The third entry in the Saints Row franchise, Saints Row: The Third is considered by many to be the best game in the franchise (besides yours truly). With bombastic cinematic appeal, crazily suggestive antics and a devil may care attitude-Saints Row: The Third was an unforgettable thrillride- and now it gets a remaster almost a decade later and it fails to upgrade the original game meaningfully, leaving Saints Row a flaccid husk of its former self-but at least it looks alright.
If you aren’t in the know-The Saints’ ascension to power has seen them taking over the city of Stillwater by wiping out adversarial factions and corrupt organizations. In Saints Row: The Third the Saints have fled Stillwater and at the start of the game they are aboard a plane headed for the new open-world setting of Steelport. After sitting down with the powerful leader of The Syndicate (a trio of factions whose primary objective is to take over Steelport) a disagreement forces a botched deal where The Saints refuse to handover over half their assets to The Syndicate. This culminates in the Saints leader i.e. you fighting your way through and evacuating a plane whilst desperately fending off suited goons high in the sky. Afterwards the Saints find that their accounts have been hacked and their power waning thanks to the retaliation of The Syndicate and its up to the Saints to recoup their losses and become more powerful and unstoppable than ever before. Initially the story appears to make the Saints more meaningful due to their lowered status, but you know how it is with the Saints-they’ll raise hell on anybody who opposes them even if they choose to do so whilst Kanye West’s Power blasts through the airwaves-the Saints don’t do depth but they do deal in dishing out destruction any way they see fit.
If you aren’t in the know-The Saints’ ascension to power has seen them taking over the city of Stillwater by wiping out adversarial factions and corrupt organizations. In Saints Row: The Third the Saints have fled Stillwater and at the start of the game they are aboard a plane headed for the new open-world setting of Steelport. After sitting down with the powerful leader of The Syndicate (a trio of factions whose primary objective is to take over Steelport) a disagreement forces a botched deal where The Saints refuse to handover over half their assets to The Syndicate. This culminates in the Saints leader i.e. you fighting your way through and evacuating a plane whilst desperately fending off suited goons high in the sky. Afterwards the Saints find that their accounts have been hacked and their power waning thanks to the retaliation of The Syndicate and its up to the Saints to recoup their losses and become more powerful and unstoppable than ever before. Initially the story appears to make the Saints more meaningful due to their lowered status, but you know how it is with the Saints-they’ll raise hell on anybody who opposes them even if they choose to do so whilst Kanye West’s Power blasts through the airwaves-the Saints don’t do depth but they do deal in dishing out destruction any way they see fit.
Much like Stillwater before it, Steelport is an open-world sandbox playground for the leader of the Saints to participate in a myriad of activities, purchase properties, repel gang influence and collect stuff. You are free to roam about the world doing what you please and upon completion of missions and activities you will gain respect, cash and some nifty upgrades both in the forms of freebies for completing all instances of a mission or activity, or through an extensive upgrade system where you can acquire perks such as health upgrades, gang members who you can recruit to join you in battle or the ability to dual wield your weapons and so much more. Saints Row: The Third throws all the empowerments and customisation options at your face and you can modify your character how you see fit and there is an impressive array of vehicles you can acquire including a freaking fighter jet of all things. All of this is in the service of making your character feel like the boss and it’s undeniably awesome to have all these liberties at your disposal.
Where Saints Row: The Third can be caught with its trousers down is in its indecisiveness of what it wants to be. Often times SR3 can’t decide whether it wants to go all ballsy in a grounded fashion like in Saints Row 2 or be an overpowered superhero like in Saints Row IV. Ok, so Saints Row: The Third indicates a transition between the grounded nature of the former or the bat-shit lunacy of the latter-but what does suck is that The Third isn’t quite a cool as it thinks it is. For one there is no excrement-throwing minigame like you see in SR2 but even worse the characters are rather terrible. Retained are Shaundi, Kinzie and that piece of shit Pierce and on the freshmen side you have a pimp who can only speak autotune through a golden mic and a gargantuan Russian bruiser-it’s as if Saints Row has done away with the grounded gangsters in the service of characters you recognise because they look huge and intimidating or they have a grating voice.
