However, all the DLC will be removed from standalone purchases along with the different versions of the game. Saves and Achievements will carry over into the Re-Elected version. Furthermore, cross-platform play is also launching on the same day, allowing those on Steam to play with Epic Games and GOG users.

Saints Row 4 is available for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, while Re-Elected is on PS4, Xbox One, Google Stadia, and Nintendo Switch. For more details on the base game, check out our review here. You can also check out our review for the Re-Elected version here.

Original story follows:

Sony has announced its lineup of titles coming to PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium this month, starting from July 19th. Just as the rumors claimed, Final Fantasy 7 Remake (PS4) and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade – which includes Episode INTERmission – will be available for subscribers. They’re joined by Marvel’s Avengers and Stray on PS4 and PS5.

Numerous Assassin’s Creed titles are also coming to the service. Assassin’s Creed Unity, Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Rogue Remastered, Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry and Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection are all going to be available on PS4. Saints Row 4: Re-Elected and Saints Row: Gat out of Hell on PS4 are also included.

The remaining roster includes Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure, Jumanji The Video Game, Paw Patrol on a Roll! and ReadySet Heroes on PS4 along with Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition for PS5. Classic titles include No Heroes Allowed! and LocoRoco Midnight Carnival on PlayStation Portable.

Interestingly, PlayStation Blog Italy notes that Dino Crisis on PS One and Ridge Racer 2 and Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny on PSP will be added to the Classics catalogue as well. It remains to be seen if these will be available for other regions later. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Update: Deep Silver has released an official trailer for the Switch version along with confirming the March 27th release date. Check it out below.

Original Story:

We’re still yet to see the next title in the Saints Row franchise but Saints Row 4: Re-Elected is seemingly much closer to being released on Switch. Amazon recently posted a listing for the game with a March 27th release date. This is in line with a French retailer listing that appeared in mid-January.

As for what to expect, Saints Row 4: Re-Elected contains the base game with all of its DLC. It sees the leader of the Third Street Saints becoming the President of the United States and stopping the alien Zinyak. Along with superpowers, players also receive weapons like the Polarizer and Inflato-Ray. Drop-in and drop-out co-op is also supported.

The downloadable content on offer includes the Enter the Dominatrix and How the Saints Save Christmas, two story packs, along with content packs like The Presidential Pack, the Commander-in-Chief Pack and much more. Saints Row 4: Re-Elected is currently out for PS4 and Xbox One (including Game Pass) so it’s available to try now. Stay tuned for an official announcement on the Switch release.

It’s been a string of Switch games getting (potentially) leaked through retailer listings in recent days. It started by the retailer listing for Metro Redux on the Switch, which was followed promptly afterward by a retailer leaking BioShock Collection for the hybrid. Now, Volition and Deep Silver’s chaotic open world action adventure title, Saints Row 4 might be headed to the Nintendo system as well.

Saints Row: The Third – The Full Package launched on the Switch last year, and now, less than twelve months later, the sequel might be headed this way too. GameXplain (via Nintendo Everything) recently spotted a listing for Saints Row: Re-elected (which contains the base game plus all DLCs) on French retailer Cultura- though the listing has since been removed.

Weirdly enough, a separate French distributor also has a similar listing up, and though it mentions the PS4, that is most likely a mistake, what with the release date being listed as March 27 (the PS4 version has been out since 2015).

Saints Row 4: Re-Elected is currently available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. On Xbox One, the game is also available via Game Pass. Meanwhile, the next mainline Saints Row title is also in development, and will be showcased sometime this year.

One of the few noteworthy announcements at the recent Inside Xbox show were the new games coming to Game Pass. Besides Dirt Rally 2.0 and Bad North, which were announced earlier this month, we’re getting Saints Row IV: Re-Elected and Cities Skylines. Other titles include Genesis Noir, Lonely Mountains: Downhill and Demon’s Tilt for Xbox Game Pass on Xbox One and PC.

Genesis Noir is essentially a detective game set “before, during and after the Big Bang”. Players will witness the creation of everything and then a way to destroy it all. Lonely Mountains: Downhill is a racing game that’s all about riding your bike down a mountain. Then there’s Demon’s Tilt, a bullet hell meets pinball title that also throws in some hack and slash gameplay.

If you’re wondering about some of the indie games from ID@Xbox, a showcase for the same is scheduled for tomorrow at 9 AM PT. Stay tuned for more details and news from the Inside Xbox stream. Microsoft has already confirmed that Project xCloud’s first public preview will be coming next month.

