That guy's a Maniac...

The unreliable eurogamer has an interesting piece just up about some guy who made the blogeadlines back in 2007 by ranting against the Wii at GDC. That's fine, each to their own but what Hecker does go on to say is the kind of idiotic rhetoric that gets our goat here at TGAM. From the linked article: "Game design and gameplay is not separable from CPU power," he told Eurogamer. "You can do more interesting games with a faster CPU. Nintendo made an underpowered platform, relative to what you could have made at the time. This in itself is theoretically uncontroversial but is moot in reality. Where are all these 'more interesting games?' on other platforms? We've said it time and time again but the reason why at least one of us isn't writing off the Wii as an acceptable console is because now, perhaps more than ever there is a real dearth of diversity of good games across all the current generation of games. Furthermore, the quality of graphics with Xbo

Three working days is up bitches so I'm posting my letter to Konami here. Then maybe we'll put it on twitter and start a facebook group and maybe make page 416 of the Guardian Guide this weekend until Konami reply to us. Dear Konami, We here at the blog That Guy's A Maniac have been debating buying the new Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Game. It has received excellent reviews all around and we are a fan of other Konami games. Silent Hill is excellent. Not so much Metal Gear Solid but each to their own. Anyway, despite being just over a month old it is already retailing for less than £20 in some places. LESS THAN £20! How is this sustainable? I'm a discerning gamer and the above game price is not even for a second hand copy but I bet the game cost a fair million to make and is already discounted to a half/third of the price. Perhaps a bit longer pride of place in the spotlight would be better for the game? I couldn't see a copy on the shelves of the largest GAME store

So editor of Gamespot UK, and owner of a name that still makes me giggle, has come out and stated that the 360 should be gadget of the 21st Century: As a gadget fan with an iPad, an Android phone and many of the other gadgets on this list, there's still only one thing I'd take to a desert island -- my Xbox 360 S. With a flat screen TV, an Internet connection and a copy of Halo: Reach, obviously. Surely the flat screen and "teh internets" is cheating? but yeah, ok 360 as Contender for Gadget of the 21st Century? It's a big claim! I mean we are only 10 years in (I assume this must be some sort of rolling competition?) anyways. I love the 360, i prefer it to the PS3 and the Wii. So yeah if a console is gonna get the Gadget of the 21st Century, I would vote for the 360. Honestly though, I don't see a console winning. The contenders consist of the usual Apple products, a selection of Phones (some as outdated as the Motorola Razr), some Cameras/Camco

Watching the goggle box yesterday was almost like watching the PS3/Xbox360 ads channel with the occasional television programme in between. PS3 are gunning for attention with an Assassin's Creed Brotherhood ad with music and very mild violence ("exclusive features for the PlayStation 3" presumably means you can play as a Sackboy). Meanwhile Kinect ads ran almost every single break. I don't know if it was deliberate or not but every single advert had a glitchy blip at the same place when the 360 logo came up at the end. Maybe they've changed their branding to be more in line with the Kinect experience. Anyone else notice that (for reference, during Vampire Diaries- yes now you can JUDGE ME ON MY TELEVISION WATCHING HABITS)?

Guitar hero is shallow. 6 versions later and not much has changed whatsoever. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Guitar hero 6 has brought in a slapdash "plot" element the "Quest" mode, akin to the story mode in previous versions. You pick a character, play a few songs from their setlist, get enough stars, unlock the encore song, and also unlock some new outfits/character designs. Later Rinse, Repeat, till Final boss. There is also a plethora of cheevos to pick up on the way. Quick mode offers challenges, more fun cheevos  and a rather nice addition, a full collection of all the songs from the other Guitar hero titles (and DLC) giving me 200+ Songs in one place. The Setlist is different this time round; It seems neversoft have decided to stay in the Rock Genre, which is a good Niche, let Rock band have the Family Fun appeal.. In Short, the game cost me £20 brand new, it does not add much to the series, just some nice aesthetic changes and some fun

