That guy's a Maniac...

We love Animal Crossing. Especially the festival days but no day is better than a Beached Samus day!  Happy days!

So let's thank the new Tomb Raider  for paving the way for more games with female protagonists in them. Before the new Tomb Raider there weren't any games with female protagonists in them at all*. This exciting new trend means equality for all! * Except Koudelka, Urban Chaos, Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider 2, Tomb Raider 3, TOmb Raider Chronicles, TOmb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider the not very good one, Tomb Raider the remake of the first one, Tomb Raider LEgend, TOmb Raider Underworld, Resident Evil, Resident Evil Director's Cut, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil the GC remake, Resident Evil the Wiimake of the Gamecube remake, Parasite Eve, Mirror's Edge, Heavenly Sword, Haunting Ground, Silent Hill 3, Silent Hill 3 HD, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Stir of Echoes, Metroid Prime 3: Optimus Prime, DIno Crisis, Dino Crisis 2, Metroid, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, THOSE OTHER METROIDS, Beyond Good and Evil, Daikatana, Perfect Dark, Enslaved (sort of), Sybe

The media's gone a bit backward recently. With everyone now able to find the news that interests online and at their convenience they've become a desperate institution languidly reporting what Z-list celebrities are saying about other Z-list celebrities on twitter or making a meal out of stories that real world people just don't care for. Horse meat is just a labelling issue. I've not met a single person so outraged that they demand constant news updates about it. Now that Queenie's got a sniffle we hope she doesn't die. Not because we're a fan of her or anything but because we can't face the traditional media brownout as they run footage of the queen doddering about and waving on repeat. I can already see the faux-outrage at the distasteful jokes about the Queen's demise on twitter.   Fortunately, we've got a reporter embedded in the roller coaster virtual world of Xenoblade Chronicles and she's full of much more interesting news HOT O

Along with the rest of the world, the potential of Scribblenauts blew our tiny little minds. Unfortunately, the first game had some control issues and we never picked up the second one. However, we spotted a copy of Super Scribblenauts new for less than the price of a pint. This must be the long tail effect then yeah? a 91% price cut over two years is how the games industry maintains healthy profits beyond launch week. Surely. That's why the games industry seems to be weathering the recession and why development companies aren't shutting down left right and centre. Right? Moronic business models aside, it benefits us well and we finally got around to the wonderful world of words. Why isn't this game in every classroom? Why isn't the media full of positive stories of gamers expanding their vocabulary through playing this lovely little game? We're almost done with the challenges in the game and, like everyone who reviewed it back in 2010, Super Scribbl

So I just thousanded FFXIII-2. I had been apprehensive about this title as FFXIII was a little too long winded, especially at endgame, specifically because the final few achievements required 100+ hours and creating a spreadsheet to complete. FFXIII-2 however was a bit more fun to play. I took the plunge over the holidays as it was £9 brand new. The Good: A really fun storyline, jumping through different time periods, seeing how the events of FFXIII turned out and where they went.  An oddly pokemon type mechanic where you recruit and level monsters throughout time. Though some of the areas are reused from FFXIII it doesnt feel like it, as they have been redone with different time-period themes. Feels like a classic Sqeenix game, A touch of final fantasy mixed with Chrono trigger but with a sleek new façade.  The multiple "paradox" endings, where you can replay certain events and change their outcome. The Bad: An overly teenage angsty theme; the younger prota

We've mentioned before how we're slaves to progressing our Backloggery  scanning the glut of games that we own but haven't beaten, let alone mastered. But we can't be alone in looking at 'the collection' and thinking "there's nothing to play". New games keep coming along and tempting us with their sexy new concepts, big graphics and face shooting shenanigans. But we've still got thousands of hours of untapped gameplay that won't cost us a penny.  However, some of those games we'll probably never finish. take Okami for example. Released over 15,000 times, Okami is a beautiful game. Virtually every screen (outside of the menus) could, nay should be printed and adorned on all the surfaces of abodes. But there's a problem. It's too big! Back in the day, when we had hundreds of hours to dedicate to games, this wouldn't have been a problem but these days it is literally too big to play. Here's how my last couple

