THQ has confirmed that Volition’s sandbox shooter Saint’s Row 2 will be released on PC this October. Set in the fictional city of Stilwater, Saint’s Row is a hyper-realistic take on the sandbox genre with over-the-top action and all-round silliness to set it apart from Grand Theft Auto. In addition to the main storyline players can take part in a vast selection of ridiculous activities including monster truck racing, barnstorming, robbery and - our favourite - insurance fraud, which involves flinging yourself in front of vehicles to rack up insurance cash.

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According to reports from Videogame247 and Kotaku, the game development and publishing arm of George Lucas’ LucasArts has laid off between 75-100 staff across all departments, including game designers and programmers. It’s a sad sight for a company that has produced so many bona-fide PC classics in the past, but an interesting side effect for gamers are the rumours being spread by disgruntled LucasArts employees revealing unannounced titles. A post on Kotaku claims that the web site has received emails about a Knights Of The Old Republic MMO being developed in partnership with Bioware, another Lego Indiana Jones and a third Battlefront game. And just to rub salt in LucasArts’ wounds Kotaku also got a message describing the upcoming action game Fracture as “an absolute piece of garbage”. Ouch.

Redlynx’s Trials 2 motorbike game is now available for download from digital delivery service Steam. It’s a scarily addictive bike sim with silly physics, pitting your hapless cyclist against bone-crunching time trial races and stunt courses ranging from ‘ooh, that’s a bit tough’ to ‘bastard hard’. Scores are automatically uploaded to a worldwide leader board and the game very cleverly lets you download ghosts of other players to race against. It’s a fantastic game that we recommend everyone should try, especially since the price has now halved to a ludicrous $9.99.

Foxconn has announced a special event to celebrate the launch of its ‘Quantum Force’ motherboards. The menacingly-named BLACK OPS, DREADNOUGHT and DESTROYER boards will be on show at YOYOTech’s London store on Saturday 24th May. As well as giving you the opportunity to check out the new kit first hand, YOYOtech is also offering TPCG readers a 5% discount on any product (excluding CPUs) on the day, and you can enter a competition for the chance to win a full system or a Foxconn BLACK OPS motherboard. The event starts at 12pm and the YOYOtech store is located at 30 Windmill Street, W1T 2JL.

The first trailer for Red Alert 3 popped up on the internets over the weekend. As you can see below it features plenty of footage of the upcoming game including lots of naval warfare and, yes, armoured bears. It also reveals a possible release date of October 2008. The music in the trailer is Frank Klepacki’s ‘Hell March’ from Red Alert 2, and they’ve also re-used the unit sounds.

In issue 5 we reviewed the outstanding Sins Of A Solar Empire from Ironclad Games, awarding it 9/10 and commenting that it was a “brilliantly executed space-strategy game.” And we weren’t wrong. However, at the time of writing Sins was only available via download or international order from Stardock.com, and several readers got in touch with queries about purchasing it in their local game emporium. Now, thanks to Kalypso Media, UK players will be able to grab a boxed copy from stores. The release date is TBA but expected to be sometime in June, and in the meantime why not download the demo, giving you 90 minutes of play over several maps.

Capcom has announced that a live-action Street Fighter movie will be dragon-punching its way into cinemas (or the bargain bin of your local Blockbuster) next year. This isn’t the first time the company has tried this, 1994’s Street Fighter: The Movie, starring Kylie Minogue and the delightfully insane Jean-Claude Van Damme*, was atrocious on every level but it apparently wasn’t bad enough to stop a second attempt. The Green Mile’s Michael Clarke Duncan will be playing Balrog while pretty-boy Chris Klein is signed up as Charlie Nash. And in case you’re wondering what this has to do with PC games… well… Street Fighter 2 was released for the PC in 1992, y’know. It was crap.

*check out the trailer for his latest movie, the self-indulgent Being John Malkovich-esque JCVD.

The official name of Ubisoft’s air combat game has been unveiled: Tom Clancy’s HAWX. That’s High Altitude Warfare X. Presumably Ubisoft was waiting until they’d acquired the rights to Clancy’s name before revealing this nonsensical title. HAWX is a flight action game that bares a resemblance to Ace Combat, with a touch of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare. Set in 2012 there’s a jump-in co-op campaign, online battles with 16 players and simplified flight model that will make it easy to fight and issue orders to your wingman without smashing into the ground.

Total PC Gaming fully opposes the unnecessary use of ‘X’, ‘Z’ or any other characters that may be used to make a game sound ’street’ for ‘da yoof’.

New Line Cinema is aiming to release an adaptation of Epic’s Gears Of War for summer 2010. Stuart Beattie, the scribe behind Collateral and Pirates Of The Caribbean, is working on the script and Epic’s Cliff Bleszinkski is lending a hand to ensure it meets expectations. It will allegedly be filmed entirely on green screen in order to accurately recreate the look of the game, but there’s no word on who the human cast might be – we assume the team are still hunting for someone suitably buff to play the testosterone-fuelled lead (a tenner says it’s The Rock).

You may recall a little game called Trials that was popular a few years back, in which you drove a motorbike over an obstacle course in a test of balance and skill. An online version was responsible for much lost time in our offices and developer RedLynx has just released a full-blown sequel that provides all new challenges, sexy new visuals and an online leaderboard. It’s awesome and addictive and you need to buy it now from http://www.redlynxtrials.com/. Monday, monday, MONDAY!