Mrs. Claus is a total badass.

How the Saints Save Christmas is, really, a perfectly descriptive title. In a dystopian future, the terrible Claws has wreaked havoc upon the universe, and a cyborg Shaundi is sent back in time - T-800 style - to save the present. To save Christmas, and the future, you'll need to spread holiday cheer; be it by fixing a movie theater to play a holiday cartoon, shooting gingerbread men with an air rifle, or nuking the absolute shit out of some "giant elves" (making them roughly human-sized).

How the Saints Save Christmas visits a fair variety of environs throughout its three story missions, and does a pretty good job of stringing you along from plot point to plot point. It doesn't bring a lot of change to Saints Row IV's gameplay - new enemies are really reskins of existing ones, and the closest thing it has to a new weapon is a holiday-themed Dubstep Gun - but it has a convincingly cohesive aesthetic of wintry snow, cheer, and mayhem.

This DLC episode introduces two new activities, one where you present-bomb houses from a VTOL sleigh (awesome), and one which mixes up Professor Genki's Mind Over Murder with holiday items and moving targets (frustrating and insane). There are also some collectibles to ... collect, but you can only revisit the areas they're in by replaying the DLC's story missions, so it hardly seems worth it. To wit: of this DLC's optional extras, most are negligible.

But overall, the mini-campaign and its remixed game elements make for a fun, exciting, and humorous addition to the world of Saints Row IV. And whether by referencing A Christmas Story, Die Hard, or Seinfeld's Festivus, your holiday celebration of choice is sure to be represented as you explode your way to saving Christmas.

Better than: Saints Row IV: Enter the Dominatrix
Not as good as: Saints Row IV
Equivalently as good as: Saints Row: The Third - The Trouble with Clones