That guy's a Maniac...

Here in the good old U of K it is snowing. In England (Scotland can handle snow and no-one has heard from Wales for years) when it snows everything breaks. Trains, cars, airplanes, TV reception, Everything. However, Lady and Gentlemens even though we are currently all snowed in, with only a couple of cans of Heinz Beanz for sustinence until Spring, wonder-commentor and Honorary Hardcore Maniac, Chuff_72 has written the world's first review of Lost Planet to coincide with more than a little bit of snow in England's capital. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IT HAS HAPPENED PEOPLE, you saw it here first* Take it away Chuffter: "Is it cool to tell yourself, "I told you so"? I watched all the video's, downloaded all the demos and masturbated over my copy of EDGE, yet at the back of my mind there was a feeling that there was something wrong with this slice of arcade pie... To begin with I followed the crowd, the Dr ( Dr Wo 69, also a stalwart Maniac and long term gamer. He

We've all been playing a game when suddenly the phone rings or the smoke from the kitchen reaches your nose and you have to run out of the room to deal with the situation. With the fire abated you return to your unpaused game to find, nothing much has happened...... You still finished the race and you weren't in last, the gaggle of Stormtroopers failed to even take you down to half life. That's right kids! I'm talking about lazy game design . It must have happened to you, when you realise that if you play a particular game by running through trying to pull off awesome combos you will die once or twice but if you walk slowly just using kick you still reach the end with full health. For me, this really ruins a game, destroying the illusions that a) You were any good at the game in the first place and b) That the virtual world you are is one full of unique characters not mindless robots programmed to run up to you and try to kill you. How many set pieces do you know that

So this arrived in the post today! Now all I need is a computer that can run it. Stupid PC gaming. Still, in the event of the end of the world I can travel from town to town scrounging tractor batteries to run top of the range PCs and I don't have to worry about finding the game. I'm going to put this game and all my other dinosaur games in a bullet proof CD case and carry them on me at all times just in case the end of the world happens. On that note, I'm now cheating on That Guy's a Maniac with my new blog Cunzy11'sdinosaursingames blog. I'm going to be the world's leading expert on dinosaurs in games and co-author of the World's Second Greatest Videogame Blog! Just see if I ain't....... In other, non-dinosaur related news, Chuff_72 , long time commentor, member of Catch the Monkeys and other Games B69 and guest writer is on a mission to discover London's greatest game stores. Here's a sneak preview of his antics on Saturday, t

Oh Sick! Its that time of year again, where you cry at home and watch the Brit awards, whilst all of the other happy couples are out grind questing in Outlands to level 70 with their Gamertag sharing partner. But what about all those happy couples? getting that Epic flying mount is gonna take longer than 1 day of romance, what you need is Richie's Valentine's day guide to gaming. So you and your partner are gamers, what do you do for Valentine's day? to share those special "hobbies" you both enjoy. Here are a few suggestions: 1. Strip Warioware. This is a fairly timid yet, sure fire way to get some nudity, fast. The premise is simple you play warioware, either for Game cube, Wii, GBA, or DS link-up, each time a player loses to their partner the lose an item of clothing, simple. This can also be played for shots, if you are trying ease the partner into suggesting a strip version, It can also be played for sexual forfeits. "Ok, if you win this one, I'll le

Yesterday, Long Time TGAM Commentor and occassional guest writer Chuff_72 said: "OH SIIIICCCKKKKKKK someone on this blog is planning on getting ALL the games with dinos in... try and guess who everybody. Anyways, that means he/she is gonna have to buy Splashdown 2! There's even a dino on the back of the frikin box! SIIICCCKKKKKKK!!!!" and "SSSSIIIIIIICCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!! I forgot John Woo Presents Stranglehold, not only dinos but in a FRIKIN MUSEUM!!!!! Another reason to get a 360...Homophobe for dinosaurs." It's true readers. I'm giving up on trying to collect all the games I would like in my games collection. The sad truth is I just don't have time to play them all and I know that one day soon I'm going to lose a cable, lead or accessory which means some of my old consoles are going to have to be put down. For good. Nothing but museum pieces. Until then I'm going to try to get every game that has featured dinosaur

At the risk of becoming the dinosaurs in videogames blog there's more news on Next Gen dinosaurs. How can you the readers treat the World's Second Best Videogame blog like this? Essentially you should head over to good old gamespot (you could go to IGN but it's a waste of time) here and watch the video for the 360 version of Turok. It looks spanky, but it is essentially a concept trailer. Tee last shot of the trailer is awesome. I'll be honest I was never a fan of the turok series. The N64 was always shit for FPS. Turok 2 was a good laugh. You could play as a dinosaur! But look at it: It's classic next-gen, see here for a more in depth guide to making things next gen. Lots of bump and some anti aliasing- check , make it realistic, add more brown- check , make it dark- check , add some bloom- check. I'm saving up my pennies right now so I can buy a 360 just for this game which is due out Q3 2007 in the US so probably sometime July 2009 in Europe. It

