That guy's a Maniac...

Oh shit. Here's an original idea, a new feature from TGAM looking at the seven deadly sins of gaming. For our other long running and not at all forgotten running features see practically every post we ever did. For the absolute originality of the Seven Deadly Sins theme just google "Gaming Seven Deadly Sins". 0 hits you'll find.  So here's out brand new feature that will probably peter out. Peeter out? Pooter out? Petre out? trail off after this one. We're looking at fear. But we aren't just about new features, we're about features within features so before the word feature starts to look weird, here's the latest on the Seven Deadly Sins of Gaming: FEAR from out in game correspondent surveying the populace of Xenoblade Chronicles . What do they have to say about either new features or FEAR in games Alcamoth Citizen? Oh shit me that is pretty fearsome. Fear in games comes in many forms. Survival horror is often said to be scary but as I&

Yes it's a review of three year old Madworld for the Nintendo Wii. When it came out last millennium in 2009, the middling reviews and the overt attempt at being 'mature' put us off. Until we found it for sale for £2.50. At that price we don't care if it is shit. But it isn't shit. It is actually quite good. It is a very inspired title. By that we mean it's probably easier to explain the game to you in the media that has 'inspired' it. Take the aesthetic from Sin City , and the plots from Escape from L.A. (or Batman Arkham city for our younger readers), The Running Man , Manhunt and a splash of No More Heroes . Allow to rest and then whisk in mechanics and directly lift at least one boss character from Devil May Cry . Add a couple of levels on a bike from Final Fantasy VII , throw in a Caddyshack reference and a level that rips off Star Wars . If you are going to lean on source material, they could have chosen worse sources of inspiration I gues

Its time to pack it all in, I made myself very ill when GAME briefly closed down thinking of the vast amounts of GAME reward points I had collected for over 10 years. I had been telling myself that I would spend it on the next console release... ...but fuck it! It a slippery slope the GAME group is on, so it's getting spent, diced up and never to be thought about again. Love and I hardly knew ye, Richie X

We're all about being open and transparent with YOU, the homeless transsexual checking the Internet when you should be working and this post, friend((ette)?) is going to be a short one. London indie game store GAME FOCUS has closed its doors ( EDGE has the scoop ). This is a fucking tragedy and much more sad face for us than the whatever-the-fuck-is-happening-with-GAME.  Game focus was a lovely little store that we'd frequently go to just browse. Not only did they have OLD FORMATS, pretty much every GBA and GC game I bought was from here but they used to have amazing displays of limited edition games, consoles and peripherals. Also they sold PlayStation promo copies for like a pound each. They did not give a fuck even though they were emblazoned with "PROMOTIONAL COPY NOT FOR RESALE".  The shop took a bit of a dive when they moved all the DVDs upstairs and the games to the basement and for some reason their amazing display cases got culled and the

We check in with the Wii's Nintendo Channel because, well you won't bother to do it on your own. Here's some of the new content that is up since last time . Finally! It seems like someone out there has been reading our weekly-ish gripes about Nintendo's poorly used Nintendo Channel and they've only gone and posted the entirety of Satoru Iwata's Japanese Nintendo Direct presentation. This is what we want. No gimmicks. No bullshit round the bush hype just straight up Nintendo news from Nintendo itself. Sure, there's a whole bunch of "Details not confirmed for Europe" disclaimers but I'd rather that than having to wait for the video game blogosphere to give us the news once they've added their sneery commentary or worse have to sit through the NoA Nintendo Direct presentations. More of this please Ninty and if you don't have a Wii you can watch the presentation here ! The Last Story continues to receive some love from the Nintendo

Where did Peter Molyneux come from? Recently, it feels like every other video game article is about him, something he said, where he moved to and what he thought of game X. He is on a mission to get as much coverage as possible (presumably as two Fable games are due to come out soon). Well his reach extends far, even into the world of Xenoblade Chronicles where Alcamoth Citizen has this breaking news to report: Should Peter be worried?

We were lucky enough to reach the grand old age of 30 again last week and among the presents presented us for surviving the 90s was a copy of Trivial Pursuit: Master Edition. Now, if you're like us then Trivial Pursuit progresses by quickly hoovering up the green, yellow, blue, pink and brown (now purple, presumably to avoid endless entertaining 'pink or brown' choices) wedges/cheeses/pizzas and then spending the rest of the game passing back and forth over the orange Pizzedge spot waiting for the odd chess question in between endless fucking cricket and soccerball questions. Well. NO LONGER! The recent master edition now has a bunch of video game based questions meaning that a) It doesn't take quite so long to get that orange chedge slice b) Finally, all that video game knowledge is justified in the eyes of your immediate family as you beat Uncle "Knows it All" to the win all because of a Halo question. Somewhat paradoxically it takes inclusion in

A new Steel Battalion we can actually play AMAZING! Oh requires Kinect BALLS. Still it means we don't have to buy a new piece of plastic for the ever growing pile of peripherals AMAZING. Fist bumping? BALLS. Seriously, fucking fist bumping? BALLS. Is this what it takes for the 'hardcore' to accept the Kinect? BALLS Fist-Bumping? BALLS. FistbumpingBALLS. Fistbumpballs. Fistballs. Fialls. FIALS.