Yesterday I found myself trying to explain the origins of Puzzle Bobble, it went a little something like this: Well originally the characters are from a game called "Bubble Bobble" where little dinosaurs blow bubbles to trap enemies in them then burst them.* And this started me thinking, where is this type of game nowadays? It seems to have been relegated to the smartphone medium. All main blockbuster titles are a "man shooting another man." I find myself thinking what happened? Somewhere between PS2 and current gen all main characters became human , or at least human looking: elf, dwarf etc. I wonder if this is a safe bet from marketers that people can identify more with a human protagonist. I miss the abstractness the otherworldly environments, rather than the scant familiar distopyas emerging in all games. This atmosphere of breaking the rules of reality had existed in games for so long, creating characters and worlds within the constraints of the machine all

Cock teases. So the gist of that expo was: There will be a PS4. It will have a controller. The Vita will be a hi-tech WiiU controller. There will be games. Very little on the hardware, except that it can render an old man with eyebrow twitches. The share button is for uploading game videos/screenshots.  What does the damned box that sits under your TV  look like?!? Will it be another kitchen utility a la the lean mean, fat reducing machine? Pfft. Love and Diablo 3 as well, Richie X 

With the hype train for the PS4 having left the station, we're going to take an opportunity to look back at the PS3. The first couple of hours of Heavy Rain were alright. So there we have it. The malformed son of the greatest console of all time, the PlayStation 2, really transformed the way we gamed. Roll on PS4!

So, Pokemon X and Y announced and we at thatguys have kleenex on standby. And this latest Valentines video shows us the newest evolution for Eevee! But no-one knows what type it is! In the Previous Generations it looks like this: Gen I Flareon: Fire Jolteon: Electric Vaporeon: Water Gen II Espeon: Psychic Umbreon: Dark Gen IV Leafeon: Grass Glaceon: Ice Which leaves Steel, Bug, Fighting, Poison, Ground, Flying, Rock, Ghost or Dragon. This Eevee evolution has been named Sylveon. Which rather annoyingly does not divulge the typing the prefix "Sylv" could refer to may things: Silver , indicating it is a steel type, however it does not look very steel-like. Sylvan, meaning foresty or arboreal, but we already have a grass type. Sylph,  which is a mythological air elemental, this could indicate a Flying or Ghost type, but nothing about it really screams either typing, except maybe a scarf that flaps in the wind. Or maybe a connection to Silph Co. the manufactur

Living eating sleeping games. Sometimes it's hard to muster up the time and energy to actually play some games. As we are want to do we took a long hard look at our backloggery  and became determined to turn some of those medals from bronze to silver and from silver to gold. The games industry and the marketeers that surround it are all but obsessed with making you crave the new, the shiny but often new games fail to build on what's gone before. We've been hoovering up a lot of the content created by the games community which actually goes a long way to celebrate the history of games and gaming like the industry fails to do. Here we tip our hats to Two Best Friends Play . Puerile, sometimes but what TBFP does and does well is celebrate games. It's connoisseurship coming from the stands which is odd considering that most other media play a part in celebrating the culture they create.  Anyway, one of the marks on our backloggery profile, whilst hunting for the easy w

In ordered to be accredited with any kind of standing, or respect within the pseudo-community of gamers there is a plateau of geeky knowledge that is a standard, however as more and more niche corners become mainstream... On a side note I refer to this phenomenon as ironic-hipster-reversal ; bringing to attention obscure elements of information to appear more knowledgeable in a subject, yet unintentionally bringing it to the foray for everyone i.e. Wearing a a T-shirt with the konami code. Pay attention to this people, this level of marketing and advertising is more powerful than social media!  ...as I was saying as video-games-geeky-knowledge becomes more mainstream the level of knowledge to be respected within the community becomes more convoluted and obscure. There has always existed a level of this autistic desire within games culture, from the early days of imported rare japanese titles. But nowadays games culture has expanded to a respected and widely used area of pop-cu

Chuff's back and he's backing down. He's compromising his principles and it's disgusting to watch. I would like to take this opportunity to whole heartedly apologise to fans of Mutant Mudds and all members of the Galactic Senate (not you ET, never you). When reviewing the aforementioned game I confess I was under severe pressure due to missing a year of deadlines, and was suffering from depression due to flashbacks of not handing in book reviews on time in Mrs Lawrence’s English class. This lead me make glaring errors in my reporting and missed out on a key feature that Mudds has that truly elevates this game to another level, I did not appreciate this during my first play through. Once again, I apologise. I genuinely do not realise how I came to miss this, there is an idle animation. Mutant Mudds: 9.5/10

