Saints Row: The Third Remastered

The "Saints Row The Third" part of Saints Row The Third Remastered is good. The "Remastered" part...not as much.

This takes place in the span of maybe 10 minutes, and it's emblematic of the stunning, baffling, audacious amount of variety in Saints Row: The Third Remastered.

Oh Saints Row. It is not you that have changed, but I.

The controls are wonky and the mission design is straight outta last-gen, but there's still dumb fun to be had with Saints Row The Third Remastered. Even all these years later, it's a refreshingly stupid sandbox title that offers up some memorable moments -- it's just a shame that they're buried beneath tedious activities and gameplay that feels incredibly basic by today's standards.

Saints Row: The Third Remastered is a self-aware, bombastic crime romp through a playground of a city that the player can wreak havoc in. The Third Street Saints are ridiculous, the missions are stupid, and the game looks better than ever. While this is unlikely to be anyone's favorite title, it's an unforgettably dumb and enjoyable adventure all the same.

Nearly ten years later, Saints Row: The Third remains an anomaly in the open-world genre as so many continue to embrace seriousness and realism.

In my early days of playing adventure games on my Xbox 360, one series always had my heart. As campy and ridiculous as it was, the Saints Row series has and always will be one of my favorite series of GTA-like games. I often call Saints Row “Goofy Grand Theft Auto,” a perfect parody of practicing crime while also shooting obscene mascots with a Dubstep gun (yes, that’s a real weapon in this series.) If you’d like to read our past review of Saints Row The Third: Remastered, check it out here!

Saints Row The Third Remastered offers exactly what the original offered almost 10 years ago. With a logical and necessary aesthetic facelift and all the content that was released by DLCs included, it is still a very fun and engaging game, and a great opportunity for those who could not enjoy it in their day, but perhaps who already own the one from 2011, have no reason to approach this new version, and it could have been used to make some small playable improvement.

Saints Row: The Third Remastered is one of the most impressive guilty pleasures - one that also manages to be much more clever than it presents itself. All DLC is included, and the overall experience is polished to a mirror-like sheen. Anyone who initially wrote off Saints Row: The Third as a insipid Grand Theft Auto knock-off, might want to give it another chance. There is more going on than just being a simple third-person sandbox action game.

Saints Row: The Third Remastered does what it promises as a remaster and nothing more.