That guy's a Maniac...

Chuff_72 is back. He's stranded on a isolated island somewhere and only has his mobile phone to play games on. He's been kind enough to wire his reviews over so we can laugh and point at mobile 'games'. They'll never be the future. This is Slayin (no “g”, no fucking apostrophe either, apparently RETRO means bad grammar too). Despite looking like shit it’s really enjoyable, and a cleverly condensed RPG in the mould of the infinite runner, because that little blue lump keeps on running, but only on one screen. If you run into stuff with your pointy thing they die, if they run into your back passage you lose a chunk of life. There is a jump button, it’s the massive grey button on the right. The controls (left, right, jump) work for once, which is cause for much rejoicing. During levels you can run into a shop and buy upgrades to keep you running, there are boss fights, and cheevos. It’s really good. That’s pretty much the review, below is all moani

There seems to be a lot of discussion at the moment about defining the language we use to describe gaming and more broadly defining the culture. One of the things we worry about here is how we preserve gaming. It's a medium we're still in the position to save most of but very little is being done to preserve it.  This recent Extra Credits video rather nicely sums up some of the major barriers to preserving the physical stuff of games. We aren't ardent institutionalists but we'd really like to see gaming museums seriously explore preserving and celebrating (museums are more than just historical archives). Museums have started to look at gaming and there have been a number of exhibitions on or incorporating gaming but to date there hasn't been an concentrated effort on displaying gaming for it's own sake. The Smithsonian exhibition The Art of Video Games and the Game On exhibition at the Science Museum were both good starts and both the Victoria Albert M

Meet Omastar, the (Oma) star of Omastar Comics and of twitter fame . You could say Omastar is my favourite Pokémon but you'd be wrong. My favourite Pokémon is Dactylocer, MY Omastar. let me explain. One of the wonderful and often overlooked features of the Pokémon series of games, including the main series of games and some of the spin offs, has been the ability to transfer Pokémon not just from one game to the next but most importantly from one generation to the next. This feature goes as far back as Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire . Pokémon were transferable from one game to the other in the Green, Blue, Red and Yellow games and these games were compatible with the Nintendo 64 Pokémon Stadium , and Pokémon Stadium 2 but sadly the Pokémon caught in these games couldn't be transferred beyond that. Since 2002's Ruby and Sapphire games it's been possible to transfer pocket monsters from one game to another up until the latest generation Pokémon Black Version 2

We've been on a bonanza of buying older Wii games to add to the collection. We avoided the original Red Steel on account of the awful reviews but wanted to try Red Steel 2, partly because it's one of the few games to use Wii Motion Plus. We're about halfway through but feel it's enough to put down some thoughts about it. It's a perfectly functional if somewhat generic game. The motion controls irk at first, swordplay isn't mapped one to one to the Wiimote, the reason for this is so that a multitude of attacks can be mapped to flick, twisting, holding and tapping buttons in combinations with flails. After a couple of hours the controls become second nature and every enemy encounter can be played a number of different ways similar to the encounters in Resident Evil 4 . It's not quite mindless and if you aren't paying attention every enemy goon can take you out.  Oddly, the game  just sort of starts. There's very little in the way of introdu

MCV reports that Nintendo will be shutting down several Wii online services . Our heart skipped a beat for a second thinking that maybe the plug had been pulled on Monster Hunter Tri or Mario Kart Wii and our hunter might be trapped in subexcellent armour or our online ranking on MK might be forever frozen at a measly 8500 points. Fortunately, for the meantime, these games aren't affected but come the 28th of June Nintendo, News, Weather, Everybody Votes and Mii Contest Channels will be mothballed forever. Also going is the ability to send messages on the Wii Message Board This illustrates something that really pisses us off about modern consoles; increasingly the console and games you buy are really just a license to use services until such time as the servers are unplugged.  Now most people probably won't mourn the loss of these services but as this series has shown we thought they were pretty great albeit underused service. We've had some hands on time with New Su

