That guy's a Maniac...

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

I was really struggling to recall any stand out gaming experience this year. There were plenty of polished experiences but nothing that particularly blew my mind. UNTIL LAST NIGHT! We treated ourself to Wii Play Motion, partly for a sexy red controller to match our sexy red classic controller but also to finally get on the Wii Motion train almost two years after it came out, now that Zelda makes the accessory worth owning. Before, this list didn't seem to justify the purchase. We were big fans of Wii Play especially Tanks!, in fact we think there are only 41 games better than it in existence . So we were quite looking forward to Wii Play Motion. Don't get us wrong there are some rum games in the pack and the experience is severely hampered if you don't have more than one Wii Motion Plus controller. Sometimes rather unnecessarily, a number of the games could easily have been pass the controller multiplayer. However, Star Shuttle is phenomenal and we wish there was

I mentioned earlier in the year playing Ocarina Of Time in HD  And I have been, And also enjoying it! But over the holiday's I have been dabbling with other HD projects. Firstly after completing Skyrim at level 72 *Bragging rights* I had a been bitten by the Elder Scrolls bug and decided to have a looksee at Morrowind and the improvement Mods: As you can see it's very pretty, on top of this though there were mods to enhance the models, and the clothing and such, it was comparable, if not better than Oblivion Graphics. However the controls and interface were dire, I was hoping to approach it with the same controls as Oblivion/Skyrim. but it is really optimised for Keyboard and Mouse. Secondly, while playing Ocarina of Time I found myself feeling nostalgic, and remembered playing FF7 around the same time. So I decided to have a look into HD mods for FF7 (skip the intro): as you can see the silly models on the world have gone, in general most graphics have be

There is a fantastic piece on video-game addiction floating about the internet, describing evolutionary reasons fro addiction, and more importantly discussing "Unethical Game Design". The tricks that developers use to trap the user into wanting to come back for more. A very thought provoking piece, check it out here or here: It's only 15 mins... c'mon. Love and Obscure Skyrim memes, Richie X.

Quite! Screenie from the excellent Syberia.

Oh gosh... I dunno if it counts as an addition to out sister blog: Dinosaurs in Games GRIMLOCK!!! Love and inappropriate indie music, Richie X

I did promise you all an update, but I was a little busy with killing Draugr, Dwarven Spheres, Falmer and "talking" to dragons. i.e. Playing Skyrim. If anyone out there cares for my character I have maxed out Archery, Sneak, Enchanting, Alchemy and Smithing, purely to get maximum damage on my bow. So what have I done? Well I fucked about at the start, pretty much the moment I could wander about, I did some random dungeons, joined the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild. I did a touch more of the main plot, then did the Mages guild, I still have the companions and the rest of the main plot to do. How about the game in hindsight now? Well It's great, it's not too buggy, though there are some annoying bugs, which has kinda halted my sidequests, so now I play the waiting game for the patch. What I am most disappointed about is the "Guilds" quests, Dark Brotherhood and Mages Guild was over so quickly, I have spent more time faffing about in other dungeons

Are mobile games any good yet? Are they even proper games? For dinosaur games no definitely not . Chuff_72 continues to look at mobile games and work out if they are any good yet here's his skinny on Infinity Blade 2 .   Infinity Blade 2, in my opinion, is the sequel to Infinity Blade, and it’s a good one.   I'm fairly certain I completed the first game, where *SPOILERS* you defeat the End Boss *END SPOILERS*, however at the start of this one he is not dead, I guess that's standard for an Immortal… I'm not sure why we all thought he was dead, he clearly states he is Immortal a number of times, so yeah, not unexpected. The original ended on a cliff-hanger of sorts, and there was a cool "hidden" ending. This time there is a new random woman, the main guy has gained a name and a voice and then he dies, only to wake up in a metal cave/room, wearing only his pants.   While the game does seem to just chuck you in head first apparently there is a whole n

