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The buttrapiest game of the month:

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This month goes to... Bug Village. This mobile pile of buttrape is designed purely to part you with your money. Sure on the outside its all cutsey insects and big cartoon eyes, but underneath lies the soul sucking villainous heart of a corporate moneygrabber concept. Just to clarify I played this on the Windows Phone. Windows phone has quite a few games on it and has the added bonus of being able to contribute to your gamerscore. Microsoft have released quite a few free games that do this too, simple crap like Minesweeper, Sudoku, but also some fun ones like Breeze . They are not all bad, but still suffer from just being mobile games. Then about a Month ago another free one hit the marketplace; Bug Village by Glu. Glu have been around for years making shitty mobile games since the days of the nokia brick phones. But this new "free" addition to the Windows Phone games is just fucking terrible. At every turn it tries to get you to pay money, there is an in game currenc

House of The Dead

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It's always nice to find yourself in the household of a fellow gamer. By far the best bit is perusing their game collection and is also why we hide Shadow the Hedgehog from public display, at the back, in a box re-sleeved with a CoD insert. It is also is a prime time to play those game you wouldn't have bought yourself but are mildly curious about. Hence how we ended up playing House of the Dead 2, 3 and Overkill . Way back when, our family had a Mega Drive and so I grew up on all things SEGA. Sega at home is fine. Arcade SEGA though? Ugh. Unlike rigid and structured games for the home consoles Arcade games are noisy, flashy and 'loose' a bit like your mother. Arcade games are a Waquila suicide* to home games single malt whiskey. Created to rinse your wallet they lack the structure I need to not go foetal and I still shudder when I have to choose 'arcade mode' from a game menu. It's why I'd been avoiding HoTD. I got over it though and HoTD is fu

NPC of the Month

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NEW FEATURE ALERT! NEW FEATURE ALERT! Not content on bringing you the hottest content on video games on the internet we're launching yet another feature setting us aside from those 'other' internet 'sites' bringing you the 'news'. Each month we'll be picking our favourite NPCs from the amazing and magical world of video games. This month is..... It's Only Our Own Bloody Correspondant Alcamoth Citizen! Any thoughts on being our very first NPC of the month bird lady? It is literally, metaphorically and stereotypically no wonder why we picked her to be our new correspondent  from inside video games with a wit like that, inside sources at the Ministry of Records and such a fine pair of head wings too. Interesting fact you might not know about Alcamoth Citizen is that she can be found standing rooted to the spot in Alcamoth City in the Day-Time. Every. Single. Day. Check it out, she's always got something to say about the latest video game

An Announcement and An Introduction

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ANNOUNCING In October last year the TGAM board of directors met to discuss how Second Greatest Video Game Blog On The Internet, That Guy's a Maniac (TGAM) was performing. We've listened to our consumers and things are going to change around here. First off, there's going to be no more features that we startand don't finish (like TGAM top 50 ultimate TGAM top games best list of best games of all time ever , Unit of the Month  or That guy's Interviews ) also we've listened to you and what you want is more Resident Evil coverage. We are called That Guy's A Maniac and should honour that legacy. So we'll be seeing some changes around here. Changes we think you will both like. Also, stakeholders have been complaining that TGAM is a it of a sausage fest when we aren't pretending to be women and we need to be covering video games from the female perspective a bit more Which brings me neatly onto OUR BRAND NEW FEATURE: INTRODUCING.... Yes, we know we do

What game is that then?

This landed in our feedreader from the normally OK EDGE magazine. Self-styled "game director and alleged psychopath" David Jaffe has kicked off Twisted Metal's marketing campaign in typical style, inviting players to fire an automatic weapon from the comfort of their desks. "I'm here to tell you about the epic return of gaming's most sick, depraved franchise," he says. "It's Twisted Fucking Metal on PlayStation 3, and it's back, bitch." Self-styled "game director and alleged psychopath" David Jaffe has kicked off Twisted Metal's marketing campaign in typical style, inviting players to fire an automatic weapon from the comfort of their desks. "I'm here to tell you about the epic return of gaming's most sick, depraved franchise," he says. "It's Twisted Fucking Metal on PlayStation 3, and it's back, bitch.

Gayms Jurnalism

Remember the GMAs? You know the Games Media Awards? Well it is a UK awards thing for people who write about games. one of last year's nominees was Chris Scullion who writes for the Official Nintendo magazine in the category SPECIALIST WRITER PRINT. Sadly he didn't win and presumably he was having an off day in OPM 79 when he writes the following about Dragon Quest X: Also making the decision tricky [about whether to get the Wii or Wii U version] is the fact that, as it's the first RPG [on the Wii] to focus more on online adventuring (much like Monster Hunter Tri)... Is it the first or is it not? Snark snark snark.