What cannot be denied however, is that the moments in Saints Row: The Third are undeniably unforgettable. SR3 is at its best when you are embroiled in ridiculous moments and Saints Row opts to embrace its most diabolically crazy aspects. Examples of this utter craziness can be found in a mission where you ride upon a pony cart being controlled by male dominatrix strippers as you travel down the streets in plain sight. There are many moments during the game’s story that throw fully-loaded balls to the wall and it’s gloriously extravagant and ostentatious to behold.
Much like Stillwater before it, Steelport is an open-world sandbox playground for the leader of the Saints to participate in a myriad of activities, purchase properties, repel gang influence and collect stuff. You are free to roam about the world doing what you please and upon completion of missions and activities you will gain respect, cash and some nifty upgrades both in the forms of freebies for completing all instances of a mission or activity, or through an extensive upgrade system where you can acquire perks such as health upgrades, gang members who you can recruit to join you in battle or the ability to dual wield your weapons and so much more. Saints Row: The Third throws all the empowerments and customisation options at your face and you can modify your character how you see fit and there is an impressive array of vehicles you can acquire including a freaking fighter jet of all things. All of this is in the service of making your character feel like the boss and it’s undeniably awesome to have all these liberties at your disposal.
Where Saints Row: The Third can be caught with its trousers down is in its indecisiveness of what it wants to be. Often times SR3 can’t decide whether it wants to go all ballsy in a grounded fashion like in Saints Row 2 or be an overpowered superhero like in Saints Row IV. Ok, so Saints Row: The Third indicates a transition between the grounded nature of the former or the bat-shit lunacy of the latter-but what does suck is that The Third isn’t quite a cool as it thinks it is. For one there is no excrement-throwing minigame like you see in SR2 but even worse the characters are rather terrible. Retained are Shaundi, Kinzie and that piece of shit Pierce and on the freshmen side you have a pimp who can only speak autotune through a golden mic and a gargantuan Russian bruiser-it’s as if Saints Row has done away with the grounded gangsters in the service of characters you recognise because they look huge and intimidating or they have a grating voice.
What cannot be denied however, is that the moments in Saints Row: The Third are undeniably unforgettable. SR3 is at its best when you are embroiled in ridiculous moments and Saints Row opts to embrace its most diabolically crazy aspects. Examples of this utter craziness can be found in a mission where you ride upon a pony cart being controlled by male dominatrix strippers as you travel down the streets in plain sight. There are many moments during the game’s story that throw fully-loaded balls to the wall and it’s gloriously extravagant and ostentatious to behold.
The superheroic and super-suggestiveness with which SR3 carries itself allows it to stand apart from its contemporaries and such crudeness and style permeates the game-especially with its array of ballistic side-activities which exude the game’s brazen attitude such as series staple Insurance Fraud where you fling the Saints leader into cars and watch as he/she flies into the air like a crash dummy. The insanity doesn’t stop there as Genkhi Bowls make you fight through arenas of costumed contestants with the aim of collecting the required amount of cash en route to the finish whilst you fight against the clock, shoot bonus signs for extra time and cash, and avoid or fight through devastating behemoths carrying flamethrowers and miniguns.
The frolics continue with Trail Blazing returns from SR2 and is about as arcade-like and explosive as the rest of the game as you charge through checkpoints whilst destroying vehicles and wiping out pedestrians to add time to an ever-dwindling timer. Snatch is another new addition where you pick up ladies like a pimp, but you have to fend off gang members and then drop them off at an allocated location. Escort returns again and either you’re picking up a man and woman so they can make backseat love whilst you evade the media’s vans and mounted flashing cameras, or you’re driving with a tiger riding shotgun and you need to boost your courage whilst minimising the tiger’s rage-thrillingly intimidating and exciting spin on the regular Escort mission variant. Tank Mayhem and regular Mayhem activities are great fun for causing wholesale destruction as you lay waste to the environment around you to generate cash.
