Saints Row 4 has a large selection of activities, targets, minigames, sidequests, and other diversions. Some of them are more challenging than others. In this guide I plan to cover strategies for all of the activities, which are indicated by blue diamonds on your map.

Saints Row 4 Activities Guide: Blazin

Blazin’ is a timed checkpoint race activity, which is in a somewhat similar vein to “Trail Blazing” in Saints Row 2 and 3. In this variant, you gain speed by picking up speed orbs, and lose it by passing through “firewalls” which in this case is a literal term.

There’s not much in the way of strategy here – it’s run as fast as you can, and try not to lose the route or hit the firewalls. If you’re way off course, I’d suggest restarting rather than trying to jump or fly your way back to the trail. With all the speed orbs, you’re more likely to be faster on foot than while jumping.

Upgrades: It’s not completely clear to me if the Sprint speed upgrades help in this event, but if you’re having issues you should probably make sure your Sprint power is as upgraded as you can get. Certainly the Haste upgrade, which boosts your acceleration, is worthwhile.

Co-Op Rating: 2 out of 5. The game only counts the score of whoever finishes first, so you can cheese this one if your co-op partner is particularly good at it. If you both suck, teaming up probably won’t help.

Saints Row 4 Activities Guide: Mayhem

Mayhem is simple – blow stuff up. Blow lots of stuff up. Blow lots of stuff up fast. That’s more or less it.

There’s a significant bonus for blowing stuff up continuously, so try to get to a target-rich area before you start blowing stuff up, and keep shooting constantly to keep your combo up. Fences, trash cans, outdoor cafes and so on have lots of little items to explode. After a while, you should be able to identify areas you should stick around in, and areas you should sprint out of. Certain high-value targets will appear from time to time, but I wouldn’t bother trying to strategize when to kill these things – the name of the game is shooting, constantly and at everything. There are 5 different variants of the Mayhem activity, each focusing on a different tool of destruction.

On-Foot and TK Mayhem are both really easy to break; if you have the Infinite Sprint upgrade from the Keith David sidequest line, plus the Tornado Sprint upgrade you can win this pretty easily. Instead of throwing the balls around in TK Mayhem, just grab one and go sprinting down the edge of the sidewalk, knocking down pedestrians, lightposts, and so on. Similarly in On-Foot Mayhem, just ignore your weapons and powers – just do the same “sprint down the sidewalk” strategy.

Try not to hit cars if you’re sprinting in TK Mayhem unless you’ve got fire and explosion resistance – there’s a good chance the car will explode, knocking you down temporarily. The ball also is constantly stuck to you, even if it gets caught on something. If it’s no longer in front of you, don’t throw it – instead, just try to get back to an open area and it should jump back to being in front of you.

Upgrades: Tank and UFO Mayhem is pretty straightforward, and there’s not a lot you can do upgrade-wise to change the outcome. On the UFO, the rockets fire fast and have a good area-of-effect. Both the tank weapons are good, one is continuous fire and never overheats, and the other does good splash damage.

The Mech variant is similar, but you have to be cautious not to overheat the Mech’s weapons. Doing so will likely cause you to end your combo. I tend to fire missiles any time I’m under the halfway mark on the “weapon heat” meter underneath the crosshairs. That way, I can get one shot off safely, or two if there’s something really big to take out.

The “On Foot” variety will lock you to a set of weapons, and your upgrades from the normal game carry over. If you’re having trouble, and don’t want to use the “Sprint” trick, you may want to work on unlocking the weapon you’ve got to use (ie, the Singularity Gun) and make sure to pour some Cache into it at a Friendly Fire gun shop. These upgrades carry over to the activity. Some of these also allow you to use your powers, like Stomp, to devastate an entire area at once, so check your powers when you start.

Co-Op Rating: 4 out of 5. Two destructive forces of nature is always better than one. The only downside is that your combo meter will be going down quickly, so try to make sure that you both pick different target-rich areas to explode with impunity. It also helps if one of you focuses on destroying small objects continuously (to get your combo up) while the other hunts down the high-value targets to destroy once your combo is high.

Saints Row 4 Activities Guide: Fraud

Ah, Fraud. Formerly titled Insurance Fraud, this activity is all about getting smacked around for great justice and profit. As you get hit, your Adrenaline meter increases, and when full the physics of the activity change significantly. This time around, you can use your super powers to great effect.

Score is awarded when you hit objects – but particularly cars. The more objects (especially cars) you hit, the higher your score multiplier, and the harder you and the object (CARS! HIT CARS DAMMIT) impact each other, the more you score per hit.

Here’s an easy way to win:

Super Sprint, and then charge a Super Jump When near the top of your jump, hit the Ragdoll button Come crashing down on a long line of cars, flipping around to hit as many different cars as you can Repeat until Adrenaline Mode pops During Adrenaline mode, sprint, jump, and ragdoll down the highway, smacking into everything you can Profit

Upgrades: Jump and Sprint upgrades help a bit, but beyond that you’re just going to have to get good at long combos and hitting a lot of cars in a single ragdoll session.

Co-Op Rating: 5 out of 5. The Adrenaline meter decreases faster in co-op, but it’s more than offset by the fact that you’re both getting major hits in constantly.

Saints Row 4 Activities Guide: Fight Club

Super Powered Fight Club gives you the chance to show off your super powers by stripping you of your weapons and giving you increasingly challenging waves of enemies to defeat. The final round is capped off with a super powered boss fight.