Fuck all y'all bitches, be sitting up on yo azerothes, I be in Pallet all up in you mommas ass singin that I be a master... catchin' em all Details released for WoWs Pet battles. And on first perusal, its really fucking pokemony, similar stats and all, though rather than 4 moves it's 3 moves, hell even some of the moves are English pokemon move names. It seems just enough similarities to dodge a law suit. Most of the details are over here Also, do they have the EV system ? DO THEY? if not imma flip this shit upside! There doesn't seem to be a levelling system, or indeed mechanics much beyond the fighting system , I'm sure there will be rewards for winning, like cheevos, cosmetic armours and such. Meh, Love and Omastar used Blizzard, Richie X

With, it seems, the whole games industry writing off the Wii in preparation for the Wii-U, now is a great time to snap up some of the quirkier releases on the platform which are currently selling for ridiculously cheap prices. Recently we've picked up Cursed Mountain, Deadly Creatures, Metroid: Other M, Disaster Day of Crisis and Madworld for less than £16 (for all of them). Individually they are a bit quirky but they represent a time and a platform with more interesting ideas than current HD console gaming which seems stuck in a bit of a rut with a a severe case of sequelitis. Trauma Center: Second Opinion is one we snapped up for a fiver a while ago and we've only just got around to playing it. We played Trauma Center/re: Under The Knife, the one and only popular medical 'em up on the DS. It was fun, if not a bit tough and also challenging. The Wii version, Trauma Center/re: Second Opinion is pretty much exactly the same game albeit with a name change and with the a

Occasionally we stub out our crack pipe (hard but do-able), log off the forums and give up our angry Internet man jig to don a smocking jacket , pour ourselves a Malibu and read a book like in the olden times. This weekend we donned three smoking jackets, poured ourselves three Malibus and finished reading three books. Our English teacher will be so happy with us.  First up is Jacked The Unauthorised Behind-The-Scenes Story of Grand Theft Auto which makes us feel ignorant about the history of video games in the same way that Replay A History of Video Games highlights how ignorant many games 'journalists' are . Yeah we loved Lemmings and knew that DMA made GTA but we didn't know that they were Scottish. Shame on us. The book is a good read. The first thing it made us do is want to play GTA again. Five hours later we picked the book up again and cringed over how gushy Kushner can be sometimes. But I guess that's the deal when you are writing an unofficial biograp

Waaay back in 2007 we interviewed the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 . Well, we've kept in touch since and although he now spends most of his time caring for sick marine iguanas at a the Nemesis Iguana Sanctuary we've managed to catch an interview with him about the reprisal of his, perhaps best known role, in the Nemesis Mode DLC for the astonishingly awful cover based shooter based Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City . TGAM lazy fictional cephalopod, Omastar is finally back from a tour of the Unova region and so attempts to earn his keep by catching up with everybody's favourite biological weapon.  OMASTAR: Star oma, omastar. Star oma? Oma oma? Nemesis: S.T.A.R.S! O: Oma oma star omastar oma omastar, star oma star oma star oma omastar? N: S.T.A.R.S! O: Oma, oma? N: S.T.A.R.S O: Oma? N: S.T.A.R.S! O: Star? N: S.T.A.R.S! O:Oma? N: S.T.A.R.S! O: Star? N: Is this guy for real? All he says is the same three words over and over again? I'm a seriou

Although obviously we'd be callous to not empathise with friends and strangers whose lives will be disrupted by whatever ends up happening with GAME group's stores, the company only has itself to blame. Of course, only now is everyone jumping on the GAME bandwagon. It isn't a charity. It is supposed to be a commercial business. It hasn't been serving PC gamers (a massive chunk of the market) for quite a long time and it hasn't been serving us for almost as long. Our gaming tastes aren't niche but we don't tend to go for the BIG AAA releases and as such GAME hasn't been catering for us. Here's a summary of our whinging over the years about GAME. Hopefully, with whatever succeeds it we won't have call to type up our frustrations and send them into the ether to be ignored by all. In June 2009, GAME performed poorly on our store survey when we used to write for that other site occasionally. In February 2010, we wrote to Konami abou

