Saints Row®: The Third™ Remastered

I've put enough time into Saints Row: The Third Remastered to say this with confidence: the best reason to pick it up has nothing to do with technical ambition and everything to do with pure, stupid fun. This is the game where you can be a Mexican wrestler in a clown mask chauffeuring a live tiger through rush-hour traffic, and the game does not even blink. That energy - completely committed to its own absurdity - is what made the original a word-of-mouth hit in 2011, and the remaster preserves all of it intact. The visual overhaul here is genuinely substantial. Lighting, reflections, denser traffic, reworked character models - Steelport looks like a city that actually has a budget now. The overhauled presentation goes well beyond a simple resolution bump, with nearly every graphical system touched or rebuilt. That said, background NPCs and some environmental details still clearly belong to 2011, and the seams show when you sit next to a main character whose face has been fully redone. The upgrade systems are still deeply satisfying to work through - earning respect, unlocking abilities, stacking passive buffs across your gang operations - and the character creator remains one of the most unhinged in gaming, letting you sculpt (or deliberately mutilate) every possible attribute of your Boss. On the gameplay side, the honest truth is it has always been a bit loose. Gunplay is imprecise, driving physics are more carnival ride than simulation, and some mission types - helicopter escort sequences in particular - can push patience. The remaster does not fix any of the original's mechanical awkwardness, and bugs carried over from the original build are still present alongside some new ones introduced by the graphical work. Achievements have been reported as unreliable on PC, which matters if that is your thing. Coop is supported online for two players through the main campaign, which is exactly where the game shines brightest - shared chaos is the intended mode of consumption here, and missions that feel repetitive solo get a lot more mileage when you have a friend along. For a couch crowd, the lack of split-screen on PC is the key limitation to flag. Online co-op works and keeps the party alive, but if you were hoping to crowd around one screen with a group, this is not the platform for that. For solo players or online co-op pairs, though, the package is excellent value: the remaster bundles all the original DLC including the three major story expansions, meaning there is a substantial amount of content without any extra purchases. The humor is juvenile, sometimes outright dated, and occasionally lurches into territory that sits uncomfortably next to the cartoon violence elsewhere in the game. Go in with eyes open on that front. If the original Saints Row: The Third passed you by, this remaster is a genuinely good entry point to a style of open-world game that barely exists anymore - irreverent, mechanically undemanding, and relentlessly committed to keeping you entertained. Veterans replaying for nostalgia will find it holds up better than expected visually, even if the moment-to-moment gameplay confirms how much the genre has moved on. Mixed Steam reviews largely reflect frustration with bugs and the age of the core mechanics, not the underlying appeal of the game itself.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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