Last weekend, once again we went through the humiliating ritual of busting down to the nearest GAME with our DSi and copies of Pokémon White and Pokémon Black Version 2 to download Legendary 'mon Meloetta. That takes us up to a sweet 648/649 (Deoxys aaargh) in our eternal mission to Catch 'em all , this generation of Pokémon is the closest we've come. In all our years of playing these ridiculous games, Nintendo seem to have finally realised that yes, Europe is a viable region and that some people do play their multi million selling game series. For previous generations we'd get shafted over special events and event only Pokémon meaning that unless you turned to an Action Replay you were destined to have to live with empty spaces dotting the pokedex. That's not to say that all regions are treated equally. Oh no. With Pokémon Black and White Version 2 there's now a multitude of ways to receive special gift pokémon and items from Mother Ninty. gifts

We recently picked up Sin & Punishment Successor to the Stars, Star Rod Sky Pirates Knights. Surprisingly, despite 3 years of rave reviews and fond reflections by everyone who ever played it, it is rather good. When we get a new game, we have a ritual. We pour over the instruction book first, reading the "plot" bit (which is still the place where most games actually describe the context of the world you're about to visit). Weirdly, the above image is in the instruction booklet illustrating the biography of Kachi one of the two playable characters. It appears she's hurriedly getting dressed, bra is out, one boot on. Fine. Maybe she's a ditsy character and her thing is always being late or something? We've not yet played through the whole game yet but this doesn't seem to be her deal.   It's just a weird image to use isn't it? I mean yes, please let us perve over the female characters at our own leisure just don't start the misogyny

We like to play games and we love to read about games. Sometimes it's hard to get the balance right so the reason why we've been quiet in past months is because it was all reading about games and snarking about games and very little actual playing games. We also like to read books about games. We've recently picked up Grand Thieves and Tomb Raiders : How British Video Games Conquered the World and it'll be a nice addition to the growing library of good books about gaming and Resident Evil novelisations. As ever it says a lot about the coherency of gaming beyond the insides of consoles and boundaries of the Internet in that there isn't a massive section in the biggest bookshop by you called 'video games'. Invariably, books from This Gaming Life through to critically under-read Replay the History of Video Games might be under the Internet or indoor games or computing or web/graphics. I'm not going to get on my high horse and say that all gamers are i

Chuff's our man on the mobile. He's been playing some games on mobiles and some thoughts have struck him thensly. Note, there's a super secret ending to this post only available to those who have played the game: Well shit, when did “Might And Magic” become “Might & Magic”? What a god damn shame, I guess that’s a pretty damning indictment of our life and times right there. I guess As, Ns and Ds and pretty fucking old school, we don’t want to alienate the Kids. A little pre-amble; My first experience of the Might And Magic series of games was on the original Playstation, it was an incredible Third Person, True 3D extravaganza called Crusaders of Might and Magic. Review: 10/10 WARNING IGN LINK  Wait! Three out of Ten? I guess my memories of the game are pretty muddy… Well, anyway, after smashing that game to bits I was hooked. Come the Playstation 2 era and the first game I played and completed was the awesome sequel, Warriors Of Might And Magic.

Chuff_72 is our man on the Mobile. He's a fallen hero, once a proud gamer now weighed down by responsibilities and such. Where he once played all kinds of games for the betterment of man his gaming life is now spent hiding in toilets and bushes trying to squeeze the most out of mobile games. Games which some people are calling the future and others are saying, steady on pal, Angry Birds and Cut the Rope we're alright but the rest is a big bucket of clunge fodder. He's been tapping away at a little game called Punch Quest. Over to you Chuff, half man, shadow of his former self. This article was sent to us from inside a dustbin so low has the gamer fallen:  Turns out that running infinitely is fun times. DINOSAUR ALERT . Looks shit, right? A budget SNES game. This is Punch Quest, it’s fucking great.  It’s an “infinite running” game, which is essentially a platformer where you don’t have to worry about pressing “right” on the d-pad, because we don’t have time f

ZOMG how can the mega corporate beast that is EA with all its staff and testers and managers and everything all come together to produce an underwhelmingly underfinished game that can only be played online? Well dear reader you gotta break it down. and look at it from the stand point of a corporate machine: Point 1. The always online aspect was an immovable benchmark for EA and the Maxis games. The growing trend in the previous sim games was online connectability with growing focus on the origin community and microtransactions i.e. buying outfits and furniture in the Sims 3. To set a standard for "always online" games creates benefits that are at minimum two-fold: all future games will be online and monitored, thus less piracy and less association with the internet swearword "DRM", and secondly to generate a sim-community for milking cash-cow games with standardised sign-up accounts across all games. Point 2. The quality and technicality of the online experi

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