Oh Great Jaggi how Great are you? Not that great anymore the Great Baggi is greater than you you are still greater than jaggis and jaggias though So comparatively, your name is apt. The first time I tried to hunt you, you won. And the second time. Not the third time, although I did have help. Stupid shoulder barge That used to take off 80% of my health. Now it does very little. Go ahead. Call your buddies. All they do is dance around. Baggis spit ice stuff at you and make you sleep. Unless Cha Cha helps me. Cha cha never helps me. I'm gonna leave you in the village next time you little shit. Maybe I should sell all that Great Jaggi stuff In me box. BUT MAYBE I'LL NEED IT LATER. I'll hang on to it for a bit. See you around 'Great' Jaggi. In the meantime I need A Rathian Plate.

Trailer for Goldeneye Wii or whatever it's being called: What is interesting is that it uses quotes from actual gaming websites rather than quotes from News of The World (Fallout New Vegas "All bets are off"). Or nuts magazine. For example. Trying to bring some 'hardcore credibility' to the marketing of a Wii game or just good practice finally aligning marketing with gamers who might buy games rather than the everyman who actually sees the News of the World as some sort of trustworthy advocate for things....?

I actually resent giving these slimy vaginal pus buboes any kind of media coverage whatsoever. But yeah for those of you that care (ideally the imbalanced ones with a sniper rifle) these faecal ridden lesions will be in Covent gardens on Saturday the 13th. Love and resentment, Richie X 

"The video games industry was born in Japan and then exported overseas." Kaz Takeshita quoted from this article over at the Beeb. Okay there's some wiggle room with 'video games industry' but seriously now?

Last week David Cameron was widely covered in the newspapers surrounding his ambition to create a Silicon City in East London. Although you might expect us to be excited about this it actually left us feeling a bit deflated and annoyed. Why, why is it time for a bulleted list? Yes yes it is. Reasons Why David Cameron and Silicon City annoyed TGAM. Video Games weren't mentioned at all in the coverage we read and we've just finished reading the excellent excellent Replay: the History of Video Games which is not just a damn fine book but it is so meticulously researched that we had revelation after revelation about how games came to be but also how games ended up being responsible for a great deal of the technological stuff that we now take for granted (including operating systems, twitter and facebook). To omit games seems a little bit short sighted when in fact we do have a good games industry in this country........ Especially with the increasing frustration over the scrapping

As the other three people in the UK who stop to actually use the other Wii channels may have noticed, via a message from ninty, that playable Wiiware demos are back! It used to be the case that you could try a handful of the download service games helping you decide whether to buy or not but for unknown reasons nintendo stopped the service which was annoying. We have issues with all of the downloadable games platforms on all the current generation of consoles but demos work really well on the Xbox 360 and used to on the Wii. Otherwise, of course, spending those Wii points on an unknown entity can result in players never using it again (missing out on gems like Swords and Soldiers, World of Goo and our favourite Lit). So we welcomed the change. Furry Legends (Gamelion), Jett Rocket (Shin'en Multimedia), ThruSpace (Nintendo) and Zombie Panic in Wonderland (Akaoni Studio) are currently available. We managed to scrounge up enough free blocks (sorry Today and Tomorrow channel but you we

We bemoan the game retail industry. How is it that the cool world of games that independent blogs and magazines show us never manages to translate to the high street? The meatspace (ugh!) frontlines? We were in London this weekend (in 'town' the cool kids call it) and the excitement around Wednesdays Kinect launch was zero because HMV had closed its demo area. Also nice to see in John Lewis amongst the six DS games and five Wii games on sale was an amazing selection of 3D televisions with no 3D glasses available. The future is poorly staffed it seems......

