10 Video Game Remakes & Remasters That Surpassed Expectations
8. Saints Row 3 Remastered
Who would have thought, of all the things we would be praising in the year 2020, it would be a port of Saints Row 3. Sure, the series may not have aged as gracefully as it would like and previous ports haven't exactly set the world on fire, but Saints Row 3 Remastered seems to be a turning point for the open world franchise.
Visually speaking, Saints Row 3 was never really a benchmark for the open world genre. Characters were cartoony in appeal and a purple haze permeated the world itself. Subsequent ports, including the most recent Nintendo Switch edition, hadn't really aided in improving the game from that original form, until this brand new port which was announced and released in the span of but a month.
Spearasoft, the team behind the port, completely rebuilt the city of Steelport with updated and in some cases completely remodeled assets, a crazy level of new detail to the lighting and shader system and an overall boost to the games frame rate.
The term 'glow up' doesn't seem to do this port justice, and perhaps it's the kind of ground work the series needed ahead of it's eventual next-gen revival.