All I can say is I haven't had so much fun playing a game in a long time. Everything, from disabling the rocket mid-flight in the beginning to hearing "The Touch" while the president (in power armour) and Zinyak recite Optimus Prime and Megatron lines at the end, was awesome. There are just so many moments in this game that made me smile (including the end credits!). Well done, Volition. Well done.

I don't think I could ever go back to the GTA games after that. :)

I haven't played any of the 3d GTA games. Never really felt like trying any of them and since I don't use Steam they weren't available to me anyway. I bought Saints Row The Third a while ago but hadn't played it until about a week ago. To my surprise I enjoyed this one a lot and then immediately got the next game as well. I'm only about 30% into the fourth game now but I totally agree. It's a blast and I hope to see more from this series in the future. Who needs GTA? :D

I've especially liked the references to Mass Effect2, They Live, Matrix.

A friend of mine was the same, never played any GTA (i got him into GTA Online and he enjoys it a lot) so when i told him "Let's play Saints Row" he wasn't really into it ("Isn't it kinda like this GTA stuff?") so we played SR3 and he enjoyed it a lot, said it was a great game but when we played Saints Row 4, he is a comic book fan and all that, so during gameplay all i heard from him was "wow", "omg", "awesome", "hahaha, i can't believe they put that into this game" or "this is just like...." (especially the Transformers thing at the end)
He basically had one nerdgasm after another. It was the best multiplayer experience i ever had, we laughed so much and had so much fun.

That Splinter Cell stealth section when suddenly the room is full of enemies and the hero asks 'Should I still shoot out the lamps?" ^^

All in all I had more fun with Saints Row 3. It felt more GTA-esque and "realistic" (well, in relative terms...). In Saints Row IV the super powers made me hardly use any cars and later I also used weapons less and less. Felt like a totally different game. Not bad, but certainly not what I had expected after completing SR3. But considering that the city was the same in SR4, I think it was fine, though. Otherwise it would have just been more of the same.