That guy's a Maniac...

Yeah Activision have decided to can a bunch of their franchises. And Guitar Hero has gone to gaming heaven. "WE' DONT NEED ANOTHER HEEEERO" On the upside:  No more new plastic instruments every year.  No playing the same game over and over with different tunes. No more unrealistic multiplayer achievements (in GH at least). Rockband is still out there for now. On the downside: We never saw Guitar Hero: Pink Floyd, or Guitar Hero: Led Zeppelin. So there you have it... Not much to miss about guitar hero, and this is coming from someone who has most iterations of it. Warriors of rock, saw great integration of all the previous games, bolstering set list. And will likely still be pulled out for the occasional house party. In conclusion, Guitar hero... You had a good run, and if I didn't own 6 different versions of you, I would say you would be missed. Love and Green, Red, Yellow, Blue, Orange, Richie X.

I bought Burnout 2 for £2 the other day. bargain of the century or what? Burnout 2 is and was a fantastic game. I don't know anyone who ever played the first Burnout or whether or not it even exists. Burnout 2 hits the sweet spot especially as, being an older game and a family favourite it is steeped in nostalgia, but it is a good game within its own right. Later Burnouts lost the way. Burnout 3 transformed crashing into pure porn but slowed everything down with too many load screens and then Revenge and Dominator seemed to come out almost one after another. There's still a heartbeat quickening thrill in juggling building up the boost bar and trying not to crash. Do you play like a pussy and just tentatively jut in and out of driving in the opposite lane? Or do you risk it all for a biscuit by driving down the middle of the opposing lane? Around a blind corner. Whilst drifting. Just the thrill of dodging the traffic as it goes about its business makes games like Stuntman Igniti

For the last 10 years, the consumer electronics industry has been converging towards mobile. At one point you would have all your digital devices, your digital camera, your camcorder, your MP3 Player, your Sat Nav, your PDA and your Mobile Phone all connected up to you PC which acted as a Digital hub for all that content and media.  Not that long ago right?  In fact I still have all of these devices, i just use them way less now or not at all.  These of course have been largely replaced by the one device to rule them all, the smartphone. I have used 4 smartphone platforms, Windows Mobile, Android, Blackberry and most recently iOS. I've gotta say carrying around one device rather than seven is obviously convenient, but only recently have these devices matured to a level where it's also realistic. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs was recently asked what the future of the PC was, he used an interesting automotive analogy.  " When we were an agrarian nation, a

They're everywhere! Spoilers in my feed reader. Spoilers as my recommended reading. Spoilers everywhere. Soon you won't be able to open a web page without video game morons, fancying themselves as games journalists, alleviating you or the need to play a game because you've measured, weighed and decided a game is a 7/10 without pressing a button. The Official Nintendo Magazine are doing their level best to spoil the shit out of Pokemon Black and White, despite the fact that all of that and more is already up on Serebii albeit it not stretched out into over 100 'articles'. Marvel vs Capcom 3 has pretty much been spoiled too. If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it for you now but if you have seen it, just take a second to the think how cool it would have been to have come across that in game without knowing it was coming. It would have been awesome times. There's probably a fucking FAQ up already on how to spoil the spoil out of that spoilers spoiled sp

Dead Space 2 is out and seems to making some waves. We're glad for it. It's one of those franchises that you can get behind and wish it success. The games are excellent and the Universe that Visceral Games has created is the usual sci-fi schlock but it's all very polished. However, the best thing about Dead Space is that when you shoot the necromorphs the sound they make are almost the exact same noise I make when I stand up or have to bend down. I can't get this association out of my head but I think it makes the games slightly better for it.

