That guy's a Maniac...

So you may have gathered from the title of this blog and many many of the posts that go with it that we are fans of the Resident Evil Series. It goes without saying. So we were midly excited to see the first videos of Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles. You get to play bits from all those Resident Evil games again! Check the latest video here . Now as much as we love the series and won't have a word to say against it ( excepting requests for DS remakes ), we are getting a little bit sick of seeing this guy: The first zombie you encounter in Resident Evil. His iconic putrid face marked the beginning of a genre (Alone in the Dark doesn't count). The cutscene he appears in marked only the beginning in a long series of games from the fundamentally broken Outbreak to the unanimous greatness of Resident Evil 4 (secretely Resident Evil 6). Killing him with a knife in the original was both tricky and a taster for the rest of the game. And then again in the directors's cut. And

As you may have heard the dude who does Mario’s voice is doing an autobiography. As it turns out Ol’ Charlie-boy is a huge fan of “That guy’s a Maniac” and has given us these excerpts: *Warning Spoilers* “One day I went into Nintendo for a voice-over job.” “I put on a really stereotypical (bordering on racist) Italian voice.” “I got the job” “I did it for a few other games” “And they all lived happily ever after” Thatyguys rating: 7/10 Good: Thoroughly good read, all the way through it you are amazed that such a small story could be padded out to a whole book. Bad: The book loses its charm because in you head it is all spoken with a thick Italian accent.

Dear Mr Rick Brookes, I would like to point out several reasons why the above comic strip from today’s Metro is uninformed and unfunny. #1. Wii’s are sold out, not many people can relate to this comic. #2. In an attempt to email you to explain these points I could not find your website… This leads me to believe you do not have one, and as such this confirms my suspicions that you are technologically impaired. #3. The whole crux of this joke is based on the assumption that the guy would actually buy the Wii for himself and that the Wii is a masculine machine… Again you are showing complete ignorance in this sector. Get with the times man! His bird would probably be more exited about the Wii than the flippin Chocolates ore perfume. Dude… just don’t try any more. P.S. Your drawings are kinna shit.

Silent hill origins came out last week. But rather annoyingly only on the PSP. So we at that guys have scrambled around in our cupboard of freebies and dug out our PSP (still in its box), part of us was glad because there is actually a reason to use the PSP! So we break out Silent Hill origins and start that bad boy up! And it is amazing! It follows the story of Travis, a truck driver. Who is getting caught up in the events preceding the original Silent Hill. *Spoilers… Right up ye* If you have played the “previous” silent hill games, you know that Alessa is Dahlias Kid, and that Alessa was burned alive, well the story takes place from this moment onwards. Dahlia, Dr Kaufmann, Lisa are all in it, but younger. Alessa is kicking about there to. The Graphics are actually quite good, as with most PSP games (according to what I have heard) it’s a mix between PS1 and PS2 graphics, a sort of PS1.5 which is great because it is reminiscent of the original silent hill. Gameplay

But Dacav still has the title for best Tetris remix yet. This one is good, the vocals mix it up a bit but as with a lot of Electrance the repetitiveness kicks in. And your talking about Tetris in the first instance which isn't amazingly varied. It needed a bigger ramp up to. Possibly, the B game theme could have flitted in as a bonus for those able to mark subtle auditory mix ups.

This christmas is gearing up to be a good one and already it's very heavily video game oriented. The TV is running Hitman the movie ads almost every ad break and the trailers for Assasin's Creed and Need for Speed Pro Street are popping up quite a bit, as well as others. They seem to be good adverts too, grown up ads, no longer the reserve of horrible ALRIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT American voice over tat or Sony wankery they used to be. This month's EDGE has an interesting schpiz on marketing for games and how much money is thrown at the great unwashed on marketing alone. Up to 15 percent of a game's net receipts is spent on marketing and for titles released worldwide for christmas up to £7 million is being spent. Recent discussions with Giant Enemy Guitar Hero suggest that PR and advertising may be the way to go about getting your game off the shelves regardless of unfulfilled promises by developers and publishers in pre-launch hype. The oft cited poor initial receptions

