That guy's a Maniac...

Flame rounds  lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Cunzy1 1: What're you selling? Richie:  Fucking ice levels, most specifically that annoying inertia slide which get applied to your main character. Annoying, get some crampons. Cunzy1 1: Are we just going to cycle through 90's gaming tropes is that it? We had five original ideas and are now just rehashing our old forum posts? Richie:  Looking back at our archive we are subconsciously rehashing ourselves over and over again. Ironically we are probably the only blog in existence with the label "bored of the same arguments" however time for us to take a long hard look in the mirror, sunshine. Doesn't make slipping on ice a game that is ...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Richie: So! What trope has bested you this time! Cunzy1 1: Super Mario Brothers 3. Level 3-3. You're having a good time with your brother Luigi fighting the Koopalings and making progress then this level happens and it gets real. It gets brutal. Boss Bass just outright murks you. It's not so much the being swallowed by a big fish thing it's just the sheer bluntless of it. You're there one minute, fish boy jumps, open gobbed then. Gone. I want to remove Boss Bass from gaming so I can sleep at night without waking up bolting upright and screaming because I thought I'd been swallowed out of fucking existence. Richie: Just dodge him/...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Cunzy1_1: What're you flaming? Richie: So you have completed the story of this sandbox game. Congratulations! Now go to all these places on the map and find 100 of this thing. I hate this! So many games, specifically around the advent of achievements and trophies, would have this additional achievement to walk round the map finding glowing orbs or such.  They dub it in the name of exploration, but is just often descends into a nightmare of keeping track of an online item location guide. This is also usually coupled with a lack of any reward short of perhaps a 10GP blip. Tacked on and just annoying. Cunzy1_1: But Richie, people sp...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Richie: Last time on Flame rounds we found a verdict was suspended, due to a creepy revelation .  Yo Cunzy, what do you got for us this time? Cunzy1 1: Right, we had a bit of a discussion already about what the collective name for these things are. This week, I want to consider those publisher 'Social Club' type websites that are annoyingly advertised on menu screens (even after you sign up) with the incentive being that your data will be harvested, sold or just leaked   logging into this side app (link your Facebook, Twitter, Google and Insta accounts for no reason!) rewards you with 'icons', 'epic loot' and probably a smattering of o...

Flame rounds  lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?) Cunzy1 1: Last time around we corrected a bad timeline by   removing Timesplitters: Future Perfect. It's ladies' choice this week, what do we have? Richie:  Right! I'm going super-niche here. On the final boss of  Super Mario World , when you are fighting Bowser in his clown face flying reverse helicopter basket thing. Every so often Peach will pop-out scream, "Help!" and throw a mushroom at you. Now admittedly this is a nice thing to do, but it fucks me right off! You have 2 feathers, or maybe you have even mixed it up and gone all maverick and have a fire-flower in reserve! I ain't gonna Judge. But does Peach care about your game p...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame rounded?) Richie: Oh man Sweet, its that time where we flame round shit again! Lets see what Cunzy has for me to shoot down this time! Cunzy1 1: This is our first entire game on Flame Rounds and it's 2005's Timesplitters: Future Perfect. As gamers of a particular vintage will tell you, Timesplitters was phenomenal and seemingly came from nowhere, an early PlayStation 2 first person shooter, against the clock game with great original characters, amazing multiplayer and silly modes/cheat characters/silly characters goofiness the likes of which hadn't been seen since Goldeneye . Timesplitters 2 built on that in almost every way. One of our favourite games of all ...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101 (but for Video Games).  Cunzy1 1:  Welcome back to flame rounds, where one of us picks something from gaming to confine to getting flames rounded out of video games and possibly existence. So far we've char grilled the Dreamcast but spared the exposed brains of Pokemon . Richie, what have you got for being flames roundsed this week?  Richie: This week I would like to address DLC content. We all understand that we live in a world where games are dissected, dismantled and portioned off to increase their value and longevity. And in most cases where a game offers me extra content, I would be happy to pay for visiting a new land, or a new campaign mode, or even a new character... But I feel sad when it is just aesthetic shit, the most archetypal example of this would be the "Horse Armour" of 360 yore. But this still happens today! Fightin...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame rounded?) Richie: And following on from last Flame Rounds, round two is all Cunzy1 1's  Cunzy1 1 : Right this one might need a bit of explaining, I'd like to flames round (verb?) the grass and psychic Pokémon Exeggcute. Even if you've got only a passing familiarity with Pokémon you'll be aware that most of them are based on animals, plants, myths or household objects. Exeggcute is an egg cluster Pokémon made up of six egg-like creatures with faces. However, it's not just the whole clutch I want to flames round, specifically, it's the one which has a cracked shell. I don't like the way it's brain(?), yolk(?) is just exposed like that. F...

Due to the runaway success of Acid rounds we would like to kick of our sister series of semi regular, irregular posts. Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame rounded?) Cunzy1 1 : So the honour of the inaugural Flame Rounds goes to you. What part of gaming do you want to see errr flame rounded? Richie : Kicking it all off Imma drop a big old bombshell on this one, Sega Dreamcast. I want the Sega Dreamcast to go in to Room 101, stop folks banging on about it. The Dreamcast was just not all that great, in fact the more I think about it the more shit it was, the spectrum of exclusive games was minimal, and there was like 3, if that. The controller was not very friendly, and that concept of the Tamagotchi memory...