That guy's a Maniac...

Fuck all y'all bitches, be sitting up on yo azerothes, I be in Pallet all up in you mommas ass singin that I be a master... catchin' em all Details released for WoWs Pet battles. And on first perusal, its really fucking pokemony, similar stats and all, though rather than 4 moves it's 3 moves, hell even some of the moves are English pokemon move names. It seems just enough similarities to dodge a law suit. Most of the details are over here Also, do they have the EV system ? DO THEY? if not imma flip this shit upside! There doesn't seem to be a levelling system, or indeed mechanics much beyond the fighting system , I'm sure there will be rewards for winning, like cheevos, cosmetic armours and such. Meh, Love and Omastar used Blizzard, Richie X

With, it seems, the whole games industry writing off the Wii in preparation for the Wii-U, now is a great time to snap up some of the quirkier releases on the platform which are currently selling for ridiculously cheap prices. Recently we've picked up Cursed Mountain, Deadly Creatures, Metroid: Other M, Disaster Day of Crisis and Madworld for less than £16 (for all of them). Individually they are a bit quirky but they represent a time and a platform with more interesting ideas than current HD console gaming which seems stuck in a bit of a rut with a a severe case of sequelitis. Trauma Center: Second Opinion is one we snapped up for a fiver a while ago and we've only just got around to playing it. We played Trauma Center/re: Under The Knife, the one and only popular medical 'em up on the DS. It was fun, if not a bit tough and also challenging. The Wii version, Trauma Center/re: Second Opinion is pretty much exactly the same game albeit with a name change and with the a...

Occasionally we stub out our crack pipe (hard but do-able), log off the forums and give up our angry Internet man jig to don a smocking jacket , pour ourselves a Malibu and read a book like in the olden times. This weekend we donned three smoking jackets, poured ourselves three Malibus and finished reading three books. Our English teacher will be so happy with us.  First up is Jacked The Unauthorised Behind-The-Scenes Story of Grand Theft Auto which makes us feel ignorant about the history of video games in the same way that Replay A History of Video Games highlights how ignorant many games 'journalists' are . Yeah we loved Lemmings and knew that DMA made GTA but we didn't know that they were Scottish. Shame on us. The book is a good read. The first thing it made us do is want to play GTA again. Five hours later we picked the book up again and cringed over how gushy Kushner can be sometimes. But I guess that's the deal when you are writing an unofficial biograp...

Waaay back in 2007 we interviewed the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 . Well, we've kept in touch since and although he now spends most of his time caring for sick marine iguanas at a the Nemesis Iguana Sanctuary we've managed to catch an interview with him about the reprisal of his, perhaps best known role, in the Nemesis Mode DLC for the astonishingly awful cover based shooter based Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City . TGAM lazy fictional cephalopod, Omastar is finally back from a tour of the Unova region and so attempts to earn his keep by catching up with everybody's favourite biological weapon.  OMASTAR: Star oma, omastar. Star oma? Oma oma? Nemesis: S.T.A.R.S! O: Oma oma star omastar oma omastar, star oma star oma star oma omastar? N: S.T.A.R.S! O: Oma, oma? N: S.T.A.R.S O: Oma? N: S.T.A.R.S! O: Star? N: S.T.A.R.S! O:Oma? N: S.T.A.R.S! O: Star? N: Is this guy for real? All he says is the same three words over and over again? I'm a seriou...

Although obviously we'd be callous to not empathise with friends and strangers whose lives will be disrupted by whatever ends up happening with GAME group's stores, the company only has itself to blame. Of course, only now is everyone jumping on the GAME bandwagon. It isn't a charity. It is supposed to be a commercial business. It hasn't been serving PC gamers (a massive chunk of the market) for quite a long time and it hasn't been serving us for almost as long. Our gaming tastes aren't niche but we don't tend to go for the BIG AAA releases and as such GAME hasn't been catering for us. Here's a summary of our whinging over the years about GAME. Hopefully, with whatever succeeds it we won't have call to type up our frustrations and send them into the ether to be ignored by all. In June 2009, GAME performed poorly on our store survey when we used to write for that other site occasionally. In February 2010, we wrote to Konami abou...

This time from should-know-better David Braben. EDGE 'have' the story Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V from Gamasutra. Every now and then someone from the games industry will raise their head above the parapet and blame pre-owned games for their own poor sales without a shred of evidence to back it up. Here's choice quote from Braben on why pre-owned is killing single player games: I mean, the idea of a game selling out used to be a good thing, but nowadays, those people who buy it on day one may well finish it and return it. And of course, marketeers not marketing games after launch week really helps too right? Oh and the so called gaming press asymmetrically hyping a game up to launch then dropping coverage as if the game never existed once it is actually out has nothing to do with it? Perhaps devs should make a game that last longer than a day or even games that people might want to keep? Presumably, Braben has data for how pre-owned has adversely affected Frontier Developments...