Out-fucking-rageous. This advert is on the actual telly-vision. Except unlike the version in that link it carries the disclaimer along the lines of "visionary applications only".  Basically, Microsoft have created an advert for the Kinect, yet another advert featuring a chilled out version of the Pixies' "Where is My Mind?", showing a whole host of things that might be possible in the future using Kinect but which aren't at the moment.  Amazing new low from MS when it comes to Kinect. Can't sell any when you show what you can actually do with it today? Then hypothesize about the future. When the product might be useful. I think more ads should be like this one. Fuck four wheeled cars, just advertise flying cars with the disclaimer "made-up future bullshit in no way reflects existing product". Tobacco companies should advertise non-existent anti-cancer medicines to allow us to smoke as much as we like. Just occasionally take an "n

Its not often we do a serious article, you know, about real things... But this is something I have had a lot of experience with. And would like to share a few gripes and annoyances with the Industry, specifically "Quality" assurance. Hey there little man, do you like computer games? Well clearly getting a job in the games industry makes sense that way all your n00b-pwning skills you have accumulated wont go to waste; they are now "experience". So how could you get in the industry? Programming? Nope. that involves a course which takes 3 years, by which time the language you have learned may be defunct. 3D Modelling? Again nope, more course work, and an Art degree... Games Design, Yeah why not, you have played so many games, you know what makes a good game  you could write an epic RPG, or create the next 3rd person hack n' slash hit. Oh no, wait, you have to spend more years doing a course on how to design games, which are ultimately, bested in gameplay buy ind

THIS IS GOING BADLY . STUPID FUCKING MEME .

Another quickie. Is it me or is this game even out yet for the consoles? Telltale's site isn't helpful. Nothing in GAME or HMV. Amazon don't seem to have it. Xbox isn't promoting it very well. Nothing on the official PlayStation site. UPDATE: Ah ha apparently it has been delayed for the Xbox in Europe. Maybe Telltale should have that on their fucking website ? That's how you do retail apparently. Pissing off the one person who actually might tolerate your piss poor QTE game. ANOTHER UPDATE: Too late! I watched most of it on Youtube. Sorry guys you lost a sale.

Soz everybody, we've been mired in Dinosaur games of late . Just stopping by, checking we haven't been burgled. Oh and there's two things you should read. There's probably an easier way of flagging these links but it'll require signing up to a thing and then a thing. So just click the links kay? First up, this discussion from EDGE about game art. It makes all the points we clumsily try to communicate when the "Are games art" discussion comes up before the conversation gets hi-jacked by idiots thinking they know what art is and isn't. Second up, what is wrong with the video game BAFTAs . There's a lot wrong with them, some of it is what Ste says in the article. But we all know that indie games are boring anyway. On a more serious note, "Games" are so huge that there's no point in trying to group them together for awards. Who are the awards for too? They certainly don't seem to be for me . Stay safe kiddlewinks.

3D is great right? Everything is just better in 3D. Including Omastar Comics! Prepare to have your eyes close down knowing that they won't ever see a finer thing after you read this new Omastar Comic. NOW IN 3D. Does not get better than that people makes you think how we ever put up with all those 2D omastar comics right? We might as well call it a day here.

Wiiware has demos, Wiiware doesn't have demos. Wiiware sorta has demos but there are none avaialable. Wiiware has demos of weird games. We keep out eye on demos that sometimes get put up on the Nintendo channel. Sometimes we download the demos. We then play an excellent mini game called "juggle the channel data" where we try to free up enough space in the Wii memory to be able to play the demo just downloaded onto the SD card. We try to do it in as few moves possible, leaving the minimum amount of free blocks spare on the Wii. Right now as we type you can download the demo of Fast: Racing League , Kyotokei and some micro racers game. We downloaded Kyotokei. First impressions aren't great. It looks like an amateur webcomicist did the characters. Erk. The music is also annoying. Not a good start. The game itself is quite cool. I don't know how original the concept is but it is basically a side scrolling shooter but you can change the colour of your guy riding a bir

