Posts

Occupy Wall Street

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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

Xenoblade Chronicles

We've only been playing Xenoblade Chronicles pretty much exclusively recently. Life gets in the way and the game that is perhaps best served in a long glass and supped over the course of a long evening is instead consumed like downing a can of red bull on the tube in the morning whilst tyring to read a newspaper with some sweaty office twat with his elbow in your balls. We also happen to be completionists so instead of skipping most of the optional quests that realistically wouldn't impact our game bar the loss of some EXP and the odd bit off gear, we literally can't skip a single one. WE PAID GOOD MONEY FOR THIS GAME WE'LL EXPERIENCE ALL OF IT. So with this background to consumption, we're finding playing Xenoblade Chronicles slipping from a fun game to a bit of a grind. Desperate to progress the story we keep spotting new NPC quests. You see the game has a day night cycle and the NPCs don't stand around like WoW pricks just giving you out quests. This

Darkstalkers 4 rumoured

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...or should I rephrase that... Yet another shallow capcom e-sports game, with little to no extra conten,t bar choosing a fighter and fighting. Yes I know the previous 2D incarnations were nothing more than that. But they will gay it up with no secret characters or at least no challenge to unlock them, of course with big announcements of all of them so there is no surprise. But for the love of god add some extra modes in, a Story mode at the very least! Though on the upside, Morrigans 3D bouncing boobs and cameltoe, woop! Love and why not Killer instinct vs Darkstalkers, Richie X

Ghost Trick

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We played Ghost Trick on the DS! For so long we've gotten used to the DS being the machine that plays Pokemon we almost completely forgot it plays other excellent games. Remember how we used to be a blog about Resident Evil (hence the name That guy's a maniac)? Last week we looked at a game with zombies in it. Today we're looking at a Capcom game so that pretty much means we're back on track as per our strategic vision . It totally counts.  So what about this game then? Well it is over a year old so we're probably the last people on Earth to play it. Others reviewed it and better than we will. Read those reviews. We enjoyed it. It was fun and aaargh. We can't write this long without a numbered list. Here's a numbered list of things we liked about Ghost Trick: Unusually, for Capcom the save system isn't totally fucked. So far there's no checkpoints just before a long unskippable cutscene or a ridiculously difficult difficulty spike(y).  B

Super Smash Brothers- Progress Report

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See those trophies up there? They are the latest three I've managed to hunt down in Super Smash Brothers Brawl. That takes my total up to 538 out of 544, with three more to unlock from challenges (Boss Battles Intense, Boss Battles Very Hard and Collect All Stickers), two more to get from the Subspace Emissary  which is no easy task (you have a stupidly short time to get Meta Ridley) and one (Capsule) which just hasn't turned up randomly yet. By far the one we're most proud of grabbing is Tabuu's normal trophy (above on the left) which we found a particularly onerous task and one our right thumb will need a few days to recover from.  The Subspace Emissary mode in Super Smash Brothers Brawl (essentially the game's story mode) got mixed write-ups in reviews but we're already up to 42 hours just playing through the story a number of times. Not too shabby considering it is somewhat an optional mode.  We've also got 22 stickers left to collect as well.

The Ironman Challenge: A reason to come back to WoW

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The Ironman Challenge I'm not keen on following WoW nowadays, but this challenge is interesting. Its essentially a community of WoW players who have created a personal challenge to make the game, well... Challenging. WoW nowadays is very easy. There is far too many quests, there are items to increase how fast you can level, you can instantly transport to dungeons with randoms etc etc.  For a while now I always wanted a Diablo like Hardcore version of WoW, you die... you are Dead. and it seems so do others a proper Solo challenge! So should I, make: That Guy's an Ironmaniac? If you care suggest Class/Race combos for me. Love and bits of metal in your heart, Richie X

Something about Jennifer Helper

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If you are a game-o-phile and allergic to metaphorical feathers you will have no doubt got some snuffles last week as everyone and their dog (on our feedreader) got their tits in a twizzle about Jennifer Helper and comments taken out of context about some game called Mass Effect. An inoffensive summary is here . It is the kind of news that bloggers love to write about. It gives them a chance to play the White Knight, pass-off a comment about how horrible Xbox Live is and then fire off some unhelpful suggestions about how the gaming community at large should combat the par for the course racist, misogynist, etcist environment in games and on the internet at large (we should confront them for it and report them to Microsoft is a strategy that hasn't worked up until now).  So what is this all about then? Jennifer Helper who didn't write Mass Effect may or may not have said words to the effect that combat should be skippable in games. Cue- the "it is a vocal minority

Nintendo Channel: NOW SHOWING!

