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Disgrace: The father of video games

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Two MCV links in as many days. Good on ya MCV, no doubt our publicity (we are the second greatest video game blog in all of existence as proved by science, probably the firs now as Harvind1 has seemingly gone offline) will give them a numbers boost. This interview with Ralph Baer over at the Salt Lake City Tribune has him bemoaning modern video games. MCV ran with the quote: “I think it’s a disgrace,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “What I created got abominated.” Now when we aren't not whinging , we often are whinging but Ralph doesn't feel the need (or it wasn't reported) quite what he finds disgraceful. Tom Nook's prices and stock rotation? The outrageous camping that goes on in Team Fortress 2? Nauseating DRM? Too many busty women in games? Not enough women working in games? The Water Temple in OoT? The fact that Rogue Squadron 2 boots you all the way back to the menu screen every time you fail a mission? That no other video game does water better than Baldur'

Not the normal whinge

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We whinge too much. One of the things we whinge about is how game retailers don't seem to be able to distinguish their mid arm ginglymus from their midrectum aperture when it comes to the business of selling games. In the immortal words of Chief Brian Irons, whose hobby used to be taxidermy "BUT NO LONGER". We're so happy we even busted out a de-motivational poster and a Resident Evil 2 quote just like it were 2005 all over again. MCV talk to Robert Hennessy, John Lewis' new games buyer and he be talking a whole lotta sense. Including a Nintendo Shop at John Lewis' flagship store, just around the corner from the hit-and-miss flagship GAME store. In a word, FUCK YES and in more words ABOUT TIME.

Modern Borefare

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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is out very very soon. It'll no doubt sell well, there may be news stories about how many millions of pounds people shirking their day at work to play it will cost the economy. We however, could not care about one of gaming's biggest annual events. Way back when, we were fans of Call of Duty, Brothers in Arms and Medal of Honour. The historical focus appealed to us. This was when FPS still worked off the Doom format. There was shooting to be done, "keycards" to be found, missions to be completed and if that wasn't enough the couch co-op wasn't too bad. Things changed with this: Showing its' age now, astonishing how much things have changed since 2002. I remember the first time I played through this, my mind was blown. It was unlike any experience I had in gaming before, incredibly exciting and powerful especially given the basis of this level on real events of the D-day landing. On a second and third playthrough however, it i

L.A. Noire: A re-review

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So I did it, I got the full 1400GP for LA. Noire. And as such I'm gonna do a retrospective review of this game. First Up, the game is not that hard, in fact it is so easy that you can actually choose to skip all the action and driving sections. However from an achievement point of view; the game is long winded, and honestly some of the achievements feel very tacked on. For instance, one achievement is to drive all 95 vehicles in the game. Now, if you have ever seen the game you could identify, a taxi, a police car and a bus, but every other fucking vehicle in that game is either a) a car , or b) a convertible car . Trying to differentiate those cars was a bitch and racked me up some youtube time, and annoyingly one car actually does not spawn anywhere in the game, the only way to get it is during a case and you walk out into a parking lot, when you are not meant to... Another horrible tacked on achievement was the hidden packages one... Fifty Hidden packages all round the map, an

I Love Dead Rising

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We buy EDGE. We read EDGE. We are EDGE readers. Randy Smith writes for EDGE. We've previously wished that Randy Smith didn't write for EDGE. However, we may have to renege our wishes because he has written a nice article about Why Dead Rising Stands Out From The Hord e. As with all good game writing h e has perfectly enshrined my thoughts into words, thoughts I didn't realise I had until I read this. I love Dead Rising (including the Wii port). Randy sums up why. It's that feeling of me against the Horde. The way I play the game changes from moment to moment. I might be trying to save survivors, I might without really noticing it, decide to eradicate all the zombies from a particular area. I might just stroll about the casino/mall checking out the environment but always with one eye on the nearest group of goons. I know what I want to do and most of the times there's hundreds of zombies in between me and my own personal objective. Things go well I move on to the ne

LIVE BLOGGING LEGEND OF ZELDA TWILIGHT PRINCESS!