I've noticed our site has had a massive increase in readers in recent days. Massive. I've also received a lot of complaints regarding the in jokey nature of the site so a bit of back story may be needed for those new readers. In which case, read the archives and come back. For everyone else (Chuff_72). Why did nobody tell me about this? What kind of readers are you? You're supposed to be the World's Second Best Video Game Blog Readers. Shame on all of you. Watch this It's perhaps the greatest concept for a game in the world ever and we should all be buying things like this right now. Don't hesitate. We need to support the dinosaur based video games industry. If we had to be the Official Nintendo Magazine we'd say it looks like a cross between Dino Riders, Warcraft II and Grand Theft Auto London. Okay so Gamespot gives it a less than average 6. But look at it! Amazing and it's educational, Boris Johnson, because it has dinosaurs, vikings and ninjas. Perso

Webcomics. There are a gazillion out there, done by horrible Indie types who probably live in San Francisco, they probably have cats and they probably are responsible for the AIDS . They are mostly about love, excuses to draw boobies or to show off to the world how much stuff the "artist" knows. Amongst the plethora of webcomics there are a tiny fraction about our favourite subject- Videogames. 98% of them however, are either sprite comics comme ca or ones titled " Two Noobs and a Gaymer " or "Just Another Gaming Comic". I've scoured all of these and they are without doubt awful and as the World's Second Best Videogame Blog it's time to play key service to those truly outstanding ones, or the ones that everyone thinks are outstanding. Then we will crown our Queen, the World's Best Videogame Webcomic. NB although our Queen sounds better because we are Second Best and she is the best, this isn't actually the case because webcomics a

Hey Kids, I have been working on a little project, And its fucking Mental/Amazing! There's a little known site out there called Score Hero and well on the front i would guess it is a place for people out there to measure peoples scores/penis' against one and other create leagues against one and other generally, i suppose, it is just one of those "Online Community" sites. However this site hides a great and wondrous secret. In the forums section there is a sub-section called "Homebrew Projects" Now the tag line for this section is " Discussion about Guitar Mods, Wireless Projects" . Where some of this may be true, Its not the golden Holy grail of this section,.Personally I am not bothered by some Stupid-faced loser defacing his limited edition 1972 Fender Expensocaster signed by Elvis and Modding it to be a guitar hero controller. No, the real Holy Grail is a forum sticky called " Idiot Proof Guide to playing custom made songs in GH2. &

Hey gang, since 2006 we've had, literally, infinite emails from some of our traditionally stalwart readers asking "Why should we stick with you phags? Your site sucks?". We hired a consultancy team to have a look but then we remembered that we didn't actually do that at all. We then tried to examine this question ourselves but we ended up laughing too much. We were pretty funny back in the old days. So I, Cunzy1 1, took it upon myself to use the internet to find out why you, the reader, should stick with us (all 6 of you). I googled "ask jeeves" (which is now just 'ask'. The Jeeves bit was probably judged to be homophobic). I then asked Jeeves "What other videogame blogs are there?". This , dearest friends, is what you could be reading instead* Result 1 (and 2) Fucking IGN. Nobody reads IGN, their sole purpose is to come first and second in any search with the word game in it. We didn't even click on these because both links were

This post was going to be a "how-to write a generic games are bad article for newspapers". You know the kind of article that is blindly ignorant of Jenkins' 8 Myths about videogames. I say this post was going to because dirty love rat laughing stock Mario Party "politician" Boris Johnson already did it for us here . We read it in the more cost-less content EDGE this month. We were thinking of making him the That Guy's maniac of the month but then the Telegraph might pick it up and put it on the front page. The Telegraph is allegedly one of only two UK newspapers that employs a person to google the name of the paper every two hours. Any results are then cut and pasted into the letters section to make it look like they have readers. We do that too. All the anonymous comments are secretely us except "I love the way all the comments are between themselves". That's one of Amber's flunkies. Anyway, the thing: Here's a list of phrases and

Hi All! Well a wee while ago I... Ahem... wenttoananimeconvention, and while i was there I thorough the mas variety of Final fantasy and Kingdom Hearts Cosplayers I scoped out the and I quote "Games room". Franky, as i stumbled down the corridor, ambling past some huge pair if black wings from someone dressed us your typical androgynous anime character, with well black wings, my knee's grew weak at the prospect as to what could be behind those mystical doors entitled "Games room". Now I have no idea what to expect, I mean its a Video games room at an anime convention, surely it has to be good right? I mean this must be like the cream of gaming, I mean there may be a few obscure Japanese titles, possibly from a generic anime featuring generic androgynous anime characters, possibly with black wings, but they can be forgiven, as long as there is only a few. As i amble into the room the sight i fall victim to is slightly, shall we say, disheartening. Figure 1