A few pics have been leaked from Mike Haggar's Final Fight Stage. And low and behold it looks like Poison! For those of you who don't know poison was a character in Final Fight. Originally one of the enemies, some people thought that beating up women might cause offence. So in a stroke of genius from management, it was stated that she wasn't actually a girl, but a transsexual, cuz ,you know it's OK to hit a transsexual over a girl, (presumably because they are lying to us or something?) -.- Anyways, Poison... gained much of a cult following, and to this day remains an alluring mystery... Would she still get it? Final Fight Revenge: limited edition Box art More importantly Will she make it as a DLC character? In previous iterations of games she has has a repertoire of kicks, And a rather interesting move where she blows a kiss and when/if it connects the opponent is subjected to images of Poison in rather provocative poses leaving the opponent stun

This is craziness from Little King's Story. Not just "whacky, I'm so random, everyone calls me mad" crazy but properly walking down the street talking to yourself and shouting at passers-by crazy.Just watch the first one minute and twenty of this here vid, which is relatively spoiler free although this is one of the bosses you fight. Be bewarn.ed. I mean it just doesn't make one bit of sense does it? Can somebody better educated than us give us some idae what's going on, or this, SHOCK. HORROR. Original stuff? TV tropes has got nothing . Remember when TV tropes used to be fun? They've ruined it now. Is a fat girl really a trope? Back to the game it's just brilliant. I'm finding that Little King's Story is a game that just keeps on giving. Just as I was expanding my city, expecting the game to start wrapping up and the ending to be on the horizon it seems that the game is only realy just beginning. I'll be honest I really wasn't expectin

On first inspection it looks just like a normal Midgar bar complete with a jukebox, TV and a seedy bar. However, the pinball machine hides the room in which the bomb attacks on mako reactors was planned by the terrorist cell AVALANCHE. A big TV for following the news. A white-board for planning where bombs should go and a umm pirate flag? A punching bag? Not much in the way of terrorist paraphernalia laying around. These guys were pro and it's a bloody good job they helped to stop that big meteor from destroying Midgar otherwise we'd be really really angry at them.

Well Folks Since Neogaf (via Kotaku ) did some of these puzzles...  Each box represents a game title old and new. Click on the file to download the bigger version, Answers in the comments! Answers will follow in the next few days in the comments section. Love and shameless idea stealing, Richie X.

Most proper gamers would probably not engage with those silly little channels on the Wii menu like Everybody votes or the Mii Contest Channel. We do though and this piece of machinimart is the direct result of such engagements Is the contest channel really a game? Is it machinimart? Or just art? It's neither. This is high art. WANKY BOLLOCKS. The digital image depicts an angry Albert Wesker standing over a prostrate Paedo Stu. Wesker, a super human cunning soldier and scientist stands over a fallen Stu. Or is Stu enticing Wesker? Either way, Wesker seems to be shouting PlayStation QTEs at him. How will Stu react? MORE NONSENSE This image is from the game Little King's Story and really examines age appropriation and how well games are tested. Is bewbies really a suitable term for seven year olds? Will Worhar ever make its way into the OED or is that just for serious words like Zig-a-zig-ah and ugh LOL ? These images and others by the TGAM Art Collective willn't be on disp

Race Rating: 8012.

What's this? A new feature? Yes, we've been looking at our web statistics and the readers of this site have been spending almost two tenths of a second longer on the site than ever before. We thought that if we introduce more features we could push the dwell time up to a whole fucking second. That and Unit of the Month: Whore Truck sounds a lot more compelling than Most Recent Idea From Our Brain, Unit of The Month: Whore Truck. Or does it? Who are we to decide? Most Recent Idea From Our Brain, Unit of The Month: Whore Truck. If gaming is to ever be treated seriously, like cancer or X factor then there are certain terms that need to be expunged from the gaming lexicon. One such term is games and another is unit and upgrade, damage, special move and more importantly power-ups. Look at this video, better still, watch it: Even the little boggle eyed boy sounds cool going on about conquering worlds. What did you do last night? "Well, I upgraded my units so they could do more

There's not been a single piece of midly interesting or pertinent gaming news today. It's very sad. NO! I lie. Someone at Nintendo said something about how using your electronic device uses up the battery. How do these science guys work this shit out?