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It's been a couple of weeks since we tuned into the Nintendo Channel to see what's up on ninty's very own TV channel. That's deliberate because the channel has a relatively low turn over and the videos seem to be programmed by a mental who doesn't really understand how marketing works. So we've matchsticked our eyes open long enough to suffer through the latest crop of hit-and-miss offering. What's new? There's a couple of Resident Evil Revelations videos up. They are as dull as the previous ones sadly whilst at the same time giving us the feeling like we've played the game already. More nonsense Mario Kart " Player challenge " vids. Yet another 'series' on the channel that just baffles. Initially these videos introduced challenges in a range of games and we're all for lengthening the long tail of interest on titles older than two weeks. Now, however, they're just Mario Kart 7 time trial videos. If you really are des

Metro- now with games coverage

How long has the Metro been doing games coverage properly? It is even in the Life section of the magazine! For so long we've been used to newspapers coverage of games being a single game review bundled in the bit-that-nobody-reads or in 'gadgets' or next to the radio listings. Not only is the (weekly) metro coverage a double page spread, they review the latest games rather than games that came out four months ago and the writing ain't that bad either.  Of course, it is entirely moot as anybody interested in games gets all the information they need online. It seems quaint to have to "read a newspaper" for reviews but it warms the cockles of our little hearts that games are finally getting the mainstream recognition that gamers seem to crave to justify their 'hobby/lifestyle'. Even if it is moot coverage and even if the gaming community does its level best to remain toxic, inane and offensive to anybody they suspect of not being a hardcore gamer.

The buttrapiest game of the month:

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This month goes to... Bug Village. This mobile pile of buttrape is designed purely to part you with your money. Sure on the outside its all cutsey insects and big cartoon eyes, but underneath lies the soul sucking villainous heart of a corporate moneygrabber concept. Just to clarify I played this on the Windows Phone. Windows phone has quite a few games on it and has the added bonus of being able to contribute to your gamerscore. Microsoft have released quite a few free games that do this too, simple crap like Minesweeper, Sudoku, but also some fun ones like Breeze . They are not all bad, but still suffer from just being mobile games. Then about a Month ago another free one hit the marketplace; Bug Village by Glu. Glu have been around for years making shitty mobile games since the days of the nokia brick phones. But this new "free" addition to the Windows Phone games is just fucking terrible. At every turn it tries to get you to pay money, there is an in game currenc

House of The Dead

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It's always nice to find yourself in the household of a fellow gamer. By far the best bit is perusing their game collection and is also why we hide Shadow the Hedgehog from public display, at the back, in a box re-sleeved with a CoD insert. It is also is a prime time to play those game you wouldn't have bought yourself but are mildly curious about. Hence how we ended up playing House of the Dead 2, 3 and Overkill . Way back when, our family had a Mega Drive and so I grew up on all things SEGA. Sega at home is fine. Arcade SEGA though? Ugh. Unlike rigid and structured games for the home consoles Arcade games are noisy, flashy and 'loose' a bit like your mother. Arcade games are a Waquila suicide* to home games single malt whiskey. Created to rinse your wallet they lack the structure I need to not go foetal and I still shudder when I have to choose 'arcade mode' from a game menu. It's why I'd been avoiding HoTD. I got over it though and HoTD is fu

NPC of the Month

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NEW FEATURE ALERT! NEW FEATURE ALERT! Not content on bringing you the hottest content on video games on the internet we're launching yet another feature setting us aside from those 'other' internet 'sites' bringing you the 'news'. Each month we'll be picking our favourite NPCs from the amazing and magical world of video games. This month is..... It's Only Our Own Bloody Correspondant Alcamoth Citizen! Any thoughts on being our very first NPC of the month bird lady? It is literally, metaphorically and stereotypically no wonder why we picked her to be our new correspondent  from inside video games with a wit like that, inside sources at the Ministry of Records and such a fine pair of head wings too. Interesting fact you might not know about Alcamoth Citizen is that she can be found standing rooted to the spot in Alcamoth City in the Day-Time. Every. Single. Day. Check it out, she's always got something to say about the latest video game

An Announcement and An Introduction

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ANNOUNCING In October last year the TGAM board of directors met to discuss how Second Greatest Video Game Blog On The Internet, That Guy's a Maniac (TGAM) was performing. We've listened to our consumers and things are going to change around here. First off, there's going to be no more features that we startand don't finish (like TGAM top 50 ultimate TGAM top games best list of best games of all time ever , Unit of the Month  or That guy's Interviews ) also we've listened to you and what you want is more Resident Evil coverage. We are called That Guy's A Maniac and should honour that legacy. So we'll be seeing some changes around here. Changes we think you will both like. Also, stakeholders have been complaining that TGAM is a it of a sausage fest when we aren't pretending to be women and we need to be covering video games from the female perspective a bit more Which brings me neatly onto OUR BRAND NEW FEATURE: INTRODUCING.... Yes, we know we do

What game is that then?