Dilemma: Guiness World Records Gamer's Edition

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Aaaaaargh. I hate it. Stupid records like 'World's Most Successful Pokemon Playing Family'. That isn't a proper record. 'World's largest controller' IT WAS PURPOSEFULLY BUILT FOR THE BOOK. How does that count? What an utter nonsense. Combining the world's most pointless record keeping organisation with one of the world's most pointless leisure-time endeavours surely deserves a record for the world's most pointless collaboration? Also 90% of these records are absolutely contested, instantly out of date and very poorly monitored and some come from the INTERNET of all places. We all saw King of Kong are those guys to be trusted? Woooooah. Amazing. Did you know that: The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall has 750,000 NPCs? And that the fastest speed run of Tomb Raider is 2hrs and 39 minutes by a woman! Did you know that Resident Evil 2 is the most popular RE on the PS2 ( change the record dudes )? Did you know that Darkstalkers umm mash up/spin off 

Soul Calibur V: This is what it's about now.

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The other character is supposed to be Lightning from FFXIII but is pretty poor The Dragonborn looks the part though! And I love the arrow in the knee! Love and There should be a word to describe being bored and trawling though YouTube, Richie X

Battling with FFXIII before FFXIII-2

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You know saying things are "like Marmite", is like Marmite you either love it or hate it. That's right there's no middle ground its black or white no shades of gray, no 6 out of 10's, its either 0 out of 10, or 10 out of 10! They are opposite ends of the spectrum, Violet and Red. missing out all the greens, blues, oranges and yellows in between. And Squaresoft are apparently the same, their games are either "teh SuXXorZ" or "Epic wins". After a slew of Epic wins: VII, VIII, IX, X, everything just seemed to go wrong for them, they made a very girly sequel to FFX, an expensive niche MMO (for PC AND consoles), a single player MMO at the end of a consoles lifecycle, and then XIII finally! After nearly 10 years since FFX, Square made an actual RPG where you level up your dudes and you know chocobos and stuff. But something was wrong... there was grumblings in the internet there was horrible talk of a 30 hour training section, but still we

Omastar Comics #33

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He's back and more spirally than ever. In this edition of Omastar Comics. Well you'll see soon enough.   Honestly, these newer Pokemon don't even know they are born. Just wait until you've been reeled out for over 100 spin off games, merchandise and theme parks. Then you'll lose that racist attitude.

Nintendo Channel: Now Showing

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Nintendo Channel: Poor Showing would be more apt. We log into the Wii's Nintendo channel every week and see what is on offer so you don't have to! This week's poor showing is: Something about Resident Evil Revelations . I'm sure it is great (well reviews don't say it is that great) but I'm a little bit underwhelmed by Capcom's marketing output. Ooooooh it has a chaptered structure. Great it has a cast that is beginning to rival Sonic in terms of blandness and breadth! If I wasn't a Resident Evil fan those two points aren't exactly selling the series to me yet this is the second or third Nintendo channel clip of Capcom staff talking about those two very very dull things. Another pointless Player Challenge video for Mario Kart 7. We whinged about them before .  There's a new weekly downloads trailer. I don't know about you but Balloon Kid, Double Bloob, Successfully Learning Mathematics Year 3 and The Very Hungry Caterpillar's ABCs

Final Fantasy VII: Revisited

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As I mentioned earlier , I played through FF7 with some nice mods, to increase the quality of the graphics and such. There were some other mods to break the 9999 limit on everything, allowing you to deal over 9999 damage, and your HP could be over 9999 too. however enemies could also hit you for over 9999. and the most fun one was "Aeris Resurrection" the guys over at Qhimm.com created a little patch to keep her in your group and to allow you to keep using her and the time you invested in her, they even added dialogue for her during the rest of the game and a hand new upgrade to her "ultimate weapon" replacing the Aeris ghost scene when revisiting the church later in the game. Done really well! I thoroughly enjoyed replaying it, remembering 99% of the secrets and locations. I even bested Emerald and Ruby Weapon, though cheaty... I used Aeris level 4 limit break which renders you invincible for the duration of a battle, but still, I wasnt really in that game for t

GAME: Still dillusional

Previous whinging here. Today's developments are that GAME CEO sees their continued slide into financial troubles caused by the groups overeliance on hardware and hardware bundle sales to mean consumers want more hardware. Via MCV : "The hardware market was much more negative than the software market. That tells you the industry and the consumer is ready for more innovation there" Here we were staring at our Wii*, 3DS** and Xbox 360*** thinking we were waiting for new decent games to come out. Apparently, what we were secretly thinking was "Gosh! I would love to splash out a couple of hundred quid on a new console that provides marginally better graphics in these times of economic shitness". And I'm sure that the millions of people with consoles sitting under their televisions are thinking the same thing. You called it CEO Ian Shepherd, King of poor retail management and myopic business sense.  * Oh sorry I forgot, Last Story is due out this year

