ATTEN: Need Saints Row Owners Help

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Well, here is a perfect example why it is important to play a game as completely as possible before launching a review.

I was ready to publish my review of Saints Row on Monday morning when I ran across this game-stopping glitch on Sunday night doing a little non-review related gaming.

I need your help to see if this is just MY Xbox 360s doing this or an actual game issue. Watch the videos below, you will see what I did that glitched the game. Here is a basic explanation of what you are seeing:

Kill the first four people in the Charlestown Warehouse mission (Los Carnales stronghold). Do not kill the last two UNTIL you block the gates of the lot with bulldozers. Once the gate is blocked, kill the last two lieutenants and it will trigger the cut scene and start the next portion of the mission...within seconds the game will hard lock.

The objective of this mission is to keep control of the lot for a certain time period. It seemed logical to create a choke point / obstacle and pick off the invaders as they come in. Unfortunately this hard locks the game.

I have no feedback from Volition yet, we submitted this to them BUT, we do not know anyone personally at Volition so we had to use the standard "online submission" form...to no avail. That is why I am turning to you guys :)


Saints Row Glitch Video #1

Saints Row Glitch Video #2

From the front page of [H] Console:

At [H] Console, we think it is extremely important to play a game from beginning to end before releasing a review. While this means our reviews might not be out on “day one”, we can give a more complete look at a game and also find serious glitches / problems like this one in Saints Row. The glitch happens when you block the gates in the Charlestown Warehouse mission (Los Carnales stronghold) to keep attackers out. The game locks up completely making it impossible to finish. The glitch we found in the video below is 100% repeatable on all of our Xbox 360s but we would like your help to see if this is simply an issue with our copy of the game or if it is in the game itself.
Click to expand...
 
...works now ;)


Thanks to the forum member that DUGG this story too, I didn't think about submitting it and getting the word out really helps to get to the bottom of the issue. Please Digg it too if you find it worthy.
 
Good idea to creat a choke point - I just ran like h*ll and completed the mission. Let's see what the programmers say...
 
Excellent catch. I was thinking of picking up the game this weekend (and still will), but now I know what NOT to do in this mission :)
 
While not an "owner" I was a renter (thank god):

I played through the story missions of SR, and found it overall to be a buggy mess along with massive framerate issues and tearing (at 720p anyways, I'm sure 480p/i is better). Uncountable pop-up/fade-in problems, including being stuck waiting for the portion of the level you are in to stream off the disc. All kinds of issues getting ahead of the dynamic level of detail. IMO the massive amount of technical and performance issues hampered the game tremendously.

However Steve, I did not experience the two issues you demonstrate in the videos. I did have repeatable hard locks in other areas. The most memorable being the last rollers mission. If I was right up next to the car carrier while it exploded it killed the 360 and had to ahrd reset. Was able to do it about 4-5 times. My guess was it was some sort of havok engine overload as the resulting explosion would be massive. I also had this issue on one mission where you have to drive a massive truck back through assloads of cops (police evidence mission maybe?). If there was a lot of tracked objects on the screen and one of them exploded it would hard lock as well.

Anyways discovering bugs in that POS is not hard. Anyone that says it's bug free probably hasn't played it more than 10 hours. I didn't even bother with the online stuff, but based on the complaints on their forums it was even worse. I would be more suprised if someone played through the storyline and didn't find any bugs.
 
The sad part is, at least for the multiplayer issues, is that they had prepared a patch to handle the lagging issues and glitches and then pulled it at the last minute and Volition is now leaving us hanging high and dry as to when they will actually release the patch. Ironically, they have released a XBL download for more wardrobe choices...fix the damn game first!
 
I played through the game and beat the entire thing.
No glitches but i see the problem.
Also frame wise not real big problems.
Sometimes slightly slower with too many explosions.
 
Well, hopefully we get enough feedback (or people that replay that mission) to find out if it is a game issue and not just a "Steve's retarded" issue ;)

Funny that there are 2,000 Saints Row reviews out right now, not one of them mentions the game locks up during certain missions. I had an absolute blast playing the game otherwise with only a few technical issues (outside of this one) that need to be addressed.

The review will be posted as soon as we get feedback, hopefully we hear from Volition in the mean time as well.
 
I know it's a stupid question but did you check your disc to see if there are any scratches or dirt on it?

