That guy's a Maniac...

We feel every single death. The cute little bastards. They just want to help. They volunteer themselves just for your materialistic gain Olimar, they shouldn't but they do. We love Pikmin but at the same time don't play it too much because then there's a chance that more pikmin will die. We're not good enough to save them all. Oh god I'm gonna cry again. As for Olimar Kirby's weird temporary existing pikmin in Super Smash Brothers Brawl we're not sure that shit isn't banned under the Geneva convention.

It's that time again. New console/handheld device time. Time for endless coverage. How does it smell? What comes in the box with it? How long is the power cord? How many minutes will it survive in a hot glass of milk? It's tiresome and we're pretty sick of all the video game news outlets just abandoning normal service to churn out endless insignificant details. We're almost tempted to abandon proper gaming to try out all that iphone shit so we don't have to filter through 40 posts about what scientifically feasible colours a 3DS could or might come in. Even worse is that you can't see the fucking 3D effect through shitty videos. Can't we just this once keep everything a surprise? Can we? Let us not spoil it so that we've all rated and reviewed every single game and feature before it has even come out. Whilst we're at it, the DS is still the best platform currently available to people. Let's show it some love before buying all the games we have al

Good machinima is very thin on the ground so it's with great joy that we direct you to go and watch a feature length filum called The Trashmaster, filmed inside GTAIV. Watch it here . The plot is as schloky as a Gears cutscene but the machinimatography is second to none. There's no hyperbole here but there are so many amazing shots crammed into 88 minutes you can't help but wonder at the eye for detail shown here. I've lived in that city but the filmakers have noticed details that makes me want to visit Liberty City again. Some of the shots in this film are ridiculous and we're willing to overlook sub-par narrative to congratulate the makers on a really really stunning piece of machinima. God knows how many hours were spent trying to set up the perfect shot and hopefully a bloopers reel will pop up sometime soon. Not only is it beautifully shot but this film is really a testimony to the highly detailed city that Rockstar built. Tiny little details that when highligh

Blatantly stealing this article from Eurogamer. Its a pretty good article outlining some of the major flaws with the game(s) unfortunately Mr Daniel Bettridge dicks himself over quite early on in the article with this statement:  "While the cool kids were out playing footie and smoking tabs I was plundering dungeons as a Night Elf, hunting for loot and trying to work out how my level 20 paladin was going to escape hordes of Orcs." Shame, credibility out the window. The boy touched on a few good points, like androgynous characters, endless walking about, and OTT CGI sequences. Though made some stupid statements about physics defying weapons, not understanding mini-games, and some drivel about too much text. Anyways, why I hate Final Fantasy... Well firstly I don't "hate" Final Fantasy, I have fond memories of FF7 and FF8 and given the time I would happily play them again. And they are OK as games, they have a fun menu juggling mechanic that

Is a great little (well, big actually) book compiled by the usual suspects (I wonder if the guys from ONM ever wonder why they never ever get asked to contribute to anything like this?). Put simply, this book lists 1001 video games you must play before you die. It is of course obligatory to now go through and list the shocking omissions and where they chose the wrong games but it is a very well balanced selection. Normally lists like this tend to neglect recent games but there's a good spread of games throughout time and space. There are 1001 of them though. How many have we played? Well I've played 155 of them. There's some odd choices but I don't envy making the selection. For example, which Street Fighter games make the list and which don't? Also, if you were to take the premise of this book very seriously and only had months to live must you really play both Advance Wars and Advance Wars Dual Strike? The book isn't without its errors don'tcha know? After

This excellent little piece is up on Inside Voice about what we mean by the average gamer. It's worth a read. We're constantly worried on behalf of the nation of gamers in that the term gamer doesn't mean anything anymore. "I play WoW exclusively" is not the same person as "I only play Fifa and CoD on Friday nights after the pub". But what we love about the post is the following list quoted word for word: * Facebook has become the platform of choice for the average gamer. * The iPhone has taken over as the most popular platform for the average gamer. * The console continues to be the primary gaming platform for the average gamer. * Due to the massive popularity of free-to-play, the average gamer won’t pay for anything anymore. * The average gamer has a subscription to Live. * The average gamer loves microtransactions and cannot wait to buy absolutely anything offered for sale. * The average gamer doesn’t have any online friends, is unfamiliar with chat

