That guy's a Maniac...

We're less angry today but we spent yesterday evening watching cutscenes from Metal Gear Solid 4 which made us angry again. Let me explain. Back when I wrote this post I did a lot of research into the top rated games for each platform. Obviously for two of the consoles this was a bit of a task. For the PS3 it was much easier due to the paucity of quality exclusive games on the platform but I kept seeing Metal Gear Solid 4 come up again and again. I was concious that we might get some backlash from people arguing that MGS 4 should have been on the PS3 list but then remembered that Duffin and Richie haven't played it. So that accounts for 100% of our readership. My relationship with Metal Gear Solid began at the PlayStation one and ended with watching my brother play through 2. So I decided last night to ruin a game I was unlikely to play by watching a couple of cutscenes. At the time MGS4 came out I looked at it and thought it was pretty much going to be more of the same but I&

Another hundred video game forums retread the same six questions about the Wii. We occasionally engage in a handful of forums until we realise why we stopped the last time. The flavour of the last five years on console forums is to discuss the death of the Wii. The death of third party support. The death of core gaming. The death of non HD gaming. Over and over again. The same arguments backed up with time honoured gut feeling and rhetoric. This heroic poster over at neogaf, Hunahan writes what I would were I not making dick jokes or getting angry at the dumbness of the gaming community. What? There's tons of third party support. At almost every given moment of this generation, there has been more third party games for Wii than for any other system on the market. Let's just cut to the real question. What you're really asking is why the Wii doesn't have the next big installments of Resident Evil, GTA, JRPG XIII, Platinum Games Presents, Castlevania Of War, or whatever t

For no reason whatsoever we decided to watch all of Consolevania and Videogaiden . It's all over though. It's all finished. A couple of years ago. This video about the Scottish games industry is brilliant I think. Sums it all up. This time of year we always get a bit melancholy. I'm sure we'll get over it but right now we'd be hard pressed to recommend gaming to anyone. It's meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. Throaway culture created purely for the generation of income. Sad face.

Readers of this here blog will notice that aside from posts about pokemon, vibrating attachments for various mp3 players and a love hate relationship with achievements is that we occasionally begrudge getting told what's next. Already there's stifled hype for the next generation leaking out all over the place. Iwata has started the Wii 2 hype train with typical no news statements and as usual the shit eaters are eating it up. There's no discerning or questioning here. Something new? Give it to me. Give me something new they say. SO this current generation has had longer than most but that's a pretty arbitrary measurement of how 'good we've had it'. Richie and I often theoretically talk about educating a complete non gamer in the way of games. We compile a big old list of all the games that really add something new or show off the best of video games. Our hypothetical non gamer has to play through them all chronologically and at the end is given a certificat

We strive against gender inequality in games and at the same time for more freedom of choice and to be treated with respect as adults who heathily enjoy video games. But then as soon as a game gives us the freedom to take screenshots anywhere we take images like this. Part of us wishes that we were uploading this with irony. Another part of us is instantly going to bookmark this page under 'email support'. On second thoughts our partners might need email support one day. Is it worse to try and hide this from our loved ones? If I'm going to do it anyway would you preffer to find it under "Crystal Chronicles Selkie sexy look"? Answers in the comments. Who's worse, the people who code and animate this stuff? Or the people who take these screenshots and upload them to a blog? because frankly, there's no innocently discovering that you could do this. At some point we made the concious decision to take these shots. Of course now that I'm writing this post I

Ready-Up are hiring so we sent them a job application. Well, I say a job application, it was exactly this one . We're quietly confident. However, because we had to go and visit Ready-Up to find the details about applying for the job we noticed a few things on the application form. A rare opportunity is available to work on the UK’s fastest growing gaming community website. Ah, fastest growing. That immeasurable indefinable measure of success. And it is a pure lie. We just visited www.thatguys.co.uk for the first time this morning which takes our growth from 0 visitors at 9am to 1 visitor at noon. That's growth of MORE THAN INFINITY. We're the fastest growing gaming community more like. Applicants must have solid spelling and grammar. Shit. We missed this on the application form. Abort. Abort. Here are our future work colleagues and a free bonus game! There are five 'woulds' and three 'wouldn'ts' can you work out which are which? Don't worry TGAM read

Following on from Doppelgangers post . I have my own set of achievement wish lists. #1 Final Fantasy VII (PS1): 1000GP Fucking RIGHT I got 1000 points: I spent so long on this game, getting some of the harder "achievements" - 'Everyone' at lvl 99 - Obtained Yuffie and Vincent - All Ultimate Weapons - Omni-slash obtained. - Aeris's final limit break. - Bred a Gold Chocobo - Master Summon, Magic and Support Materia's - Ruby Weapon Defeated - Emerald Weapon Defeated #2 Super Mario World (SNES): 1000 GP Yeah entirely completed, 96 exits located. I know this is isn't the hardest of "achievements" but this one in ingrained in me. I guarantee you I could straight up complete all the way up to 96, with all the tricks timing and secrets safely stored away in that mess of useless grey matter I call a brain. In fact to confirm this myself and Doppelganger went through this again a couple of years back. We straight up

Remember this from last year? Out of the blue Iran chose to single out the speedy normal type Pokemon. Banning all broadcasts featuring the slinky Pokemon, pokedex #53. The " BBC Persian, which will go on air next week, will be used by British intelligence for "espionage and psychological warfare", according to Iranian officials. " Were Team Rocket involved? Bizarrely, Meowth were fine. Original story here and super-mad-props to Rob is Gay who has given us enough of these to run with forever.