So i did my first dungeon, found the first side quest i could do and ran there and started opening chests and killing bad-men. Its oblivion again!!!! Well that's it for now. Further updates in the next few weeks on this game. Love and Golden Claws, Richie X

Ding! Levelled up! Took my first "perk" in Archery, oh I see Skyrim is using the perk system from Fallout... Though i worry did i choose well?!?!? Love and hastily chosen perks, Richie X

So here is my little badass. Love and Off to the block with you, Richie X

Oh yeah, fuck remembrance day! Today is Skyrim-day! Right now I'm installing that bad boy ready to launch into it, expect updates today.... Love and the only reason I'll be silent at 11am is because I'm so engrossed in character creation, Richie X

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. WE'VE ABUSED ALL CAPS TOO MUCH IN THE PAST, THIS TIME WE MEAN IT. The Official pokemon website is running a vote for a pokemon that will be featured as a download via the Pokemon Global Link. It is clear that TGAM are poke addicts but it ain't all rosy . This could change everything. Here are the current rankings of pokemon people have been voting for: For the love of god Pokemon players. VOTE FOR DEOXYS! Deoxys has never been available in the UK. The empty spot in my almost living pokedex drives me crazy. It is a constant source of dismay to me and the people around me. Whoever the fuck is voting for ditto and pikachu needs euthanising straight away. Not metaphorical euthanising, deliberate hunting down, slaying dissecting and grotesquely displayed in public areas as a warning to others. As for the people voting for Arceus, sure, it is a nice third choice but there was an event for it a while ago. You missed out. Sorry guys. VOTE DEOXYS. For all that is

Two MCV links in as many days. Good on ya MCV, no doubt our publicity (we are the second greatest video game blog in all of existence as proved by science, probably the firs now as Harvind1 has seemingly gone offline) will give them a numbers boost. This interview with Ralph Baer over at the Salt Lake City Tribune has him bemoaning modern video games. MCV ran with the quote: “I think it’s a disgrace,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “What I created got abominated.” Now when we aren't not whinging , we often are whinging but Ralph doesn't feel the need (or it wasn't reported) quite what he finds disgraceful. Tom Nook's prices and stock rotation? The outrageous camping that goes on in Team Fortress 2? Nauseating DRM? Too many busty women in games? Not enough women working in games? The Water Temple in OoT? The fact that Rogue Squadron 2 boots you all the way back to the menu screen every time you fail a mission? That no other video game does water better than Baldur'

We whinge too much. One of the things we whinge about is how game retailers don't seem to be able to distinguish their mid arm ginglymus from their midrectum aperture when it comes to the business of selling games. In the immortal words of Chief Brian Irons, whose hobby used to be taxidermy "BUT NO LONGER". We're so happy we even busted out a de-motivational poster and a Resident Evil 2 quote just like it were 2005 all over again. MCV talk to Robert Hennessy, John Lewis' new games buyer and he be talking a whole lotta sense. Including a Nintendo Shop at John Lewis' flagship store, just around the corner from the hit-and-miss flagship GAME store. In a word, FUCK YES and in more words ABOUT TIME.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is out very very soon. It'll no doubt sell well, there may be news stories about how many millions of pounds people shirking their day at work to play it will cost the economy. We however, could not care about one of gaming's biggest annual events. Way back when, we were fans of Call of Duty, Brothers in Arms and Medal of Honour. The historical focus appealed to us. This was when FPS still worked off the Doom format. There was shooting to be done, "keycards" to be found, missions to be completed and if that wasn't enough the couch co-op wasn't too bad. Things changed with this: Showing its' age now, astonishing how much things have changed since 2002. I remember the first time I played through this, my mind was blown. It was unlike any experience I had in gaming before, incredibly exciting and powerful especially given the basis of this level on real events of the D-day landing. On a second and third playthrough however, it i