This kind of thing ( IF we notice it, that's a big IF) is game breaking for us. It seems more and more to use that hardcore games are anything but and casual games seem to be good for the kind of challenge that made games so compelling in the first place. Doesn't matter anyway BECAUSE YOU ALL BOUGHT IT IN THE MILLIONS. P.S Multiplayer is for Phags before you even go there. UPDATE WHEN I WAS FIXING THE VIDEO. It turns out I know quite a lot of the Spanish from Resident Evil 4. I don't know what they are saying but I imagine it is the equivalent to Achtung! Schnell Schnell and ACHTUNG GRENADES! in German.

Dated for 4th March 2011. The count down begins... Love and another 200+ hours of my life given to Gamefreak, Richie X

1. Play Marvel vs Capcom 2 on XBLA. 2. Play Super Street fighter 4. 3. Buy Kleenex: Love and last minute gay jokes, Richie X

See here for what this nonsense is about. Basically, I've successfully transferred 490 bits of code from one DS cart to another! Erm, yay me? Can't wait to do it all over again when Pokemon Black and White come out.....

I was on the continent for Christmas and when I wasn't dying I was pining for some gaming action. It was Christmas after all and for me Christmas just isn't Christmas without the family gathering around the yearly multiplayer game or gaming long into the night, freed from the constraints of early starts the next morning. Just after Christmas, the wife and I went into town. She spent shit loads of money on books ("they're for work") which normally gives me free reign to spunk some dough on a new game. The problem was nothing that I wanted was reasonably priced, what I did want and was probably reasonably priced wasn't stocked and even games that were just over reasonably priced and that I kind of wanted I was put off by the couloured triangle on the spine of the box ruining the gaming shelf ( Dead Space Extraction's yellow triangle already taunts me every time). I then spotted a copy of 1000 video games to play before you die but it was more expensive in

In a future retrospective article.  We have decided to pose ourselves some questions to answer for 2012 Dear Cunzy11,  Did you... Finish Monster Hunter tri? Buy Pokemon White? Beat Richie with some cheaty pokemon in great pokemon clash 2011? Buy an HD console? Buy a 3DS like a gormless new tech adopting twat? Get past that bit on Alien Resurrection yet? Play a single XBLA, Virtual Console, Wiiware or PSN game? Dear Richie, Did you... Thousand any games this year? Play any games in the top 10 Metacritic scores this year? Buy Pokemon black? Resist WoW all year? Gold star every song on Rock Band 3 with every instrument? Play a single XBLA, Virtual Console, Wiiware or PSN game? Dear Games  Industry, Did you... Release the 3DS? Release No More Heroes for the 360? Announce the Next Blizzard MMO? release yet another in the Guitar Hero/RockBand Franchise? Announce a Kingdom Hears game that isn't on a mobile platform? Think that GTAV looks like badly drawn testicles? Announce another Conso

544 trophies! 700 Stickers! I am still lacking an amount of trophies and 30 stickers. Really? Where are they all? Stupid cheaty Tabuu cheaty wing blast cheats boss battles dick.

Well,  2011 is upon us and by now we should be clearing up the last few achievements on the games we got over the festive period. And with them out of the way, what do we have to look forward to? Cue Music It's...  That Guy's guide to gaming in 2011! In no particular order: Dragon Age 2 (Multiple platforms) 11/03/11 Sequel to one of my Favourite RPG's, some snazzy new improvements to the combat, a much needed Graphic overhaul, and a brand new plot involving Morrigan's child someone called Hawke. And above all, some more money to spend on EA DLC! Lego Star Wars 3: Clone Wars (Multiple Platforms) 18/02/11 Well, not sure I care that much about this one, as much as the Lego games are consistent fun. The formula is a tad tired,  The last one I played was Lego Indiana Jones 2, which was thrashed pretty quickly.  I didn't really bother with Lego Harry Potter, and well... As much as I like Star Wars I never bothered with the clone wars cart

