That guy's a Maniac...

There now follows a joint entry from Richie and from Diversion Projects, Kaiser Tia , regarding a favourite gaming franchise... As you may or may not know the Silent Hill series is getting a fifth instalment. Hurrah! However, this chapter in the series will NOT be developed by Konami Japan's Team Silent . Instead It will be developed in the US by The Collective, inc., the company responsible for such gaming classics as The Da Vinci Code and Star Wars: Episode III (ugh). Konami made a similar decision when they outsourced the PSP's Silent Hill Origins to Climax US , who did such a bad job that the game's developent that most of the game's mechanics were scrapped and production handed over to Climax UK, who were deemed more capable of delivering a 'Silent Hill experience'. Now we don't claim to be a Japanimaniacs or USAphobes, but we have all seen what happens to good Japanese things when they get Westernised. Subtlety generally goes out of the window

Yes, here at TGAM, we have lost the plot a bit. We don't actually play games anymore but we like to think we are characters in a Douglas Coupland book*. Fortunately, Chuff_72, our man on the street, does play games. Here are his thoughts on hyped to the max Assasin's Creed. SPOILER_O_RAMA Dude, I rented Assassassassinssss Creed over the weekend and busted that bad boy right open - CAUTION, OPINION WITHIN MAY NOT BE OF THE POPULAR VARIETY. First off, I DO like this game, it is fun and looks pretty. However, it is also, misleading, rushed, boring, repetitive, annoying and overrated. Fun. I finished this game and enjoyed it, I liked the story and the characters, I thought the future elements were nice and especially that you are a Bartender called Desmond (Spoiler?), though very divisive (this game is basically a setup for a new franchise, even EA would be ashamed of the obviousness of this) and the game felt cool to play, it does a good job of making you feel like a badass (excep

Fanboy…. It seems a harmless term, no? In most cases fanboyism starts when someone claims to prefer one system’s merits over another. Be it the aesthetic qualities, technological differences or accessibility. People generally have to choose one particular system due to pricing, and dependant on the “flavour of the generation” people will change their arguments. In the case of the current generation you have a new breed of Nintendo fanboy who chose that system because of the “innovative” Wii-mote, these people will claim that graphics are non-essential and that gameplay is core. Or in the case of the 360, more and more 360 fanboys are cropping up as previously PS2 players bite the bullet, and buy a 360 due to the extensive catalogue and pricing which the PS3 cannot currently offer. That’s all fair and good these are good reasons to buy the consoles. But it does not stop there, certain people then feel that they then have to either justify their purchase, either with almost religious li

You probably don't remember when webcomic cretin Tom Bickley of Catl Ult Doll gave us a secret nod. If you don't here it is . Well after several years of randomly emailing Ryan North and telling him that he stole my idea, Omastar Comics , for his longer running comics series Dinosaur Comics (the similarity is shocking Mr North), he has finally given us the nod we so deserve here . Whaddya mean you can't see it again? Here it is: It's obvious to you and me. Once again it is shown that That Guy's A Maniac is a site for the discerning millionaire Canadian, time travel-to-steal-ideas webcomic artist. Just another reason why we are the World's Second Greatest VideoGame Blog of All Time as proved by science You are only part forgiven Ryan. The head, one arm and one leg specifically. You get to choose which side you get to keep. Nooch.

Yeah so it’s been a while since I went off on a WoW Rant. As you know I have a lvl 70 Mage on a PvE server. But a while ago I started an Undead Priest on a PvP server and now he has hit lvl 60. It really was the long Haul from 1-55. But when patch 2.3 hit last week, the experience gains were very noticeable! I flew up 5 levels in a matter of a few days. Patch 2.3 added a lot of new things, a new instance, a revised Duskwallow marsh with more quests for people ranged 35-45, and have made the items gotten from instances more burning-crusade-ish, and of course increased experience gains. When I was levelling my mage to 60 ( back in the day ) levels 58-60 were really epic, it took weeks of running Strat and getting Eastern Plaguelands quests completed. But in the recent updates it took about 1 night to do both those levels! On that note, I did not do any of the Outland quests to get to that level, I did it purely in Silithus and EPL, just for old times sake. So levels 61-70 now await. My

Dude! Calling all UK-ites: As you are no doubt aware Guitar Hero 3 has been released in the US and Asia... But because we are classed as part of the EU, We are not getting it for another Month! Well not exactly! Check this shit. Observe: NO REGION PROTECTION And it has been tried and tested to work on UK PAL 360s! The only downside is that the shipping upps the RRP (£69.99) by £17. but fuck it, I'm willing to pay £17 to get it a month earlier! Just another helpful tip from us at That Guys. (And the Giant Enemy Guitar Hero) You knows we luvs ya! Richie xxx

That Guy's a Maniac is dead... Long Live That Guy's a Maniac!