Freeze element is your friend – hitting an enemy with Freeze Blast or Buffing yourself with Freeze aura will make all enemies one-hit kills. After freezing, you can melee, sprint through them, toss them away, stomp, etc to get the kill.

Upgrades: Save this one for the late game, as you’re going to need a lot of upgrades for Gold. Stomp and Buff are both quite useful here, as you’re going to fight a lot of enemies in close quarters in some of these rounds. Bonus health, damage resistance and damage immunity are all excellent, since the boss fights tend to sap your will. Any melee upgrades will come in handy, since the only weapon you can bring in is your fists. Some points in telekinesis can’t hurt, as this is one of the primary damage dealers is tossing people around and tossing objects at people you can’t toss around.

Co-Op Rating: 5 out of 5. There’s a lot of stuff to do in here, and speed is of the essence. Being able to deal damage to multiple enemies in multiple areas of the map is critical.

Saints Row 4 Activities Guide: Rift

There are three activities that are lumped together under the “Rift” moniker. Since they’re so different, I’ll cover them separately.

Telekinesis

Telekinesis Rifts focus on your Telekinesis power, as the name implies. You’ve got to catch and then throw exploding orbs at targets. The orbs and targets have colors that must match. Over time, the targets will cycle through colors, so there is some timing involved.

Although this one seems like it should be focused on accuracy, the real way to win here is speed. Even if you just get kinda close it still counts as a hit, and the more hits you get in quick succession, the higher your score multiplier. Try to catch and throw every orb you can, and toss any orbs away that you can’t use immediately – it’s generally not worth it to hold them until the targets change.

Upgrades: The Telekinesis power appears to be infinite use in here, and I’ve not seen much of a benefit from taking any power increases to it. That said, you might as well sink some upgrades into your powers if you’re having trouble, on the off chance that it makes a difference.

Platforming

Platforming Rifts focus on your ability to hit a target while super-jumping. There’s a time element as well as a score element. The closer you get to the middle of the ring, the better off your score is.

Keep an eye out for “quarter circle” pads which you can sprint across for bonus points – in some cases, you can run in a circle around a platform and get a bunch of bonus points from these. Other than that, it’s mostly about speed. There are a lot more platforms than you’ll likely have time to hit, so focus on moving quickly.

Upgrades: There’s not a lot that really helps here. You’ve got to be fast and precise in order to win. The jump power upgrades seem to be turned off for the most part, although you can glide and air dash.

Co-Op Rating: 2 out of 5. Although you both earn points, there’s a significant point decrease for the player who hits the target last. I did find that I could skip portions of the course, which meant that I got extra bonuses for “early completion” while my partner worked on hitting every last target for points. I don’t know if this is a particularly awesome strategy – both times we played, we Gold’ed it, but it was quite close.

Speed

Speed Rifts are all about running fast and collecting orbs. Although this sounds very similar to the Blazin activity, it’s actually quite different. It’s more of an “on-rails race” where the objective is to pick up powerups and use them wisely. It’s more like a kart racing game than an open-world checkpoint race.

The overall goal is to pick up orbs, which charge your boost. Then you can use your boost to start a combo, which increases your score per orb, and also allows you break through barriers. All of these objectives earn you points, which you need for medals. Focus on the purple orbs, since they are worth quite a bit more than the others. Watch out for the “red zones” which indicate holes you will fall through. Falling through a hole wrecks your combo.

The physics here are very slippery, and it’s really easy to overcorrect and fall into a hole or miss an orb. You may want to adjust your sensitivity down for this activity if possible. No matter what you do, jumping is kind of painful, as you’ll often jump to avoid obstacles and fly right over the orbs you were trying to grab while in midair.

Upgrades: There’s not a lot of upgrades that make this easier – you’re on rails for this. It just takes practice and a steady hand.

Co-Op Rating: 3 out of 5. There’s not a lot you can do to coordinate here, you’re both essentially just running the course at once. However, having two people can help you cover for one person’s mistakes.

Saints Row 4 Activities Guide: Professor Genki’s MOM

Professor Genki and his wacky announcers are back again with another hit-or-miss activity in Saints Row 4. This time, you’ve got floating rings placed around a city block, and each requires a different type of object thrown through it. You have to work fast to clear each “block” in order to reach the Gold medal.

There’s a lot of “misc” objects lying around that don’t do anything here. If you happen to grab one, my suggestion would be to huck it far off into the distance so it doesn’t bug you anymore. If you’re having issues grabbing a particular object, try using the “aim” button to zoom in a bit. The TK power is a lot more accurate when you’re aiming.

You’re going to have to learn each level and figure out what targets you can hit from what vantage points. Otherwise, you’ll waste a lot of time running around the area. In some areas, it’s better to bring an object in, while in others there are plenty of objects to go around. I tend to have the toughest time finding cars, but the toughest time picking up people. Genki heads tend to be scattered about very near the Genki head objectives, though.

Upgrades: Telekinesis, obviously. You may also want to focus on speed increases for your sprint and jump powers, as moving around the city is key to clearing these fast.

Co-Op Rating: 4 out of 5. Two telekinesis tossers are better than one. Some level of coordination is good, since it’s a real pain to pick something up and get aligned just right with the ring, only to find that your partner has already cleared that ring. We agreed ahead of time to focus on a particular type of ring. I did vehicles, he did people, and then we both did Genki heads if we wrapped up early.