What started life as a DLC is being released tomorrow as a full game. The origin of Saints Row IV has been well documented as has its battle with the Australian Classification Board over the game’s content and developer Volition’s purchase by Deep Silver during the THQ bankruptcy auction.

Despite the core game being expanded out of a Saints Row: The Third DLC, critics generally love this game. They enjoyed the over-the-top superpowers and the game’s general sense of fun and humour. Others found that there wasn’t much to the game beyond the superpowers and that said powers were a bit OP. Looks like your enjoyment of the game may come down to your enjoyment of crazy superpowers.

The Escapist (100%): Saints Row IV is a fantastic game, keeping up the series’ tradition of giving players a wide open world and the tools to go absolutely bonkers within it. It’s hilarious, it’s action-packed, and most of all, its fun to play.

Destructoid (95%): I was genuinely depressed to see the credits roll, because Saints Row IV, in contrast to its predecessor, had given me so much to fall in love with, reaching its conclusion could only ever end in disappointment. It is with a bittersweet heart, then, that I declare Saints Row IV perhaps one of the best open world sandbox games you could ever hope to play, and practically a culmination of everything the genre’s worked toward this generation.

Gaming Trend (86%): This game was built as an homage to the history of gaming.  Sure it’s derivative.  Sure it leans heavily on shallow and easy humor.  Sure it borrows unrelentingly and unabashedly from any source Volition could pry into the product.  Somehow all of that comes together to create a game that is fun, hilarious, addictive, and demands that you find every single collectable possible…  If you like your sociopathic fun somewhere beyond the intersection of insane and unapologetic, you’ll love Saints Row IV.

Eurogamer (80%): Saints Row 4 may lack refinement – nothing thwarts a superhero quite so frequently as an overhanging roof or your homies standing in a doorway – but it compensates with sheer exuberance. It’s a heartfelt love letter to the superhero genre and to a medium that makes such madness possible. There’s a fine art to being this gloriously dumb, it seems, which pretty much makes Saints Row 4 the Sistine Chapel ceiling of stupidity.

IGN (73%): With its recycled map and wildly overpowered abilities, playing Saints Row IV feels like a lot like enabling god-like cheat codes in Saints Row The Third and going nuts. Its ridiculous story, goofy characters, self-aware humor, and amazing character editor make it all work, especially for those of us who’ve played the previous games and can appreciate its in-jokes. But its appeal is shortened by the ludicrous speed at which we can zip across it and grow tired of its lack of challenge.