Celebrated Saints Row modder Mike "IdolNinja" Watson has died.

Watson, who led the Saints Row 2 patch project at Volition, died yesterday after a long battle with cancer.

In May, Watson's illness caused him to step down from his position as Volition community manager, although he continued to work on the Saints Row 2 patch project.

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Following a succession over-the-top adventures that folded in alien invasions and superpowers with Saints Row 4 and its subsequent follow-ups, Volition is bringing its open world crime series back to its roots with the next year's Saints Row - a reboot that reintroduces a more grounded contemporary fictional setting while still looking to hold onto the humour and possibilities that Saints Row has become beloved for.

Titled simply Saints Row, the new game will be a cross-generational affair that's coming as soon as next February, and sees a player-created character heading up a gang of four as they go on to establish a criminal empire. Among that group is Eli, a nerdy planner with an MBA, Neenah, who provides the driving talent and Kevin, who, er, has some lovely abs? Then there's the player character themselves, defined by the player using some of the same deep customisation options seen previously in the series - and the group's make-up promises to play into the co-op that is also at the heart of this Saints Row reboot.

Providing the playground this time out is Santo Ileso, which draws heavily upon the American south west. It's broken down into nine distinct districts, including the downbeat Rancho Providencio, Las Vegas analogue El Dorado and the secluded suburban Monte Vista. In the heart of the city there's an extended emphasis on verticality (and the promise of some tools to make the most of all that, with wingsuits and ziplines that catapult players into the air).

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Five of the Best is a weekly series about the parts of games we overlook. We've discussed a diverse bunch: crowds, hubs, potions, mountains, hands... They're the things we take for granted while we play but then, years later, find lodged in our brains. It's only then we begin to appreciate how important they were. So let's celebrate them.

Today...

Character creators! How long do you spend in them? Do you pick a premade face and just breeze through? Do you pick a template, tinker a bit and then settle? Or do you adjust absolutely everything, take all evening and it still doesn't look right? I feel your pain.

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Developer Volition has pledged to fix the notoriously broken PC version of Saints Row 2 over a decade after its original release, having found the game's long thought lost source code.

Speaking during a special announcement livestream (which also marked Saints Row 2's 11th birthday in the US), Volition's general manager Mike Kulas explained that the studio, when faced with having to create three versions of the game for its original 2008 release, opted to outsource the PC port. And as both Volition, and countless users on the game's Steam page will attest, the results were less than stellar.

For a long time, the only way to enjoy Saints Row 2 on PC in anything like a satisfactory manner has been to rely on community created mods. Volition's Mike Watson, himself a modder and now senior community manager at the company, has lead the charge to improve the game internally for years, but plans were scuppered when the studio was unable to find the original PC source code. Now however, after much searching, that code has been found.

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