That guy's a Maniac...

There are religious zealots, there are wars, there are corrupt politicians, we are a race driven by greed and murder. We are in an age defined by media terror and propaganda; we see innocents gunned down, and media parading it like a circus show. We are conspiratorially being told what to think, how to think it, and what we should fear. But these guys... Balrog, Vega and M.Bison...are beacons of hope... Its a widely known fact that over in Japan these three are actually named: Balrog = M.Bison (Japanese) Vega = Balrog (Japanese) M. Bison = Vega (Japanese) When Streetfighter II hit the rest of the world, Capcom were a tad worried that M. Bison might attract some legal attention from M. Tyson, so they did a swapsies. Now the beautiful thing about this is, you don't see outrage, you don't see campaigns or picketing about this, you don't see people demanding that all the names be the same across the world. Nope what do you see, acceptance, acceptance of our diffe

You know, its not often I talk about the games industry and the depravity and filth within, however today I would like to bend your ears, open your eyes and perhaps even educate the cretins and executives out there. For the non-industryer "crunch time" is when a game, DLC or whatever is reaching it's deadline. This deadline will suddenly make everyone involved on that project start working at 200% (usually up from 50%) to get everything done, creating a great deal of stress on budgets, quality and people. The deadline itself is usually enforced by marketing, or by a separate publisher, who has dictated that, "this needs to happen by then". Now, why does this exist? In short, this exist because of poor project planning. The tl;dr version is: Persons are placed in positions of authority and management, due to internal promotions i.e. low ranking programmers, developers and even testers who get given these tasks, without professional qualifications or certifi

Yes children! This weekend I actually played some games. Shock and awe is what you are no doubt feeling now. Not satisfied with persistently sitting on the sidelines poo pooing any game that someone else might be interested I decided to see if I still had it and played me some games*. First up I played Turok for the Xbox 360. Totally bog standard shooter that borrows more than quite a lot from Gears of War from the token black guy who carries big guns to running around for six levels for the sake of some comms device. However, it had dinosaurs in it which means an instant 10/10. I totally busted it too! It took me a shocking 15 hours-ish but I enjoyed it nonetheless. All that crap about decent AI was still total bullshit too but it did have some nice boss battles. It is sad that the cheevos were so poorly thought through with the majority linked to multiplayer crap . Then I busted up Dinotopia The Sunstone Odyysey. It took about 5 hours and 50 minutes of my life. The game started

Boo hoo hoo. Boo hoo hoo. Waaaaaah waaah a boo hoo hooo. That's all we ever hear from you. Boo hoo hoo Blizzard hates my class. Waaaah waaah waaah Capcom won't respond to my letters. Boody hoo hoo "they" ruined Star Wars Galaxies. Yes it's pathetic but fortunately it's mostly from the PC gamers. Until now... Since the release of Mario Kart Wii a number of sources have complained about the return of the blue shell. Even EDGE which usually flounces above such gamer whining, whines about it ( Mario Kart Wii 6/10 ). Well you know what? The MBA s at That guy' s a maniac, the Second Greatest Video Game Blog of all time , have voted it the most bestest amazing pick up of all time. Read that last sentence again. Not just videogame pick ups. ALL pick ups. Be it pick up lines, picking up a prostitute or a pick up truck, the blue shell beats them all hands down. Here's what the Master blog artists had to say: "It is our generations great leveller. O

Discerning readers may have caught wind of the latest study confirming that there is a positive correlation between exposure to violent media and violent behaviour. The study was undertaken by L. Rowell Huesmann at the University of Michigan, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. In an uncharacteristic manoeuvre we actually got hold of this journal paper, unlike most of these scummers , and had a read. And what you find in the report is not what is being bounced around the web, cut down into bite size chunks for morons like you and me to read, comment on and then ignore. The paper was good but didn't have any images. There is only one typo, which, although unfortunate isn't entirely unexpected. There we go, yet another example of high fidelity Gaming Journalism from the World's Second Greatest Video Game Blog of All Time, That Guy's A Maniac.

We've all been playing a game when suddenly the phone rings or the smoke from the kitchen reaches your nose and you have to run out of the room to deal with the situation. With the fire abated you return to your unpaused game to find, nothing much has happened...... You still finished the race and you weren't in last, the gaggle of Stormtroopers failed to even take you down to half life. That's right kids! I'm talking about lazy game design . It must have happened to you, when you realise that if you play a particular game by running through trying to pull off awesome combos you will die once or twice but if you walk slowly just using kick you still reach the end with full health. For me, this really ruins a game, destroying the illusions that a) You were any good at the game in the first place and b) That the virtual world you are is one full of unique characters not mindless robots programmed to run up to you and try to kill you. How many set pieces do you know that

Webcomics. There are a gazillion out there, done by horrible Indie types who probably live in San Francisco, they probably have cats and they probably are responsible for the AIDS . They are mostly about love, excuses to draw boobies or to show off to the world how much stuff the "artist" knows. Amongst the plethora of webcomics there are a tiny fraction about our favourite subject- Videogames. 98% of them however, are either sprite comics comme ca or ones titled " Two Noobs and a Gaymer " or "Just Another Gaming Comic". I've scoured all of these and they are without doubt awful and as the World's Second Best Videogame Blog it's time to play key service to those truly outstanding ones, or the ones that everyone thinks are outstanding. Then we will crown our Queen, the World's Best Videogame Webcomic. NB although our Queen sounds better because we are Second Best and she is the best, this isn't actually the case because webcomics a

Today children we are looking at Comic Book Superheroes. We are going to make some sweeping judgements and then try to apply deep philosophy to it just like all those Geeks did to the first matrix. Do you remember that readers? After the first matrix, the people who dressed up as Neo would go around touting how deep the film is and that it touches on some really deep issues. Then someone else dressed as Neo would say "Hey dude!It's not that deep it's just based on this book/anime/thought experiment". Then loads of those media university lecturers wrote books on the Matrix and how it marks a turning point in the late 20th century, cyberpunk became the new stupid thing that hip lecturers and literature teachers would teach in a vain attempt to appear with it and with a finger on the pulse. Do you remember all that reader? Then the Matrix Reloaded came out and pretty much shat on all those people. It was brilliant. But it's time for Comic book superheroes to back