So we love video game music. Not all of it, but when it is good we'll take it over millionaires crooning about getting their arse out or falling in love any day. It gets into our mind. So (bear with me) there's an advert on TV for the perfume Opium which has been on the idiot box quite a lot recently. I keep seeing it and it reminded me of a game. In particular this ad at 20 seconds.   Eventually, it came to me! It's from the Notre Dame theme from Timesplitters 2, composed of course by Graemem Norgate, one of the few men we'd happily marry without even meeting (we swooned when he wrote to us ). The relevant bit is in the vid DOWN HERE at 1:31:   And of course, both of these were 'inspired by' a certain Mr Mozart, this vid at 2:35.   Here's the handy URLs to skip the rest and straight to the bit I'm on about should you wish you music cretin Opium , Splitters , Mozart . That's it. Just saying. Jeez. End of the music lesson. Now. Fuck o...

So that's that busted then. Not wishing for the 11 or so hours we spent on the game to be completely wasted we thought we'd fire our thoughts about the game into the ether because, you know, there are millions of people out there wanting to read a two year late review of Metroid: Other M . Its those millions that keep us going. Well for those of you who made it to this bit, we've got some exclusive behind the scenes stuff right here where we talk about our feelings and stuff. We're letting you see our soft squishy innards rather than the darksteel exterior of our shared internet persona. We find ourselves as the unlikeliest of Nintendo fans. If you could turn, turn back the hands of time to the PS2 days we'd happily bet money on the fact that we wouldn't (well I wouldn't) be playing a Nintendo home console pretty much exclusively. See there's nothing wrong with Mario, with perhaps the exception that almost everything has a smiley face and eyes, bu...

So around the start of February there was as a bunch of releases I was getting hyped* up about but now... a few weeks later... I couldn't care less. Game sites seem to have ignored their release even happened. No news except meta-reviews with the odd smattering of DLC rumours. I mean I know that games are considered nothing more than interactive entertainment mediums, akin to movies, but with more button presses (dependant on DVD extras). But I'm a little sad that for the first time, I have not given into hype, and I seem nonchalant about the whole thing. Maybe I didn't want FFXIII-2 or Soul Calibur V? Maybe, games are not worth the hype. Maybe the whole system is wrong! rant... should have continuous promotion... ramble... accessibility to all games ever made... rant... But that won't change, this is the machine we all made, hyped up media bombs, based on demographics and trends. Defining people by terms and desirability to ...

We've been playing through Metroid: Other M and although initially we weren't grabbed by it it has grown on us although it isn't without it's flaws. We're quite near the end now we can feel it! BONUS! Little Navis (Pows) almost like Navi from the Legend of Zelda. They don't have two wings like the proper Navi and they're yellow. Easter egg? Homogenous design? Who knows/cares?

I mean. What were we expecting? Finally a games award ceremony that did games proud? An awards ceremony without cringey moments? We should know by now to temper our expectations. Highlights: Notch gave an excellent speech that at least gave the impression somebody at the ceremony actually knew about games. The début games category was strong. Modern Warfare 3 not picking up any awards.  Also, at some points there were some attractive ladies on stage (and the Saturdays). Lowlights: Little Big Planet 2 not only getting nominated but winning three awards! Dara 'O' Breen or whatever his name is misgauging quite a few jokes by either being too in-the-know or too off-the-peg-stereotypes. About six games getting nominated for most of the awards. Poor categories as ever. Proper Z-list celebrities presenting awards, at least poorly known games industry folk look liked they knew why they were there and what was going on. Rare people for being too a) American b) Arrog...

Remember the Nintendo Wii? It has a channel called the Mii Contest Channel where every now and then Wii owners, should they choose of their own free will, can create Miis to match a theme and vote on the submitted Miis. Many of you may have resigned the Wii to gathering dust but there are still a fair few people who obviously spend a lot of time just creating new Miis. We've been astonished at the diversity of creations from a fairly accurate Lady Gaga through to Wookies, Simpsons characters, Aliens, Robots and even the Mona Lisa a Mona Lisa faced woman. Back to the contests, once a new competition is announced either due to stark homology or a severe lack of creativity, creations tend to all look alike and fit within certain cultural tropes. Any competitions about science or intelligent ends up with hundreds of Einstein Miis (white shirts obligatory) being submitted. Competitions about righteousness or grace, expect Princesses (white or pink shirts). Anything to do wit...

