That guy's a Maniac...

Yes people with astonishing predictability at least one newspaper is saying the riots in London are inspired by GTA. First of all this is idiotic. GTAIV is now three years old. Secondly, you can't 'riot' in GTA. Almost as soon as you set something on fire, the fire engines turn up and the police show godlike tenacity and initiative when you start a crime spree. Perhaps we should get our police officers and firemen to play GTA and it might inspire them to be more effective? Secondly, this is yet another example of sloppy reporting by the media. These riots were clearly inspired by 1999's Urban chaos, where gangs take to the streets to fuck things up and: The 2002 game State of Emergency. And look! It's by Rockstar, the same purveyors of such filth as Bully, GTA, Table Tennis and Manhunt. Do your fucking research you lazy media cunts.

Xenoblade Chronicles. Here be the trailer. What's not to love? It's got more than a little bit of Monster Hunter and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers about it, two games which I like a lot. Talking to a couple of gaming pals about it, their response has been "since when did you like JRPGs?". A fair question. I don't and I don't normally like games with Xeno in the title. But I do like big open games with a sense of environment and it looks like great care has been taken over the setting. Finally! A game I'm actually excited about. Let's hope it doesn't dissappoint.

I have holiday and I've been trying to bust as many games that I've half started as possible. Kirby's Epic Yarn A lovely little game that appeared quite easy to 100%. I was wrong. Clocked it in at just under 20 hours in the end. Stupidly, I left all the challenges until the end so the last hours or so was just burning through the repetitive and sometimes tricky challenges. Soundtrackwise, many of the new tracks are as sublime as the classic old tracks. Fun. Little King's Story I'd put Little King's Story on the back burner for a long time. Typically because when I play it I get sucked in so I don't attempt to play it unless I know I have time free. It's a game that still gives even late on where lesser games tend to add all the padding. It is also still challenging although I do end up restarting a lot because I'v become very attached to a little hunter of mine called Stella. She was one of my first citizens, she's married to a guard and has

That time of year again. Another stupid gaming awards ceremony. The problem with game awards is that they try to be like film awards but games don't really work like that. Let's have a look at the UltimateGOTY nominations: Sad face just doesn't cover it. Maybe the selection isn't that bad it's just well, this screenshot says everything doesn't it? Is this it? Is this what we'd be dreaming next generation was going to be delivering? Here's the same selection with sequels and remakes taken out. Two interesting but flawed games. Do that excercise again but only keeping PC games, or downloadable games or pah. Same old arguments. Unlike films, there are a bazillion games released every year and I know that my personal choices don't overlap with everybody's but there are a few outstanding issues. What's with the categories? Either have categories that work or just make em up. I know I'd never put Portal 2, Dead Rising 2 and Little Big Planet 2

You may have read this story last week about the tragic death of a 20 year old killed by deep vein thrombosis, supposedly from playing Halo online (ODST? Reach? The original?). You can predict how the rest of the story goes. The parents say they thought it was safe, Microsoft point to that small print that comes with their console, in the instruction booklet for every single game and even flashes up as a message in many games "Time to take a break kids". My initial response was that long stints of doing anything causes all kinds of medical problems but a friend pointed out that even if you were reading a book for twelve hours straight you'd move around more than if you were gaming. Nothing else exists like gaming to fix your attention so avidly. Dead arms, pins and needles and head rushes are par for the course for gamers and chillingly, this story reminded me of marathon sessions in my youth. Fortunately, necessity means I don't have time for hours and hours of play

Barry Burton nipples.

The only good thing about the Escapist has this to say: Gaming could be one of the most exciting new forms of storytelling in all media but you're all cancelling Pride & Prejudice to show the Friday night football. It's like being stuck at some excruciating wedding reception with a lot of extremely drunk and raucous relatives who are trying to get you to join in the conga. I do not have the same concepts of fun as you. I would not have a good time if I just let my hair down. Having to share physical space with squawking maiden aunts who still forward lolcats to each other makes me want to spit up my kidneys. Now bugger off and leave me to my cake. The whole post here . He's just specifically talking about stories in gaming but he could be talking about a lot of aspects of gaming.

