Aliens, superpowers, inflation lasers, a dubstep gun - judging from its short teaser trailer, Saints Row IV looks to be the most ridiculous game in the series yet. Speaking to OXM, Volition senior producer Jim Boon responded to comments made by Cliff Bleszinski - who suggested the game should tone down its more juvenile elements - saying, "I think our tone is an element of our success."

"Ultimately I don't think that SR's tone gets in the way of bigger sales. If anything, I think our tone is an element of our success. SR is quite unlike anything else out there, and I think gamers crave unique experiences - I know I do. We have a lot of passionate fans that love SR, so I think we are striking the right chord."

Despite this, Boon says the team doesn't feel pressure to outdo the ridiculousness of previous games - even though they clearly have. "If anything it is liberating to be able to come up with any idea we think gamers will enjoy with no restrictions. Ultimately the pressure comes from trying to keep things fun in SR4. We have a very creative team that comes up with some fairly crazy ideas - that is almost the easy part for the team.

"The challenge is to make sure these ideas have a purpose and are fun," Boon continues. "We don't want to do crazy just for the sake of being over the top, so it is important that our crazy ideas actually add to the game. The pressure comes from having the time to really hone our idea into something that feels awesome for the player. We have had to cut any number of ideas if we thought we couldn't get the fun factor where it needs to be."

All fine and well, but would fans really miss the giant purple dildos? Boon thinks yes. "I think our fans would miss what might considered juvenile elements of previous SR games. Based on the overall reception and sales of SR3, I strongly suspect many people enjoy this aspect of SR, even if some may not want to admit feeling that way. Thinking of a movie series like The Hangover - people love the humor but you might not want to discuss some of the finer moments of those movies with your mom, for example.

"I think the same might be true for SR. We do get an awful lot of feedback from fans telling us much they love our juvenile tone - with some asking us to go even further! Ultimately SR4 doesn't try to take itself too seriously and we even have a lot of fun at our own expense."

Read the full interview to learn how superpowers have been integrated into the game, and how the team coped during THQ's bankruptcy.

Saints Row 4 is due out August 23rd.

Saints Row 4 debuted last week with all the subtlety one might expect from a game with dubstep guns and rocket-launching guitars, and it's eyeballing an August 20 release. That sets up a scant month-long gap between it and Grand Theft Auto 5's planned September launch, and Rockstar's titan has both years of success and a heavy fanbase to bring to bear. Speaking to Eurogamer, Volition Producer Jim Boone says the team isn't worried in the slightest and feels Saints Row is unique enough to stack up to its giant competitor.

"Obviously, when announced its date and it was so close to us, that was an interesting phenomenon," Boone says. "But the thing we feel good about in general is that we're such a different game to what they are. If we were stylistically similar to the first Saints Row, I'd be horrified right now. Saints Row: The Third came out the same time as Assassin's Creed, but the games are so different in terms of what they do."

Saints Row 4 certainly departs heavily from its original predecessor (remember when you were fighting gangs?), adopting a chaotic grab-bag of wacky antics such as superpowers, alien invasions, and pedestrian-firing cat cannons. Grand Theft Auto 5 is much more narrative-focused by comparison, weaving a more serious tale of crime and redemption connected across multiple main characters.

For Boone, open world games have come along far enough for both styles to co-exist peacefully. "The genre's matured enough where you can have all these different styles and still be an open world game and be different," he states. "So I look at GTA 5 and think there's this massive game coming out, but I don't think that with our superpowers and alien invasions, no one will compare us to them."

It isn't often we see the words "Origin" and "sale" next to each other, but this week is the exception: EA is running a week-long Player Appreciation Sale which discounts some pretty hefty games in the publisher's lineup—titans such as Mass Effect 3, Crysis 3, and Battlefield 3.