This landed in our feedreader from the normally OK EDGE magazine. Self-styled "game director and alleged psychopath" David Jaffe has kicked off Twisted Metal's marketing campaign in typical style, inviting players to fire an automatic weapon from the comfort of their desks. "I'm here to tell you about the epic return of gaming's most sick, depraved franchise," he says. "It's Twisted Fucking Metal on PlayStation 3, and it's back, bitch." Self-styled "game director and alleged psychopath" David Jaffe has kicked off Twisted Metal's marketing campaign in typical style, inviting players to fire an automatic weapon from the comfort of their desks. "I'm here to tell you about the epic return of gaming's most sick, depraved franchise," he says. "It's Twisted Fucking Metal on PlayStation 3, and it's back, bitch.

Gayms Jurnalism

Remember the GMAs? You know the Games Media Awards? Well it is a UK awards thing for people who write about games. one of last year's nominees was Chris Scullion who writes for the Official Nintendo magazine in the category SPECIALIST WRITER PRINT. Sadly he didn't win and presumably he was having an off day in OPM 79 when he writes the following about Dragon Quest X: Also making the decision tricky [about whether to get the Wii or Wii U version] is the fact that, as it's the first RPG [on the Wii] to focus more on online adventuring (much like Monster Hunter Tri)... Is it the first or is it not? Snark snark snark.

Dilemma: Guiness World Records Gamer's Edition

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Aaaaaargh. I hate it. Stupid records like 'World's Most Successful Pokemon Playing Family'. That isn't a proper record. 'World's largest controller' IT WAS PURPOSEFULLY BUILT FOR THE BOOK. How does that count? What an utter nonsense. Combining the world's most pointless record keeping organisation with one of the world's most pointless leisure-time endeavours surely deserves a record for the world's most pointless collaboration? Also 90% of these records are absolutely contested, instantly out of date and very poorly monitored and some come from the INTERNET of all places. We all saw King of Kong are those guys to be trusted? Woooooah. Amazing. Did you know that: The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall has 750,000 NPCs? And that the fastest speed run of Tomb Raider is 2hrs and 39 minutes by a woman! Did you know that Resident Evil 2 is the most popular RE on the PS2 ( change the record dudes )? Did you know that Darkstalkers umm mash up/spin off 

Soul Calibur V: This is what it's about now.

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The other character is supposed to be Lightning from FFXIII but is pretty poor The Dragonborn looks the part though! And I love the arrow in the knee! Love and There should be a word to describe being bored and trawling though YouTube, Richie X

Battling with FFXIII before FFXIII-2

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You know saying things are "like Marmite", is like Marmite you either love it or hate it. That's right there's no middle ground its black or white no shades of gray, no 6 out of 10's, its either 0 out of 10, or 10 out of 10! They are opposite ends of the spectrum, Violet and Red. missing out all the greens, blues, oranges and yellows in between. And Squaresoft are apparently the same, their games are either "teh SuXXorZ" or "Epic wins". After a slew of Epic wins: VII, VIII, IX, X, everything just seemed to go wrong for them, they made a very girly sequel to FFX, an expensive niche MMO (for PC AND consoles), a single player MMO at the end of a consoles lifecycle, and then XIII finally! After nearly 10 years since FFX, Square made an actual RPG where you level up your dudes and you know chocobos and stuff. But something was wrong... there was grumblings in the internet there was horrible talk of a 30 hour training section, but still we

Omastar Comics #33

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He's back and more spirally than ever. In this edition of Omastar Comics. Well you'll see soon enough.   Honestly, these newer Pokemon don't even know they are born. Just wait until you've been reeled out for over 100 spin off games, merchandise and theme parks. Then you'll lose that racist attitude.