We were discussing games we were playing the other day and as it transpired, neither of us had been playing games for 'fun' recently. Richie had been grinding a stupid achievement in Last Remnant and I'd been playing through Tatsunoko vs Capcom to get third and fourth costumes for characters I will never ever use. Also, some of the most vivid memories I have of games is ridiculous repetitive nonsense. I remember running in and out of the entrance to the Gold Saucer in Final Fantasy VII to a guy who trades one form of virtual money into another. Even worse was watching a friend dodge lightning bolts in Final Fantasy X. Capcom also brings on the pain in most of their titles, unlocking Tofu in Resident Evil 2 and getting the rocket launcher in Resident Evil. Me and my famly also spent hours and hours in the original Tomb Raider trying to get t his medipack. Turns out it was 'unreachable'. But I guess the question is, why do we do it? Are we having fun? Richie and I de

Please? As much as I'd love to buy one of the four OS CDs that were released in Japan it would be really nice if I could just get them off the disc. They are on the disc after all. Great thanks. IN RELATED NEWS. Sound tests. WTF? I do want to listen to the theme from Orbital Ring Systems Cargo Bay , a catchy little ditty from Tatsunoko vs Capcom but I had to steal music of the internet to make it happen. I would never ever have call to listen to the 34 different grunts that Alex makes in the game but sure, that's what you can do in the gallery. It makes no sense.

Round 2 of understanding gamerish (round one here ). Today we take on understanding scores out of ten. Many gamers lack a coherent framework for prolonged discussion of merits and downsides of commercial products. Combined with attention spans shortened by obligate internet use means that reviewers often use a simple one to ten scale, often at the bottom of a review to help the pressed for time gamers decide which game they should chip, rip or steal next. Unfortunately though rather than use the X/X system as a rough indicator of quality many gamers endlessly squabble over scores of their favourite games neglecting to notice that scores are merely one person's take on a game and that the reviewer's employer is probably a more important factor on what score that game gets than actual quality. Furthermore, many assume the one to ten scale to be a normal scale but it's actual more complicated than that . Here's how the gaming scale works. 0 - Not often used at all even for

I don't know how many other people spend a lot of time on the Wii's Nintendo Channel but it is a mine of useful information. Aside from hit and miss video uploads and video series that don't go beyond one or two videos, you can view records for virtually every Wii game released, including reviews by the people who play them. Players not only review the games they play (using a sliding scale) but they rate whether they think hardcore or casual gamers would appreciate the title and whether the game is best played alone or with friends. The number of times played and the average play time are also recorded. The Games Anyone can view this data by going to the Nintendo Channel and seeing All Recommendations. Unfortunately, the list that is brought up doesn't contain all reviewed titles and from what I can work out there may be some regional filtering. I can't work out why this is, the legend to the list describes the games as those currently available . However, No More

Thank. God. . Nobody likes Mega Man.

When we can't play games, read games or think about games in our head we find time to watch videos of games. Watching game vids is a tireless pursuit. For every fun and interesting video out there, there are hundreds of poorly edited, humourless, boring and idiotic videos. Here's what we've been watching recently. Two Best Friends Play. Yes games can be thought provoking, worrying, scary, addictive, intriguing and brilliant. A lot of the time though they are stupid and embarrassing. The tropes of games aren't something to be mourned though! it is where the source of fun can come from. In a world where online grimfest shooters seem to be how our community mostly interacts, Two Best Friends play reminds us of happier times of goofing around whilst playing games with your buddy on the couch. The video above is our favourite of the series but all the others are worth watching. Fail of the Weak We're big Halo fans here. Oh yeah, sure it's popular so lets rip into

Quote from Xbox CFO Dennis Durkin via EDGE Firstparty Xbox 360 releases "superior" to Nintendo or Sony's. "I would ask you to go and look at some of your data, just to compare first party performance over the course of this lifecycle, because I think our first party performance in terms of quality bars and units per title this shift has been superior to our competition's" If you click through you see he even goes on to claim sales per unit as well as quality to be reasons why Xbox 360 first party games are superior. Well "quality" may be harder to assess but lets look at sales shall we? Here's a selection from the Nintendo Wii (all data from ever reliable wikipedia): Wii Sports (76.76 million) Wii Sports Resort (27.68 million) Wii Play (27.38 million) Mario Kart Wii (27.00 million) Wii Fit (22.61 million) New Super Mario Bros. Wii (21.94 million) Wii Fit Plus (18.49 million) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (9.48 million) Super Mario Galaxy (8.84 mill

