Saints Row: The Third Remastered

There are remasters and then there are remasters. Some companies would have just taken Saints Row: The Third, tweaked the lighting a little, bundled it with all of its DLC and shoved it out on current-gen consoles with an improved resolution and called it a day. With Saints Row: The Third Remastered, however, Sperasoft and Volition have pretty much improved every single asset and implemented graphical features that make it stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the prettiest open world games available right now. This is still Saints Row: The Third – which is to say that it’s one of the most enjoyable open-world games ever made – only now it looks and plays better then ever.

This Genki-sized update is more than just a polish job, it’s the whole enchilada. With visual upgrades and a dash of physics improvements, it’s sure to draw any Saints Row fan in all over again. Now we’ve just gotta get rid of the Genki-sized bugs.

While yes…there are still some performance problems, Saints Row the Third Remastered is a helluva fun game, especially with friends. The story missions will have you rolling with laughter, and there’s no setback if you find yourself in the middle of a shootout between all three gangs and the Steelport police. It’s just all good fun. And with all the craziness going on in the world, it’s nice to have a game to lose yourself in that makes you not take yourself quite as seriously and reminds you to be thankful for the time you have and tackle life one day at a time.

Speaking from my heart, I maintain that this is, in a number of ways, a compromised version of Saints Row: The Third that the new coat of paint doesn’t really make up for. However, if you were fortunate enough to play the game back when it first came out, especially when it was working fully, this is a very pretty way to look back at it.

Saints Row: The Third Remastered feels like that old friend who keeps cracking the same jokes over and over, and while some of them still feel funny, most of them don't.

A solid remaster of a good game. The ridiculous but funny story and the huge content thanks to all the included DLCs are now shining in a much better graphic. However, the remaster did not wipe out the negative points. The missions are still repetitive, the AI is stupid as hell and the world feels a bit empty, if you leave the path of missions.

Flawed but fun, Saints Row: The Third Remastered brings back its ridiculously addictive formula to keep long-time fans and new players entertained for many hours. Sadly, it's a bit rough around the edges, and in no way comparable to a number of modern-day titles from the same genre.

I may have wanted more out of Saints Row: The Third Remastered, but it's still as much a blast to play today as it was in 2011, and now it's prettier to boot. Grumbles aside, what more could I ask for?

The “Saints Row The Third” part of Saints Row The Third Remastered is good. The “Remastered” part...not as much.

Stuck in the past, Saints Row 3 still offers a lot of fun, you just have to look past some pretty dated humour to find it.

The remastered version of Saints Row: The Third feels like a wasted opportunity. If in addition to dealing with the technical aspect, Sperasoft would hve polished the playable experience a bit, updated the AI and solved the most obvious problems, perhaps it would have been worth revisiting it 9 years later.