Most of THQ’s game brands or intellectual properties (IPs) were snatched up in January, with the likes of Saints Row, Homefront and Metro quickly finding new owners, mainly due to development for the next titles in the series already being well under way. However, a few IPs were unsold, meaning a secondary auction would be required. Bidding has just ended with 17 bids to be offered to the courts.
This week saw the sad end of an era as THQ’s assets were finally sold off at auction. While many of the licenses, franchises and development teams found new homes, there were a few that are still holding out hope for a lifeline.
Amongst all the misery, there have been numerous reminders of some of the great times THQ games have provided over the years. So here’s my tribute to some of the best games I’ve played from THQ over the years on this generation of consoles.
Now that the possessive minions have stopped deleting videos from Youtube we can bring you the remaining trailers from last week’s Spike VGAs. First up is the long awaited new trailer for South Park: The Stick of Truth.
The eagerly awaited THQ and Obsidian RPG is looking like a decent tie-in for a change. The crappy 2D animation has been left intact, rather than force the game into an unnecessary 3D model. The traditional turn-based battles draw from the frequently obscene history of the series to provide spells and summons that feature lots of familiar characters doing some nasty, nasty things. We’re looking at you Mister Slave.
Cartman is the star of the show once again and provides a bucket of laughs during this all too brief two minute look at the game. The game is currently pencilled in for a March release next year, we’re keeping our fingers crossed it won’t see any further delays.
The multiplayer component of upcoming FPS title, Metro: Last Light has been cancelled. 4A Games made a statement via the game’s blog, citing a desire to concentrate on the single-player campaign as the reason.
The decision was made after E3, but has only just been confirmed publically. Despite keen fan interest for details about the multiplayer, the developers realised that the single-player experience was what fans really care about. While the game won’t ship with any multiplayer, we could still see something later on.
After the first game where War -one of the Four Horseman- jumped the gun a little and brought on the apocalypse and wiped out humanity, we get to step into another rider’s shoes. Running parallel to the events of the original game, we’re now playing as Death.
Death is eager to clear his brother’s name and if possible, restore humanity to Earth. For the most part of the game though, we won’t be going back to Earth. Instead we’re exploring several large open maps of typical fantasy fare – forests, canyons, ice worlds, hell and any other staple you could care to remember.
Death is coming. August 21st specifically. So make sure you’ve made all the arrangements, because Vigil’s eagerly-awaited sequel is going to demand your presence, no questions asked. As protagonists go, brother number two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is certainly someone you don’t want to piss off.
My hands-on session starts at the opening of the now-finished game. A noisy Manchester Comic Con environment made taking note of any cutscenes a redundant luxury. So, eager to savour the full experience come review day, I skipped ahead, keen to let Death to do his thing.
With promises of rebuilding the aging gameplay for this year’s title, we’re expecting a lot of WWE ’12. The Smackdown name has been removed from the title as a statement of intent. But has enough changed to warrant the new name, or is it just another gimmick?
The most noticeable addition is the Predator system, which allows you to use the face buttons while locked in a grapple to target the arms, head or legs. Repeated manglings cause your opponent to move awkwardly and reduces their resilience to submission moves. It works well, although repeated use of a move to cause the injury can get boring and makes play feel mechanical, rather than fun.
GTAV will have to wait its turn. We’ve been looking forward to Saints Row: The Third for a while now and after the dirty delights of SR2, we can’t wait to get stuck in again with the current console generation’s most enjoyable open world crime series.
After pissing off The Syndicate, the Saints are forced out of Stillwater despite being the world’s most famous street gang. Instead, they’re dumped into Steelport and have to start from square one again. Their rise to power pits them against The Syndicate and the gangs of Morning Star, The Deckers and The Luchadores, the latter of whom are led by Killbane, voiced by Hulk Hogan. With this fresh start, the series is welcoming to old and new players.
The Games Workshop space faring Warhammer 40k universe has been begging for a proper action game for years. Having provided so much inspiration for video games it’s about time it had one.
Relic Entertainment have served 40k well already with their Dawn of War strategy games on the PC, but now they face a different challenge with an assault on the crowded action shooter genre. This is no Gears of War clone though; you’re playing as a Space Marine, the toughest soldiers out there. These seven-foot tall genetically engineered killing machines don’t need a cover-system; they’re all about fighting through the pain.
PS3 gamers eager to get online and show off their Space Marine skills after charging through the single-player game may find a nasty little bug is stopping them connecting to any matches.
When logging into the multiplayer options many players are getting this message: “Your NAT is not set to “Open”. This may prevent you from joining or hosting some game sessions.”
Thefirst gamewas a surprise hit from the Vigil Games team. Despite being an original creation, the world felt so lived in and like it had a deep past with plenty of scope for further stories, making for a world we’re eager to dive back into.