So I did it, I got the full 1400GP for LA. Noire. And as such I'm gonna do a retrospective review of this game. First Up, the game is not that hard, in fact it is so easy that you can actually choose to skip all the action and driving sections. However from an achievement point of view; the game is long winded, and honestly some of the achievements feel very tacked on. For instance, one achievement is to drive all 95 vehicles in the game. Now, if you have ever seen the game you could identify, a taxi, a police car and a bus, but every other fucking vehicle in that game is either a) a car , or b) a convertible car . Trying to differentiate those cars was a bitch and racked me up some youtube time, and annoyingly one car actually does not spawn anywhere in the game, the only way to get it is during a case and you walk out into a parking lot, when you are not meant to... Another horrible tacked on achievement was the hidden packages one... Fifty Hidden packages all round the map, an

We buy EDGE. We read EDGE. We are EDGE readers. Randy Smith writes for EDGE. We've previously wished that Randy Smith didn't write for EDGE. However, we may have to renege our wishes because he has written a nice article about Why Dead Rising Stands Out From The Hord e. As with all good game writing h e has perfectly enshrined my thoughts into words, thoughts I didn't realise I had until I read this. I love Dead Rising (including the Wii port). Randy sums up why. It's that feeling of me against the Horde. The way I play the game changes from moment to moment. I might be trying to save survivors, I might without really noticing it, decide to eradicate all the zombies from a particular area. I might just stroll about the casino/mall checking out the environment but always with one eye on the nearest group of goons. I know what I want to do and most of the times there's hundreds of zombies in between me and my own personal objective. Things go well I move on to the ne

It starts! Batteries, check. Wii check. Component cable showing green? No. Sort of? Eventually fixed. We're in. To start press A+B. Why. Why not A or B? Save file has been created. Pretty interesting stuff so far. Choose name- Dink. Winner. Dink and Apony. Epic adventures. Water is not as good as Baldur's Gate (better than Wow though). Spirits. Talking about spirits. There's a man with a moon face. It's tough. We're in Hyrule again. We know that much. TRIVIA: The first horse you see doesn't have a penis. We were both looking for it too. Ugh Goat herding. Squirrels. Red colour's gone looks like Gears now. Games been paused to sort out the issue with the colour red. Tits! She's washed our penisless horse. Discussion about whether Dink is mute or not. Sex of Apony confirmed by tits. We have to play an instrument already. This is one of the things we hate about LoZ. On the upside we're riding a horse. Apony to be specific. We've herded some goats an

This is not the exciting exclusive announcement we announced in yesterday's announcement announcement . Last week we were grumble grumble grumble grots about the new Legend of Zelda game. This is not fitting of the World's Second Greatest Video Game Blog of all time as proved by SCIENCE . So we're going to man up and give it a shot. We're comfortable enough in our sexualities to admit when we may have been hasty or wrong. In fact, I might really enjoy throwing boomerangs or throwing those pathetic little bombs about? This evening, along with fellow LoZ hater and extremely occassional contributor Chuff_72 we've decided to give Legend of Zelda Twiglet Princess a go. It is only fair. Apparently, this lady is in it? Why doesn't she wear shoes? We might even live blog it. We say 'might' because we might not get past the first five minutes if Link insists on making that horrible noise he makes. Then that wouldn't make for a great blog at all.

PREVIEW: EXCLUSIVE: We've got an announcement to make: at some point in the future we will be announcing something. Maybe a countdown clock. Maybe we'll finish our TGAM top 50 ultimate TGAM top games best list of best games of all time ever , maybe we'll announce another gaming celebrity ? Stay tuned to our constant stream of announcement announcements through all of those social networking sites you are on!

