Saints Row 3 and Saints Row IV pivoted the series from being a straight imitation of GTA and embraced the more ludicrous and comedic aspects of gaming. It was good enough to spawn a sequel, and after that things got a little weird.
The original was viewed as mostly fine but didn’t really do anything to set it apart as more than a slightly worse version of GTA in most people’s eyes. Saints Row was just that, an attempt to take on GTA in the realistic, crime-focused open-world space. The most successful of them, like Grand Theft Auto, would almost immediately attract other developers to try and compete with them in the hot new space. Fitbit Versa 3Ĭertain games were so influential that they almost single-handedly created entire genres.