That guy's a Maniac...

Books innit? In between writing about games, listening almost exclusively to gaming soundtracks and reading about games on the Internet we occasionally find the time to actually play some games. Rarer still, we find time to pick up a game related book and give it a bloody good read and now is a good a time as any to be reading about games. This time five years ago, you'd be hard pressed to find any gaming based literature in your local book shop. Now, for the discerning reader, it is hard not get buried by it. First up, we've been reading The Second Life Herald: the virtual tabloid that witnessed the dawn of the metaverse by Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace. This book is 3 years old now but charts the early days of the growth of things like The Sims Online and Second Life and where interesting stuff happens with emergent behaviours in games. If you completely missed this chunk of gaming history but want to know more about why people bother with second life, what the Upskirt Museum

We twatted this the other day but seeing as we have a spare 8 seconds instead of the spare 2 seconds it's another post! You lucky mugs. In the Gamerati circles video game culture striving for acceptance by the rest of the world is a popular subject. Many critics are eager to point out that we are already there. Sadly, film is, without warrant, still wholesale held in some higher regard as an art form. Even though most films are genuinely ridiculous or awful. A look at the box office over the last year though indicates that video games influence runs far and wide. Not necessarily for the better either. Non-fans of super heroes, zombies, aliens, werewolves or wizards have had three okayish films to watch in the last twelve months. Enough already. This was compounded on a recent trip to the movies when ever single trailer was either comic book sequel or strangely familiar . No More Heroes: The Movie God of War: The Movie* Heavy Rain** *Yeah okay, wh

Is there any other title for a blog post or article even remotely (giggle) related to peripherals? Back in the day, my gamer friends and I would fantasize about displaying our collection of video game stuff in the unlikely event that any of us could afford more than a rabbit hutch house in the future. Amongst an ever changing set up to the inevitable gaming room the wall of peripherals was something we were particularly keen on. It would be a cross between a museum display case and a weapons cache that you see in spy movies showing off all the various peripherals that have been available over the years. Of course the recent industry in producing crap wiimote holders went and ruined the whole thing. However, if it was ever to happen BIG GAME HUNTER 2010 would totally be a justifiable purchase.

Of course I am talking about LittleBigPlanet. Remember the hype? The endless conference videos showing the game, Kotaku, GameSpot and every other popular gaming blog totally selling out to Media molecule? Those annoying videos where someone recreated another game in LBP, a game that you could probably by on the virtual console anyway? Did anyone see the akward TV spots? This is egg on the face of all those with high hopes for this "game" and ultimately a sign that a game like LBP may be great in an office full of game journalists with a shared PS3 but for the average joe? It seems that Mario Kart Wii will do fine. So where does this leave the PS3? Pretty much all the stuff that was due for launch finally came out and it all came out with a poof! Rather than a bang. Is anyone even playing MGS4? No, thought not. Resistance 2 and Resistance? HA! Ummm... Home? Oh not out yet. So much for killer aps. Looks like the 360 fanboys won the skirmish, battle and war.

Ok. Enough now. This is a public notice to all game developers currently in the "hype" stage of development. Please stop dropping the "We've got some great AI" bomb during interviews UNLESS . You do have some great AI. FPS are by far the biggest culprits of just throwing that line in there after they've talked about the graphics and the story. A recent playthrough of the Turok demo shows that those cheeky guys at Propaganda games are living up to their name. Check this whole article about it over at IGN. Fair dos you might thinking. Now, this would all be believable if after about two minutes of play you couldn't sense that all of that talk about AI was absolute bullshit. Chuff_72, the man allegedly made of pure candles, waxes lyrical: "WHY can't people who make these things try something a bit different, like, the raptors that attack you, they look cool and move nicely, and look dangerous, but behave like any normal retarded FPS e

This Months maniac is nothing other than a girl… as if it wasn’t crazy enough that girls actually play video games ... But check this shit: Observe how she is holding the Joypad, upside down?!? And… get this… she was playing well. I’m sure we have all at some point tried to mess around with how we hold the joypad. For instance, thinking if we have two fingers pressing the Triangle, Square, circle and Ecks button, rather than one thumb, we might be able to perform better. But no matter what, our fingers will reset to the default position where the index finger hovers over R1, the middle finger hovers over R2 and the thumb sits over the right analogue stick. When/If I die I know for a fact my hands will automatically assume the PS2 position, if its an open casket, people will be able to slot a joypad in perfectly, I invite you all to attend and try it out. Laters, Richie-O