Red Faction: Guerrilla Demo Released

THQ has released a single-player demo for Red Faction: Guerrilla on LIVE Marketplace and PlayStation Network. Volition’s Red Faction: Guerrilla is a 3rd person open-world shooter promising real physics-based destruction, a story-driven single-player campaign and multiplayer options. The demo features a single-player mission introducing the GeoMod 2.0 Destruction Engine, and comes just weeks before the June 2nd launch of Red Faction: Guerrilla.

You can try out the demo on both systems right now. Look for the game in the first week of June.

Vigil, Volition keeping busy

According to GameSpot story, a slide seen in an THQ investors’ presentation from February (click the screenshot to the left to check it out) offers a sneak peek at its release schedule for the next few fiscal quarters.

THQ’s in-house studios Vigil, Volition and Relic are hard at work on several games:

Vigil

Volition

Relic:

Also in the presentation, THQ promised a continued emphasis on its popular wrestling and fighting franchises, as well as more games from developers Kaos Studios (Frontlines), Juice Games (Juiced) and Blue Tongue (de Blob and the upcoming Marvel Super Hero Squad).

Conspicuously absent from the presentation was Big Huge Games, which is working on an as yet unnamed RPG headed up by Ken Rolston of Oblivion and Morrowind fame. BHG was recently hit with numerous layoffs and THQ has said it is looking for a buyer for the studio.

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Saints Row 2 Ships

Saints Row 2 is at retail for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 giving players an alternative to Grand Theft Auto IV if that’s what they are looking for. In Saints Row 2, players lead the 3rd Street Saints in a battle against ruthless gangs and an evil corporation to reclaim the streets of Stilwater. Developed by Volition, Saints Row 2 features lots of customization options, third-person combat, both competitive and cooperative online multiplayer and an arsenal of weapons and vehicles.

We’ll have a review for this game later this week - we wanted to take some extra time to test the multiplayer component - which was woefully inadequate in the first game. Stay tuned.

THQ Conference Call Notes

A lot of interesting news came out of this week’’s THQ conference call besides just the usual facts and figures. THQ president Brian Farrell revealed some of the games the company plans to release in the next quarter and beyond, with a couple of interesting surprises.

One that everyone already knew about was Saint’s Row 2, but THQ talked a little bit about the game’’s focus in the second chapter of this gang-themed third-person action game, promising a more refined game. The most important thing to note is that Saint’’s Row 2 is going to avoid directly competing with Rockstar’’s Grand Theft Auto IV, which is probably a wise decision on THQ’’s part. The company said that the game for the PS3 and Xbox 360 is being built using existing technology at Volition and that it will hit outside of GTA IV‘’s release window (late April).

Farrell also revealed that developer 5th Cell’s popular DS game, Drawn to Life, is being developed for the Wii. The game has sold 700,000 copies worldwide on the DS. Farrell hopes to duplicate or improve on that success with the new game.

Red Faction, the latest in Volition’’s shooter franchise, was also revealed, with Farrell promising more action revolving around the concept of highly destructible environments. That game is being developed for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. More details on the game will be released within the next couple of weeks.

THQ is also putting a lot of faith into de Blob for the Wii and DS, which is one of its many original titles. The company delayed the game once, to give it more time for polish, say Farrell.

Farrell said that Frontlines: Fuel of War will prove to be a promising title for the company because of its keen focus on multiplayer. The game promises 32-player online games for the Xbox 360, with more on the PC. Finally, Farrell said that the PS3 version was canceled for a number of reasons but then went on to point the finger at Epic’’s Unreal engine as a major roadblock. According to Farrell, Unreal engine is not optimized for open-world development. Sticking with the development of the PS3 game would have put its release date 60 to 90 days behind the other games. A playable demo will be released sometime next week on Xbox Live Marketplace.

Here are some other small but interesting tidbits from THQ:

- First details on the new UFC title will be revealed on Memorial Day weekend in conjunction with a live event. The game is being scheduled for a release in March 2009 — prior to the launch of its regular WWE game season. Farrell says that the game has one year of development under its belt and another year to go.

- THQ expects Disney Pixar’’s Wall.E to outperform the previously licensed Disney Pixar title Ratatouille (which was kind of a bust).

- A new Tak game is coming, along with other licensed Nickelodeon titles.

- Company of Heroes Online will launch soon in China and is the first of many planned free-to-play online titles.

- THQ Wireless will be creating mobile phone titles based on LucasFilms” Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.

- There are currently 1,700 developers working in THQ’’s various studio systems and each is working on three skus or less.

- Stuntman failed because it did not translate well to next-generation platforms.

- Juiced failed because it was way too ambitious and the developers were overburdened (they were working on a whopping six sku’’s!).

- Farrell said that he was pleasantly surprised with Warhammer 40K Online‘’s progress but cautioned that development is still the early stages. So far, so good, he said.