Shit it like a polaroid picture. Props to Chuff_72 for showing me how Christmas is going to get even more expensive since this post . Yes that's right Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure for the DS. Advance apologies to my niece and nephew but it's another 11% towards my life dream. When you are my age you'll appreciate that I went for it. x x Review from the box art : Tricky. Very tricky. Could be amazing if done in an Endless Ocean kind of way. Probably going to be a bit dodge-modge kind of like a Tamagotchi but with even less functionality than eat, poo and sleep. COntains prehistoric monsters 9.5/10* *The use of the word "monsters" over extinct mesozoic marine fauna loses the 0.5 point

Yes, those perverts at IGN, spurred on by creative juices and out of the box thinking are doing another Top 100 . Let's hope they are doing the list by the rules . Let's check: 1) Don't ever mention Zelda or Metroid. F AILED. Number 78 is Link's Awakening. I suspect the top 30 will be littered with metroids and zeldas. Come on IGN sort it out. 2)When everyone least suspects it pull out a really shitty retro game to fuck off all the youg'ns. PASS ! Number 70 is Tecmo Bowl for the GB and NES. Yes, that's right it is better than Wipeout, Goldeneye, Quake 2 and the original Resident Evil. 3) Ignore all PC games except the crappy Molyneux games that no one really played or enjoyed anyway. FAIL . They've gone for some other shit like Syndicate, Mech Warrior 2 and planetscape:Torment. Selling out. 4) Cram in as many "Great but underrated" games as possible. PASS. Hello! ICO. 5) Put at least one of the Final Fantasies, other than VII above VII

Last night TGAM had their first ever official online encounter with each other. Gears and Halo 3 were the games. At one point we teamed up and showed the rest of the online community exactly how you play. TGAM STYLE. The pictures tell the story. We're the Red Team, Team Blue is Team 'Sidekick' (Duffin and Chuff_72) and Team Green were the guys who tried hard but weren't very good (Mr Cyclopse and TLK ToRnaDo Jd) Yes within literal seconds we were shooting at each other. Then we were using vehicles.We were committed to eliminating each other. We managed to stop shooting each other but only when the opportunity to drive around like idiots presented itself. This screenshot here is the result. That's me that is. The other teams were dazzled with out L337 skills and fury. We easily won. The score was something like 54 kills to us. 3 for the other teams combined. We don't need to prove that we are the best any more thanks to everyone who tried

Below is a chat conversation between myself an Cunzy in response to the previous post about Terra Nova: Cunzy 11: I just , I just , Hate them So much Richie: lol Cunzy 11: Hate hate hate Fair enough if they ju argghhh HATE THEM Wanky bollox It ' s rubbish Richie: I never read TN Cunzy 11: It's like TGAM except not funny or pertinent Or anything SHIT Richie: Hmmmmmmmm " Deliberately doing something pleasurable which you know will cause others pain (e.g. ganking) " from Terra Nova Ummmm Cunzy 11: Pfffffffffffffft pFffffffffffft See my comments on that post Richie: Its a gank or be ganked world... Deal with it Cunzy 11: I know Don't whinge about it But doubly don't try to define it They try to define it to themselves Chat to any normal gamer and they won't care They'll say I was ganked/fraged/ ninjad They don't care Richie: no Ninja -ing is wrong . Well wrong

Please! There's been an accident and we need help from all comers. Gamers across the web, please unite. It seems that after all those close calls, depsite everyone's warnings, the people over at Terra Nova have finally FALLEN HEAD FIRST UP THEIR OWN ASSHOLE. For those of you who don't know it Terra Nova is a blog about virtual worlds. Fair enough you might say. There's a few of those about. However, the problem with Terra Nova is that they take it way too seriously. The blog is written by various contributors who have tenuous job titles or tenuous connections to 'virtual worlds'. They only ever discuss Second Life, WoW, Guild Wars or EVE online. In addition there are a few crackpots who go on and on about MUDs. Anyway, so what you might say, you do a blog about old capcom games and sex toys. Yes. This is true. But we don't take ourselves so painfully serious and we don't make sweeping assumption about virtual worlds, catalysed by the matrix movie