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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

Legend of Zelda Twiglet Princess

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This is not the exciting exclusive announcement we announced in yesterday's announcement announcement . Last week we were grumble grumble grumble grots about the new Legend of Zelda game. This is not fitting of the World's Second Greatest Video Game Blog of all time as proved by SCIENCE . So we're going to man up and give it a shot. We're comfortable enough in our sexualities to admit when we may have been hasty or wrong. In fact, I might really enjoy throwing boomerangs or throwing those pathetic little bombs about? This evening, along with fellow LoZ hater and extremely occassional contributor Chuff_72 we've decided to give Legend of Zelda Twiglet Princess a go. It is only fair. Apparently, this lady is in it? Why doesn't she wear shoes? We might even live blog it. We say 'might' because we might not get past the first five minutes if Link insists on making that horrible noise he makes. Then that wouldn't make for a great blog at all.

Exciting exclusive announcement

PREVIEW: EXCLUSIVE: We've got an announcement to make: at some point in the future we will be announcing something. Maybe a countdown clock. Maybe we'll finish our TGAM top 50 ultimate TGAM top games best list of best games of all time ever , maybe we'll announce another gaming celebrity ? Stay tuned to our constant stream of announcement announcements through all of those social networking sites you are on!

Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City

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We've mentioned REORC before. We weren't very nice about it. We were concerned that what makes the early Resi's great had been taken away from this game. It was looking like an essentially generic man-shooter affair with the occasional familiar B.O.W. Manshooter syndrome is the new Monster Syndrome , or so we thought. Well this trailer encourages us to commit milnerphagy (milphagy? We want to eat our hat, not a hatmaker although eating a hatmaker is more Resident Evil). It actually looks good! We're excited again! Less focus on generic shooty people with gasmasks and more about the city and the story capcom have told, retold, rereleased and retold and retold again. Then retold in HD. We feel for the Resikipedians as it looks like the canon is going to be slightly retweaked again. Yay! Resident Evil again. We used to be a blog about Resident Evil once.

Legend of Zelda Skyward :(

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Wii game Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is due out in less than a month and already, with some predictability, it is picking up some great reviews. The EDGE review goes as far as to say "How apt that this ultimate tale of hero-making should see Nintendo’s hardware become the console it was always meant to be." and ONM gives the game 98%. The editorial of this month's EDGE encapsulates how we feel about modern gaming. Oh how we've forgotten what "proper" gaming was with the seemingly unstoppable tide of "games" you "play" on your phone. This is gaming. That sense of wonder at a virtual world that is unique to the feeling that games give you. We should be happy. LoZ:SS is evidence (alongside Xenoblade Chronicles and the upcoming project rainfall releases) that there's life in the Wii yet and further proof that graphics do not necessarily make a great game. Much like the Gamecube, at a time when the Wii is increasingly referred to as a &

Help Me!

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Play both of these at the same time. It works*. * DOES NOT WORK.

Help Me!

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Help Me is an occasional series written about Ashley Graham, daughter to the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. OH SHIT I DUN ACCIDENTAL SEEN HER PANTIES. The internet is retarded. Stay away from it. It is nothing but mind rot and we think it may be spreading.

Extra Exclusive Lack of a Battlefield 3 review.

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As you’ll have noticed, TGAM is yet to have brought you a review of Battlefield 3. This is because, unfortunately, we didn't ask EA to give us a copy in advance of release and have never ever made any contact with them so why would they. So instead, below* is a picture of a puppy waering a unicorn. Take that RPS . *Appears above if you are a homs.

What is it?

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I can't express in any phrase more succinct than this that it is my sincerest wish that what "it" may be is not the bodily life fluid of my friend, who wears green and goes on missions armed only with a knife who may or may not be developing a serious steroids problem.