Is bloody brilliant. We were fans of the original Silent Hill, most of the sequels and even the film didn't suck too bad although it wasn't a patch on the games in terms of shit-your-pantiness. Then there were those reboots on obscure formats (Origins anyone?). So it was with some trepidation that we played Silent Hill Slatted Marmosets. However, it turns out to be great. So great that only a bulleted list will do it any justice. The game opens with a Cheryl section that almost puts the Jason section from Heavy Rain to shame. Our favourite game was waggle the wiimote whilst shouting Cheryl whilst looking at saucy pictures AS IF WE WERE WANKING. It works best when he says 'Sweedie' whilst you do it. Dicking around with the mobile is awesome. It's like real life! But with better reception. And fewer Indian call centres. I think Harry kept it from the shrink but I bet obsessively phoning every single phone number you find is pretty diagnostic of mental issues. Brillian

Pokemon Soul Silver brought precisely zero new pokemon to the table. I have 490 pokemon on pokemon diamond. Pokemon diamond has 400 hours of playtime. I am worried about the cartridge dying. Pokemon can be very tediously and slowly traded from Diamond to Soulsilver. This is project Exodus. STAGE ONE COMPLETE>

As I mentioned previously, I was dead over Christmas and confined to games I could play without moving too much, specifically, I could only play games whilst only moving my index finger and thumb right hand. Aside from Final Fantasy III this also meant that it was time for me to face up to the Battle Tower in Pokemon SoulSilver. For those of you who ain't in the know, the Battle Tower is a very challenging tower of battles. Who'd have guessed? Basically you take some of your best dudes and try to beat as many CPU dudes in a row as possible. Challenges can be done with 3 pokemon in mano a mano type affair or with four pokemon in 2 mano a mano affairs or if you have a willing friend you can try and do the tower with a mate over wifi. If you beat 20 trainers in a row you get to fight the tower tycoon. If you beat the tower tycoon you get a schmancy ribbon for all the pokemon in your team. If you beat 48 trainers in a row you get to face off against the tycoon slightly pimped and i

I got ill for Christmas. Cold sweats, runny nose, the lot and because I was in lands-a-foreign, the only thing I had to see me through moments when I wasn't delirious was a DS and a random selection of games. I needed to play a game that wouldn't mind me running away to snot every few seconds and also one that I could play in all three positions (laying on my front, reverse cowboy and neck propped up). Turns out Final Fantasy III was the only game that I had on me that fits the bill, annoyingly. I say annoyingly for three good reasons. Firstly, in something that might be called RPGitis I've been stuck on the same bit for years now. If you ever played an RPG, particularly a Squeenix one, you'll have no doubt experienced something similar. When I load up my game I find that I'm outside a city. I go into the city but from the way everyone is welcoming my guys like heroes, it's clear I've just finished what I needed to do for these city dwellers. I have no godl

Dear Cretins. We've received just under 15k* emails regarding why our 'best of' link leads to an under construction page and has done for the last couple of years. Well, now it is fixed. Ish. Here it be . A year by year break down of the highs and lows of TGAM over the last four years (up to 2009). We laughed. We cried. We even did a couple of good posts. You can also find our lists of lists to date (up until 2009). I think you'll find we've been consistently excellent these last four years justifying our position as 50% of the living gaming celebrities on Earth. *Well 15k worth of emails were shipped. Ha topical joke that we be incomprehensible in 5, 4, 3, 2.... what the hell does it mean?

In Games, snow: 1) Makes nice footprints that disappear after a while 2) Makes everything a bit slidey. 3) Is always accompanied by music with bells in it. 4) Makes penguins and snowmen appear. In real life, snow: 1) Makes women stand indoors no matter where they are/ where they were going to. 2) Blocks all forms of transport. 3) Causes horrific traffic accidents. 4) Kills old people. So there we have it. Snow in games is much nicer than in real life. SUCK THAT SNOW IN GAMES NAYSAYERS.