Perhaps the system is getting too hot and locking up?

I am a Saints Row owner (yes I still enjoy it) and I've not experienced any lockups.
I've completed all missions yet I guess I could try the "Chokepoint" strategy tonight and let you all know tomorrow.
Go figure. Maybe you have a bum copy. I'd suggest renting it and trying that mission with an alternate copy.

Psyko M.
 
I got that too while playing that mission. I blocked the entrance and it hard locked. And I only blocked it with one car.
 
I loved that bit at the end where you were hitting random buttons on the controller. Yeah, Saint's Row has been collecting dust on my shelf since I bought it. The game is just too unpolished for me to enjoy it... I'll definitely try doing that when I play the mission and see what happens...
 
Zinn said:
I loved that bit at the end where you were hitting random buttons on the controller.
Click to expand...

Yea that was pretty good. I like how you all are trying to catch things like this now. Wish you all paid that much attention in dead rising. Anyway I look forward to the review.
 
Hey Steve I just played the mission, blocked the entrance and at 1:26 left it froze. Looks like a glitch in the game itself.
 
So far we have two people here and 12 that have e-mailed me with confirmation of our results. I have mail in to Volition right now to see if we can get some sort of feedback as to what is causing this (and other) glitches.
 
I have completed this mission with no problems, I didn't create a barricade with cars though, I simply chose to run around killing the people as and when they showed up.

I have experienced a few other bugs and glitches however they have not been consistent each time. I have played it sometimes with very little pop up and stuttering and yet other times the game has really suffered from tearing and lots of graphical glitches. I don't know whether it is down to the console overheating or simply having an off day? I have also experienced this in other games.

I haven't had any freezes yet playing SR but I did have a problem with getting into a car and not being able to do anything, couldn't drive and couldn't get out the car so I had to load a previously saved game. Also had a problem on one of the Rollerz missions where you have to protect some vans from being attacked by wiping out 3 groups of Rollerz in their cars. On the 3rd group of cars I wiped them out and nothing happenend, the mission didn't end and I was forced to load again.

Apart from that the game runs fine and dandy.
 
From reading the posts on the Volition forums, they blame pretty much everything on the hardware.

"The DVD drive can't keep up with the rate at which we stream content"
"Your 360 is overheating"
etc., etc.

Same shit with Capcom on Dead Rising. They claim that everything works fine on the systems they use for QA. I'm really beginning to wonder if there isn't some major design flaw in the 360. Either way, it should be the developer's responsibility to deal with Microsoft on these issues, not ours.

BTW, I have similar issues on both of my 360s.
 
I finished the game as well but I didn't block the enterance in that particular mission. The game has locked up on me during huge explosions on several occasions. Is there a quick why to replay just the mission shown in those clips?
 
LOL, Steve...

I love how you fumble about with the controller when its hardlocked.

I do exactly the same.
 
Steve-

I’ve looked through our troubleshooting e-mails and had not seen one concerning this issue.

Did you ever receive a reply from the troubleshooting e-mail? (http://developer.saintsrow.com/contact)

We have looked into this issue and we hope to address this issue in the future. As a work-around, I'd suggest completing the mission without blocking the gates.

We strive to be prompt in addressing problems- so if you have any further issues, you can email me directly through the email provided on this site, or you could contact us at the link above.

Once more, thanks for letting us know about this issue and we're sorry about any inconvenience.

Alex Newman
SR Troubleshooting
 
How's that for prompt response? :D

Volition has responded here / via e-mail to let me know they are looking into the issue. Very cool.

I will see if we can get some of the guys from Volition to talk about the whole bug reporting / fixing process, it can't be as easy as people make it seem.

Stay tuned.
 
At least they replied:)

I also mash buttons on lock ups of games...I think its instinct, even though I don't think it has ever worked in the history of games to actually fix anything;P haha
 
This is why [H]OCP reviews are the best.

Because instead of getting on their knees and servicing the vendor for $ to give a good review, [H]OCP is not afraid to really tear it apart and tell us what we care about.
 
I am not sure what makes people mash buttons when a game locks, maybe it is disbelief, frustration or a combination of all of the above.... but it is comedy gold to watch someone ELSE do it. (pisses me off when it happens to me)
 
Steve said:
I am not sure what makes people mash buttons when a game locks, maybe it is disbelief, frustration or a combination of all of the above.... but it is comedy gold to watch someone ELSE do it. (pisses me off when it happens to me)
Click to expand...


