The Saints Row series emerged in the Xbox 360 era as a cheeky, irreverent response to the likes of Grand Theft Auto. By its fourth game, however, the open-world series’ cars, heists, sex-toys-as-weapons gimmick, and explosive gunfights had seemingly run out of new directions to go.

Previews suggested that this week’s new series reboot, simply titled Saints Row, might wipe the slate clean to provide a fresh perspective on the crime-spree genre. Instead, this game simply wipes the slate clean—and leaves it that way.

Saints Row (2022) is the rare open-world game that makes an average Ubisoft open-world game of the past five years seem refreshing by comparison. Describing this game as a regression to the Xbox 360 era would be an insult to the late 2000s’ best open-world adventures. It can’t touch the adventurous exploration, satisfying mechanics, and supercharged bombast of 2007’s Crackdown, while its hole-filled plot and cookie-cutter characters aren’t fun to laugh at, let alone with.