Chuff's back. He's our man on mobile which has been pretending to do games for a long time . Over to Chuff_72. Look at this shit, does this look like the sort of game a tough Role Playing Mother Fucker like me would be into?  So for some reason (for any reason - AMERICA), I’ve been attracted to these really tough, unforgiving platformers that have been creeping into the App store. I really got into a game called League of Evil , smashed it, then smashed up the sequel, three starring the shit out of it BEFORE they nerfed all the completion times so your Mum (Mom) could finish it too while she’s rubbing one out (rubbing, furiously, there’s a squeaky noise and everything). It’s got some story. It’s about a boy who has an uncomfortably close relationship with his Granny who he keeps in the attic. Then Aliens happen.  The controls are pretty gross, a button* for up, down, left and right, NO DIAGONAL, because if the C64 taught us anything, it’s that pressing the D

We know, we know . Yes you can touch it.

Woo doggy . We're even more internet famous than we were before.

Looks familiar .

This time of year our better half will go into a torpor and if left uninterrupted will sleep forever. A physiology we took advantage of, not like that, to get a couple of hours of gaming in and finally saw the credits of The Last Story . Looking at the Nintendo Channel stats for this game our playtime of just under 41 hours was almost double the time that the 1753 other players (who have allowed Nintendo to publish their data) spent on this game.  Other lesser sites also reported a playtime of 20 hours. So what kept us? Well this is a head scratcher because unlike other RPGs, The Last Story does an excellent job of cutting out the obligatory filler content. There are only a dozen or so different dungeons. Armour comes in six different flavours and is easily upgraded without epic or repetitive quests for rare materials. We honestly just spent all that extra time taking in Lazulis City, a hub city, that's probably up there with the best game places to just spend time soaking

Another goading response from Team Ninja. Put simply there is a divide, and it can be sweepingly categorised into a generation/age. Devil may cry series has spanned over 10 years, and at each end of that spectrum it has picked up a selection of generational players, and frankly the younger/alternative kids (you know the ones that use terms like speed thrash metal) specifically liked it for the broody, angsty, gothy design. But some people liked the DMC series for its gaming style with a fun tacked demon stuff. Dante was iconic, as a character he appealed to a large audience. This new Dante is just a little too alternative to appeal to the spectrum he once appealed to, this video is the glacé cherry on top of the spiralled turd that was the "no-white-hair" announcement. Love and Ah fuck it, its not Dante, Richie X

This just in, stoic TGAM contributor Chuff_72 who hath spake the BIG ONE , Sold Out , and spake t h r i c e, wades into our flip flopping about PC Games to speak once more. Chuffty: I did not grow up owning a PC, but my best friend always had the most up to date system, 386, 486, Pentium etc, so I played all those games when they first came out; Wolfenstein , Frontier , X-Wing , Warcraft 2 , Dark Forces 2 , etc. Great times. Then at a certain point “Graphics Cards” and “ETC” came along and suddenly there was no standard PC anymore and everything stopped working. I didn’t touch a PC to play a game from about 1999 to 2004. In late 2004 I gave a mate £400 and asked for a PC that could play Dawn of War (“a good 40K game, holy shit take my money!”). My custom built PC died about a year and a half later, Limewire + 4gig of porn resulted in about 3000 viruses (literal, not figurative). After a deep cleanse the graphics card stopped working, at no point could I be arsed researching

For those of you outside the UK the current weather may not seem like a topic for conversations lasting more than a couple of minutes. For the British however, it is a source of endless conversation particularly when the weather does surprisingly interesting things outside of the format: depressing rain.  Well now it's fucking snowing so productivity in the UK drops ten percent, not because, people have to stay at home because of death warnings and avalanches but because everyone takes the time to tell everyone they meet that "It is snowing", "It's cold" and endless details about the varying extent of the snow from their own areas and the areas they've heard of through friends and colleagues "I heard Essex got it bad but Kent is fine". Us. We'll just rerun this post from two years ago thanks.

...because every time I sit down at a keyboard my fingers default to WASD. And because some of my best memories and games have been on the PC, from the heady sprite driven days of DOS games; pointy-clickies like Discworld or the ancestral king of FPS's Doom.  SETSOUND= SB16  Through to the graphic driven monsters that plague benchmarking sites. My gaming memories start with the humble Commodore 64 in the 8-bit era and Amiga 1200 in the 16/32 bit era. Yes I flirted the consoles of that time, NES, Mastersystem, Super Nintendo and Mega Drive, but weirdly I remember playing Street Fighter II on the C64: But my first PC was an ex-office PC that ran windows 3.1 akin to the specs below: But as time went on I learned more about PCs I upgraded my 33MHz CPU, to 166MHz. My GFX card got a much needed boost, and as time went on upgrading just became a thing that had to happen, not necessarily just to play a game, but to keep a PC ahead-of-the-curve for a few more years

