Saints Row: The Third Remastered
A mostly smooth return to Steelport
Once again it’s time to party like it’s 2011 – only now the Saints are bringing their mayhem to PS5. Based on last year’s remaster, the extensive overhaul of a PS3 favourite is now enjoying next-gen bells and whistles through a free upgrade.
The process of transferring your PS4 save data to the PS5 version of the game is meant to be fairly slick. After downloading both versions of the game plus your old save data, you should be able to pick up where you left off. Alas, first we were told our profile had been corrupted. Then when we tried to check our save was usable on the PS4 version, we got caught in an infinite load loop – an issue that was supposedly fixed with a recent patch. The PS5 build wanted nothing to do with our borked save and we only managed to get the transfer system to play ball after wiping our cloud saves, digging out our original PS4 hardware, and reuploading our save data from there. Our advice: don’t faff with the old build; head straight into the PS5 version once you’ve downloaded all your files.
BACK IN LILAC
Thankfully our return to Steelport proper goes better. The PS4 build offers a respectable locked 30fps, and the PS5 upgrade promises twice as many frames alongside dynamic 4K resolution. It’s a smooth ride, whether you’re wheeling around belting out bangers from the last decade or holding off the fuzz with a rocket launcher.
Loading is often over in less than half the time it would’ve taken the PS4 build to begin considering a spot of mayhem. While you mostly miss the character portrait loading screens that were new for the PS4 release, it means you can get stuck back in without missing a beat. Nothing kills the mood having to wait to retry a failed mission. As for the DualSense, new functionality is limited beyond a purple light emanating from your controller.
DualSense functionality is limited beyond a purple light emanating from your controller.
But while this is a welcome freebie for fans, there’s little here to entice newbies. That is to say that, while the remaster effort remains impressive and the upgrade introduces welcome technical upgrades, the PS5 sheen cannot obscure the decade-old game design.