Nintendo Channel: Now Showing

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Nintendo Channel: Poor Showing would be more apt. We log into the Wii's Nintendo channel every week and see what is on offer so you don't have to! This week's poor showing is: Something about Resident Evil Revelations . I'm sure it is great (well reviews don't say it is that great) but I'm a little bit underwhelmed by Capcom's marketing output. Ooooooh it has a chaptered structure. Great it has a cast that is beginning to rival Sonic in terms of blandness and breadth! If I wasn't a Resident Evil fan those two points aren't exactly selling the series to me yet this is the second or third Nintendo channel clip of Capcom staff talking about those two very very dull things. Another pointless Player Challenge video for Mario Kart 7. We whinged about them before .  There's a new weekly downloads trailer. I don't know about you but Balloon Kid, Double Bloob, Successfully Learning Mathematics Year 3 and The Very Hungry Caterpillar's ABCs

Final Fantasy VII: Revisited

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As I mentioned earlier , I played through FF7 with some nice mods, to increase the quality of the graphics and such. There were some other mods to break the 9999 limit on everything, allowing you to deal over 9999 damage, and your HP could be over 9999 too. however enemies could also hit you for over 9999. and the most fun one was "Aeris Resurrection" the guys over at Qhimm.com created a little patch to keep her in your group and to allow you to keep using her and the time you invested in her, they even added dialogue for her during the rest of the game and a hand new upgrade to her "ultimate weapon" replacing the Aeris ghost scene when revisiting the church later in the game. Done really well! I thoroughly enjoyed replaying it, remembering 99% of the secrets and locations. I even bested Emerald and Ruby Weapon, though cheaty... I used Aeris level 4 limit break which renders you invincible for the duration of a battle, but still, I wasnt really in that game for t

GAME: Still dillusional

Previous whinging here. Today's developments are that GAME CEO sees their continued slide into financial troubles caused by the groups overeliance on hardware and hardware bundle sales to mean consumers want more hardware. Via MCV : "The hardware market was much more negative than the software market. That tells you the industry and the consumer is ready for more innovation there" Here we were staring at our Wii*, 3DS** and Xbox 360*** thinking we were waiting for new decent games to come out. Apparently, what we were secretly thinking was "Gosh! I would love to splash out a couple of hundred quid on a new console that provides marginally better graphics in these times of economic shitness". And I'm sure that the millions of people with consoles sitting under their televisions are thinking the same thing. You called it CEO Ian Shepherd, King of poor retail management and myopic business sense.  * Oh sorry I forgot, Last Story is due out this year

That Resident Evil 6 trailer

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Oh my god you guys, watch this:  THIS IS DISGUSTING. Capcom should be ashamed of themselves. Did they not learn from Resident Evil 5? This trailer is so racist.   1) First of all this game is telling four year olds (everyone knows that four year olds play these games) that it is okay to shoot white men who are world leaders. Could've made the president black or a woman or a black woman. But no. A white guy. Disgusting. Don't they know that this kind of imagery (people shooting white presidents) is charged with history?   2) It is racist against white presidents who wear glasses. Ut oh, I'd watch out if I were you Giorgio Napolitano cos come 2012 there's gonna be a whole bunch of racist four year olds trying to shoot you up in the face/eyes.   3)All the zombies are white ironically, including a jumping zombie. Don't they know that this kind of imagery (white people shooting jumping white people) is charged with history? Capcom just assumes all gamers ar

That's How You Do A Black Out

No new posts for nine days. None of this half arsed one day business. Take that SOAP.  In other news : ALL GAMES ARE THE SAME. Totally homogenised. There's nothing to even be excited about anymore just mindlessly going through the motions of playing new game X which is exactly like all the games you already played last year. Not even a 'trailer' for Resident Evil 6 can get us excited considering that only 1/3 of us played RE5 and none of us have a 3D(NO GAMES)S to play the other two Resident Evil games. Fortunately there is star shuttle to tide us over.   HERE'S A POEM ABOUT STAR SHUTTLE   Tsssssssssshhhhhh (bottom thruster)  Tsssshhhhhhh (right thruster)  Tshhh tshhh tshhh (Left, top then right thruster)  Tsshhhhhhh (top and front thruster)  TSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH (All thrusters in thrustration)  Tsh (Top and back thrusters)

Resident Evil Operation Blah Blah Blah

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Okay so we're a teensy bit worried that REORC is messing with the Resident Evil format but this video is kinda cool. I'm just a bit disappointed that it wasn't the Nemesis who appears at the end but what you gonna do? Oh and German subs so might learn some German.

Game continues to slide...