So Xbox has brought out this new online. What what the hell does it do? Well, out of curiosity i signed up, it tracks your most played games and gives stats on them. There is also a reward point scheme, these seem to be septate from Microsoft points, in the same way that Tesco clubcard points are not real money. Other than that, you seem to be able to earn points based on renewing your membership to gold, or subscribing to sky player, oh and doing a survey about your "media" plans for summer. Right now there is no actual information on the types of rewards other than points. So what is it for? As far as I can see it's a glorified Clubcard, Nectar Point etc reward scheme, but with intangible  ways of collecting points, and also for undisclosed rewards. It all seems a bit bollocks for now, especially since the "rewards" will only count from the point you signed up for it (being a XBLA subscriber since 2007 this bugs me) Ah well lets see how it pans out

According to this authentic looking website , a study by Doritos woman play computer games just as much as men. Some even prefer it to sex. But here's the best part: Worryingly, one in five even admitted to regularly gaming in bed. Shit. This could mean the end of the species. The mail also has the story but recently has changed "a shocking 49 per cent of women confess that they too are addicted to Internet games". to "a surprising.....". All around it is a fairly silly study and from the looks of it it is equating 'spend more time' to 'prefers'. In which case I 'prefer' waiting for the most unreliable bus in London to sex. These two media outlets also insinuate that it is fine for men to waste their life playing video games but not women. We've been trying to find the survey but it appears to involve having to go on some promotional facebook thing.

We've picked up a copy of Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All Stars Edition. The fighters include a team of Capcom characters who we all know and love from series like Darkstalkers, Onimusha and Quiz Nanairo Dreams. You know, Quiz Nanairo Dreams. Rainbow Colour village? You know. However, you may have wondered for the last year since it came out, what the hell is a Tatsunoko? Well readers, we went to the British Library to do some research and discovered that Tatsunoko is a DC comic about seahorses who become people with super powers. Here's the bios of the Tatsunoko Set (the name of the super hero group). Casshan Casshan also known as Casshern is a prick. Generic in every way. He thinks it is acceptable to dress like a power ranger in 2011. Doronjo Doronjo falls over a lot. As a result we see her knickers. A lot. She can turn into a bat, which is unusual for a woman who used to be a seahorse. Gold Lightan It is uncertain weather Gold Lightan was made before or after the Gre

Gamers rule the internet. It is a fact. Non gamers may spend a lot of their time on the internet but gamers spend all their time on the internet. This is why whenever you google anything, something game related appears around page 4 . Page 20 is nothing but gifs from games. So we're basically a cult that rules the internet and we use a secret language to wage persistent and futile war against each other in silly arguments with no stakes whatsoever. Here's the first in a no doubt successful , frequent and long running series . PC Games . PC games means all PC games except the ones that come free with computers, games you play on social networking sites, flash games, promotional games, virtual versions of board games, virtual versions of card games or all that shovelware. "PC games" specifically refers to games with elves, simulators, shooty men or games where you have to click on a base. Which accounts for roughly <1% of games you can play on a PC. When referring

We've managed to scoop another exclusive, this time we interview Elizabeth from the upcoming game Bioshock Infinite. TG: Congratulations on getting cast to play Elizabeth in this award winning franchise. Bioshock Infinite takes the series to the skies. Was working with heights a problem for you? E: Oh god. ONE OF MY EYES IS BIGGER THAN MY MOUTH. Where is my stomach supposed to be? Of fuck, I don't have a stomach. Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit TG: Was it difficult playing a 20 year old character (Elizabeth's real age is 12)? E: I can't breathe. I can't breathe. My head is as wide as my waist. Who made me like this? Why is my neck so long? {Elizabeth begins to hyperventilate}. TG: Now that you've been cast a a female character in a PC game are you looking forward to people uploading drawings of you having sex with various people and things? Including possibly that woman from Half Life 2? E: Ppplease. Kill. Me? TG: Tell us about that awful fringe you were sport