Here's the full list of games on sale and their prices:

Battlefield 3 Premium—$25
Battlefield 3—$12
Battlefield 3 Premium Edition—$30
Crysis 3—$30
Crysis 3 Digital Deluxe Edition—$40
Crysis 3 Digital Deluxe Upgrade—$10
The Sims 3 Seasons—$20
The Sims 3 University Life—$28
The Sims 3 Supernatural—$15
Dead Space—$6
Dead Space 2—$6
Dead Space 3—$30
Resident Evil 5—$10
Mass Effect 3—$10
The Walking Dead—$10
Batman: Arkham City GOTY Edition—$12
FIFA Soccer 13—$20
Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection—$15
Hitman: Absolution—$15
Saints Row: The Third Full Package—$25
Assassin's Creed 3—$35
Assassin's Creed 3 Deluxe Edition—$56
Darksiders 2—$18
Dead Island GOTY Edition—$10
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City—$25


Normal and special editions on sale? And they're big games? I don't want to spoil this rare opportunity to enjoy a good Origin sale with cynicism, but it's hard not to chortle lightly at the convenient devaluing of nearly half the games EA offered SimCity players for free earlier this week.

How silly is Saints Row IV going to be. Well, let's look at what's inside its announcement trailer.

A guitar-shaped rocket launcher. This is quite silly.
Superpowers. This is very silly.
A head-expanding laser beam. Positively batshit.
A skyward launching nutshot. Just... ouch.
A giant, mutated, rampaging mascot. I think I'm becoming desensitised.
An announcement date of August 20th for the US, and August 23rd for the UK. More informative than silly, really.

There's a definite pattern emerging.

Frankly, I'm delighted. Saint Row: The Third was one of those games so unapologetically ridiculous that it snapped back on itself and became a uniquely warped kind of genius. It's nice to see Volition and Deep Silver really test how far they can push that.

Farewell then, THQ. Yesterday saw the publisher’s final assets sold off to a variety of buyers, and while many good people (and franchises) managed to find a new home, our thoughts and well-wishes are with those that didn’t. As we’re in a reflective mood, we thought it only appropriate to commemorate the loss of this fine company with a look back at ten of the best games it’s delighted us with over the years.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (September 2004)

Tempting though it is to bang on about Relic Entertainment’s wonderful sci-fi RTS Homeworld, it wasn’t until 2004 that THQ took the Vancouver-based studio under its wing. Dawn of War represented the first fruits of that union, and it remains one of the most successful digital adaptations of the tabletop favourite, capturing the appeal of the series in a smart, refined package.

Full Spectrum Warrior (October 2004)

The most satisfying triumphs come from conquering the greatest adversity. Pandemic’s squad-based military shooter was an incredibly demanding game in its day, its punishing authenticity a result of its origins as a US Army-affiliated training simulation. Persistently tense and claustrophobic, it may not have been the dictionary definition of ‘fun’, but it was a sweaty-palmed experience we’ll never forget.

Titan Quest (June 2006)

Time for a lesson in ancient history - well, 2006 does seem a fair while ago these days. THQ managed to temporarily sate appetites for a new Diablo by releasing this gloriously entertaining action-RPG that proves you don’t need an awful lot more than an enormous world and hordes of colossal monsters to biff for a good time. Titan Quest may not have been anything particularly new, but there’s an art to making hacking and slashing as fun as this.

Company of Heroes (September 2006)

Just as the world and his dog was heartily sick of WWII settings, Relic’s blistering RTS managed to make us all care again. ‘Visceral’ may be horribly overused in games criticism, but rarely has the word been applied more accurately than to CoH’s shudderingly intense combat. Tough, gritty and oddly beautiful, it elevated its creator among the giants of the strategy genre.

Supreme Commander (February 2007)

Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games might be in the headlines for very different reasons at the moment, but back in 2007 this talented studio was making waves with a truly brilliant RTS. Supreme Commander was grand-scale warfare at its most exhaustive and exhausting – with some of the best AI in the business putting up a heck of a fight, every hard-earned victory was worthy of a triumphant air-punch.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R (March 2007)

Frightening, surprising, intense and ambitious? Or scrappy, buggy, overwhelming and confusing? S.T.A.L.K.E.R was all of the above and more, a sandbox-survival horror-RPG-FPS-adventure that cast you as a scavenger around the ruins of Chernobyl. Everyone’s experience was different: ours involved a lot of nervy creeping around in the dark, punctuated by terrified shrieks whenever a mutant spotted us. And we loved (almost) every minute of it.

Red Faction: Guerrilla (September 2009)

God bless Geo-Mod 2.0. It’s rare we’re minded to salute a physics engine, but the unparalleled destruction it enabled is what made Volition’s game such a giddy joy to play. After all, why just shoot an enemy when you can topple a multi-storey building onto him? Expertly paced, with a campaign that escalated into hysterical carnage, Guerrilla may have been unrefined at times but boy was it fun.

