REVIEW: Saints Row: The Third Remastered

Saints Row's 14-year history has seen the series grow incredulously. From a self-referential, open-world game that was meant to compete with Grand Theft Auto, it has evolved into a bizarre, superpower-infused series where you play the role of the President of the United States. Saints Row 3 was released in 2011. It became the most popular installment of the series, selling over 5.5 millions copies. This was the obvious next AAA title in this age of remasters.

Five years after Saints Row 2, 3rd Street Saints has become their own multimedia conglomerate with all kinds of fingers, from filmmaking and merchandising to property owner. You play as Steelport, a fictional city. This is a departure from the Stilwater setting. Your character, which you can customize, leads the 3 rd street Saints to take over Steelport from rival gangs the Morningstar, Deckers and the Luchadores.

It's superfluous to plot in a game where your main melee weapon, a huge sextoy, is your main melee weapon. It's only there to support the cacophony action that you'll experience in Saints Row 3: The Third. __S.8__ Saints Rowis a game that lives and dies by the gameplay.

My first impressions of the shooting process were dismay at the clunky nature of the shots. Saints Rowhas been a shoot first, ask questions later series so it's not surprising that this mechanic doesn't work as well as you would expect. My Warzoneteammates have confirmed that my lack of accuracy in zooming in and seeing the sights is not due to historical gaming errors. The first hour of the game was a series of bombastic set-pieces. It felt slow and tedious, with enemies taking what seemed like an eternity to be shot down. It was frustrating. Although I increased the sensitivity quickly after, similar problems remained.

The Apocalypse Genkitime test was a real annoyance in my early efforts here. It is basically an obstacle course where you can earn money by shooting strangely dressed enemies. There are also signs for time, money and health bonuses. Dodging electricity traps and fire should have been more fun. It was frustratingly inconsistent with the gun gameplay. Some enemies went down in one hit while others took 4 shotsgun blasts, and then a slow reload to get downed. Although I like these time trials, it is frustrating to have to do them again and again.

Mercifully, I was able to drive around Steelport with much greater success. Although the number of vehicles available was overwhelming at first, I soon found a favorite with Nyte Blayde. This allowed me to fill the void in my life that Burnout Paradise left. Driving around the city and earning XP by completing classic Burnout challenges such as near misses, driving along the motorway in combination, playing the fastest game of Chicken, and racing around to maximize powerslide potential, was the best experience I had while playing Saints Row: The Third.

It seemed like Saints Row should be driving around the open-world and taking down gang activities. I found it much easier to tear around corners and torpedo-dive out of my car at full speed while running around taking out 10-20 gang leaders to take over their territory. The immediate aftermath, where you are pursued by the most determined police force in the world until they either lose you for a sufficient time or you reach safety, was often a tedious task. It was tedious to have to travel to the same place on the map each time you wanted to lose your notoriety. However, I appreciated the differences between Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto's Wanted levels. They changed depending on the gang you were fighting.

The number of story missions you can access via your phone (a system that this franchise developed back in 2006) made it clear that Saints Rowexcel is much more fun than it appears. It's easy to get bored if you just run and gun through streets or warehouses. This was best done in a penthouse overtake that featured Kanye West's Power as the soundtrack. It was an essential jolt of energy for a mission type that had been used many times before.

I had the most laughs and fun playing Saints Row 3 when I got into Trouble With Clones DLC content. In it, a teenage has cloned the legendary gang member Johnny Gat. It only gets more silly from there. Your mission is to find the Hulked Out Johnny. One mission involves a car chase where you have unlimited rockets and must destroy everything and anyone in your path. The AI will drive you safely, but it was a terrible experience and caused many deaths due to its inability to get out of tight spots. This game was great fun, despite its AI problems. But it also showcased the best thing about this remaster: Its commitment to total destruction.

Although the graphics have received a nice upgrade in 2011 it still falls short of the current level of graphic quality. Saints Row isn't able to compete with Grand Theft Auto V in this regard, but you could argue that Saints Row has a cartoonier visual style. HDR was a problem on this remaster. I had to increase the brightness to maximum and still had problems when it was night in Steelport.

This is a good remaster with plenty of content, especially considering all the DLC content. As I started to get used to the Saints Row way of life, my enjoyment of the game increased. (Truthfully, it wasn't something I enjoyed until I met the Johnny Gat Clone, at which point, I realized what game I was actually playing). I look forward to getting into the game more. Although I have my reservations about the shooting aspect of the game, it won't be my only gripe. However, it doesn't ruin the experience in any way. The game's best moments are when it embraces the absurdity, as I mentioned earlier. Steelport is sure to have plenty of it.