HD rereleases

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Silent Hill, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil , Beyond Good and Evil, Zone of the Enders, Ico and SoTC and Halo Anniversary. All of these franchises have HD re-releases due out or out already. Although, we're hugely appreciative that older games are kept alive we're fans of being able to play the versions we already own. Important to note that aside from the original Halo it is impossible to play SH, DMC or RE on current generation platforms (okay so if you have an old PS3 or Wii you could still play some of these). But of course, HD re-releases are different from straight up re-releases but I can't shake the feeling that this kind of stuff is happening because the ideas are running out. Is this spate of HD re-releases a confession that this generation really wasn't much cop for innovation besides a graphical enhancement? Team TGAM is probably split on the issue but I'm of the opinion that technology has progressed faster than game designers and developers can keep up

Pokemon Global Link

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Okay, so I know we've been a bit Pokemon heavy content-wise recently but tough. Deal with it. Today's topic is the Pokemon Global Link . For those of you who aren't Pokemon fans, the latest "proper" DS Pokemon games, Pokemon Black and Pokemon White, allow you to upload a pokemon to the Dream World. Then, via a PC you can go on shallow and limited adventures in the Dream World via the Global Link. The Dream World itself allows you to catch a bunch of Pokemon through playing mini games with them (fun but not very useful if you have a living dex like myself), grow some berries (sort of useful because there's very few other ways to get them in game) and make a bunch of virtual friends by visiting their houses in the Dream World. There are multiple areas of the Dream World to unlock by visiting it over and over again. On top of this there's a whole sims-esque aspect of upgrading your house and buying furniture with berries. Also, via the Global Link you can d

Resident Evil 4: Revisited

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So I finished Resident Evil 4 on the 360. It was again great fun, The only places I really got stuck were the silly slide puzzles, the Graphics are great, and all the gameplay was back there, enjoyable as ever. I played Resident Evil 4 originally on the Gamecube, then again on the PS2 with all the extras, I then tried the PC version, and of course the stupidly easy Wii version. So I have played it a bit too much. The 360 version remains faithful in all ways to the original sight sounds and scares. The only problem was I had done it 'all' before. Unfortunately there is 2 achievements on the 360 version I will not get. And that is playing it through on professional version, because I just cant be bothered, been there done that, and annoyingly, remaining faithful to the original, you have to play through normal difficulty before unlocking the professional difficulty. Secondly, is gaining all the bottlecaps for the shooting gallery, I spent ages on the PS2 version getting

HG101's Top 1000 video game tracks

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Like listening to music? Stuck for suggestions? HG101 ran a poll and has come up with this massive list . Okay, so 1000 might be too many and yes, the list reads more like a snooty gamer's list of musics from those games that are darlings to the hardcore. Far too much music from games beginning with Chrono . Waaay too much Castlevania , Mega Man, Persona and Final Fantasy. But a valiant effort. I've spent the last few days going through the list and downloading some songs I'd forgotten or never heard of. Recently EDGE's Steven Poole bemoaned the lack of decent video game tracks these days. I don't know if there are less great tracks these days or that gamers of my generation just don't play games as much as we used to so there is less time for these songs to worm their way into our heads. I definitely have a soft spot for mega drive/ SNES era music and part of the reason for enjoying video game music (I almost exclusively listen to VGM or VGM remixes) is

Omastar Comics #31

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Back once again with the renegade master D4 damage. Power to the people. Omastar is back in the house but it is nearly Autumn and he is still rocking HIS SUMMER WARDROBE. Not cool dude. Yeah, like that ever solved anything Archeops? Jeez.

Sunday Statistics!

Pokemon White Pokedex. SEEN 642 OBTAINED 640 Probably won't mean a lot to most people. The translation is, I've spent a shit load of time on this game and I've only got 8 more Pokemon left to get*, five of which have never been made available in Europe. I spent a long time yesterday trying to get two more. Each generation of Pokemon games is normally released in two editions (possibly with a third remake). Red and Blue, Gold and Silver, Ruby and Sapphire, Diamond and Pearl and Black and White. The "genius" move is that some Pokemon are only available on one version and not the other requiring players to trade with each other or failing that buying both copies of the game to ahem, catch 'em all. In the DS iterations of the games, trading has been made much easier with the Global Trade Station. You don't have to physically meet up with another player, you can go online and leave a Pokemon of your choice on the GTS, specify what you want in return and nine ti