W00t, joy of joys! Today will go down in history as perhaps one of the greatest days in gaming history. We have spent years upon years waiting for this day. From the days of Pong, though the days of 8bit, all the way up to the snazzy HD consoles, its all been leading to this one gem. This one Holy Grail, the ultimate game of all games: Rest assured we can all die happy now. P.S. Sarcasm P.P.S. To all those concerned, please stop this… not only are you encouraging Mr Chegwin, but you are giving birth to more gaming filth into the world, and its not like you have an excuse, like it was an accident. The Game was pre-meditated, you have given birth to a fully-fledged downs syndrome game with congenital abnormalities. This should have been aborted from Day 1. Are you proud of yourselves? Sickos.

Timesplitters 2, the single greatest game of all time , and arguably man's greatest acheivement, was the first FPS to do the virus mode well. I know that the sequel to Timesplitters 2, OF WHICH WE HAVE 100% IN ALL THINGS BUT DO NOT SPEAK, messed it up so bad that Bungie had to steal the idea to keep it alive. As long as we all know and we pay props where props is due we can all be friends yes? I don't even want to think about the consequences if I see another "not paying tribute to TS2" post.

Chuff_72 is our maniac on the street and he regularly send us stuff to post when we are too busy doing pointless challenges and mixing up T-Virus to destroy the world if Capcom doesn't deliver vidjogames on demand. His stirling efforts have earned him at least a cameo in the TGAM film and he is an unlockable character in TGAM the game . Anyway, here at TGAM we are dedicated to doing what everyone else already did before us, and doing it twice! Here are some more thoughts on that game what came out recently Halo 3. Take it away Chuffty: "Dude, just a quick email to tell you how much fucking fun halo 3 is online. I didn't play any of the various deathmatch types or any of that bollocks, and while I checked out some co-op story which was okay, though pretty hard to follow with myself, the Dr and two fellow TFUs, shouting about the Gheys in the trees, most of the time I had no idea where to go apart from follow the little countdown marker thing, AND friendly fire was on, wit

69 Thatguys Street Racoon City T6 4M1 Dear Team Ninja, Firstly I would like to thank you on your wondrous attention to detail, and on encapsulating everything that anyone could every want from bouncing CG boobs. However, it pains me to say that this is not a letter complementing your hold on the CG boob market, this is in fact a letter of apology. You may have recently received a letter from my colleague, a Mrs Lvl 70 Richie complaining that her phone was broken due to the rage caused by your game being too 'hard'. However, I implore you to ignore the demands set out in my colleague's previous letter because, well she plays WoW and she just isn't used to real time combat systems or skill based games. She spent hours playing DoA 4 Online desperately trying to "click" on opponents before endlessly being beaten. In fact, it was only recently that Richie learned that DoA had a game element to it at all. She would just sit watching the rolling demo screens at

One more before bedtime. Today Omastar discusses (angrily) the english on holiday in Spain Next week on TGAM: We do a really boring review of an old game to make ourselves sound better in the oh-so-intellectual field of writing about videogames. Richie, the supposed co-author of the world's second greatest videogames blog in the world, That guy's a maniac thinks about doing a post. CO-AUTHOR UNCONVINCED Nintendo make an original Wii game, exclusive right here. Apparently it is controllable. We explore the 'PS3 online' rumour sweeping the internet. Click here for a sneak preview of the result Counter Strike Priapism Syndrome: We get all the details on this disturbing medical condition affecting America's youth. Until then, take care and I'll expect to see you 'all*' next week. * Well I'm guaranteed to be here so Richie, I'm expecting to see you here is what I'm saying