Exposed armpits confirmed in Street Fighter X Tekken.

Nintendo are pushing DQIX so hard and via the various channels that we consume all things video games we run the risk of getting Dragon Quest indigestion. Both EDGE magazine and ONM have run DQ retrospectives and articles in addition to those horrid PROMOTIONAL FEATURES that look like NON-PROMOTIONAL OBJECTIVE FEATURES. There have also been a couple of DQIX videos on the Nintendo Channel and a number of prime-time TV spots. Even the bloody real-life newspapers were carrying reviews and previews on Sunday. There was no escaping it. And yes, we know how they all go. "DQ sold a bagillion copies in Japan". "Nobody is interested here". Except for the PS2 version. That was quite good. Yet, for all this rhetoric and the unanimous glowing reviews we aren't even going to bother buying it, here's why. Firstly, and least importantly, there just isn't the culture of ad-hoc multiplayer play here that there is in Japan. I lose count of the games that have these 'n

Following on from my  previous post , it seems that it might actually be happening! Oh yeah! Ryu and Jin Richie X

To those of use we lost 12 years ago to this day during that “incident” in that “mansion” just outside Raccoon city . To the brave souls of S.T.A.R.S. Alpha and Bravo teams we lost; May we never forget you! Love and dearly (re)departed fake specialist police teams, Richie X

Hey readers. I messed up. Can someone tell me about this Dead Rising 2 website ?

Holy shit bubbles! Rumours are circling the internet that there will be a Namco vs Capcom game AND a Capcom vs Namco game! Word of mouth is that Namco bandai will produce “Namco vs Capcom” using their Tekken 6 engine. And Capcom will produce “Capcom vs Namco” using the Streetfighter IV engine! Bad ass, if it were true, it all seems a pipe dream... to good to be true. But Fuck it... on to the wish list. Capcom is easy, we all know the Marvel vs Capcom series line up on the Capcom side, that’s fine. we love it. But Namco? Now that’s a toughie, their strongest mascots are probably the Tekken/Soul Calibur group... but whom else? Pac-Man: Not very likely methinks, a round yellow ball with a mouth... not the most complex button mapping to do... Mr Driller: Little guy in a pink suit that Drills underground, It’s doable, would like to see Megaman Vs Mr Driller. “Tales of” Series: Now admittedly I am pretty gay for Tales of Vesperia, I never played the other ones as they a

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Achievements (Trophies if you swing that way). In some respects I hate the fact they try and control the fun to the extent where I feel like I can't cut loose and just enjoy game anymore. I do however like to have something tangible now from a game upon completion, something that I can look back on and at a glance tell how much I got from the game , how long I spent and even to an extent how much i enjoyed the game. So when we did the  Painful Moments in Gaming  week it got me thinking about games from my past and how it would be nice to have a record of time spent on games from my childhood. So here is my top 10 list of games that I spent a lot of time on as a kid, each of which I'd love a record of achievement for and what I think I would have scored.. (I am aware that some of these games are available on XBLA)  #1 . Treasure Island Dizzy(C64): 970,  I was  robbed  of a perfect 1000 score... it still

We used to write a blog about Resident Evil dontcha know?

We already mentioned ALREADY JESUS CHRIST ALREADY GET OFF MY BACK MOM ALREADY! That we are big fans of video game soundtracks. Be it the official tunes, an inspired remix and very occasionally we even allow songs which have merely sampled an OT. to creep onto our MP3 player. PRO TIP : Never ever, ever be tempted to listen to a video game related song which has been filed under the 'comedy' or 'humorous' genres. They are almost exclusively 11 year old boys who sound like girls on helium doing the first season Pokemon theme tune. Tetris remixes aside, of which we are veritable connoisseurs, we do like hard copy soundtracks. They are often objects of beauty as well as magically trapping the music onto a disk. Here's our top 5. Yeah that's right bitches. Doing a list. Lists are normally the reserve for the green around-the-gills, unskilled new video game bloggers. But when you've been blogging as long as we have you are allowed to sometimes ironically do a list

Is? Is this a new series ? Maybe, maybe. Chronicling the activities of the often underestimated bug/grass pokemon. Do not underestimate bullet seed. Full article from here .

TGAM gives you the low down on the Nintendo Channel, Nintendo's sometimes under-used promotional channel available for free download on your Nintendo Wii. This third of team TGAM is a big ol' Nintendo fanboy and is keen to evangelise the rather good comunity stuff that is on offer for the Nintendo Wii. Another two weeks of Weekly Downloads Trailer On Wiiware, DSiWare and Virtual Console , round-ups of the latest new content on the Nintendo Shop. Pearl Harbor [sic.] Trilogy- 1941 Red Sun Rising actually looks quite good. Kung Fu Funk looks like fun in short bursts if you've never played Warioware . The mental Toribash is given a bit of love although even we wouldn't buy it from the weird ten seconds of footage. Zenquaria: Virtual Aquarium is yet another virtual aquarium for your Wii except this one had Mii compatability. And looks rubbish. DSiWare has the rather shambling new line up including Steamworld Tower Defense (yet another tower defense game!), Hair Sal