We've mentioned REORC before. We weren't very nice about it. We were concerned that what makes the early Resi's great had been taken away from this game. It was looking like an essentially generic man-shooter affair with the occasional familiar B.O.W. Manshooter syndrome is the new Monster Syndrome , or so we thought. Well this trailer encourages us to commit milnerphagy (milphagy? We want to eat our hat, not a hatmaker although eating a hatmaker is more Resident Evil). It actually looks good! We're excited again! Less focus on generic shooty people with gasmasks and more about the city and the story capcom have told, retold, rereleased and retold and retold again. Then retold in HD. We feel for the Resikipedians as it looks like the canon is going to be slightly retweaked again. Yay! Resident Evil again. We used to be a blog about Resident Evil once.

Wii game Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is due out in less than a month and already, with some predictability, it is picking up some great reviews. The EDGE review goes as far as to say "How apt that this ultimate tale of hero-making should see Nintendo’s hardware become the console it was always meant to be." and ONM gives the game 98%. The editorial of this month's EDGE encapsulates how we feel about modern gaming. Oh how we've forgotten what "proper" gaming was with the seemingly unstoppable tide of "games" you "play" on your phone. This is gaming. That sense of wonder at a virtual world that is unique to the feeling that games give you. We should be happy. LoZ:SS is evidence (alongside Xenoblade Chronicles and the upcoming project rainfall releases) that there's life in the Wii yet and further proof that graphics do not necessarily make a great game. Much like the Gamecube, at a time when the Wii is increasingly referred to as a &

Play both of these at the same time. It works*. * DOES NOT WORK.

Help Me is an occasional series written about Ashley Graham, daughter to the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. OH SHIT I DUN ACCIDENTAL SEEN HER PANTIES. The internet is retarded. Stay away from it. It is nothing but mind rot and we think it may be spreading.

As you’ll have noticed, TGAM is yet to have brought you a review of Battlefield 3. This is because, unfortunately, we didn't ask EA to give us a copy in advance of release and have never ever made any contact with them so why would they. So instead, below* is a picture of a puppy waering a unicorn. Take that RPS . *Appears above if you are a homs.

I can't express in any phrase more succinct than this that it is my sincerest wish that what "it" may be is not the bodily life fluid of my friend, who wears green and goes on missions armed only with a knife who may or may not be developing a serious steroids problem.

Silent Hill, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil , Beyond Good and Evil, Zone of the Enders, Ico and SoTC and Halo Anniversary. All of these franchises have HD re-releases due out or out already. Although, we're hugely appreciative that older games are kept alive we're fans of being able to play the versions we already own. Important to note that aside from the original Halo it is impossible to play SH, DMC or RE on current generation platforms (okay so if you have an old PS3 or Wii you could still play some of these). But of course, HD re-releases are different from straight up re-releases but I can't shake the feeling that this kind of stuff is happening because the ideas are running out. Is this spate of HD re-releases a confession that this generation really wasn't much cop for innovation besides a graphical enhancement? Team TGAM is probably split on the issue but I'm of the opinion that technology has progressed faster than game designers and developers can keep up

Okay, so I know we've been a bit Pokemon heavy content-wise recently but tough. Deal with it. Today's topic is the Pokemon Global Link . For those of you who aren't Pokemon fans, the latest "proper" DS Pokemon games, Pokemon Black and Pokemon White, allow you to upload a pokemon to the Dream World. Then, via a PC you can go on shallow and limited adventures in the Dream World via the Global Link. The Dream World itself allows you to catch a bunch of Pokemon through playing mini games with them (fun but not very useful if you have a living dex like myself), grow some berries (sort of useful because there's very few other ways to get them in game) and make a bunch of virtual friends by visiting their houses in the Dream World. There are multiple areas of the Dream World to unlock by visiting it over and over again. On top of this there's a whole sims-esque aspect of upgrading your house and buying furniture with berries. Also, via the Global Link you can d