Unfortunately some side-activities aren’t so hot including Traffic and Heli Assault activities that force you to defend Saints gang members while they make deliveries across Steelport-they can be frustrating because the control is largely out of your hands as to whether your hombres make it to the end of their run in one piece-and Saints Row: The Third can rely too heavy on on-rails sections at times, while they themselves can be thrilling and brilliant their implementation in these side missions is too much of a nuisance.
In terms of a remaster Saints Row: The Third is pretty dire. The visuals have been spruced up nicely, giving Steelport a more magnificent glow and a greater current-gen look, and all the dlc goodness from the original game is stuffed in here too-but in every other regard it’s a piss-poor showing. One headlining reasons for this is the amount of crippling slowdown the game endures-particularly when the screen is busy with explosions and total havoc. Time and again slowdowns occur that make you wonder if the game has frozen solid but it rarely if ever gets to that stage where you have to kickstart the game again. You’d think a current-gen PS4 would easily run Saints Row: The Third but alas it performs as though it was a poor Switch port and that’s simply not good enough for the standards of SONY’s beast.
Preserving much of what made the original version of Saints Row: The Third great, the remaster is certainly worth ponying up the dough for if you have yet to participate in the destructive playground of Steelport. With that said the remaster’s dire performance riddles the experience with holes that are hard to forgive even if it looks prettier. Sadly this isn’t the ultimate version of the 3rd Street Saints’ third game but if all you want to do is relive its destruction as a fan of the original or embrace it for the first time as a new initiate-Saints Row: The Third Remaster is serviceable but considerably flawed.
The frolics continue with Trail Blazing returns from SR2 and is about as arcade-like and explosive as the rest of the game as you charge through checkpoints whilst destroying vehicles and wiping out pedestrians to add time to an ever-dwindling timer. Snatch is another new addition where you pick up ladies like a pimp, but you have to fend off gang members and then drop them off at an allocated location. Escort returns again and either you’re picking up a man and woman so they can make backseat love whilst you evade the media’s vans and mounted flashing cameras, or you’re driving with a tiger riding shotgun and you need to boost your courage whilst minimising the tiger’s rage-thrillingly intimidating and exciting spin on the regular Escort mission variant. Tank Mayhem and regular Mayhem activities are great fun for causing wholesale destruction as you lay waste to the environment around you to generate cash.
Unfortunately some side-activities aren’t so hot including Traffic and Heli Assault activities that force you to defend Saints gang members while they make deliveries across Steelport-they can be frustrating because the control is largely out of your hands as to whether your hombres make it to the end of their run in one piece-and Saints Row: The Third can rely too heavy on on-rails sections at times, while they themselves can be thrilling and brilliant their implementation in these side missions is too much of a nuisance.
In terms of a remaster Saints Row: The Third is pretty dire. The visuals have been spruced up nicely, giving Steelport a more magnificent glow and a greater current-gen look, and all the dlc goodness from the original game is stuffed in here too-but in every other regard it’s a piss-poor showing. One headlining reasons for this is the amount of crippling slowdown the game endures-particularly when the screen is busy with explosions and total havoc. Time and again slowdowns occur that make you wonder if the game has frozen solid but it rarely if ever gets to that stage where you have to kickstart the game again. You’d think a current-gen PS4 would easily run Saints Row: The Third but alas it performs as though it was a poor Switch port and that’s simply not good enough for the standards of SONY’s beast.
Preserving much of what made the original version of Saints Row: The Third great, the remaster is certainly worth ponying up the dough for if you have yet to participate in the destructive playground of Steelport. With that said the remaster’s dire performance riddles the experience with holes that are hard to forgive even if it looks prettier. Sadly this isn’t the ultimate version of the 3rd Street Saints’ third game but if all you want to do is relive its destruction as a fan of the original or embrace it for the first time as a new initiate-Saints Row: The Third Remaster is serviceable but considerably flawed.
STORY: 4/10
GAMEPLAY: 7/10
PRESENTATION: 5/10
LIFESPAN: 8/10
SCORE: 6/10
Remastering Saints Row: The Third has no business being so janky with its debilitating slowdowns although you can forgive it thanks to the pleasures carried over from the original version of the game and all its dlc. Taints Row.