Our part of the Internet is all a flutter about A not THE Steam Box (Piston or something) and now some biometric gaze tracking thing but I for one couldn't care less. Note, American friends it is couldn't care less not could care less. Could care less means that you still care about something. You could lower the level of care about something. Couldn't care less. Could Not. Anyway, I'll probably never be a PC gamer. Don't get me wrong I think PC games can be brilliant. Rock Paper Shotgun is my little window into the world of PC games and every now and then I'll get a little bit jealous of the gaming opportunities I'm missing out on. I love the stories that come from the RPS team and the unique gaming experiences that can only be had with mods, indie platformers almost as good as older platformers, the 'five second' games and loser generated stuff that really reaches into the upper echelons of what gaming is capable of being. On the other hand t

As we mentioned in this post we've finally acquired all of the Operation Rainfall titles for the Nintendo Wii and we're proud of it. Thanks again to all the people who badgered Ninty to localise these titles. We've spent hundreds of hours on Xenoblade Chronicles , tens on the Last Story and fractions on Pandora's Tower . Nonetheless we're now in a position to bring you the most important information about these innovative titles that caused a mini renaissance in JRPGs. That was until nobody bought them. That question, which we bring to you now, uncut and unedited, free from the chains of 'the man' who keeps the video games press subdued and gagged. That question, which we're about to ask and then answer is: What are the tit physics like in the Operation Rainfall titles? We know. Finally right? Each of the games being a JRPG of sorts, Pandora's Tower is more of an action adventure if you insist on using nonsensical genre terms like that, f

Okay, so we all take review scores with a pinch of salt M'kay? That said it interesting seeing how the world of games with it's bagillions of entries looks when you par each game down to a grade or number and compare them to each other, or platform to platform or year to year. MCV (who definitely did not have a bad year last year) reports on Metacritics analysis of last year and the results chime with how we felt about last year's games.  They were just a bit pants and this is the games that were making the headlines and everyone was talking about. For our personal tastes we hardly picked up any of these titles. Ass Creed still hasn't fixed the flaws that put us off the first and second one and Far Cry seems to be picking up GOTY nominations here there and everywhere by default. Like everyone else Dishonored was good but eerily instantly forgettable. Last year our gaming palettes were gorged with Xenoblade Chronicles (technically a 2011 release for EU), Poke

New years Resolution are like video games, [insert witty analogy here. Perhaps watch that "The Thick of it" DVD box set your snooty guardian reading friend got you for Xmas for inspiration]. And as such we have some resolutions this year. Number one, do more posts. And dear reader(s) this is not just for you, you conceited twat(s), don't be so selfish. This is for us too. We need to spit some venom and bile about how games are not as good as they were X years ago, otherwise it builds up and the only way to vent is by punching random handicapped children on the street. Number two, We do solemnly vow to refuse to accept browser gaming, any review of such will only be ironic or sarcastic. We almost did a review in 2012 of Family guy online which is a browser-based- microtransaction-fueled-wow-clone, (remember when games were just defined as, Shoot-em-up, RPG, Beat-em-up, Platformer...) But thankfully we got our act together and did our usual; opened blogger and crie

Sharla who? Yes in the second of the Operation Rainfall titles we've been playing through we think that our crush on elastatits has been completely replaced by our love of the heavy-drinking, fun loving, foul-mouthed Syrenne of The Last Story . Plus she's disabled*! A strong, disabled female video game character who puts the typical JRPG male protagonist to shame.   *She has a Northern accent.

Making what passes for 'news' today is the story that the X-Factor final last week had the lowest viewer figures since 2006 . Why might this be? Well we can speculate. People may be tired of the format, people may have better things to do on a Saturday night. TV may need to reexamine the way it judges the success of failure of shows because with so many ways to catch up online, on mobiles or through set top boxes that allow pre-recording. The notion of having to be sat at home to watch something at a fixed time (complete with annoying ads) is probably alien to people of the generations after mine. They may have just found the contestants boring or figured that it wasn't really a contest anymore given that the finalists comprise an uncharismatic Liverpudlian, an uncharismatic shy guy (not that kind) who insists on having a haircut that makes him instantly unlikeable and the one who can actually sing and seems a bit interesting. These all sound like possible causes for the