volition-studios
Latest
Saints Row: The Third gets 'freaking super powers' this fall in 'Enter the Dominatrix' expansion
In what is now becoming an annual tradition, one April Fools' joke is turning into a real-life thing. This time it's Saints Row: The Third's "Enter the Dominatrix" expansion. According to THQ, the new standalone content, taking place after the events of Saint's Row: The Third, will add "freaking super powers" for the price of $30.Enter the Dominatrix arrives this fall, and it'll bring a whole new angle to the world of the Saints: "alien warlord Zinyak and his malevolent race" are apparently trying to grab up all the Earth's resources and/or women. It sounds like those freaking super powers will come in handy, eh? The dubious character seen above – named "Paul," innocuously enough – will also play some role, which remains to be seen. THQ says we'll hear more about Enter the Dominatrix this summer, so keep an ear flap on your gimp mask unzipped for now.Update: THQ confirmed to us that Enter the Dominatrix is a standalone expansion and Season Pass owners will have to pay $30 like everyone else.Update 2: To be extra extra clear, THQ explained to us that Enter the Dominatrix is a standalone "boxed retail product" that can be played without owning the original Saints Row: The Third disc. It will be available solely at retail (on disc) at launch this fall.
Saints Row: The Third and doughnuts for dinner
Saints Row: The Third is like a doughnut, and I'm trying to decide if that's a good thing. I mean, everybody loves doughnuts -- I know I do. They're fluffy, sometimes sticky and mostly made of sugar and butter, two of the best-tasting foods around. And a proper doughnut, maybe with a morning coffee or during a meeting break, can really hit the spot, giving you that extra burst of energy that you need. But they're not that good for you. A regular Krispy Kreme alone runs up to 300 calories or more. Doughnuts are great as an occasional pick-me-up, but you'd be in trouble if you started eating nothing but doughnuts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, right? Which brings us to Saints Row: The Third.%Gallery-136917%
Saints Row: The Third dev walkthrough introduces faces to the pavement
Offended by the already released material for this holiday's Saints Row: The Third? Then you probably shouldn't take a walk through Steelport with Volition's Drew Holmes as he roughs up the populace, and in turn shows off the game's sandbox madness. The rest of you? Head past the break.
Red Faction: Armageddon demo now live (and extra magnetic)
The Xbox Live demo for Red Faction: Armageddon is now available and has everything you could want ... by which we mean "the only weapon you'll ever want:" the magnet gun. The weapon is anything but polarizing, as you might have noticed in our recent preview. Beyond toying with the magnet gun, you'll get to reassemble demolished buildings and walkways with the nano forge, use collapsible worm holes to implode enemies, and just generally blow up everything in sight. The demo concludes with a note that says the game will launch on May 31, but we'll remind you that the title was recently moved to June 7.
Red Faction: Battlegrounds beta extended to Oct. 26
If you were one of those lucky few PlayStation Plus members selected for the Red Factions: Battlegrounds beta, you'll have an extra week to zoom around and blow junk up. Word comes via the PlayStation Blog, where Volition community manager J Goldberg also announced that 1,000 more PlayStation Plus members will be invited into the beta. Red Faction: Battlegrounds is a twin-stick shooter in which up to four players engage in vehicular-based combat both online and off. It's expected to launch on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network in early 2011.