This time from should-know-better David Braben. EDGE 'have' the story Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V from Gamasutra. Every now and then someone from the games industry will raise their head above the parapet and blame pre-owned games for their own poor sales without a shred of evidence to back it up. Here's choice quote from Braben on why pre-owned is killing single player games: I mean, the idea of a game selling out used to be a good thing, but nowadays, those people who buy it on day one may well finish it and return it. And of course, marketeers not marketing games after launch week really helps too right? Oh and the so called gaming press asymmetrically hyping a game up to launch then dropping coverage as if the game never existed once it is actually out has nothing to do with it? Perhaps devs should make a game that last longer than a day or even games that people might want to keep? Presumably, Braben has data for how pre-owned has adversely affected Frontier Developments

So we love video game music. Not all of it, but when it is good we'll take it over millionaires crooning about getting their arse out or falling in love any day. It gets into our mind. So (bear with me) there's an advert on TV for the perfume Opium which has been on the idiot box quite a lot recently. I keep seeing it and it reminded me of a game. In particular this ad at 20 seconds.   Eventually, it came to me! It's from the Notre Dame theme from Timesplitters 2, composed of course by Graemem Norgate, one of the few men we'd happily marry without even meeting (we swooned when he wrote to us ). The relevant bit is in the vid DOWN HERE at 1:31:   And of course, both of these were 'inspired by' a certain Mr Mozart, this vid at 2:35.   Here's the handy URLs to skip the rest and straight to the bit I'm on about should you wish you music cretin Opium , Splitters , Mozart . That's it. Just saying. Jeez. End of the music lesson. Now. Fuck o

So that's that busted then. Not wishing for the 11 or so hours we spent on the game to be completely wasted we thought we'd fire our thoughts about the game into the ether because, you know, there are millions of people out there wanting to read a two year late review of Metroid: Other M . Its those millions that keep us going. Well for those of you who made it to this bit, we've got some exclusive behind the scenes stuff right here where we talk about our feelings and stuff. We're letting you see our soft squishy innards rather than the darksteel exterior of our shared internet persona. We find ourselves as the unlikeliest of Nintendo fans. If you could turn, turn back the hands of time to the PS2 days we'd happily bet money on the fact that we wouldn't (well I wouldn't) be playing a Nintendo home console pretty much exclusively. See there's nothing wrong with Mario, with perhaps the exception that almost everything has a smiley face and eyes, bu

So around the start of February there was as a bunch of releases I was getting hyped* up about but now... a few weeks later... I couldn't care less. Game sites seem to have ignored their release even happened. No news except meta-reviews with the odd smattering of DLC rumours. I mean I know that games are considered nothing more than interactive entertainment mediums, akin to movies, but with more button presses (dependant on DVD extras). But I'm a little sad that for the first time, I have not given into hype, and I seem nonchalant about the whole thing. Maybe I didn't want FFXIII-2 or Soul Calibur V? Maybe, games are not worth the hype. Maybe the whole system is wrong! rant... should have continuous promotion... ramble... accessibility to all games ever made... rant... But that won't change, this is the machine we all made, hyped up media bombs, based on demographics and trends. Defining people by terms and desirability to play a game. Love and di

We've been playing through Metroid: Other M and although initially we weren't grabbed by it it has grown on us although it isn't without it's flaws. We're quite near the end now we can feel it! BONUS! Little Navis (Pows) almost like Navi from the Legend of Zelda. They don't have two wings like the proper Navi and they're yellow. Easter egg? Homogenous design? Who knows/cares?

I mean. What were we expecting? Finally a games award ceremony that did games proud? An awards ceremony without cringey moments? We should know by now to temper our expectations. Highlights: Notch gave an excellent speech that at least gave the impression somebody at the ceremony actually knew about games. The début games category was strong. Modern Warfare 3 not picking up any awards.  Also, at some points there were some attractive ladies on stage (and the Saturdays). Lowlights: Little Big Planet 2 not only getting nominated but winning three awards! Dara 'O' Breen or whatever his name is misgauging quite a few jokes by either being too in-the-know or too off-the-peg-stereotypes. About six games getting nominated for most of the awards. Poor categories as ever. Proper Z-list celebrities presenting awards, at least poorly known games industry folk look liked they knew why they were there and what was going on. Rare people for being too a) American b) Arrogant c)

Remember the Nintendo Wii? It has a channel called the Mii Contest Channel where every now and then Wii owners, should they choose of their own free will, can create Miis to match a theme and vote on the submitted Miis. Many of you may have resigned the Wii to gathering dust but there are still a fair few people who obviously spend a lot of time just creating new Miis. We've been astonished at the diversity of creations from a fairly accurate Lady Gaga through to Wookies, Simpsons characters, Aliens, Robots and even the Mona Lisa a Mona Lisa faced woman. Back to the contests, once a new competition is announced either due to stark homology or a severe lack of creativity, creations tend to all look alike and fit within certain cultural tropes. Any competitions about science or intelligent ends up with hundreds of Einstein Miis (white shirts obligatory) being submitted. Competitions about righteousness or grace, expect Princesses (white or pink shirts). Anything to do wit