Especially if I insist on buying shit like this for myself as a reward for buying other people presents. Which I will insist upon. Review of Clever Kids Dino Land based on the box art alone: Shoddy aimed-at-children game that uses about 2% of the space on a DS cartridge. Three thousand complete the six piece jigsaw mini games, and one microphone gimmick game that doesn't really work. There is a 50% chance that this game doesn't allow players to save but instead they have to enter a passcode WHICH IS SO EARLY PlayStation it hurts. With dinosaurs and mammoths 10/10 I dream of the day I can fill my little DS 9 game case carrier with dinosaur and prehistoric creatures games only! LIFE AMBITION PROGRESS: 11%. £40 and I could be 33% closer to my life ambition! MONEY CAN AND DOES BUY YOU HAPPINESS! Fossil League: GOT! Ice Age 2: The meltdown: Need! Clever Kids Dino Land: Need! Dino Master: Need! Dino Crisis DS: Not yet made. Get on it Capcom!!

Hi kids. Part three of our fanboys rantings after this inspiring post by Richie!. Here is part one and two . Chuff_72: There are no interiors in the game (well there are a couple but essentially all the buildings are just pretty boxes - there is also no interaction, you can't remove a plank bridge to stop people following you for example.) Mysterio: OMFG! THIS GAME IS SHIT - ALTAIR IS A HUMAN CHARACTER, WHY CAN’T HE REMOVE HIS ROBES AND MASTERBATE??!!!!???!!!111 Cunzy1 1: Because that would be gay and you'd probably like it and spend all your time in toilet cubicles getting rimmed and thus not buying more over hyped games.

There now follows a joint entry from Richie and from Diversion Projects, Kaiser Tia , regarding a favourite gaming franchise... As you may or may not know the Silent Hill series is getting a fifth instalment. Hurrah! However, this chapter in the series will NOT be developed by Konami Japan's Team Silent . Instead It will be developed in the US by The Collective, inc., the company responsible for such gaming classics as The Da Vinci Code and Star Wars: Episode III (ugh). Konami made a similar decision when they outsourced the PSP's Silent Hill Origins to Climax US , who did such a bad job that the game's developent that most of the game's mechanics were scrapped and production handed over to Climax UK, who were deemed more capable of delivering a 'Silent Hill experience'. Now we don't claim to be a Japanimaniacs or USAphobes, but we have all seen what happens to good Japanese things when they get Westernised. Subtlety generally goes out of the window

Omastar has been feeling bad lately. He can't drink without getting drunk. He would blame videogames but there aren't videogames yet. They wouldn't work in the sea anyways. He can't even listen to gangsta rap either because mammals haven't evolved past the "nose noise" stage in their evolution yet. Yeah that's right North. We can all copy! How do you like them apples??? EDIT: Because it's not really worth a new post. I hate being a gamer it means you download lots of shit that you don't need or will ever look at again. Especially free shit like that Good writing for games guide and Breaking the Mold Bioshock PDF. Also, btw, games people no one really cares about the art of Halo/Half Life/Bioshock. You read it once and think "Oh, OK so originally the mad doctor had three less wire tentacles coming out of his head". Then that information is instantly forgotten and never needed again. The only reason gamers buy The Art of ......

Dude, I rented Assassassassinssss Creed over the weekend and busted that bad boy right open - CAUTION, OPINION WITHIN MAY NOT BE OF THE POPULAR VARIETY. First off, I DO like this game, it is fun and looks pretty. However, it is also, misleading, rushed, boring, repetitive, annoying and overrated. Fun. I finished this game and enjoyed it, I liked the story and the characters, I thought the future elements were nice and especially that you are a Bartender called Desmond (Spoiler?), though very divisive (this game is basically a setup for a new franchise, even EA would be ashamed of the obviousness of this) and the game felt cool to play, it does a good job of making you feel like a badass (except the main dude swings his hips a little too much.) Badassedness. Of course, this is what *every* game should be about. Altair isn’t supposed to be a ‘badass’ for Fuck’s sake, he’s from a religious sub-sect from post islamic intent on destabilisation of the muslims. Duh. Looks pretty. Oh yes