That guy's a Maniac...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Richie: Last time on Flame rounds we found a verdict was suspended, due to a creepy revelation .  Yo Cunzy, what do you got for us this time? Cunzy1 1: Right, we had a bit of a discussion already about what the collective name for these things are. This week, I want to consider those publisher 'Social Club' type websites that are annoyingly advertised on menu screens (even after you sign up) with the incentive being that your data will be harvested, sold or just leaked   logging into this side app (link your Facebook, Twitter, Google and Insta accounts for no reason!) rewards you with 'icons', 'epic loot' and probably a smattering of o

Bit of Shitty news: Bob Wakelin is dead... You can easily be forgiven for asking who Bob Wakelin is, but truth is he probably touched your life in some way without you realising. Bob Wakelin was particularly famous for "Box Art" back when games were physical, you used to buy games in oversized cardboard boxes or in cassette tape and box form. And on these boxes was box art. And is was art, these guys were given the unenviable task of taking 8-bit sprites and re-imagining them. And imagining is the key word here the wonder of this box art is that is set a precedence for the game itself, no-one was under any false pretences that the box art would emulate the in-game graphics, but when you were playing it it would enhance the level of imagination you placed on it, especially when trying to decipher what some of those pixels were! Bob's portfolio is extensive and I want to just showcase a few of our favourites: The Newzealand Story: The New Zealand (Newzealand?) Sto

It starts! Batteries, check. Wii check. Component cable showing green? No. Sort of? Eventually fixed. We're in. To start press A+B. Why. Why not A or B? Save file has been created. Pretty interesting stuff so far. Choose name- Dink. Winner. Dink and Apony. Epic adventures. Water is not as good as Baldur's Gate (better than Wow though). Spirits. Talking about spirits. There's a man with a moon face. It's tough. We're in Hyrule again. We know that much. TRIVIA: The first horse you see doesn't have a penis. We were both looking for it too. Ugh Goat herding. Squirrels. Red colour's gone looks like Gears now. Games been paused to sort out the issue with the colour red. Tits! She's washed our penisless horse. Discussion about whether Dink is mute or not. Sex of Apony confirmed by tits. We have to play an instrument already. This is one of the things we hate about LoZ. On the upside we're riding a horse. Apony to be specific. We've herded some goats an

Windows Phone 7 series Xbox Live integration Is this the future of handheld gaming? I hope not. I might be being shortsighted here but I really think there needs to be separate real estate for controls for any meaningful gaming. ( Tap Tap Revenge isn't meaningful) With Web browsing and scrolling through contacts, touch makes sense, you touch it once then view, with a game (short of a Guitarhero style rhythm game) you need to be able to view the screen and react quickly without smudging it up with your fat fingers. Bring back snake I say! However given the Xbox Live integration with achievements, there will no doubt be endless subpar titles purchased and played solely for boosting their penis compensating GamerScore. However, with that said if they make Diablo 2 on this sucker, with cheevos, I'm in!! Đ