Oh, E3

I don't have cover based shooting. Or a morality system. Or QTEs Or motion controls I don't try to push shitty 3D on you because I know that it just ruins games/films/tv/everything I won't make you sit through an unskippable cutscene over and over Or hours of updates every time you just want to play a game I'm not a sequel Or a remake Or a wiimake Or a demake Or a film/book/theme park ride adaptation Or an iPad mutant I don't tell everyone through twitter or facebook every time you queef I don't have anyone making utterly unrealistic hyped claims on my behalf which ultimately never transpire My ladies walk around with their breasts covered and their front or back bulges centre shot My men aren't stubbled, chisled or maverick I don't demand you to upgrade your graphics card/desktop wallpaper/boyfriend in order to play me I don't subject you to the lowest form of humans through online play I don't have version exclusive characters or weapons you ca

We've always got a bit of time for a downloadable game on the console that may actually be alright. sure, juggling the games and channels on the Wii between an SD card and the hard drive can be tedious but it goes to show that if you give people the tools to make their own games, five years later there might be one or two worth playing. With all the E3 hype it might have been easy to miss generically titled FAST Racing League but we're glad we gave it a download. FAST Racing League takes 'inspiration' from N64's Pod Racer, Wipeout and we imagine that FX racing series but we were never a fan of that. There's only twelve tracks but it is blisteringly fast, hard as nails and comes with two or four player split screen multiplayer. Not bad considering that this £7 download is more fun than most racing games in recent years (Motorstorm 3, 4, 5? was awful but that may have just been the 3D experience). I will say that it is a bit soulless and when you are whizzing arou

EDGE has had a redesign. Here's what we think of it in an EDGE style Continue/Quit thing: Continue - Post Script The new 'post script' bit at the end of reviews. Before, they'd hype up a game in preview then review it for the rubbish it was the month after in reviews. Now they just do both together. I wonder how long before devs and producers stop giving these interviews if a game gets a six (gaming's 3). - No more Kroal!? Hoo. Ray. - Spinal For a second we thought the quote on the inside editorial staff page was gone. For a second we were wrong. - Aspirational Reading Finally a gaming magazine its fine to read in public and look like a metro sexual wanker rather than a gaming one. - People, Places, Things A great idea. Quit - Alexander the not so great Leigh Alexander has a column. We like what she's trying to do but her writing has taken a holier than thou aspect of late. That and she links to music on her blog like a music waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanker.

The wii is good an’ all but what I’d really like is 51 episodes of an awful Kirby TV show, for free as a wii channel. Not all at once mind, I want them to be staggered over the next 6 months. Would you look at that! It’s come true. Sure, let’s mess around with Kirby ‘canon’. Let’s give King Dedede a stupid voice. Let’s add two annoying kid characters. Let’s make Meta Knight some kind of Johnny foreigner. Let’s add a stupid theme tune and let’s not use any of the awesome Kirby music that already exists. Still it’s free and yes I’ve watched every episode and will continue to watch them all until episode 51 on the day of release. I’m gripped. Turn on your wii and download the channel now!

We’ve been away and the reason is that we were paralysed by an overwhelming sense of underwhelment. The cause was this year’s E3. Okay, we’ll admit it, we haven’t been the world’s staunchest E3 fans, it’s the time of year that game companies gleefully inform us of what shit we should be eating for the coming year, whether we like it or not. Lesser gaming sites use the occasion to announce all kinds of “exclusives” and “previews” until everyone is bored with it all and all that is left for the next year is the rather tedious exercise of waiting for the games that have been totally spoiled through the year to come out. Microsoft’s Presentation. Remember that tosser with the shades from last year arriving on the stage like the unruly, too-cool-for-school but delivers results rebel. He was back this year still with the shades but it’s clear that he is to Microsoft what Tim Allen is to Disney. He’s now their dancing monkey, their rebel bitch. He ain't cool. They green-lit his motion co

We’re sure we came up with this as a joke ‘game’ around about the time that Eye training for the DS came out. Looks like we’ve got grounds to sue because it’s actually been fucking released on wiiware. How did we get to this? UPDATE: Proof http://www.thatguys.co.uk/2007/10/two-down.html that's a four year old idea.

