"Saints Row: The Third Remastered" Painfully Boring

    I have finally finished Saints Row: The Third, and all I have to ask myself is, why did I play through this all? Look, the game's better than Saints Row 2, I'll give you that, but considering it's predecessor was liable to crash on me at any moment, it was a miracle I even finished that game (I can't remember if I actually finished the game). I mean this game is fine, sure, but it's pretty much what you'd expect from any sort of open world "GTA-ish" sort of clone, only this one just doesn't take itself as seriously. I think my main issue with this game is that it had a lot of content, but ultimately most of it was useless. Which I suppose is my issue with this game, frankly it's kind of boring.

    I mean let's just start with the DLC, which might have been "funny" or cool when the game was first released, but simply fall flat now. Maybe I just hate fun, maybe I just need to go find other games to play or something, One of them is supposed to parody what would be a typical fanboy, which is fine and all, but frankly the whole "Johnny Gat has been cloned and it's gone all terribly wrong" thing becomes pretty tiresome pretty quickly. I basically completed this DLC as soon as I had the oppourtunity to, and I felt like it didn't add anything to or from my gameplay experience. The same could be said for Genkibowl, or whatever it's called. I'm sure 12 year old me would have enjoyed it, or maybe 20 years ago I would have, but when I played through it today, in 2024, I don't think I even cracked a smile once at any of the jokes. That's not to say they were all a bust though, as I actually did enjoy the movie one, especially watching Jenny and her slow descent from overdramatic stereotypical alien turned psycho killer. I just think I liked using all of the alien gear even if I never touched it post-DLC.

    Which brings me to an issue with this game, you really don't need to touch anything. Once again the gang system returns, and I can see why it never made it's way into Saints Row 4. I mean you hardly do gang stuff anyways in Saints Row: The Third, you mostly just end up fighting the syndicate and doing random wacky objectives. And yes, while the main quest is fine, any other activity is utterly useless. I'm sorry, but there is hardly any sort of real benefit to taking over neighborhoods, buying up shops, expanding your territory, and even buying upgrades for most of the guns. The truth is with the DLC added most of the guns/vehicles you need are already there, and it's not like the game's particularly hard either. If we're being frank, the most difficult aspect of the game is the fact that the developers don't know how to make it any harder other than overloading your screen with enemies, sort of like what Saints Row 2 did, which I hated by the way.

    I hate to say it, because 12 year old me really loved Saints Row 4, and as such I was really excited to sink my teeth into the earlier games, but they just kind of stink. I have forty hours invested into this game according to Steam, but if you look at my actual save file it would tell you that it's actually more like 15 hours in total. That's because this game was kind of boring, and so I'd constantly stop it to go do other things, or alt-tab to go play something else, leaving this game in the dust. I mean from the crashing, which was more frequent than it should have been, to the fact that all side-quests are pretty much meaningless, there's hardly anything to do in this game. It's just mediocre all-around, there's no other way to describe this game, and honestly, it's a miracle to me that this franchise managed to pump out as many games as it did.

Final Score: 45/100

    I almost enjoyed this game, almost. But the more I write this review the more frustrating this game felt to me. I bought it on sale for like 4 dollars CAD, and that is the only time I would encourage anyone to even touch this game and bother trying it. The gameplay and story are fine, but that's about it, everything else is mostly subpar, or just falls flat on it's face. What is the point of an open-world game if all of the activities add very little to the actual experience of playing the game, and players can just breeze through the story without ever touching them? I think that's ultimately my gripe with this game. If it was just your average linear game nothing would change about it. All of these extra features are just frills, they don't contribute to anything, nor do they make your experience any better. If you speedrun through this game's story I wouldn't blame you. Let's just hope Saints Row 4 holds up to what I thought it was as a kid.