Word has finally reached the gaming community of an impending release of Saints Row 4. From various websites and press releases, the story follows the 3^rd Street Saints who are no longer celebrities but their leader is the President of the USA. But as ridiculous as this sounds, it’s about to get a lot more over-the-top.

The main story follows the Saints as they try and defend earth from an alien invasion. The aliens have built a simulation of Steelport and they put the Saints in there. Cue the new gangs that enter the frame and a whole host of new features. You can combine the vehicles and weapons from the previous games with alien technology and your player can also have super powers.

The story for the game was initially designed to be available as DLC but the new developers decided that they wanted to go ahead and make a game from it.

The question that starts to form in the back of everyone’s mind, including my own is: Have they finally gone too far?

We all remember the original GTA games that were released on the Playstation. They were great fun and they didn’t take themselves too seriously. Most people bought them because you could drive around and wreak absolute havoc across a city. They had never played or experienced anything like it and it spawned several spin off’s such as GTA London.

Then the next generation of consoles was released and although GTA 3 was a mediocre game, Vice City was possibly the best of the series to date. It introduced the first playable character that had substance and was actually an integral part of the game.

But after GTA Vice City, they started taking themselves far too seriously. San Andreas was a good game, but it was trying to be something it wasn’t and that resulted in it being patchy and the story line being weak.

As the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 exploded onto the scene, the eventual release of GTA 4 and the resulting spin off’s (Lost and Damned and the Ballad of Gay Tony) appeared on the scene. And that is where the GTA series began to fall apart.

It took away the fun aspect of the game and made it difficult to evade the cops and blowing things up and killing people attracted too much attention. You feel as if you’re forced into playing the game. It also introduced a playable character that was just too serious for that kind of game.

As most people would agree with me (and many who wouldn’t) GTA is just trying to be something it isn’t. It takes itself far too seriously and you feel like it’s trying to be something it isn’t.

In 2006, Saints Row appeared on the market. At first everyone thought it was just a spin-off of GTA but as people started playing it they realized it was far from it. It is a game that stuck to the original traditions of the genre. It is designed for the gamer just to have fun. From snatching ho’s to drug dealing to some outrageous characters it was different and it was fresh. I was an instant fan and when Saints Row 2 hit the market a few years later, I snapped it up.

This game took it to the next level and they made it more fun and a lot more ridiculous. Some of the side missions are genius, and you find yourself laughing along to fantastic dialogue and great characters. They also tied it in well with the first one, making the faithful of Saints Row happy but also opening it up for new players who decided to give the first a miss. It introduced new gangs and a new way of playing the game and once again it was well received by the gaming community.

Things died off for a while in till the release of Saints Row the Third which was a lot more fun and a lot more ridiculous than the other two predecessors. It built on the foundations of what it already had with the other two games and then just decided to tear itself apart and never take itself seriously.

As you sit and play the game, you get the ominous feeling that maybe they have gone too far with the ridiculous and deviated from what it was originally supposed to be. It was supposed to be a gangster game with a bit of fun but you get the ominous feeling that things really have been taken too far.

So what will Saints Row 4 have in stall for the player?

I ask this question with a mixture of fear and dread, worried that they would have just taken the ridiculous aspect of the game way over the top and it is now more stupid than it is fun or they once again have managed to reach the perfect balance of everything and they have once again pulled it out of the bag.

From what I have read if the story line and the screen shots I have seen I am concerned that it seems like they have done the later and pushed the boundaries of ridiculous. Another grave issue that I have, and so do most people that have commented on the various websites and forum’s is that if this was actually supposed to DLC originally, how have they managed to flush it out for a full feature release without either repeating themselves or worse, ruining the franchise.