We've only been playing Xenoblade Chronicles pretty much exclusively recently. Life gets in the way and the game that is perhaps best served in a long glass and supped over the course of a long evening is instead consumed like downing a can of red bull on the tube in the morning whilst tyring to read a newspaper with some sweaty office twat with his elbow in your balls. We also happen to be completionists so instead of skipping most of the optional quests that realistically wouldn't impact our game bar the loss of some EXP and the odd bit off gear, we literally can't skip a single one. WE PAID GOOD MONEY FOR THIS GAME WE'LL EXPERIENCE ALL OF IT. So with this background to consumption, we're finding playing Xenoblade Chronicles slipping from a fun game to a bit of a grind. Desperate to progress the story we keep spotting new NPC quests. You see the game has a day night cycle and the NPCs don't stand around like WoW pricks just giving you out quests. This ...

...or should I rephrase that... Yet another shallow capcom e-sports game, with little to no extra conten,t bar choosing a fighter and fighting. Yes I know the previous 2D incarnations were nothing more than that. But they will gay it up with no secret characters or at least no challenge to unlock them, of course with big announcements of all of them so there is no surprise. But for the love of god add some extra modes in, a Story mode at the very least! Though on the upside, Morrigans 3D bouncing boobs and cameltoe, woop! Love and why not Killer instinct vs Darkstalkers, Richie X

We played Ghost Trick on the DS! For so long we've gotten used to the DS being the machine that plays Pokemon we almost completely forgot it plays other excellent games. Remember how we used to be a blog about Resident Evil (hence the name That guy's a maniac)? Last week we looked at a game with zombies in it. Today we're looking at a Capcom game so that pretty much means we're back on track as per our strategic vision . It totally counts.  So what about this game then? Well it is over a year old so we're probably the last people on Earth to play it. Others reviewed it and better than we will. Read those reviews. We enjoyed it. It was fun and aaargh. We can't write this long without a numbered list. Here's a numbered list of things we liked about Ghost Trick: Unusually, for Capcom the save system isn't totally fucked. So far there's no checkpoints just before a long unskippable cutscene or a ridiculously difficult difficulty spike(y).  B...

See those trophies up there? They are the latest three I've managed to hunt down in Super Smash Brothers Brawl. That takes my total up to 538 out of 544, with three more to unlock from challenges (Boss Battles Intense, Boss Battles Very Hard and Collect All Stickers), two more to get from the Subspace Emissary  which is no easy task (you have a stupidly short time to get Meta Ridley) and one (Capsule) which just hasn't turned up randomly yet. By far the one we're most proud of grabbing is Tabuu's normal trophy (above on the left) which we found a particularly onerous task and one our right thumb will need a few days to recover from.  The Subspace Emissary mode in Super Smash Brothers Brawl (essentially the game's story mode) got mixed write-ups in reviews but we're already up to 42 hours just playing through the story a number of times. Not too shabby considering it is somewhat an optional mode.  We've also got 22 stickers left to collect as well....

The Ironman Challenge I'm not keen on following WoW nowadays, but this challenge is interesting. Its essentially a community of WoW players who have created a personal challenge to make the game, well... Challenging. WoW nowadays is very easy. There is far too many quests, there are items to increase how fast you can level, you can instantly transport to dungeons with randoms etc etc.  For a while now I always wanted a Diablo like Hardcore version of WoW, you die... you are Dead. and it seems so do others a proper Solo challenge! So should I, make: That Guy's an Ironmaniac? If you care suggest Class/Race combos for me. Love and bits of metal in your heart, Richie X

If you are a game-o-phile and allergic to metaphorical feathers you will have no doubt got some snuffles last week as everyone and their dog (on our feedreader) got their tits in a twizzle about Jennifer Helper and comments taken out of context about some game called Mass Effect. An inoffensive summary is here . It is the kind of news that bloggers love to write about. It gives them a chance to play the White Knight, pass-off a comment about how horrible Xbox Live is and then fire off some unhelpful suggestions about how the gaming community at large should combat the par for the course racist, misogynist, etcist environment in games and on the internet at large (we should confront them for it and report them to Microsoft is a strategy that hasn't worked up until now).  So what is this all about then? Jennifer Helper who didn't write Mass Effect may or may not have said words to the effect that combat should be skippable in games. Cue- the "it is a vocal minority ...