A very polished and impressive remaster

It’s weird to think that Saints Row The Third is almost 10 years old now, when it was first released back 2011. Saints Row as a whole is seen as the understudy to Grand Theft Auto, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing at all. Saints Row is over the top, it goes past boundaries not many games do, it challenges you to jump out of airplanes without a care in the world and do a mid-flight battle. Yes, these are things that I’m OK with. After my extensive time with Saints Row The Third Remastered on the Xbox One X, I am pleasantly surprised with how Sperasoft handled the remaster.

With all remasters, the main thing that you’re going to be focused on is the visuals. Whilst not a full on remake, this remaster does very well to bring Saints Row The Third up to today’s standards. If this was released now and it was the first time we’d gotten our hands on Saints Row The Third, you could safely say that this does belong on the Xbox One visually. The lighting in the game was what impressed me the most, Sperasoft have done a wonderful job in completely re-working that for this remaster and it impressively shows, especially when cruising Steelport at night. HDR really comes into effect here and shows off the remaster very well. A lot of other aspects of the game have also been reworked, including vehicles and weapons. I’d still like to see a bit more effort put into the character models, I still feel as if they look a little outdated but this is definitely a remaster worth playing if only for visuals alone.

Back to the game itself, there are probably a tonne of players that will be going back to Saints Row The Third for the 2nd/3rd or even 4th time. I don’t need to tell you how good the game is. I’m looking at those players who have never played a Saints Row game. Maybe they stick to Grand Theft Auto as some sort of loyalty or whatever, but this is the best time to get into Saints Row with this remaster. Don’t worry if you haven’t played the original or the 2nd game in the series, it doesn’t really matter too much. The story follows the Third Street Saints of course, but each game is about having complete mayhem and that is exactly what you’ll do with Saints Row The Third.

Want to wrestle a luchadore? Dress up as a STAG operative to take over a command center? Jump out of burning plane? Get sucked into a virtual reality showdown? Yes, these missions and more are all possible in Saints Row The Third. It’s a game that never lets go of its true over the top values and it’s something that I applauded 11 years ago when I first played it and even more so now.

In terms of where I maybe expecting a bit more in terms of the remaster was the overall game mechanics which do feel a bit dated. The main gaming mechanic that I am talking of would be the driving mechanics. Yes, the faster cars in general are a bit better but I can’t help feeling that overrall, it feels rather stiff and sluggish to drive. It’s not a game breaker at all, but I would of really liked some attention to be given to the core game mechanics. It feels like 95% of the work has been to the visuals and whilst I can’t fault there efforts, I do think some more work on the overall mechanics would of meant we would of gotten an even better remaster to tide us over until Saints Row V.

There’s no doubt that this game will make you laugh. I’d almost forgotten how funny the voice acting one and of course, hearing the Hulkster Hulk Hogan in the game is something I’ll never get bored of listening to. The overall script is absolutely hilarious and still has me laughing, perhaps even more so all these years later. I can’t wait to see what Voilition have in store for us in Saints Row V!

Overall, apart from the overall gameplay not being polished enough for my liking, there is still no reason not to award Saints Row The Third Remastered a high score. With all what’s going on in the world at the moment, this is the perfect game to make you smile and laugh, especially with the core value that this game does not take itself too seriously at all! If you’ve played this before, I still recommend coming back to this as you’ll enjoy it even more this time around and again, I must stress, if you haven’t played Saints Row before, jump in now and with the remaster, you won’t be disappointed!

A Xbox One Review Code was provided by Deep Silver