There is a very specific kind of joy that comes from sprinting through a crowded intersection, leaping onto the hood of a sedan, pulling the driver out through the windshield, and driving off while firing a rocket launcher out the window. Saints Row: The Third built its entire identity on this kind of gleeful, consequence-free chaos. What I didn’t expect was that adding motion controls and a VR headset would make that chaos feel physically real — like I’m actually holding that rocket launcher, actually leaning out of that stolen car, actually standing in the middle of Steelport while everything explodes around me.
The way to play Saints Row The Third in VR is through Zolika1351’s ZMenu mod, a free community trainer that added full VR support in late 2022. This is not an injection driver. It is a genuine, dedicated VR implementation with head tracking, motion controls, and weapon tracking built into a mod menu that you drop into the game’s folder. The setup is straightforward enough: download the mod, extract it, launch the DX11 executable, press F7 to open the menu, and toggle VR on. From there, the entire open world of Steelport becomes a VR playground.
But here’s what you need to understand before you start: this mod is packaged inside a trainer menu. A trainer. That means you’re downloading a tool that can spawn cars, teleport across the map, give yourself infinite health, and manipulate game memory — and somewhere in that menu, there’s a VR section. If that raises your eyebrows, it should. The same tool that lets you become invincible also runs your headset. For some players, that’s a non-starter. For others, it’s just the price of admission for a free VR mod of a game that never had any business working in headsets.
Once you’re in, the physicality is immediate and genuinely surprising. Driving through Steelport in VR, with actual head tracking and a sense of real vehicle scale, transforms what was already a ridiculous game into something genuinely exhilarating. You feel the speed. You feel the absurdity of launching a convertible off a ramp while firing an SMG one-handed. The weapon tracking works — you physically aim with your motion controller, and the game maps that to your crosshair. It’s not perfect; the weapon scale can look weird, and the 3D rendering has been described by users as “a bit off” in places. But when you’re mid-chase, leaning around corners, leaning out of a helicopter to fire a grenade launcher at a rival gang’s convoy, the imperfections fade into the background.
The combat benefits enormously from the physical presence. Saints Row The Third’s shooting was never exceptional — competent third-person cover shooting with a ridiculous arsenal. In VR, aiming with your actual hand makes every weapon feel more immediate. The dildo bat becomes funnier when you’re swinging it with a motion controller. The airstrike becomes more satisfying when you’re physically pointing at your target. The insurance fraud activity, where you throw yourself into traffic for cash, gains a slapstick physicality that the flat screen never provided. This is the rare case where adding VR to a silly game makes it sillier in the best possible way.
But the caveats are substantial, and they start with the single biggest problem: the cutscenes are completely broken in VR. During story sequences, the camera positions itself at bizarre angles, clips through geometry, or locks into positions that make following the action essentially impossible. For a game that leans heavily on its ridiculous narrative — the Saints have become a media empire, you’re fighting an international crime syndicate called The Syndicate, there’s a wrestling match and a B-movie shootout — losing the cutscenes is a significant blow. You can technically complete the entire campaign, but you’ll be watching the story through a broken viewport. Some players switch to a flat-screen view for cutscenes, which is an acceptable workaround but breaks the immersion every time the story advances.
Performance is the other major friction point. Saints Row The Third is a 2011 game, but its PC port has always had performance quirks on modern hardware, and adding VR doesn’t help. Users have reported frame drops and stuttering even on capable PCs. The mod includes a Performance Mode with adjustable settings, and the developer specifically recommends disabling fake distant vehicles and pedestrians to reduce load. These workarounds help, but they’re workarounds — you shouldn’t need to turn down crowd density in a decade-old game just to maintain VR frame rates. The January 2024 update to the mod actually reverted the VR build to an earlier July 2023 version because the newer build broke VR entirely, which tells you everything you need to know about the stability of this implementation.
Comfort is another consideration. This is an open-world game with fast driving, rapid camera movement, and third-person perspective with head tracking. The adjustable VR Turn Angle helps, and dedicated turn left/right binds were added in updates after early users reported D-pad controls reversing when they physically turned around. But it’s still intense. Driving at high speed through city streets in VR, with the camera lurching over curbs and fishtailing around corners, will test the stomach of anyone prone to motion sickness. The insurance fraud activity, where you ragdoll through traffic, is essentially a comfort nightmare. If you’re sensitive to VR motion, this is not your game.
There’s also the question of which version to buy. The mod targets the original game’s DX11 executable and has been tested on the GOG version. The Remastered version, released in 2020 with visual upgrades, is not confirmed compatible. Some secondary sources have claimed otherwise, but the mod author’s own documentation does not list the remaster as supported, and the Remastered version runs on a different build. If you want to play this in VR, buy the original — it’s cheaper anyway, and the visual upgrades of the remaster are irrelevant once you’re inside a headset.
So who is this actually for? Saints Row The Third in VR is a recommendation with a very specific audience. If you already own the original game, if you have any affection for the Saints Row chaos sandbox, and if your tolerance for jank is high enough to handle broken cutscenes and occasional frame drops, this mod delivers something genuinely special — a full open-world crime simulator with motion controls, completely free. The sense of scale when you’re standing on a rooftop overlooking Steelport, the physical comedy of the insurance fraud minigame, the sheer ridiculousness of firing a rocket launcher from a moving car with your actual arm — these moments are real and they’re worth experiencing.
But if you want a polished story experience, if cutscenes matter to you, if you’re sensitive to motion sickness, or if you only own the Remastered version, this mod is not the answer. It is a free trainer with a VR mode, not a professional VR port. The broken cutscenes alone will frustrate anyone who cares about the narrative. The performance issues will annoy anyone who expects consistent frame rates. And the trainer-menu packaging will concern anyone who doesn’t want game-memory manipulation tools running alongside their VR runtime.
The honest bottom line: this is one of the most impressive free VR mods for an open-world game, and the physical comedy of Saints Row The Third translates better to VR than its serious tone ever would have. But the caveats are heavy enough that only the truly committed should bother. Play it if you love the Saints and you’re willing to meet the mod halfway. Everyone else should admire the ambition from a distance.