Saints Row

Unseen64.net has unearthed images of Saints Row: The Cooler, a motion-controlled brawler spin-off that never saw the light of day.

Update: It sounds like proceedings may be delayed. The auction is still going and the hearing could start this evening at 8pm UK time rather than at 5pm. That information comes from an investor (@DDInvesting) who seems reliable.

Actor Michael Clarke Duncan died on Monday after two months of treatment following a heart attack. He was 54 years old.

Rap star 50 Cent has revealed plans to produce a movie based on Saints Row.

THQ has told Eurogamer that a sequel for Saints Row is yet to be confirmed or announced.

Gangster-banger Saints Row will be appearing on PS3 in spring, according to THQ, which is "boat-sing" that it's the first open-world game on the console. Apart from Oblivion. And Godfather.

Volition has released a yuletide freebee for Saints Row which allows you to slip into a Santa Claus outfit to enhance your gang-banging rampages, before presumably Ho Ho Ho'ing all the way to the bank, or crack-den, or whore-house, or other naughty-thing-house-shop.

The full ensemble is up for grabs: coat, hat, boots and hair.

Unfortunately only virtual gangsters with Xbox Live Bling accounts will have access to this patch immediately, whilst inferior Silver hustlers will have to wait until after Christmas Day to get their greedy mitts on those famous red duds. Even more misery is in store for our German friends, who won't be able to dress-up at all.

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THQ and Saints Row developer Volition have released a downloadable multiplayer map for the latter's Xbox 360 exclusive gangster-'em-up.

THQ and Volition have released a patch for Xbox 360's Saints Row, aiming to sort out a bunch of multiplayer problems as well as some general glitches. The "auto-update" should download whenever you next fire up the game.

According to the developer, lag ought to be reduced now, while it's also sorted out a range of issues including some exploits - like the "clothes stealing" exploit. We would've left that in, it sounds great.

Naturally, the update is required to play Saints Row online. Here's a full list of what's fixed:

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As promised a few weeks ago, THQ and Volition have released a bit of extra content for decent-enough Grand Theft Auto clone Saints Row.

TT Games and LucasArts have fought their way to the premier position in the UK all-formats charts, as Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy becomes the highest-selling title this week.

Capcom's bloody adventure title Dead Rising has bludgeoned its way to the top of the Chart Track all-formats charts this week, becoming the fastest-selling Xbox 360 title to date.

THQ has denied that it will use September 15th to release a host of new clothes and tattoos for Saints Row players to deck their characters out in, but says we can definitely expect some downloadable content soon.

Publisher THQ has knocked itself off the top of the charts in the UK, as Saints Row nudges Cars to the number two position to claim the top spot in its first week of sales.

Despite the predictably provocative strap line, we're not going to bang on too much about the ridiculous number of similarities between Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto (and it is astonishing). Rather than get steamed up at the death of creativity and end up ranting incredulously "and they even stole this bit!", we're in the 'talent borrows, genius steals' camp today. We're also interested in how we managed to glean so much enjoyment from such dead-eyed creative bankruptcy. In some senses it's a terrible game that you want to take an AK47 to, yet there you are, 25 hours into it, 3AM in the morning, still enjoying it.

Whether you're sick to death of the glorification of gangster theme, bored of GTA-style games or you just plain hate what the game stands for, the thing that it's hard to escape how well-crafted it is. And how enjoyable it is. It's like a McDonald's burger; you know you shouldn't like it, but man it tastes so good. The most puzzling thing is - unlike a BigMac - it's a curiously moreish experience that keeps you coming back for more.

Saints Row is, quite simply, a 'product' in the most calculated sense. THQ and Volition sat down a couple of years back and identified not only what was so popular about GTA, but what people hated about it. So, what we've ended up with is something that's not just specifically designed to appeal to the mammoth GTA audience, but makes an effort to fix all manner of irritations that have bugged fans for years. It effortlessly ticks all the right boxes. It's playable, fun, and forgiving, yet also remembers to be challenging, diverse, absorbing and epic. It's also very very slick, and polished to the nth degree. The hardest thing about the game is getting over your own dogged preconceptions and slightly irrational prejudices.

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I'm going to try and write this news story without a single childish, puerile reference to "multiplayer gang-banging", a phrase which I believe our American brethren take to mean something entirely different to what it means among sniggering, smutty types up and down the land here in the British Isles. It's going to be hard. Wish me luck.

After all manner of reports about technical problems with the multiplayer mode in its next-generation GTA-'em-up title Saints Row, developer Volition has reassured fans that it's hard at work on a patch which will have them popping caps in recalcitrant asses all over Xbox Live in no time.

The patch, whose existence was revealed in a post on the studio's own website, will fix a number of single and multiplayer game issues, with the chief improvements to the multiplayer aspects being better network latency, fixing connection ratings so that more large-party games are possible, and sorting out the matchmaking system to get people into games faster.

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THQ has championed the use of Xbox Live Marketplace to distribute pre-release demos of Xbox 360 games, revealing that the recently released Saint's Row demo was downloaded 350,000 times during its first week online.

As promised, THQ has popped a Saint's Row demo up on Xbox Live Marketplace. It's 904MB (!), and available everywhere except Germany and - you guessed it - Mexico.

"Our development team, when we saw the various GTA games coming out, thought Rockstar had created a genre."

There's undoubtedly something of a dilemma when first playing Volition's Saint's Row. It's too easy to yell "It's a GTA clone!" and be done with it - you want to rise above that. But, erk, Saint's Row is so similar to Rockstar's series in so many ways that it's beyond impossible to ignore. The look, the map design, the animations... the gameplay, all walk that incredibly tenuous and crumbling pathway along the cliff edge of Inspiration above the fetid waters of Copying.

THQ and Volition's Xbox 360 exclusive Grand Theft Also, Saint's Row, is due out on August 29th in the States - but you won't have to wait that long to try it out.

Volition's a-bit-like-Grand-Theft-Auto gang warfare game Saint's Row has been given a US release date of August 29th.

Soon every publisher will have a Grand Theft Also to call its own. Spawning from the fertile belly of Rockstar North's uber franchise we've already seen Take-Two (Mafia), Sony (Getaway), Activision (True Crime), VU Games (Simpsons Hit & Run, Scarface) and LucasArts (Mercenaries) score some of their biggest hits in years on the back of mission-based drivin' n' shootin', so it's hardly a massive shock to see some other publishing giants casting envious glances over their neighbour's fences.