I do it too. I am too stubborn it restart the console... so I decide to just hammer on the controller a bit in hope that sparks something. Never works though :(
 
Steve said:
I am not sure what makes people mash buttons when a game locks, maybe it is disbelief, frustration or a combination of all of the above.... but it is comedy gold to watch someone ELSE do it. (pisses me off when it happens to me)
Click to expand...
I was actually looking forward to you throwing the controller after you were done messing with the buttons. lol
But alas... you kept your composure. :(
 
Ok, there's a bug that causes the game to crash. Not good by a longshot, but not THAT big a deal.

"At [H] Console, we think it is extremely important to play a game from beginning to end before releasing a review. While this means our reviews might not be out on “day one”, we can give a more complete look at a game and also find serious glitches / problems like the one we found in Saints Row. The game locks up completely making it impossible to finish."

Really, that is overstating... the game is not "impossible to finish." That makes it sound like all your games saves are wiped out and you have to start from scratch. By this standard, every game that has ever crashed was "impossible to finish." A lot of impossible to finish PC games out there.
 
Zinn said:
I loved that bit at the end where you were hitting random buttons on the controller. Yeah, Saint's Row has been collecting dust on my shelf since I bought it. The game is just too unpolished for me to enjoy it... I'll definitely try doing that when I play the mission and see what happens...
Click to expand...

Dude, this game is FAR more polished and complete than GTA ever was... Volition addressed every issue I had with GTA (as GTA is boring due to crappy AI, etc)..

Late...
 
Chriscic said:
Ok, there's a bug that causes the game to crash. Not good by a longshot, but not THAT big a deal.
Click to expand...

In fairness, if you didn't know that it was blocking the entrance that caused the crash (why should an average joe bughunt?) then you wouldn't be albe to complete the game.
 
Dfiant said:
Dude, this game is FAR more polished and complete than GTA ever was... Volition addressed every issue I had with GTA (as GTA is boring due to crappy AI, etc)..

Late...
Click to expand...
If by polished you mean random slowdown, glitchy graphics, less features (vehicles, activities), sound cutting out for no reason, and bugs that crash the game making it impossible to finish, then Saint's Row is definitely more polished than GTA in all those respects. Otherwise, I would have to disagree with you.
 
Psychotext said:
In fairness, if you didn't know that it was blocking the entrance that caused the crash (why should an average joe bughunt?) then you wouldn't be albe to complete the game.
Click to expand...


Not to mention the fact that if any cars block the entrance (say, you blow up the invaders vehicles with the RL as they come in) that it locks the game. It took us a whole day of messing with it and 20+ tries to figure out that it was the act of blocking the parking lot entrance in any way that was causing it to lock up.

He is assuming that the minute the game locked, a lightbulb popped on over everyone's head....*poof* ...."it must be the cars blocking the entrance!!!"

How many people would have just tossed the controller and just said "screw it" and never picked the game back up or traded it in at GameStop for credit?


Oh yeah, the final tally this morning was 102 people that could reproduce the glitch 100% of the time.
 
Chriscic said:
Ok, there's a bug that causes the game to crash. Not good by a longshot, but not THAT big a deal.

Really, that is overstating... the game is not "impossible to finish." That makes it sound like all your games saves are wiped out and you have to start from scratch. By this standard, every game that has ever crashed was "impossible to finish." A lot of impossible to finish PC games out there.
Click to expand...

I AM TEH DRAMA KING!!@!

(your e-mail is replied to as well) ;)
 
Zinn said:
If by polished you mean random slowdown, glitchy graphics, less features (vehicles, activities), sound cutting out for no reason, and bugs that crash the game making it impossible to finish, then Saint's Row is definitely more polished than GTA in all those respects. Otherwise, I would have to disagree with you.
Click to expand...

I've encountered every one of those things in GTA3~San Andreas. Saints Row is a big game...all big games have glitches.
 
Ok I can see what you are saying. I suppose it wouldn't be immediately apparent what was causing the game to lock, and that could cause you to try over and over again. That is a big bug!

Keep up the great work with the site Steve; always a pleasure to read.

-Chris
 
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