While Saints Row IV wasn’t playable, Volition did have gameplay footage. And it’s every bit what you’d expect from the hilarious supervillainous trailer.
The clip they’re showing, about three minutes in length, is basically a demonstration of concept. Everything from the third game, like the wrestling takedowns you can perform on random civilians, is intact and, needless to say, overhauled with more elaborate animations and comedy vale. You perform a slide-kick where you punch a guy in the nuts, then leap up and fling him by said nards into orbit.
Beyond that, well, it’s Saints Row: You see an inflato-ray, which does exactly what you expect; a dubstep gun, which makes cars boogie like they’ve got hydraulics and people dance themselves to death; and superpowers.
The superpowers in particular are somewhat reminiscent of games like the sadly-deceased Prototype or Crackdown franchise; running down roads at sixty miles an hour, superstrength, freeze blasts, and ground pounds. The trailer closes with the titular Saint going toe-to-toe with an alien lava monster.
In other words, it’s pretty much exactly what you want from this franchise. It promises to be utterly goofy and ridiculous fun, and we hope we get another crack at it before August comes along.