That Resident Evil 6 trailer

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Oh my god you guys, watch this:  THIS IS DISGUSTING. Capcom should be ashamed of themselves. Did they not learn from Resident Evil 5? This trailer is so racist.   1) First of all this game is telling four year olds (everyone knows that four year olds play these games) that it is okay to shoot white men who are world leaders. Could've made the president black or a woman or a black woman. But no. A white guy. Disgusting. Don't they know that this kind of imagery (people shooting white presidents) is charged with history?   2) It is racist against white presidents who wear glasses. Ut oh, I'd watch out if I were you Giorgio Napolitano cos come 2012 there's gonna be a whole bunch of racist four year olds trying to shoot you up in the face/eyes.   3)All the zombies are white ironically, including a jumping zombie. Don't they know that this kind of imagery (white people shooting jumping white people) is charged with history? Capcom just assumes all gamers ar

That's How You Do A Black Out

No new posts for nine days. None of this half arsed one day business. Take that SOAP.  In other news : ALL GAMES ARE THE SAME. Totally homogenised. There's nothing to even be excited about anymore just mindlessly going through the motions of playing new game X which is exactly like all the games you already played last year. Not even a 'trailer' for Resident Evil 6 can get us excited considering that only 1/3 of us played RE5 and none of us have a 3D(NO GAMES)S to play the other two Resident Evil games. Fortunately there is star shuttle to tide us over.   HERE'S A POEM ABOUT STAR SHUTTLE   Tsssssssssshhhhhh (bottom thruster)  Tsssshhhhhhh (right thruster)  Tshhh tshhh tshhh (Left, top then right thruster)  Tsshhhhhhh (top and front thruster)  TSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH (All thrusters in thrustration)  Tsh (Top and back thrusters)

Resident Evil Operation Blah Blah Blah

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Okay so we're a teensy bit worried that REORC is messing with the Resident Evil format but this video is kinda cool. I'm just a bit disappointed that it wasn't the Nemesis who appears at the end but what you gonna do? Oh and German subs so might learn some German.

Game continues to slide...

If you live in or have traveled through London you will have no doubt encountered discarded newspapers on tubes, in the street and in lunch and common rooms across the capital. If you are lucky you might find yourself with the Evening Standard or the Metro to help lunch/train/bus journeys fly by a bit quicker. If you are unlucky it will be City A.M . a boring newspaper about the city and stocks and graphs and FTSEs. However, recently I've not minded flicking through City A.M if only to follow the slip slide of GAME group into liquidation (possibly). In today's City A.M some goon from GAME group was blaming the lack of a new console cycle as a cause of their poor success. Okay, so I know very little about economics and markets and stocks and shares but I'm going to go out on a limb to say that it is pretty retarded to rely on the console cycles in order for the business to stay afloat. In the same week that sales of the Wii have topped 30 million across Europe you'd

Windows 8 and Gaming

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I have been messing about with windows 8 recently. Just to see its compatibility with older games and just the general feel of it. Windows 8 upon start up presents you with a slide-to-unlock screen akin to the Windows Phone, though entirely pointless if you are not using a touchscreen (though a simple tap of the space bar works just as well, if not faster) you are then presented with an "app" screen. Its not too dissimilar to the windows phone or 360 interface, and feels a little iOS too, though it's debatable as to whether this is a good thing on a desktop/laptop: As you can see this is your typical workspace, undoubtedly designed for a touchscreen interface. You have apps (which when clicked on/tapped expand into their own fullscreen versions) as you can see, there is an inbuilt twitter/RSS/Weather and the Facebook app "Socialite" doesn't work currently. Those with keen eyes will also see Final Fantasy VIII! Well I just dug out my old copy of it an

2012 Nintendo Channel: Now Showing

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It's our first look at the Wii's Nintendo Channel in 2012 ( here is all the previous Now Showings). What will the hit-and-miss Nintendo channel bring this year? Our money is on- inconsistent videos, series that inexplicably end after one or two videos and in general poor use of an otherwise extremely well placed marketing tool. So what do we have? Bizarrely, Nintendo TV  the monthly show from the Official Nintendo Magazine, has been reset back to episode one again for the new year. There's now a woman presenter rather than that Welsh chap but sadly it seems the script writer hasn't changed. Expect cringey dad-joke "humour" in spades. One improvement in this awful ONM vehicle is that the episode is now divided up into different sections. Hopefully this means we won't get quite so many Mario/Zelda retrospectives/love letters. There's two tutorial videos up for Boom Street , Nintendo's odd Dragon Quest/Mushroom Kingdom/Monopoly game. The tra

TGAM a retrospective 2011

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We did a puzzle Back when we were excited about MvC3 we did an homage to Poison You know that regular piece we do? You know Unit of the Month? No? Crazy We realised Something We had too much free time We did a lengthy piece on "Digital Convergence" We predicted it  Black and White came out We decided we weren't  having fun We did an  Interview We lost something We invented the quadruple/triple inverted commas We joined the 3D fad Well that is it for this year, we'll be back in 2012 for the Mayan apocalypse, a million HD remakes and announcements of the next consoles? Abba said it best... Love and Next year we promise it'll be better, TGAM X