That guy's a Maniac...

The Simpsons Game: Now this game was a fun romp, I really enjoyed the storyline, parodying many other games, even referencing their tropes (every so often Comic book guy would pop up, announcing that a video game cliché such as "Double Jump" or "Exploding barrels" had been found).  I had been playing it (couch) co-op, and after an epic session taking us to 5am, we were approaching Matt Groening's mansion, to what felt like a final boss character. Given the late hour, we decided to call it. The next day we resumed, or so we thought. Cue that wonderful message; "Your Save File is corrupt". And sure enough, exit to the dashboard and check the file, big yellow exclamation mark. RIGHT. BEFORE. THE. FINAL. BOSS!! Personally I blame EA for this one; "This game features and Autosave feature". And boy does it, it saves every couple of minutes and after every pickup etc. Constantly writing over the same section on the hard-drive over and

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion   Oblivion was one of my first experiences on a 'next gen' platform and looking back I was a far more innocent gamer. I wasn't bothered by achievements, or consulting any guides to make sure I didn't miss out on any weapons or plot developments. I was just happy exploring the world and seeing what happened. I remember the first time i was afflicted by Vampirism and having to abandon the main plot while I dealt with this truly surprising plot twist, I miss that innocence and it was only a couple of years ago. Anyway I digress. Oblivion for me was a return to the days of Diablo, which lent itself to multiple playthroughs where you could share equipment across save files and over time I had amassed a huge collection of equipment. This hoarding nature was quickly appearing in Oblivion too. As I ventured innocently across the world of Cyrodill I started to acquire a lot of cool shit, Unique Weapons, Daedric artifacts,

Too painful to talk about again. /sigh

*Oh spoilers, but if you haven't fucking played it by now, I have no sympathy for you and I really shouldn't cater to you* There is a bit in the game later on, where you have to get by some whirlpools by equipping and unequipping the "iron boots": Time it just wrong and you get a KO from being sucked into the whirlpool and you return to the start of the whirlpool. Which happened over and over and over, keep in mind that to equip or unequip the boots means menu juggling, so it was getting more and more frustrating, till eventually I, out of rage, grabbed the controller and twisted it.  As I did so, the the 2 moulded halves of the controller prised apart However it didn't snap, or break... It did however revert back to it's original state very quickly, the controller snapped shut, the 2 sides closed together pinching a strip of skin on the palm of my hand. Well, not just pinching it actually scissoring the strip right off, forcing me to wear a

Pretty much my whole family plays video games but occasionally, my brother and I would end up having little competitions. I still have all the old notebooks with the score for various one v one competitions that would span hours and sometimes days. My brother was an absolute demon at (bizarrely non cart based) driving games and anything to do with the Second World War and I was competent at beat em ups, kart games and FPS so often the competitions would be quite tight. One time we started to argue about who had 'completed' the most games. It was a stupid argument but he had completed more games than me so I insisted that it didn't count unless you had the save game to prove it. So we end up going into the memory card management screen of the PlayStation and counting up all the provable 'completions'. My brother argued that this system wasn't fair especially when games he liked took up more than one slot. In particular, Gran Turismo took up 5 slots, a third of a

SSX: Tricky The Year was 2002 and Richie! and Cunzy11 had been playing SSX:Tricky with various Portsmouthians on the PS2 all year. Summer came along and Richie! introduced it in to my life and thus started many many hours and many many sessions of Tricky. Now although we all completed the game to get the best boards/characters etc, the main focus was one of the first tracks, Garibaldi. The tracks simplicity lent itself to a points frenzy, so the game was simple; how many points can you grab in one run by hitting as many x2, x3, and x5 multipliers as possible. Over the months, we poured endless hours in to devising the best route that gave the best pay off in points. Often we would incorporate part of eachothers run in to ours, constantly refining the process. We even theorised about what score a 'perfect run' would yield. The right of passage target (before you were considered a contender) was 1 Million points, however quickly 2M was achieved and everyo

Viva Piñata: Trouble in paradise: This cutesy game is really fucking good, there is very little like it out on the market, and as it turns out, it's hella addictive! I had come quite far in the game, I had managed to collect most of the species, even managing to collect the elusive Choclodocus . However disaster struck, I load up my "garden" and get presented with "Your save data has become corrupt", Motherfucker! I had spent fucking ages collecting those piñata species! But Salvation! As it turns out there is also a rolling save, and it had registered my progress with collecting species and their stats. So I proceeded to start a new garden, collect the remaining species, send them off to parties, essentially completing the game. Except, I was missing one entry... the Choclodocus... Which, as it turns out it is, in effect, tied to your Gamertag. Restarting the whole process for collecting him again would not allow me to re-obtain him. He is lost in