So I finished Resident Evil 4 on the 360. It was again great fun, The only places I really got stuck were the silly slide puzzles, the Graphics are great, and all the gameplay was back there, enjoyable as ever. I played Resident Evil 4 originally on the Gamecube, then again on the PS2 with all the extras, I then tried the PC version, and of course the stupidly easy Wii version. So I have played it a bit too much. The 360 version remains faithful in all ways to the original sight sounds and scares. The only problem was I had done it 'all' before. Unfortunately there is 2 achievements on the 360 version I will not get. And that is playing it through on professional version, because I just cant be bothered, been there done that, and annoyingly, remaining faithful to the original, you have to play through normal difficulty before unlocking the professional difficulty. Secondly, is gaining all the bottlecaps for the shooting gallery, I spent ages on the PS2 version getting

Like listening to music? Stuck for suggestions? HG101 ran a poll and has come up with this massive list . Okay, so 1000 might be too many and yes, the list reads more like a snooty gamer's list of musics from those games that are darlings to the hardcore. Far too much music from games beginning with Chrono . Waaay too much Castlevania , Mega Man, Persona and Final Fantasy. But a valiant effort. I've spent the last few days going through the list and downloading some songs I'd forgotten or never heard of. Recently EDGE's Steven Poole bemoaned the lack of decent video game tracks these days. I don't know if there are less great tracks these days or that gamers of my generation just don't play games as much as we used to so there is less time for these songs to worm their way into our heads. I definitely have a soft spot for mega drive/ SNES era music and part of the reason for enjoying video game music (I almost exclusively listen to VGM or VGM remixes) is

Back once again with the renegade master D4 damage. Power to the people. Omastar is back in the house but it is nearly Autumn and he is still rocking HIS SUMMER WARDROBE. Not cool dude. Yeah, like that ever solved anything Archeops? Jeez.

Pokemon White Pokedex. SEEN 642 OBTAINED 640 Probably won't mean a lot to most people. The translation is, I've spent a shit load of time on this game and I've only got 8 more Pokemon left to get*, five of which have never been made available in Europe. I spent a long time yesterday trying to get two more. Each generation of Pokemon games is normally released in two editions (possibly with a third remake). Red and Blue, Gold and Silver, Ruby and Sapphire, Diamond and Pearl and Black and White. The "genius" move is that some Pokemon are only available on one version and not the other requiring players to trade with each other or failing that buying both copies of the game to ahem, catch 'em all. In the DS iterations of the games, trading has been made much easier with the Global Trade Station. You don't have to physically meet up with another player, you can go online and leave a Pokemon of your choice on the GTS, specify what you want in return and nine ti

No sooner than I throw a wobbly about the underused Nintendo Channel then they go and upload some half decent videos. This week is a video about Mario Kart 7, confirming that Metal Mario and Lakitu will be two new playable characters to the series. Also, unlike most tracks the WuHu Island course won't be a three lap course, instead the race will take place as one long lap across the island. Now, we're all for change but we can't help but be disappointed by the announcement of these two new characters. Firstly, in between Mario, Luigi, Waluigi, Wario, Baby Mario and Baby Luigi, we would have expected a bit more originality in character choice than yet another Mario. Secondly, if the characters from MKWii are returning too Lakitu adds to the already koopalicious choices of koopa trooper, dry bones, Bowser and Dry Bowser. With Mario Kart hopefully boosting sales of the 3DS we were secretely hoping that Nintendo would shake up the series. Perhaps by including characters from

Chuff_72 is an occasional correspondent who has been even more (or is that less) occasional in recent years because, well, here's his story. Chuff_72 used to be a proper gamer. He used to run a clan . He has an impressive collection of games, particularly an amazing collection from the PlayStation era. Then, as happens to us all, life happened. A job, a girlfriend (who does not tolerate gaming on the family TV) and a mortgage meant that game time just disappeared. Gaming was reserved for rare geekends, two filthy days holed up with other men, geeking out on video games, CCG and movies. Then one of the geeks died. And one moved to America. And now we meet maybe three times a year. A sorry existence for Chuff with but a fingernail hold into the world of gaming. Then the Xbox 360 broke. Now his only window into gaming is finding games to play on the iphone on the daily commute. We're informed that mobile games are the future, well here's a perspective from someone who