.
• Anachronic Order: How the Saints Save Christmas is set after the events of the game, with all gang members and narrator Jane Austen present. However, the mission pack becomes playable immediately after CID is obtained, at which point most of the team plus Jane is still being held prisoner by Zinyak.
• Analogy Backfire:

Zinyak: Look at you... Mercutio to my Tybalt... Boss: Don't be too excited, Tybalt dies at the end

• Anal Probing: The Rectifier Probe as a weapon to be wielded by the player. The player can approach a target from behind and thrust the weapon between the victim's legs, before pulling a trigger which launches the victim into the air.
• And the Adventure Continues...: The ending credits feature drawings of the Saints engaging in shenanigans throughout human history.
• And This Is For: While using their turret gun outside the White House, The Boss calls out a list of crimes the aliens have committed while blowing their ships out of the sky.
• Animated Actors: The main concept of Enter the Dominatrix - the Saints provide commentary on various scenes from the original "script".
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Achieving a gold score for an activity ends it immediately, rather than forcing the player to wait for the timer to run out.
  • The co-op activities are not necessary to control the map.
  • Assassination and Vehicle Theft missions are now activities that contribute to map control and revenue. The former no longer has specific instructions for bringing out the target, and for the latter, the vehicle always spawns immediately (and in some cases, is a static target that is never used by NPCs on the road), and its payout is never hampered by vehicle damage.
  • When in the vicinity of a command CID, sprinting will not use any stamina.
  • Towers have warp points, so if one falls to a lower level or the bottom, they can warp back to the last point they activated. Very helpful, considering how tall those towers are.
  • Grabbing a cluster that requires using a superpower will instantly recharge all superpowers, which makes grabbing groups of these clusters less tedious.
  • Homies will teleport to the player's location if they get too far away, rather than abandoning them.
  • The phone clearly shows which Homies are available and which are not, determined by what role they play in an active mission. Cooldowns are now instantaneous as well, which means one can dismiss a Homie and get them back as soon as they drop out of the map.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • The Zin Decree demands that people "Adhere to no one's law but Zinyak's, destroy anyone who dares stand in your way of complete and total domination, and always take time to appreciate the finer things in life".
  • A commercial for the game has the narrator say "The alien invasion has taken our planet. They have taken our presidents. They have taken our clothes.".
• The Artifact: Superpowers make using vehicles for transportation obsolete. They only times one may be driven is when the Boss' powers are taken away and if one cannot use telekinesis to pick up a Vehicle Theft vehicle without destroying it.
• Artifact Title: Subverted; Ben King's rescue mission involves going back to the Saints Row Church to save him from the Vice Kings.
• Artistic License Animal Care: At the start of the second mission, the Boss feeds an apple to Angel's tiger, which they appear to have adopted as the White House's pet. Tigers cannot digest apples.
• Artistic License Physics: Nuclear missiles capable of reaching the US from the Middle East would have a flight time of about half an hour, rather than two minutes, and the warhead detaches from the rocket somewhere around the highest point in the trajectory, rather than continuously burning until impact. At the point the Boss sabotaged the missile near the end of Zero Saints Thirty, it would have still been somewhere over Central Asia, not the White House.
• An Asskicking Christmas: The How the Saints Save Christmas DLC.
• Asskicking Equals Authority:
  • The Boss is elected the President of the United States of America after saving the country from a missile attack by climbing the missile and ripping out wires along the way, detonating it mid-air.
  • Zinyak became the ruler of the Zin Empire by conquering planets and offing his superiors.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Marauders, rolling balls that unfold to form explosive-shooting tripod robots that can only be damaged by shooting the back of its 'head'. It of course swivels to track the player's movement, and can swivel as fast as the Boss can run around it without assistance.
• Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever: Paul, a giant Saints Flow mascot, is the boss of Pierce's rescue mission and the fourth mission of the Enter the Dominatrix DLC.
• Autobots Rock Out: Aerosmith's I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing during the nuke scene, Haddaway's What Is Love during the escape from the Zin mothership, Stan Bush's The Touch just before the Boss gets to Zinyak's base and Thin Lizzy's The Boys are Back in Town during Gat's loyalty mission.
• Awesome but Impractical:
  • Vehicles, as flashy as they may be, are almost completely unnecessary due to the Boss' superpowers.
  • The Sprint Tornado power may be useful for on-foot Mayhem, but it is not very effective for combat or activities. Moreover, it makes it very difficult to speed-jack vehicles and tends to blow up cars and gas stations at the most inconvenient time (such as during Blazing).
  • Death From Above requires the player to get very high up to use it that one rarely has an opportunity, and other superpowers as well as unlimited ammo for guns can do the same job much more efficiently.
  • With the Inflato-Ray, the player has to focus it on a single target for a couple of seconds to get a kill. If one aims away for more than a second or two, their head will shrink back down to normal size, and only one enemy at a time can be killed with it.
  • The Tiny Pistol is a hitscan Hand Cannon that can found as soon as the player enters The Simulation in the secret room in Let's Pretend. What prevents the gun from becoming a Disc-One Nuke are massive knockback, low charge capacity (only four shots before the gun's charge is depleted), and an insanely long recharge time.
  • The 'Merica gun from the Commander-in-Chief DLC pack is More Dakka personified, but it eats rifle ammo for breakfast, produces copious muzzle flash that obscures the aim, and there is constant muzzle climb due to its high rate of fire.
• Back From the Dead:
  • Gat, though played with as he was never dead, but merely though of as so.
  • Past gang leaders as loyalty quest bosses. When they are defeated, they are reprogrammed as homies.
  • In the good ending, time travel is used to restore the earth.
• Background Music Override: The Warden theme overrides all music, but that is overridden by the Dubstep Gun and the 'Merica weapon. In some missions, a set song or theme is played instead to suit the mission or for the characters to listen/sing to.
• Banned in Australia: Briefly. To avoid this, the offending content, namely the use of drugs in Shaundi's loyalty mission, was basically axed, the mission automatically completes, and the offending content is never shown. The Rectifier Probe weapon
• Earthshattering Kaboom: Zinyak threatens this will happen to Earth if the Saints try to escape. And h actually does it, to their horror.
• Idiot Hero: The Boss. While previously favoring very straight-forward action has acquired elements of one to play foil the multiple genius characters in the cast.
• I Hate Past Me: Saints Row: The Third Shaundi hates Saints Row 2 Shaundi, at least before the loyalty mission.
  • Other Me Annoys Me: The feeling is mutual.
• Klingons Love Shakespeare: Zinyak loves a lot of classic Earth culture including the works of Shakespeare and Jane Austen.
• Lazy Artist: Invoked. Zinyak deliberately ripped off the city design of Steelport for his virtual reality version, but added a bunch of stuff modeled after himself in place of the Saints themed stuff, which annoys the Boss to no end.
• Same Character but Different: Provides an explanation for Shaundi's massive character change between the second and third game.
• Shallow Parody: Some aspects of the game are an obvious yet intentionally shallow ripoff of Mass Effect, particularly the "romance the crew" parts.
• Sudden Gameplay Change: Some of the rescue missions become a totally different game genre.
  • Matt Miller's mission turns into a visual novel esque adventure.
  • Johnny Gat's is a Streets of Rage Homage to the event of the second game, Only this time you can possibly prevent Aisha's death.
• Trailers Always Spoil: It was no secret Johnny Gat was coming back.