For the sequel, you play as a different Horseman of the apocalypse, Death. Rather than joining your bother War, immediately after the events of the first game, which would have been a great starting point given the tantalising conclusion, your adventure will run alongside that of your brother’s. This parallel story may throw up the odd familiar face, but we’re told to expect plenty of new locations, which is definitely better than going through all the old ones with everyone telling you that you’ve just missed your brother.
Now I’m not saying looks are everything, but after slumming it through the grey roughness of the original Metro 2033 game, it’s amazing to see the difference in Metro: Last Light. This game looks gorgeous. Yes, it still has a bit of a grey fetish, but like Killzone, it’s made pretty work of some of the colour palettes old-timers. And the game’s still only at pre-alpha code level, so it could get even better.
Those of you that played through the original game will find that the story of Last Light follows on from the (SPOLIER) ‘bad’ ending where you did launch the missiles to destroy the Dark Ones. So it would seem that your initial fight will be against human enemies, we’re sure there’ll be a few mutants along the way too. We’ve already seen those winged gargoyle-like arseholes (they pissed me off a lot last time) flying about in one of the trailers. Towards the end of the presentation, we also saw some large troll/gorilla-like creatures that featured some astonishingly slick animation and textured rocky skin that almost distracts from them trying to rip Artyom’s face off.
Since Saints Row 2 surprised us all by being a hell of a lot better than the original and for many, a more enjoyable game than GTAIV, we’ve been waiting to see how the next game would handle the pressure. Well, just remember it was a bit bonkers before and it’s not prepared to put its pants back on quite yet.
With just one hour to play the new game, we couldn’t believe how quickly it went. The first part of the demo is a bank heist with your Saints Row buddies, and all of you are disguised in oversized Johnny Gat heads, including Gat himself. It would appear that the Saints might have chosen the wrong bank to knock over though. As soon as they let their guards downs, all the bank tellers pull out some serious military grade hardware and open fire.
When the developers first announced there wouldn’t be a cover system for this third-person-shooter it raised a few eyebrows. Now that I’ve seen the suicidal nature of a swarming orc hoard eager to test the might of a Space Marine’s weaponry, it seems it was a great decision.
So forget about turn-based choices, real time strategy and dice rolling, this is the full-on action title we’ve been waiting for. Strategy fans have enjoyed the Dawn of War games, but action fans always intrigued by the rich sci-fi lineage of the series can now look forward to the first decent Warhammer game since Fire Warrior.
These games keep surviving, despite never really amassing much acclaim, even after merging the two world of motocross and ATV quad-bike racing, which at least saved fans of both a bit of money. So is there enough here to warrant a purchase rather than another indifferent shrug two laps into the demo? Let’s find out.
There’s no a typical career mode in place, either by label or structure, which is initially off-putting. But at least there’s no terrible story. You can choose to ride an MX (bike) or ATV (quad) around a small handful of tracks while earning experience points for yourself and for each vehicle.
Red Faction Armageddon’s multiplayer is going for a co-op angle this time around, similar to the Horde mode in Gears of War. Teams of four players will face off against 30 stages of enemies for each of the eight maps. Expect lots of tighter arenas compared to the last game’s open multiplayer deathmatches on the surface of Mars. We’re going to miss those epic jetpack battles.
The main map we got to try out was the underground Black Market. For the most part this level was made up of fairly narrow tunnels with low ceilings, making for some claustrophobic chaos. There’s a small square decorated with lots of neon signs which all too often distracts you from looking out for the alien’s bioluminescent glowing parts. The area of play seems to loop around in a circle. With the terrain including slopes and staircases.
The son of Kim Jong Il, proves to be quite a nasty daddy’s little boy and after ‘unifying’ North and South Korea, he decides to stretch his legs a bit in this alternative future-based first-person-shooter.
While Korea was on the up, America was trying to recover from a flu virus that killed millions and soaring gas prices that crippled the nation’s industry. When Korea launched a surprise attack, the US never stood a chance. Using EMP strikes, Korea destroyed America’s vulnerable, digitally reliant infrastructure.
The demolition minigames from the previous Red Faction game have been reworked into a stand-alone Ruin mode.
Rather than being more of the same though, it’s set to be a big improvement thanks to the addition of the Magnet Gun, which if you read my recent preview of the single player game, you’d know is the new toy that every big kid should want.
The level begins with the game’s star, Darius Mason (grandson to Alec Mason of Red Faction: Guerilla), fleeing for his life.
He’s just been duped into unleashing an alien horde from a mysterious underground shaft in a Marauder temple, deep underground on (in?) Mars. We never see any people, but we can hear them cursing Mason in the tunnels ahead as they flee from what he’s let loose from the planet’s depths.
The No Sleep Gamer 