The news networks are full of 3 DS spam today , this week , this year . Paucity of information, waist deep in nonsense. Even better are the gazillion reviews that start with "you can't see how brilliant it is without actually seeing it". Still they type on for another couple of thousand words. They still bother with screenshot galleries. We'd be a little less interested if 85% of the 3 DS are literally remakes of older games. But 'in 3D'. I missed the caveats in reviews for Ocarina of Time that end with 90% would have been 100 were it just in 3D. The endless boring pointless speculation. Is this the price? Is that too much or too little? Is a thing which isn't out yet sell for an appropriate price? That's cutting edge analysis right there. Yes? No maybe? The real answer is nobody knows yet. Stop asking. Video game 'journalism' really is at its desperate ugly low around a new product launch and as much as we may or may not appreciate the new

This is Sakura's Character selection art from SSFIV... Now Check out that Elbow [Warning: what has been seen, cannot be unseen]... Filth So in conclusion, if you are aroused by this you are defined as a Cubitophiliac (Note: Lover of elbows) Love and Dirty elbows, Richie X

Surf Time: 5 seconds.

Our whole world is crumbling around us, we have been playing Pokemon for 12 years. Ugh... We just spotted this today... Caterpie and Venonat evolve in the following way: But upon further perusal this should clearly be: Ok so the distinction in the Caterpie - Metapod - Venomoth evolution line is not overly obvious. But the Venonat to Butterfree similarities are astounding!Observe the Antennae, eyes, mouth, hands, and colouration. Without giving into the horrible realisation that Nintendo fucked up, and have been lying to us; to stop ourselves swapping their positions in the pokedex, turning off the DS and never returning to pokemon again. There may be a way to explain this, from an Evolutionary stance: 1. Theory One: Venonat is a derived form of Butterfree. If we can assume that Butterfree has remained Morphologically similar, there is a possibility that the species branched off at an earlier point in which may have found a flightless niche exising as a

“The casual gamer that used to play on the PC and the hardcore gamer that used to play on a dedicated gaming portable now plays on their smartphone,” This is probably true which is why we don't consider ourselves gamers anymore. We're just some outmoded relic who doesn't enjoy the flimsy, unreliable, download four updates every time you log in, this game was actually a better minigame in a proper game and jesus fuck who needs to play games on the bus anyway? type of gamer which is neither casual or hardcore. It's sad really because our pining for proper games equates us to that particular breed of film buff who only watches films with subtitles or films that are in black and white. Don't get us wrong, there's nothing wrong with a bit of [POPULAR MOBILE GAME IN THE GUARDIAN THIS WEEK] or [FACEBOOK GAME #1] but they don't quite provide the same level of fun as a game of Hogs of War or Wii Party nor do they really offer the rich experiences of Resident Evil or

Today is EDGE day! (In the interests of appeasing long suffering TGAM WaG/BS we've been asked to make our content more accessible so here goes). EDGE is one of the finest magazines about gaming in our humble opinion. It's the [INSERT ACCEPTABLY RECOGNISED FASHION MAGAZINE NAME] of gaming. It normally takes us a good fortnight to read through all of it, every single word, but on the first EDGE day the ritual is to read the editorial and the first couple of articles (the looking forward article in this month's mag is both excellent and depressing at the same time) then flick through reading Continue/Quit, Website of the month and internet game of the month before absorbing the ever wise words of Steven Poole . The magazine is then closed until a deeper reading sometime later. However, on the flick through earlier our eyes were caught by an ad similar to this one-but not this one, for what looks like yet another fantasy MMO we're not going to play called Rift . For blind r

WAR! - never been so much fun! Go to your brother, Kill him with your gun Leave him lying in his uniform, Dying in the sun! YEAH Cannon Fodder 3 has been announced from Codemasters! For PC and 360! It's been so long! Incidentally, whilst searching on google image for the iconic poppy image above I stumbled across this gem: Itsa retro pixelated naked butt chick, in a passionate embrace with a green scaley fish man, in the woods at night, with two dragons rising up between them. Classic. These kinds of images were iconic of the "demoscene" back in the day, trippy nonsensical music and imagary just as a launch before you ran your likely pirated software.  Gotta love it. Love and interspecies midnight forest dragon sexing, Richie X.