Time for the yearly dip into the world of PC games. Just under 3 hours of downloading and updating nearly done....

Well following on from my last post raving on about how great the emulator version of Ocarina of time is Graphically and entirely. I decided to dig out all the old N64 games I had and, straight up, create a collection of all my old N64 games and have them running in some oddly-polygony HD glory. Sadly none of them work. My top 5 of my favourite games for the N64 that dont work on an Emulator. (click the images for full rez versions) Mario 64. Mario actually ran quite well despite some visible games between walls, but I'm sure they were there in the fist place. However, there were many areas where things were just not visible first example being the first bonus slide: Closer you got to the slide the more it would disappear, so annoying. 4. Shadows of the Empire. This one I was really looking forward to, I remember this game quite fondly, one of the most under-rated launch titles. However, once you get past this screen, the menus are a garbled mess: 3. Super Smash Bros. Th

I've been exclusively playing Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis and Turok Evolution on the PS2 recently. Partly because you won't be able to play PS2 games through the TV anymore, already it hurts the eyes unless you spend ten minutes of naffing through the menus everytime you switch from DVD to TV to PS2 to Wii. I've been playing Jurassic Park genesis because JESUS FUCKING CHRIST KEVIN FROM OHIO YOU'VE SEEN A Ceratosaurus hunt and eat most of a herd of Dryosaurus and you're pissy because the trees aren't authentic? Ahhh the thrills of accidentally deleting security fences. As for Turok Evolution, I've been trying to finish it for that other neglected webpage . Now, I know it isn't particular a great shooter but considering how easy it is to roll your eyes far back into your own head everytime another FPS comes out it is easy to forget the kind of crap we had to put up with. Here's a list of my personal peeves at Turok, some are specifically aimed a

Wow! just Wow. For the past week or so I have been having cravings to play Zelda: ocarina of time. So through the wonders on the internet I dug out an emulator. I also dug out my 360 wireless adaptor. I set that bitch up! Plugged my PC into my TV, set the Graphics to all maximum settings, and set the Controller like an N64 pad. And started it up. Amazing, I never new that all those details were possible despite the backgrounds and some of the textures being a bit pixelly its flawless, and plays really well with the 360 controller! Here's to Retro Games and HD. Love and Saria's song Richie X

The 3DS hasn't sold a bajillion bajillion copies. Which is a massive failure as everything should sell more than the last thing that sold the most. Forever. Cue cut and washed articles about it. By the family bucket load . TGAM doesn't have one. Here's why: 1) We already have, on average 3 DSes each in various shapes sizes and colours. According to our Peruvian ancestry four is an unlucky number so until one breaks we won't be getting one. If only Microsoft made DSes then we'd probably have to get a new DS every week (amirite?) b) The DSiXL only came out last week. The protective sheet is still attached. C) 3D is to gaming like the discovery of a third nipple during intercourse (yours or theirs) with someone you've paid a lot of money to. It is just a bit weird, not really what you wanted and leaves you feeling that sometimes more isn't actually better. )) The average length of a DS game is around 4000000 hours with all those RPGs (including the one with the

Is a game about submarines. NOT Lesbian Robots OR Robot Lesbians Sadly.

The last panel in this week's triptych about Wiiblindness in the games industry. In the last part I already mentioned EDGE. EDGE 227 has a largely thoughtful article about online multiplayer in games raising all the interesting points around when and why online multiplayer is shoe-horned into a game (e.g Dead Space 2), whether it's devs, marketeers or the consumers who are responsible for more and more games shipping with online multiplayer and the curious mystery around the virtual non existence of crossplatform onlinemultiplayer with one not so notable exception. For no discernable reason not a single Wii game, nor the console itself is mentioned even when it may be pertinent to. Sure, the console is still widely viewed as the little engine that couldn't but it's a glaring omission not to mention Mario Kart Wii when testing 2009 titles for how active communities are. That's a three year old game that not only still has an active community but also a title that get