Red Faction: Guerrilla dev post-mortem: to embrace true open-world freedom 'you need to stop caring'
In a lengthy post-mortem on Gamasutra, design director James Hague breaks down how his team at Volition developed Red Faction: Guerrilla's many, many missions while working with an enormous, open world where pretty much everything can be destroyed. Beyond the seemingly minor decisions (order of actions within a mission, for instance) being problematic, the sheer enormity of RFG's terraformed Mars and its fully destructible environment drove the game's developer to deliver on the promise of freedom not just between missions, but during them as well. This, as you might imagine, caused quite a bit of a hitch, resulting in the eventual boiling down of some mission objectives to their most basic elements. "To truly fit into the open world model, missions have to provide the same sense of freedom that the world itself provides. And to make that work takes a change of mindset. It means letting go of being a control freak and instead embracing the chaos that's inherent in open world design," Hague says. For him, game design is often a struggle for how to control the player, and thusly, the player's experience. In the case of RFG, though, he exclaims the team had to "stop caring" about said control. "You can't control what the player experiences every moment. That's not a failure; it's what comes with letting the player do what he wants." Hague goes into far more detail over four pages of individual mission dissection, so if you're a fan of the game like we are, we'd suggest checking out the whole piece -- it may not be as rewarding as destroying a tower and watching it fall on scrambling soldiers, but then what is?
Get your ass back to Mars for quintuple XP in Red Faction: Guerrilla
Ah, Total Recall references -- does it get any better? Well, five times the XP for five days in Red Faction: Guerrilla is a start. Any of you Quaids out there who jump online for some jetpack-fueled fun will get quintuple XP from today up until Monday, December 21. And if you've not downloaded the multiplayer DLC pack yet, check out Volition's Twitter feed, @RedFaction. Volition's going to be giving away codes for the DLC to a few lucky followers throughout the event.
Red Faction: Guerrilla multiplayer DLC hammers down Sept. 17 release [update]
The second of three planned DLC packs for Red Faction: Guerrilla will add more multiplayer mayhem on September 17 -- just over threeeee weeeks from now. The pack adds eight new maps and two new modes (listed after the break!), some of which are shown and discussed in the the video above.Volition is aiming to release the Multiplayer Pack for PS3 and Xbox 360 at $7 (560). Oh, and for those who've yet to play Guerrilla, we totally recall telling you to "get your ass to Mars."Update: THQ has ninja-switched the DLC date to Sept 17 from the 10. Don't believe us? The original date can still be heard in the video.
Obama and McCain team up in Saints Row 2
No, not really. Let's just get that out of the way. That said, there are obvious facsimiles of the two major United States presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, featured in this co-op trailer for Saints Row 2. For the record, there are also cops and robbers, rednecks and tree huggers, and let's not forget pirates and ninjas. Silly pairings aside, the video serves to highlight the drop in / drop out online co-op, which can be carried through the entire single player campaign. Anyone with a copy of Crackdown knows that open world destruction is more fun with a friend. Cooperative open world destruction complete with crazily customizable characters? That's even better.Strangely absent from the video: pimps teaming up with whores.
Don't trip dawg, Saints Row 2 be comin' 2 PC
THQ has confirmed to Big Download that ghetto fabulous Saints Row 2 will be poppin' caps on PC. Originally announced for Xbox 360 and PS3, the game doesn't have an official release date yet for com-pu-ters, but Gamestop lists it with the same launch date as the console version. Saints Row 2 probably plays a significant role in THQ's financial stability, so it's not surprising to hear that the title will try to pick up cheddar from whatever platform it can find it on. THQ recently fired 200 employees and reported a $35 million loss in its last fiscal year. We'll holla back with an update if the publisher gives a release date soon. %Gallery-19838%
Red Faction III headed to PS3
An overdue second sequel to the ahead-of-its-time Red Faction has been mentioned during a recent investor-focused conference call. THQ's CEO, Brian Farrell, explicitly stated that Red Faction III is in development for the PS3 by THQ's Volition Studios, the same developers who produced the first two games. The series has been on hiatus since Red Faction II was released in 2003. The two first games utilised "Geo Mod" technology to allow players to damage the environment in realtime - something that's almost taken for granted nowadays but that was revolutionary back in 2001. We have great memories of creating cubby-holes and sniper points deep in the walls and waiting for an unsuspecting opponent to saunter past. Needless to say, we're psyched that Red Faction III is in development, despite the lack of any real details or even an official announcement.[Via Joystiq]