Metro 2033 (March 2010)

A rare thing: a great shooter with shooting that isn’t that great. Metro’s gunplay is lacking in feedback, but it’s hard to care too much in a world this rich and enveloping. Every inch of 4A Games’ subterranean nightmare is permeated with an atmosphere so thick you could slice it. This is the FPS as survival horror, and as appropriately brutal and hard-edged as that suggests.

Darksiders (September 2010)

A tilt of the hat to its sequel, too, but we’ve got rather a soft spot for Vigil’s original, even if ‘original’ is hardly a word you’d use to describe Darksiders’ unholy blend of Zelda and God of War. If you’re going to steal, though, then be sure to pinch from the best, and this post-apocalyptic tale did just that, marrying puzzly exploration with thrillingly weighty scraps, topped off nicely by some fine Joe Mad artwork.

Saints Row: The Third (November 2011)

What started out as a poor man’s GTA began to find its own identity in the follow-up, but it wasn’t until the third game that Saints Row realised its true potential. It was a monument to excess, a crude, coarse, tawdry descent into debauchery that was almost operatic in its tastelessness. Some remained immune to its charms (if that’s the right word) but there was genuine sophistication behind the silliness. Dumb, then, but artfully so.

 
 

THQ
1989-2013
RIP
This is no place for a horse.

 
 
 

THQ is no more: the bankrupt publisher and developer auctioned off its assets in U.S. Bankruptcy Court today. Though the court must still approve the sales, a letter from THQ's CEO (which was passed to Kotaku by an employee) reveals the bidders, which include Sega, Ubisoft, Deep Silver, Crytek, and Take-Two, and the THQ franchises and studios they'll acquire. Below is a breakdown of who's getting what, and what led to today's sale.

Who's getting what? Based on what we know right now...

Company of Heroes and Warhammer 40,000 developer Relic Entertainment is going to Sega.

Saints Row developer Volition, Inc. and the Metro series are going to Koch Media (Deep Silver).

The Homefront franchise is going to Crytek.

THQ Montreal and the South Park license are going to Ubisoft.

Evolve, a game in development by Turtle Rock Studios (which worked on Left 4 Dead), is going to Take-Two Interactive.
THQ will "make every effort to find appropriate buyers" for its remaining assets, such as Darksiders developer Vigil Games.


What happened?

On November 13, 2012, THQ announced that it had defaulted on a $50 million loan. Its subsequent Humble THQ Bundle raised about $5 million for THQ, charities, and the Humble Bundle organizers, but it wasn't enough: the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 19th.

Bankruptcy isn't necessarily the end—Chapter 11 allows the debtor to stay in control of the company under court oversight—but things didn't go as planned. THQ expected to sell itself in whole to a private equity firm called Clearlake Capital Group, but THQ's creditors and the bankruptcy court rejected that proposal earlier this month, which led to today's piece by piece auction.

We're heading towards the conclusion of THQ's ongoing bankruptcy saga. After the publisher's creditors raised objections over its hoped-for quick sale - objections which were upheld by a US judge - details are emerging about how that sale will eventually go down.

THQ had hoped to sell themselves as a whole, ensuring the company could exist as-is under a new owner. That's now not going to happen, after it was decided that a wholesale attempt would fetch less money than dividing the company up and selling each franchise separately. A tweet by the Distressed Debt Investing blog confirms this move, saying "The auction will allow for piecemeal ("title by title") sales of THQ assets"

DDI's latest blog update on the THQ case explains how the sale will work. THQ's properties will be auctioned off on January 22nd, with both titles and studios up for grabs. So far EA and Warner Brothers have been revealed as interested parties, although it's not known which titles they're eyeing up.

Also unclear is how this arrangement will affect THQ's upcoming games. Company of Heroes 2, Metro: Last Light and South Park: The Stick of Truth all seem close enough to completion that a prospective buyer would almost certainly want them released and making money. The status of their other projects - like Volition's Saints Row 4 - may be less secure. This is assuming the auction will keep each developer with their respective games, which itself is far from certain.

We should start to finally get some solid details come the sale hearing on January 23rd. In the meantime, wild speculation! Where would you like to see THQ's many great franchises end up?

Thanks, Polygon.