The first thing to say about this particular remastering, is that it doesn’t appear to be all that impressive. Certainly some of the problem is that the art style when it comes to the Saints Row games is that they just aren’t as crisp and clean as some of the other titles that first appeared on the Playstation 3 and have since been ported over to the PS4. If you attempt to compare Re-Elected to something like The Last of Us or Grand Theft Auto V remasters, the graphics and especially the facial features of the characters in this game are going to fall quite short.

"If you attempt to compare Re-Elected to something like The Last of Us or Grand Theft Auto V remasters, the graphics and especially the facial features of the characters in this game are going to fall quite short."

Another problem is the rag doll physics employed in the game. The developers got away with some of the goofiness of movement when it comes to Saints Row IV because most of the game actually takes place inside a computer generated world. The physics rules of this world have already been tampered with a little bit in order to give your character a number of different super powers. Having those powers already makes everything seem just a little bit goofy, but in a good way. Being able to run faster than a speeding car works because you and Kinzie have worked together to make that computer generated world allow you to run faster than a speeding car.

Despite the souped up physics and otherworldly powers characters in this game are supposed to have, running into and through a pedestrian and watching them actually bend and flip and rag doll away still seems like something you wouldn’t expect to see in a AAA game on the Playstation 4. Once again, you have to wonder whether Volition meant for this level of goofiness, since there is actually one particular game mode, where the entire intent is for you to rag doll your way through the town for as long as possible. Do this just right and you’ll be able to roll and flip and smack and flop for miles and miles and miles.

So did the developers design the rag doll physics for Re-Elected in order to make fun of other games and their attempts at realistic death scenes? Or did the developers come to understand the limitations of their engine and come up with a rather clever way to poke fun of themselves? Whichever the answer, it still comes off as a little off putting to see on a major console in 2015. It’s even more off-putting when you again compare Saints Row IV: Re-Elected to the other games that have recently gotten a new spit and polish. When you shoot someone in Grand Theft Auto V or The Last of Us, those gun shot victims have a bit of rag doll in them, but they go down looking quite realistic.

"The real issue is whether or not you’ve ever played this game before. It is certainly worth a buy if you don’t already have it or haven’t ever played it."

I should stop here and say that because I’ve been complaining about the look and feel of this particular remaster for the first half of this review, you’ve probably assumed I didn’t like the game. The fact of the matter is I still greatly enjoyed myself as I played through this incredibly original story and well created world. The conundrum that always presents itself when talking about a supposed upgrade of a title that isn’t particularly old is that it’s hard to tell exactly what you’re supposed to review.

Am I supposed to sing the praises of well drawn and well filled out characters that have become fan favorites as the series has unfolded? Or do I assume you all know that Saints Row IV is a very good game and what you really want to know is whether or not it’s worth your money to purchase it all over again in a new format? If the answer is an affirmative to the second question, then the answer simply has to be no.

The release of the current generation console version, which really is seemingly just the originally with a slightly longer name and just a little spit and polish might be one of the most pointless remasters to date. The lack of any real tangible upgrade from the original is complicated by Sony and the launch of its Playstation Now service. As long as you have a fast enough Internet connection, you can play the original through that service and assuming this isn’t a game you’re going to want to play over and over, you can do it for quite a bit cheaper this way.

If you don’t want to go through the bother of trying to stream the original Saints Row IV, or you want to be able to go through the game as often as possible, Reelected isn’t a complete waste of money. There’s plenty of content, more than you’re going to be able to go through in a number of sittings and even when you are going through a somewhat repetitive part, there’s enough to keep it fresh and fun.

The real issue is whether or not you’ve ever played this game before. It is certainly worth a buy if you don’t already have it or haven’t ever played it. If you’re enough of a fan of the series that you’ve already played Saints Row IV on the PS3 or Xbox 360, then there really isn’t a compelling reason to give Saints Row IV: Re-Elected a go.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

Gfk Chart-Tracks sales charts for last week are in and to no one’s surprise, Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was the top selling game across all platforms. Sales were up by 27 percent likely due to the recent release of the Havoc DLC which added Exo Zombies to the game.

If you’re confused about the lack of Techland’s Dying Light, which released globally on January 27th, it’s due to the physical release’s delay in Europe. Though available digitally, Chart-Track only accounts for physical retail sales.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is in second place following a 7 percent drop in sales. FIFA 15 is in third place and Saints Row IV: Re-Elected/Gat Out of Hell is in fourth place despite a 38 percent sales drop.

