That guy's a Maniac...

ZOMG how can the mega corporate beast that is EA with all its staff and testers and managers and everything all come together to produce an underwhelmingly underfinished game that can only be played online? Well dear reader you gotta break it down. and look at it from the stand point of a corporate machine: Point 1. The always online aspect was an immovable benchmark for EA and the Maxis games. The growing trend in the previous sim games was online connectability with growing focus on the origin community and microtransactions i.e. buying outfits and furniture in the Sims 3. To set a standard for "always online" games creates benefits that are at minimum two-fold: all future games will be online and monitored, thus less piracy and less association with the internet swearword "DRM", and secondly to generate a sim-community for milking cash-cow games with standardised sign-up accounts across all games. Point 2. The quality and technicality of the online experi...

We love Animal Crossing. Especially the festival days but no day is better than a Beached Samus day!  Happy days!

So let's thank the new Tomb Raider  for paving the way for more games with female protagonists in them. Before the new Tomb Raider there weren't any games with female protagonists in them at all*. This exciting new trend means equality for all! * Except Koudelka, Urban Chaos, Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider 2, Tomb Raider 3, TOmb Raider Chronicles, TOmb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider the not very good one, Tomb Raider the remake of the first one, Tomb Raider LEgend, TOmb Raider Underworld, Resident Evil, Resident Evil Director's Cut, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil the GC remake, Resident Evil the Wiimake of the Gamecube remake, Parasite Eve, Mirror's Edge, Heavenly Sword, Haunting Ground, Silent Hill 3, Silent Hill 3 HD, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Stir of Echoes, Metroid Prime 3: Optimus Prime, DIno Crisis, Dino Crisis 2, Metroid, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, THOSE OTHER METROIDS, Beyond Good and Evil, Daikatana, Perfect Dark, Enslaved (sort of), Sybe...

The media's gone a bit backward recently. With everyone now able to find the news that interests online and at their convenience they've become a desperate institution languidly reporting what Z-list celebrities are saying about other Z-list celebrities on twitter or making a meal out of stories that real world people just don't care for. Horse meat is just a labelling issue. I've not met a single person so outraged that they demand constant news updates about it. Now that Queenie's got a sniffle we hope she doesn't die. Not because we're a fan of her or anything but because we can't face the traditional media brownout as they run footage of the queen doddering about and waving on repeat. I can already see the faux-outrage at the distasteful jokes about the Queen's demise on twitter.   Fortunately, we've got a reporter embedded in the roller coaster virtual world of Xenoblade Chronicles and she's full of much more interesting news HOT O...

Along with the rest of the world, the potential of Scribblenauts blew our tiny little minds. Unfortunately, the first game had some control issues and we never picked up the second one. However, we spotted a copy of Super Scribblenauts new for less than the price of a pint. This must be the long tail effect then yeah? a 91% price cut over two years is how the games industry maintains healthy profits beyond launch week. Surely. That's why the games industry seems to be weathering the recession and why development companies aren't shutting down left right and centre. Right? Moronic business models aside, it benefits us well and we finally got around to the wonderful world of words. Why isn't this game in every classroom? Why isn't the media full of positive stories of gamers expanding their vocabulary through playing this lovely little game? We're almost done with the challenges in the game and, like everyone who reviewed it back in 2010, Super Scribbl...

So I just thousanded FFXIII-2. I had been apprehensive about this title as FFXIII was a little too long winded, especially at endgame, specifically because the final few achievements required 100+ hours and creating a spreadsheet to complete. FFXIII-2 however was a bit more fun to play. I took the plunge over the holidays as it was £9 brand new. The Good: A really fun storyline, jumping through different time periods, seeing how the events of FFXIII turned out and where they went.  An oddly pokemon type mechanic where you recruit and level monsters throughout time. Though some of the areas are reused from FFXIII it doesnt feel like it, as they have been redone with different time-period themes. Feels like a classic Sqeenix game, A touch of final fantasy mixed with Chrono trigger but with a sleek new façade.  The multiple "paradox" endings, where you can replay certain events and change their outcome. The Bad: An overly teenage angsty theme; the...

We've mentioned before how we're slaves to progressing our Backloggery  scanning the glut of games that we own but haven't beaten, let alone mastered. But we can't be alone in looking at 'the collection' and thinking "there's nothing to play". New games keep coming along and tempting us with their sexy new concepts, big graphics and face shooting shenanigans. But we've still got thousands of hours of untapped gameplay that won't cost us a penny.  However, some of those games we'll probably never finish. take Okami for example. Released over 15,000 times, Okami is a beautiful game. Virtually every screen (outside of the menus) could, nay should be printed and adorned on all the surfaces of abodes. But there's a problem. It's too big! Back in the day, when we had hundreds of hours to dedicate to games, this wouldn't have been a problem but these days it is literally too big to play. Here's how my last couple ...