What happens when a bunch of lazy academics who don't do any real research but want to play Second Life, MUDs and WoW all get together and try to think of something to do? This Dear Terra Nova et al. Nobody cares until we've seen you beat Emerald and Ruby weapon. Until then stop trying to outdo each other by trying to find the first innovation by trawling through MUDs and other crappy subject material to find the first time Chicken Sandwiches were featured in games, sorry platforms or virtual worlds. And in response: A Declaratio n of Virt u al World s Policy made by the writers of That Guy's A Maniac, the Second Greatest Videogame Blog of All Time In the World , assembled in full and free convention with a temporary no cybering cease fire in Gaylando in Animal Crossing: Wild World as the first true Synthetic Worlds Congress. Whereas virtual worlds are places with mostly furries or paedos or unhappy middle aged America, unless we are talking about interesting virtual

So controversy week last week what with the Jamie Bulger thing in the new Law and Order game and Manhunt 2 being banned etc. etc. So why do video games attract so much controversy? Books, works of art and films are allowed to portray almost whatever they want. 9/11, racism, people who have their mouths full of cockroaches: many of which are dead but those that aren't are throwing up on themselves and each other and so on. But as soon as games do these things they are labelled as disgusting, evil, exploitative, cashing in on tragedy or just simply wrong. This very quickly gets backed up with all other lazy arguments condemning video games to create a nasty impression in the public media. The reason that this is allowed to happen in books but not games because stupid people don't read books but they do play games. Sorry stupid people. But it's true. Stupid people watch films too but films are 'high art' so for every mother on a crusade there are 40 LA film

Guess who's back. Back again..............

Well this is a different post to any other that I have written here. You may have noticed that since our one year birthday we haven't made any posts. That is because Richie doesn't make posts and well because I... I don't know how to say this.... but I. I'm going to leave the blog. My reasons? Well for the last time. It's time for a list: 1) As one of the only women writing on the interwebs about games I have faced nothing but persecution from people. One commentor said "You make me feel sterile". As a women and I blogger I could clearly translate this L337 as "You are sterile". Now I can take jiggery-pokery like the next person but when people make assumptions about my reproductive system and it's functionality then I say No! You can't tell me that. It's my ovaries and uterus and nothing but a spot of untimely blood or a doctor is going to tell me about them. 2) I'm happy in "real life" so I don't need a bl

Hey kids it's time for a triforce -esque update from me and some of the things I've been up to: 1) This weekend was That Guy's A Maniac Mini-Con 2007! Following the success of TGAM Con and TGAM con 2 son of TGAM Con and TGAM Con 2 was a great success. I finally busted the dirty sequel to TGAM's 2006 Game of the Year , Timesplitters Future Perfect, accidentally. It started by me showing Chuff_72 and Quadbee how hard the last four challenges were to get a gold on. I ended up getting two platinums and two golds so that's another game 100%ed! Many games were played, by many I mean mostly three: Quake 2, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Dinotopia: Something About Suntone Pirates. Quake 2 was probably king and we managed to get a hall of fame all star line up for some Quakage, the likes of which have not been seen for some years- Quadbee, Chuff_72, Robisgay and Cunzy1 1. We also got to the last level of FFCC. Dinotopia Sunstone Pirates is a pretty awful game bu

Woooo BOOBIES! Turns out X-Ray is a possibilty nowadays!! If you set your nightvision enabled camcorder to "near infrared"... These “near infrared” light waves are the waves that are penetrating the material and reflecting an image of the body surface. See the story here . Rock on...

Right! It has been a week now. And Pokemon Pearl is fucking awesome! It is more of the same but with some fairly funky remixes. So what benefits does the DS bring to the series? Well… to be honest not that much. Most of the game is controlled with the D-Pad and DS buttons and there is not much cause to use the touch screen, you use the touch pad to select your pokemon attacks, thankfully the touch buttons are big and can be used by fingers and not the stylus. The only time the stylus really comes into play is the name input screen. There are other touch pad functions in the Pokétech, which is a device that shows up on the touch screen, it has a pedometer, the item finder, a clock, a calculator… all welcome additions to the pokemon world. Other than that the game Is playing along nicely with some rather interesting evolutions, including examples of sexual dimorphism, and allopatric speciation.

I have the pleasure of introducing our latest addition to the links section: Diversion Diversion is an internet radio station run by official thatguys DJ, Kaiser Tia. The station mainly plays Video game and anime tracks, and is ever so delightfully interspersed with the musings of the aforementioned Kaiser Tia. There is also a competition every week where if you guess the music/sound effect you win a fantabulous prize… The website itself has its own bloggy-ness and her latest post Gimps in videogames… has inspired us ay Thatguys to follow up and expand, so expect a Thatguys /Diversion collaboration to create the most extensive collection of gimps in videogames for you perusal pleasure.