Report just in from our very occassional reporter on the Street. Chuff_72. I swear this just happened, no exaggeration. In Game, Central London: C72 - Hi, I'm looking for a copy of Monster Hunter Tri? Man1 - *Blank look" C72 - It's on the Wii. Man1 - The Wii? C - Yeah M1 - Have you looked in the Wii section? C- Yeah, couldn't see it M1 - Sorry what was it called C - Monster Hunter Tri M1 - Monster Hunter Trial? C - Tri, T, R, I M1 - Right, I'll have a look C - *Waits for a few minutes* M1 - Sorry can't find it… What was it called again? C - Monster Hunter Tri? M1 - *To Man2* Ever heard of The Monster Trial? M2 - Monster Hunter? M1 - Trial M2 - No. Have you have a word with Steve? M1 - *Bearing in mind they are standing next to me!* No. Turns to me, yeah we can't find it. Holy. Sh*t. I know we have this all the time but come on dude! At least get the f*cking name right and don't then ask a guy about it in front of me and essentially lie about whether you

'MCV is the leading news site for the game industry. Check out our news, press releases and interviews.' Is the annoying tagline that comes with the first line of every news story from MCV from the comfort of my feed reader. I don't know but (checks...) yes. MCV's website is one of those horrible Gamespot format ones where it looks like someone has nose spewed onto the page and then garnished it with adverts mid- fucking-article. Just let the whole story through the feed reader and not just a tagline and let me choose whether or not I want to read more than two lines of your stories.

This time of year is normally a bit short of news. The Christmas big hitters have yet to start the hype machine. WELL 2010 IS THE YEAR THIS CHANGES. Look at these interesting news headlines. The Official Nitendo Magazine drops a News bomb with Pokemon Snap wasn't originally a Pokemon game Kotaku drops it like it is hot with Super Mario Bros' Controls Were Originally Different And at least 40000 different sources are confirming that PSPGo is getting a price drop. Are they still making the PSP? I thought that died ages ago. Still, exciting news if you want to catch up on two Metal Gear Solid Games and watch Family Guy on the train to work. What's worse than an industry of writers with nothing to write about? A writer writing about it. EXCITING TIMES GUYS.

We're talking away. I don't know what I'm to say. I'll say it anyway. Today's another day to find you. Shying away. I'll be coming for your love, OK? Take on me, take me on. I'll be gone. In a day or two. So needless to say. I'm odds and ends. But that's me stumbling away. Slowly learning that life is OK. Say after me "It's no better to be safe than sorry". Take on me, take me on. I'll be gone. In a day or two Oh the things that you say. Is it life or just a play my worries away. You're all the things I've got to remember. You're shying awayI'll be coming for you anyway. Take on me, take me on I'll be gone in a day or two 8/10. Worth a purchase!

We get literally a dozen emails every four years asking us how we manage to write at least two hard hitting posts a month. Well reader here's a behind the scenes look at a post in progress, with directors commentary at the bottom. That's right, we're opening up the creative process to you the readers. Not at all because we can't be bothered to write anything proper. Who knows? This may inspire you to start up yet another video game blog because there aren't enough of those around!!!!!* Here it goes: With my wife away on business, I've spent hours and hours with my mistress. There's nothing quite as thrilling as sitting in my pants, opening a bottle of wine and spending the night with another woman. However, this other woman isn't Tracy from accounts, it's a woman called Cunzy1 1 who is mighty handy with a bowgun. Yes, after months of waiting I finally picked up Monster Huntr Tri for the nintendo Wii and I've gorged myself on it this last week and

So Capcom spoke out about a couple of their older Franchises, back before Resident evil was a wannabe 1st person shooter, and dads searched for Zombrex for their infected daughters whilst wearing a mankini and riding a little pink bike. It seems Onimusha shan't be seeing a remake/reboot any time soon, and well... Dino Crisis: " while Dino Crisis has the unfortunate problem of nobody at the company having "a burning desire" to "light that franchise back up again.". Nobody cares :( This was all of course in response to the Devil May Cry Reboot, with that fake Dante. Love and Burning Desire,  Richie X

Just Monster Huntering. In the meantime, here's an image and some tasters for posts I won't write anytime soon 1) About the time I went to buy Monster Hunter 4 months after it was released and couldn't find a copy. 2) About the time I 100% Zack and Wiki after swearing a lot. Really really a lot. 3) About how there are no good British games bloggers left anymore now that Kieron Gillen left. 4) About how I tried to play Monster Hunter Tri online but was too scared.