Minecraft: Xbox Edition, Far Cry 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Minecraft: PlayStation Edition and Destiny make up the remainder of the top ten. What are your thoughts on this week’s best sellers in the UK? Let us know in the comments.

Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V, which features one of the biggest worlds in video games in recent years, saw updated animations, new content and the first person mode that totally changes the way players can go about in the game. Earlier in 2014, Crystal Dynamics along with Nixxes Software and United Front Games launched Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition which was extremely well developed, featuring updated character model, effects and graphical overhaul.

Video comparing cutscenes from the PS4 and Xbox One versions.

In short, this trend of remasters is not a bad thing, unless developers get it right. Unfortunately, this is where High Voltage Software falters a bit. Saints Row 4: Re-Elected isn’t exactly a bad port but the problem is it does not seem to be taking advantage of the potential that the current gen consoles offer.

We recently got our hands on both the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game and are pleased to report that both run at a native 1920 X 1080 resolution, which is a step above the sub-HD resolution found on the PlayStation 3 version. Both the versions share the same in-game assets such as character models and high resolution textures, but the real downer is the frame rate. Given that the game came out almost 18 months ago, it is not unfair to expect that the remaster will run at 60 frames per second on both consoles. Unfortunately, that is not the case here as the developers opted for an unlocked frame rate approach. Both versions frequently judder from 30-60 frames per second but it’s the PlayStation 4 version that stays close to sixty frames per second at most times which is down to its superior GPU.

Unlocked frame rate isn’t an unknown quantity at this point. Last year’s inFamous Second Son had an unlocked frame rate but given that it was a fast paced game, the judder was hardly noticeable. Later on Sucker Punch released a patch that allowed players to cap the frame rate at 30. Why exactly High Voltage Software did not opted for a similar approach is something that we are not aware of. Given that a fair share of the player’s time will be invested in slow paced activities such as exploring the world and navigating from point A to B, a locked 30 frames per second could at least helped in removing the judder effect. May be developers will fix this in a future patch but nothing is confirmed at the time of writing this analysis.

Video comparing gameplay from the PS4 and Xbox One versions.

Another disappointing feature is the lack of a decent anti-aliasing solution. As you can see from the PS4 images below, there does not seem to be any kind of post processing AA. In an era where developers are pushing their games with advanced and optimized AA techniques such as HRAA (Far Cry 4), the lack of a decent AA solution is baffling. Again we are clueless as to why the developers opted for this but we suspect that the PS4 and Xbox One versions are based off the PC version which had support for MSAA, so the developers might have avoided it all together due to resource issues. But this is merely an assumption on our part, regardless this game seriously needed a decent post processing AA.

Lack of decent AA solution is rather disappointing. For high quality images, please download from here.

Another feature that seems to be lacking are detailed shadows. As evident from the screenshot below, the remastered versions suffer from shadow dithering. It must also be noted that some alpha effects like smoke and fire seem to be better on PS4, especially in the cutscenes. As seen from the cutscene comparison video in this article, the PS4 version seems to be have more effects, whereas they are completely absent on the Xbox One version. However these instances are rare and far between.

The remastered version has shadow dithering.  For high quality images, please download from here.

But as I said before, this isn’t exactly a bad port so other than the updated resolution and high resolution textures, the developers have added enhanced screen space reflections wherever they could. This kind of helps the city to come alive at times. Enhanced motion blur and depth of field also make a return to the remastered versions. The reason why I am using the term enhanced is because it seems that that certain graphical parameters have been given a lift compared to the PC version.

Enhanced screen space reflections, motion blur and depth of field in action.  For high quality images, please download from here.

Conclusion:

In the end, High Voltage Software’s effort with Saints Row 4: Re-Elected can be best described with two words: not optimized. There is no doubt that the remastered versions have few enhanced effects, 1080p resolution but the lack of a stable frame rate and post processing AA makes us feel that this is not a port that will stand up against the likes of The Last of Us Remastered or Grand Theft Auto V.

It’s hard to judge which version performs better since they both suffer from variable frame rates but if you are a fan of more effects and higher frame rates than the PS4 version is the one to opt for. But if you have a decent gaming PC, then you might very well buy the PC version which is better and may be even cheaper.

If anything, this remaster proves yet again that there is still a decent amount of difference between the two consoles. PS4 has a bit more in it to churn out better effects and higher frame rates than its counterpart, the Xbox One. Whether this gap will remain consistent throughout 2015 is something that remains to be seen.