At TGAM we don't care if anyone thinks of games as art or not. Do you remember the early 2000's when you couldn't move for the internets, mags and forums explaining are games art question? Endless touting of Ico or Rez as pure art. All the while in America there were loads of videogame-art exhibitions. Have you noticed how all the posts this year seem to be very nostalgic? Is it because with the exception of "Halo 3 not yet released" is the only news at the moment? Who can say. Anyway. TGAM, one time only, no more discussion; GAMES AS ART. If we were pushed we could put Games under the umbrella of art but I wouldn't. Art and Art Galleries fall under my remit as part of my real work outside of Planet TGAM and if you want to associate Games with pretense, boredom, elitism, waste of time and evolutionary worthless then yes, Games are Art*. All I know is that I'd rather watch final fantasy AMVs set to that song by Linkin Park endlessly than watch David

Today children we are looking at Comic Book Superheroes. We are going to make some sweeping judgements and then try to apply deep philosophy to it just like all those Geeks did to the first matrix. Do you remember that readers? After the first matrix, the people who dressed up as Neo would go around touting how deep the film is and that it touches on some really deep issues. Then someone else dressed as Neo would say "Hey dude!It's not that deep it's just based on this book/anime/thought experiment". Then loads of those media university lecturers wrote books on the Matrix and how it marks a turning point in the late 20th century, cyberpunk became the new stupid thing that hip lecturers and literature teachers would teach in a vain attempt to appear with it and with a finger on the pulse. Do you remember all that reader? Then the Matrix Reloaded came out and pretty much shat on all those people. It was brilliant. But it's time for Comic book superheroes to back

Alright dudes and dudettes TGAM is back. Our temporary exile from this most fantastic blog has mean you guys missed out on some excellent posts: 1) The post that was a parody of this one from UK:Res. Oh man it was pretty funny and included some out of the box fresh images. 2) Our belated game-themed christmas carols sung in the style of you're average yanky warbler like "Saiiiii ay ay ay yai halent hill, Ho oo ooo oo oo oo ly hill ayll is braaiyaiyaiyaiyaiyiayyiayt". That was a genius post I'm telling you. 3) You missed some of Chuff_72's anecdotes like the time he believed he liked Tekken and the time he hated the XBox 360. 4) You missed the congratulations, congratulations, commisserations posts for Richie getting a stunning girl, marrying her and then subsequently she died. Of the face AIDS. 5) Our photo exclusive of what happens when you drink 7 pints of wife-beater (stella artois) or big wkd blues (for Richie) and then play Wario Ware smooth moves on

Howdy y'all, Asyou can see there has been very few actual posts, this is mainly due to, well Blogger annoying the fuck out of me and Cunzy. These annoyances include, Images not loading, Posts not posting, and generally not letting Cunzy do anything. In the mean time please feel free to enjoy the new "Media" section which currently only includes some wallpapers, but we're looking to add to this with other crap soon. P.S. If you haven't already seen, there is also an "About" section including some of the most Frequently asked questions by thatguys fans. And on to of that there is an "Archives" section featuring the best moments from myself and Cunzy. We'll be back with you soon, assuming Blogger sorts itself out.

So the Xmas period is upon us, everyone has got new games for all varieties of systems, and in playing this variety of PS2 RPG's, 360 Shooters, DS throw-away's, and Wii flappers, I got withdrawals. Its buggin me, I quit WoW months ago, but goddamn! It was a good game! Yeah I know, I'm just nostalgic, and possibly rose-tinting the situation. Everything I have been seeing in games recently has been reminding me of WoW and with the Burning Crusade expansion dawning on the horizon, it's on every fucking game site too. So where am I going with this? Bear with me... I'm worried that WoW has ruined my expectations/outlook on games. WoW was shit, there were hideous people online, gold farmers, 40-man raids, even just parting with Twats... But the world was huge, beautifully rendered and the quests were fun (well later on they were fun once it stopped being, kill 20 X, 15 Y and 10 Z, then return to me) and to be honest the levelling system was all you could want in a game. O

It's been a good year for games with 7 consoles releasing some truly brilliant games. What is my choice of the year? Shadow of the Colossus? Gears of War? New Super Mario Bros? Or have we been bunged a load of cash to say Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter? No lady and gentlemen my choice for game of the year 2006 is Timesplitters 2, the finest FPS on any format, possibly excluding all the Residet Evils which are RTS anyway. Why is it so great? Timesplitters 2 is so great because it had everything and it was birthed during the happy phase of gaming before age of cynicism of advertising, bugged to fuck game releases and mediocre copy catting. Go ahead whack it on now remind yourself how good it is, no gangstas, no Halo health system, no EA trax and no episodic releases. The story mode (although lacking a strong plot) is still highly enjoyable now, putting the "acclaimed" story modes of Half Life 2, Gears of War and Final Fantasy XII to shame. The levels are excellently desig