Saints Row The Third Remaster developed by Deep Silver Volition and Sperasoft is now available on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
The Saints are back in one of their most popular titles, Saints Row The Third but does this remaster warrant coming back? Yeah, it does, why? Rather than just being upscaled slightly, the developers have replaced a lot of models, completely redone the lighting systems and made it look a lot closer to the PlayStation 4 than being a carbon copy of the original. Saints Row The Third starts off with the Saints getting into trouble with a rival gang in Steel Port, the Saints must take the city from multiple gangs and cause absolute chaos while doing so. The same old daft dialogue is there with some really strange yet hilarious missions, the actions as chaotic as ever but runs a lot smoothly this time, what’s not to love? Through each mission and challenge, you’ll earn experience to level up which enables new upgrades, new items and weapons, you’ll also earn money to buy buildings to keep on taking over Steel Port and making a sweet sweet profit to spend on things like the amazing shark gun which makes a shark appear out of the ground and eat people up. What’s not to love about that? As you go the weapons and vehicles you own become so crazy, earlier I was flying around on a broomstick pretending to be a Witch with a cowboy hat.
The gameplay hasn’t changed at all, this might be where some love it because of that or some of the older systems in place haven’t aged all that well or been improved so may put some off. I enjoyed going back and having a good laugh but the driving and combat never felt like they were as polished as they could be and sadly it still feel that way. It never really makes the game feel bad though as Saints Row The Third was a game and is still a game where you can go absolutely mad and experiment with so much that you rarely pay attention to the basics, it’s definitely a good fun title still. There are quite a few bugs where some of the AI don’t do anything, glitches and the usual but they were being patched out daily before release so the development team did really well on polishing it for release. The challenges are still so much fun, and being on the current-gen consoles it felt like I could cause more chaos without worrying I’m pushing the system too far. I thoroughly enjoyed going back to the DLC I had previously missed as-well, both I and my partner were laughing at the Saints in Space mission a lot, that charm and humour is still there and still funny to this day. What I loved about Saints Row The Third in the past was how much customisation there was, at the time it felt like GTA was going a more serious route, still, a fantastic game but Saints Row broke the shackles of being a GTA clone and offered a ton of strange challenges, customisation options were plenty and the story was just so insanely unreal that they truly created there own identity. You can still see when Saints Row decided to change it up and now it looks even better.
As mentioned earlier, The Saints Row Universe has received a lovely looking overhaul, the lighting has improved, characters models redone, bigger and better and I honestly think this is how a remaster should be, even if it’s just redoing parts of it to bring it into the current-gen. I loved driving around Steel Port taking in the new graphical upgrades, it makes it feel new again. The soundtrack is fantastic whether it be taking on a funny mission or listening to some of the radio stations that have some great song selections. The voice acting is the same as before and still just as good, especially when you’re character is trying to act for the acting mission.
Verdict
Saints Row The Third Remastered is worth a revisit, especially since it’s not just a 4k upscale with better fps, it has remade many of the assets from the original and I say that’s worth it. There are some bugs and gameplay chunks that feel a bit dated but overall returning to Steel Port once again was a ton of fun and makes me hopeful for Saints Row 5.
8.5/10
Nerdy Bird Games 