Saints Row IV (PS3/PS4, 360/Xbox One, PC)

Really, this entire series fits the bill pretty well, but for some reason Saints Row The Third is the one that’s gotten most of the attention and nostalgia over the last decade or so. This ignores that its even-less-grounded successor is sitting right there, waiting for a remaster that still hasn’t come.

And it’s a damn shame because IV going for a cartoonish hybrid of The Matrix/Marvel/Mass Effect works like gangbusters, not just for the kind of open-world game that plays like Crackdown on, er, well, crack, but for grounding all of the Saints’ interstellar/interdimensional shenanigans in God’s-honest character development. The cackling veneer has you disarming a nuclear weapon while Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’ plays, before landing in the Oval Office to become president, or buying a gun that shoots dubstep, or calling in Rowdy Roddy Piper to bring a rogue Keith David to heel. Keep playing, though, and you run into legitimately heartwarming moments, like Professional Shaundi and Tweaker Shaundi bonding by having a superpowered run together in the city, or reconnecting with Johnny Gat by doing a Professor Genki obstacle course set to ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, or just how oddball and sweet a bunch of the romance options turn out to be (though Kinzie’s is just perfection). It’s maximalist chaos that doesn’t forget to still have a heart.