If you live in or have traveled through London you will have no doubt encountered discarded newspapers on tubes, in the street and in lunch and common rooms across the capital. If you are lucky you might find yourself with the Evening Standard or the Metro to help lunch/train/bus journeys fly by a bit quicker. If you are unlucky it will be City A.M . a boring newspaper about the city and stocks and graphs and FTSEs. However, recently I've not minded flicking through City A.M if only to follow the slip slide of GAME group into liquidation (possibly). In today's City A.M some goon from GAME group was blaming the lack of a new console cycle as a cause of their poor success. Okay, so I know very little about economics and markets and stocks and shares but I'm going to go out on a limb to say that it is pretty retarded to rely on the console cycles in order for the business to stay afloat. In the same week that sales of the Wii have topped 30 million across Europe you'd

Windows 8 and Gaming

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I have been messing about with windows 8 recently. Just to see its compatibility with older games and just the general feel of it. Windows 8 upon start up presents you with a slide-to-unlock screen akin to the Windows Phone, though entirely pointless if you are not using a touchscreen (though a simple tap of the space bar works just as well, if not faster) you are then presented with an "app" screen. Its not too dissimilar to the windows phone or 360 interface, and feels a little iOS too, though it's debatable as to whether this is a good thing on a desktop/laptop: As you can see this is your typical workspace, undoubtedly designed for a touchscreen interface. You have apps (which when clicked on/tapped expand into their own fullscreen versions) as you can see, there is an inbuilt twitter/RSS/Weather and the Facebook app "Socialite" doesn't work currently. Those with keen eyes will also see Final Fantasy VIII! Well I just dug out my old copy of it an

2012 Nintendo Channel: Now Showing

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It's our first look at the Wii's Nintendo Channel in 2012 ( here is all the previous Now Showings). What will the hit-and-miss Nintendo channel bring this year? Our money is on- inconsistent videos, series that inexplicably end after one or two videos and in general poor use of an otherwise extremely well placed marketing tool. So what do we have? Bizarrely, Nintendo TV  the monthly show from the Official Nintendo Magazine, has been reset back to episode one again for the new year. There's now a woman presenter rather than that Welsh chap but sadly it seems the script writer hasn't changed. Expect cringey dad-joke "humour" in spades. One improvement in this awful ONM vehicle is that the episode is now divided up into different sections. Hopefully this means we won't get quite so many Mario/Zelda retrospectives/love letters. There's two tutorial videos up for Boom Street , Nintendo's odd Dragon Quest/Mushroom Kingdom/Monopoly game. The tra

TGAM a retrospective 2011

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We did a puzzle Back when we were excited about MvC3 we did an homage to Poison You know that regular piece we do? You know Unit of the Month? No? Crazy We realised Something We had too much free time We did a lengthy piece on "Digital Convergence" We predicted it  Black and White came out We decided we weren't  having fun We did an  Interview We lost something We invented the quadruple/triple inverted commas We joined the 3D fad Well that is it for this year, we'll be back in 2012 for the Mayan apocalypse, a million HD remakes and announcements of the next consoles? Abba said it best... Love and Next year we promise it'll be better, TGAM X

GOTY:2011

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I was really struggling to recall any stand out gaming experience this year. There were plenty of polished experiences but nothing that particularly blew my mind. UNTIL LAST NIGHT! We treated ourself to Wii Play Motion, partly for a sexy red controller to match our sexy red classic controller but also to finally get on the Wii Motion train almost two years after it came out, now that Zelda makes the accessory worth owning. Before, this list didn't seem to justify the purchase. We were big fans of Wii Play especially Tanks!, in fact we think there are only 41 games better than it in existence . So we were quite looking forward to Wii Play Motion. Don't get us wrong there are some rum games in the pack and the experience is severely hampered if you don't have more than one Wii Motion Plus controller. Sometimes rather unnecessarily, a number of the games could easily have been pass the controller multiplayer. However, Star Shuttle is phenomenal and we wish there was

Have a Hi-Res Holiday!

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I mentioned earlier in the year playing Ocarina Of Time in HD  And I have been, And also enjoying it! But over the holiday's I have been dabbling with other HD projects. Firstly after completing Skyrim at level 72 *Bragging rights* I had a been bitten by the Elder Scrolls bug and decided to have a looksee at Morrowind and the improvement Mods: As you can see it's very pretty, on top of this though there were mods to enhance the models, and the clothing and such, it was comparable, if not better than Oblivion Graphics. However the controls and interface were dire, I was hoping to approach it with the same controls as Oblivion/Skyrim. but it is really optimised for Keyboard and Mouse. Secondly, while playing Ocarina of Time I found myself feeling nostalgic, and remembered playing FF7 around the same time. So I decided to have a look into HD mods for FF7 (skip the intro): as you can see the silly models on the world have gone, in general most graphics have be

I used to be addicted... till I got an arrow in the knee.

