But the big ones have usually been restricted to the PC. This makes sense, because it's harder to put together a bit of software that needs to run across a huge variety of hardware, rather than spend time fine tuning it to work on one specific platform - as with the consoles. That, and Windows has a nasty habit of crashing out for no good reason as well, so you're never quite sure if it's the game or the operating system that's pissing you about.

So after paying out for a string of bug ridden games on the PC that culminated in what I fondly refer to as, "The Bioshock Incident", I decided never to buy a game for my PC again and concentrate on getting them for my console instead. After all, despite all the bad press surrounding the XBox 360 hardware faults, it seems to me to be a fairly solid console*.

And that's what I did. And things went swimmingly. That is until I parted with 40 pounds of hard earned cash on Saints Row 2.

It beggars belief how this got past quality control, it really does. When I first started trying to play it, it was on my old 360, which kept freezing in the game and eventually died with the three red lights. I could be forgiven for thinking that the problems were down to my old console, even though nothing else really broke (it used to eat my Fallout 3 disc, but that's another story). So the console was sent off and replaced, and the game is just as bad on the replacement.

Doing some googling shows it's not just me getting these problems, and it's not just the 360 either. I've read numerous complaints about the game freezing at random on the PS3 and PC as well, which says to me that the code is flawed somewhere.

So fix it fuckers! Fix it soon. 40 pounds is a lot of notes to waste these days. That's quite a few beers, a few miles worth of petrol or even a mediocre hooker. Poor show on Volition Inc & THQ for rushing this out and you've had months to fix it, yet all I hear is that they're now concentrating on the next sequel in the series. That's one I won't currently be wasting my money on, and I urge you all not to buy this game if you haven't already.

// Rant over. For your viewing pleasure, a quick gameplay video showing the psychedelic flicker effect and eventual crash:

* 1 Incident of the RROD in three years. Console replaced within a week and a half. Not too bad.