EDGE magazine isn't just the thinking gamer's read, in our opinion it's one of the few 'publications' that transcends insulting and is actually written for people above the age of nine. By comparison, half of the shit on the web and virtually every other gaming mag falls somewhere between the Beano and the National Enquirer. However, one of the problems with a cross platform publication is that each issue can only offer a limited number of pages to each platform. Increasingly this has meant that every platform but the Wii gets coverage. In this month's issue E227 only one of the 23 games reviewed and previewed is a Wii game. Last month only two of the 24 games were Wii games. Now of course, it pleases more of the demographic,more efficiently to look at the cross-platform games !PS3, PC,Xbox 360) but the truth is that there ain't that much on the horizon . It seems that when Capcom or Nintendo aren't making Wii games, nobody is. Why is that Nintendo magi

There's been a blitz of Wii bashing and just ignorant the platform recently. It's a bit stupid really and recalls times when the PlayStation 2 and Gamecube were prematurely abandoned, the former platform killed off in it's prime and the latter sticking two fingers to Microsoft and Sony with Resident Evil 4. So it appears to begin with the Wii. The first bit of bashing comes from Frank Gibeau, head of the EA Games label describing the Wii as a legacy platform (via Industry Gamers ). "They [Nintendo] understand the dynamics and the fact that HD consoles is a booming part of business right now. Legacy platforms like PS2 and the Wii have dropped off significantly. They’re not stupid. They’re going to figure something out. They’re going to come back at it." Is the kind of moronic rhetoric that gets our goat. What he actually means is that nobody, especially EA have been able to replicate Nintendo's success on it's own console and it is language like this that m

We're not just interested in games we're interested in the cultural products that surround games and gaming. One of which is machinima, essentially films made in game engines. The problem is 99% of it is absolute shit. There are a few gems out there; Red vs Blue , War of the Servers and Trashmaster . Machinima can also be funny (see Top FPS ) and there's even been a decent CoD kill montage video that's been more than looking at a sniper scope with the odd numbers popping up, beautifully edited and link subsequently lost. The rest though is total bullshit. Here's a top tip to would be machinima directors out there, that if taken on board will improve the average quality of all machinima by at least 5%: Having one of your characters say LMAO, ROFL or LOL isn't in any way funny. Stop doing it and instnatly make the world a better place.

Is another brilliant and flawed but only brilliant because it is flawed wii game with more a more fresh feel than anything on release on the HD consoles. Playing it reminded me a lot of the awesome Shadow of Memories for the PS2 despite the fact they have nothing in common at all except they feature a guy. Just saying that's all. You play as Ray somebody who is an all American hero and former International Rescue Team member following a totally predictable tragedy. Ray depressed about the tragedy is now a pen pusher at the Crisis Managment Division until he gets called back in to service. The game follows a series of (not so outlandish it seems) events that start with an earthquake, then a tsunami, followed by a nuclear threat and then gets even more ridiculous with everything from firestorms, volcanic eruptions, floods, terrorist battles and even a lahar. BRING ON THE CHEESE. The game is so cheesy its hard not to smile or believe that the developers are unknowing in the cheesiness

Breaking News:  Wii 2 (Codenamed Project Cafe) has had it s specs Leaked  "the console will include a custom IBM PowerPC CPU with three cores, a GPU from the ATI R700 family with a shader unit at version 4.1, and at least 512Mb of RAM. Backwards compatibility with both the Wii  and GameCube games.  The controller has a six-inch touch screen, a front-facing camera, D-Pad, two bumpers, two triggers. There you have it HD DS in  your living room. FINALLY HD! More on this as more rumours flood the internets Love and HD-Hugs, Richie X

I've been wanting to play Deadly Creatures since it came out way back in 2009. The premise is simple you play as a Desert hairy scorpion and a Texas brown tarantula and go about Arachnida business somewhere in the desert of the southwestern United States. The game is fucking brilliant and also flawed, totally linear but the game drives you on just because you want to see what's next. The game is also incredibly frustrating and right up to the end, death is only ever around the corner leading to occasional rage when a checkpoint is the wrong side of an unskippable cutscene in particularly tough sections. There's some odd reusing of the same level, a particular section of which you return to on four occasions and later level design tends towards laziness with invisible walls stopping you from wandering off piste. Also jarring is the end FMV sequence which is of appallingly low quality. Play alternates between the tarantula and the scorpion, the former is by far the best one