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There is a fantastic piece on video-game addiction floating about the internet, describing evolutionary reasons fro addiction, and more importantly discussing "Unethical Game Design". The tricks that developers use to trap the user into wanting to come back for more. A very thought provoking piece, check it out here or here: It's only 15 mins... c'mon. Love and Obscure Skyrim memes, Richie X.

Huge Organ

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Quite! Screenie from the excellent Syberia.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron Trailer

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Oh gosh... I dunno if it counts as an addition to out sister blog: Dinosaurs in Games GRIMLOCK!!! Love and inappropriate indie music, Richie X

Oh yeah... Skyrim

I did promise you all an update, but I was a little busy with killing Draugr, Dwarven Spheres, Falmer and "talking" to dragons. i.e. Playing Skyrim. If anyone out there cares for my character I have maxed out Archery, Sneak, Enchanting, Alchemy and Smithing, purely to get maximum damage on my bow. So what have I done? Well I fucked about at the start, pretty much the moment I could wander about, I did some random dungeons, joined the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild. I did a touch more of the main plot, then did the Mages guild, I still have the companions and the rest of the main plot to do. How about the game in hindsight now? Well It's great, it's not too buggy, though there are some annoying bugs, which has kinda halted my sidequests, so now I play the waiting game for the patch. What I am most disappointed about is the "Guilds" quests, Dark Brotherhood and Mages Guild was over so quickly, I have spent more time faffing about in other dungeons

Chuff_72 Strikes Again: Infinity Blade 2

Are mobile games any good yet? Are they even proper games? For dinosaur games no definitely not . Chuff_72 continues to look at mobile games and work out if they are any good yet here's his skinny on Infinity Blade 2 .   Infinity Blade 2, in my opinion, is the sequel to Infinity Blade, and it’s a good one.   I'm fairly certain I completed the first game, where *SPOILERS* you defeat the End Boss *END SPOILERS*, however at the start of this one he is not dead, I guess that's standard for an Immortal… I'm not sure why we all thought he was dead, he clearly states he is Immortal a number of times, so yeah, not unexpected. The original ended on a cliff-hanger of sorts, and there was a cool "hidden" ending. This time there is a new random woman, the main guy has gained a name and a voice and then he dies, only to wake up in a metal cave/room, wearing only his pants.   While the game does seem to just chuck you in head first apparently there is a whole n

BUY KINECT NOW AND THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING INTERESTING TO DO WITH IT IN THE FUTURE!

Out-fucking-rageous. This advert is on the actual telly-vision. Except unlike the version in that link it carries the disclaimer along the lines of "visionary applications only".  Basically, Microsoft have created an advert for the Kinect, yet another advert featuring a chilled out version of the Pixies' "Where is My Mind?", showing a whole host of things that might be possible in the future using Kinect but which aren't at the moment.  Amazing new low from MS when it comes to Kinect. Can't sell any when you show what you can actually do with it today? Then hypothesize about the future. When the product might be useful. I think more ads should be like this one. Fuck four wheeled cars, just advertise flying cars with the disclaimer "made-up future bullshit in no way reflects existing product". Tobacco companies should advertise non-existent anti-cancer medicines to allow us to smoke as much as we like. Just occasionally take an "n

Quality Assurance: The ass-end of the Industry.

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Its not often we do a serious article, you know, about real things... But this is something I have had a lot of experience with. And would like to share a few gripes and annoyances with the Industry, specifically "Quality" assurance. Hey there little man, do you like computer games? Well clearly getting a job in the games industry makes sense that way all your n00b-pwning skills you have accumulated wont go to waste; they are now "experience". So how could you get in the industry? Programming? Nope. that involves a course which takes 3 years, by which time the language you have learned may be defunct. 3D Modelling? Again nope, more course work, and an Art degree... Games Design, Yeah why not, you have played so many games, you know what makes a good game  you could write an epic RPG, or create the next 3rd person hack n' slash hit. Oh no, wait, you have to spend more years doing a course on how to design games, which are ultimately, bested in gameplay buy ind