Married now though. Which has nothing to d o with the absence. I gave up games for three weeks voluntarily. Because I AM IN CONTROL. Did go here though: So. What didi I miss?

Say hello to the new Dante... My CG-Man-crush is over in fact, Any flirtations with this "New Dante" would force me to sign some register. This is apparently a "Reboot" of the series, due for release on 360 and PS3. Though from the pics over at the Capcom Urinary , I am unconvinced, this looks like A prequel, prequel, set before DMC3 I don't see "the island, the setting of DMC1 .  The other option is that this is actually Nero instead, but nobody wants to think about that. Well I'm excited there is a new DMC in town, but ambivalent as to the approach.  Ambivalent Love and Hugs, Richie X

Since 66% of this blog is situated in Scotland, and I am actually in the games Industry, I suppose we are expected to comment on this one. For those of you who don't know, APB flopped, and as such RTW went into administration. Now, did anyone NOT see this one coming? I certainly saw this... not as a pessimistic prediction, more a painfully apparent inevitability. I have seen many people come and go from this company, each time I would pose the question, "why, realtime worlds?". Just to be met with an almost blind ignorance that this company could 'do no wrong', when specifically they were working on a supposed WoW-killer MMO. An ambitious task, anyone would agree. And the premise of this WoW-killer? Cops and Robbers. Realtime worlds I roll my eyes at thee. Though I do have to tip my hat to them, during the time (years) leading up to the launch they did manage to create some hype about a 'GTA-like MMO' (lies), and at one point made micro-transactions s

Last weekend was my stag do, which was organised by my gay partner, Richie! Unlike your traditional stag do there was not a stripper in sight. Or going out. At all. Instead it was this groom to be and his bezzy mates playing the games that we all grew up with. I couldn't have asked for a better stag do, I laughed until I cried, I drank until it hurt and we had one last gaming session with all my Slads in one (well, two rooms). Sadly on Sunday I realised this would probably be the last time we'd all be together with nothing but time for playing the games that we cut our teeth on. But enough of the gay stuff! AWARDS TIME! Group Awards. CLICK FOR BIG IMAGE. This will mean very little if you weren't there. Some of the games that came out: Quake 2, Mashed, Mario Kart, Boom Blox, Geometry Wars, Resident Evil 5, Timesplitters 2, Puzzle Fighter, Blazblue, Street Fighter IV, Soul Calibur, Pod Racer, Red Faction Guerilla, Wii Sports, Army of Two and even a spot of doorsies. The weeke

Crazy summoned Demon hands to rip apart any wrongdoers, man that would be an awesome skill to have the next time someone tries to sell me the Big Issue. Seriously though, Dragon Age 2 Đ

You gotta love the rabbids. They represent that idiotic, goofy childishness that used to be the heart blood of gaming on the NES and Mega Drive. This should be the last sexy image on TGAM for a while now.

I have had a recent campaign to "thousand" quite a few of the games on my 360 list. I have completed Dragon Age: Awakenings and the Expansions (1550 GP), along with a couple of other titles too (Nothing cheaty like Avatar or King Kong though). Rather dauntingly I decided to start up Final Fantasy XIII with intent of thousanding it, I've invested serious amounts time into previous Final fantasy games, why not do it with this one? Because endgame sucks... I have pretty much run out of things to do except grind... I have spend 60 hours on the game I have completed 62/64 missions ( I have decided to leave the remaining 2 missions until I fill out the crystarium AKA get to the maximum level) and well, if I complete mission 64 it makes the grinding process slower. So I'm sitting on 720 gamerpoints:  I'm missing 6 achievements *SPOILERS* Adamant will: Killed an Enemy that spawns after mission 64 Masters Seal: Maxed everyone's roles. Treasure H

Thousand Verb to thousand ( third-person singular simple present thousands , present participle thousanding , simple past and past participle thousanded ) ( transitive ) ( Gaming ) To finish all achievements/Trophies; to make done; to reach the end of the required achievements/trophies. NB: Is not necessarily used in context of the number "one thousand", as expansions, live arcade and multiplayer achievements add/subtract form the total. You're a participle. Love and transitive hugs, Richie X

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