That guy's a Maniac...

So I fucking bought San Andreas... Again. (Currently owned: PS2, Steam, Windows Phone, now 360) It was really just on a whim, £2.99 on XBox Live seemed well worth a punt. I had a dick-about with the iOS/Windows Phone version and as cool as it is to have San Andreas in your "pocket" the controls are just wank. Nobody likes a fake dual analogue stick game. But the 360 version is worth it. Its prettier than 10 years ago, it now has achievements, it actually stands the test of time! Downside is after playing the iOS version I am very aware that this is the port of the iOS version and now a newly reconditioned version, there are obvious giveaways with the controls. And it crashed a couple of times. Love and Hot Coffee, Richie

A beautiful bit of "16-bit" work. The whole thing is just the epitome of the crazy Japanese pixel are you come to expect from the mid 90's You don't see shit like this nowadays, no siree, Its all fucking hyper real sci-fi men with brown hair. Where's the fantasy where is the off-the-wall utter madness you used to see in games. Even the fucking F2P Monstrosities with cartoon graphics still settle into the old D&D tropes. Love and Fuck you, I'm old, I get it, Richie X

#GamerGate continues to tear the gaming community apart. Brothers and sisters fight. But there's a shining light. Writing letters to end the hate, harassment and nastiness that haunts our hobby. Theoretical game developers and community managers wrote their letter  and gamers have their petition  but as a community, video game journalists have not yet spoken out as a group. Until next week that is. An anonymous source who wants to remain anonymous sent us this letter which will be going out next week.  Dear Gamers (R.I.P) Please stop the hate. The only thing we have is the power of our opinion on games and gaming related things and if you don't like that then we don't get paid. Well a lot of us don't get properly paid in the first place. In fact being a games journalist sucks. We should really do something to improve our plight. Anyways. If games journalists stop writing are we not just gamers? Please stop the hate. Signed 7 of 9 Albert Brooks Andre...

Here! You know Kotaku right, in between all their "journalism" they do crap about Japanese Culture. Like stuff about food shaped like an obscure animal from the most talked about cult dating sim from that week. Or when they talk about their favorite Anime from this season and genuinely discuss the quality of the "boing" noise that the overly endowed female character's boobs make when they bounce/jiggle/squish. Well here is our favorite bit of Japanese culture: Babymetal! They are hitting western shores now. I'm too old now for Dubstep and following Radio 1. But this I can get behind. Be warned Babymetal, TGAM may just go Full Stalker on this one. Love and KAWAIIIIIIIIIII, Richie X

With the gaming community tearing itself asunder, the developers, gamers and gamers who get paid to write about games turning on each other like cornered animals (online of course, nothing is happening in real life) this conflict between brother and sister is spilling over into game worlds too. Our in-game correspondent,Alcamoth Citizen reporting from Xenoblade Chronicles has this to say about the burning issue: 'Why isn't anyone excited about Jigglypuff being potentially leaked for Super Smash Brothers?'. So there we have it. If only other game journalists took this news quite as seriously.

This last couple of weeks there's been a storm in a teacup that seems to have culminated in the gaming community doing a sea cucumber and eviscerating itself, turning itself inside out and ejecting all it's internal organs as a defense mechanism. You can follow the 'story' on the social media under the hashtag GamerGate. We won't go into the specifics of how this kicked off because the spark that lit the part of the fire we're interested in is sort of irrelevant. The short version is that some pretty strong evidence has come to light reminding us once again of the rampant cronyism and amateurism within games journalism. The funny thing is that what may or may not have happened to kick this off is almost completely by the by. In between the feminists, the white knights, the trolls, the griefers, the journalists and the developers all rallying to four or five different calls and fighting with each other, some are using the #GamerGate  to call for clearer transpar...

Recently I was gifted a PlayStation 3 and a fairly comprehensive catalogue of games which is great for two reasons. Firstly, free games! Secondly by being gifted one it allows me to maintain that the PlayStation 3 never reached a critical mass of games for my tastes that warranted a purchase of the (still) overpriced console. One of the games that was on the shortlist that never reached critical mass was Valkyria Chronicles.  Released in 2008 to generally positive reviews, Valkyria Chronicles is a mix of all the best bits from Advance Wars , Battalion Wars and quirky PlayStation 2 game Ring of Red . It's a 3D turn based strategy game which is a lot of fun with a beautiful art style. Playing games slightly time shifted from the climate in which they were released is interesting. Although I can see the appeal of VC when it came out, having played and loved Fire Emblem: Awakening last year, VC is probably lower in my estimations as there are some great mechanics which shou...

This week, Omastar gets his tentacles in a twist about that OTHER Omastar, in particular the lucrative merchandise deals and TV spots.  Fucking religion.

You know what,  I dislike the Dead or Alive Series: Way back in the heady days of 2010 back when we cared about the Chilean Miners and Wikileaks . I wrote a blogpost about a game I played back in the heady days of 2006 when we make crass Steve Irwin jokes and the danish drew some cartoons. And frankly I have not played a Dead or Alive game since then, the combat is clunky, random and just plain frustrating! UNTIL NOW!! They have bath and bedtime DLC!!! A fighting game in PJs and Towels. I'd pay money for that. Love and Remember when phones didn't have touchscreen? Richie X

On this day, July 24th 1998 The S.T.A.R.S. team first investigated the mansion... You gotta fucking love that opening. Real people... Not mo-capped. Got i miss those heady days of the PS1. Sniffle. Love and dont open THAT door, Richie X

Earlier this year, life-sim lite, Tomodachi Life came out for the Nintendo 3DS. Unfortunately 90% of the coverage from the red top gaming sites exclusively focused on Nintendo's controversial decision to exclude same-sex relationships in the game. In itself that decision rightly deserves highlighting but as ever, the proper journalism parodying gaming press reported nothing but this, resulting in a lot of coverage that failed to explain what a ' Tomodachi Life ' was in the first place. I don't know if Nintendo were happier to receive any coverage at all or unhappier that it was all negative. Interesting, especially given how the press fall over themselves to create content every time a GTA or Saint's Row comes out, with only a handful of the more thoughtful hacks sparing a sentence or two for the inherent misogyny, sexism and racism that those games portray (hastily followed by hand waivey 'but it's alright cos it's GTA isn't it?'). Anyway, tur...

The above video shows all that is glorious about Project X Zone. Firstly you have Xenosagas KOS-MOS and T-ELOS (the scantily clad curvaceous androids) teaming up with Tekken's suicidal Pink-haired android Alisa which already is a crazy mind-blowing cross universe groin explosion. Just skip to 40 seconds in. Love and Jiggles, Richie X

Sorry reader, the 3DS onslaught continues. Whist this gen struggles to find its feet and to distinguish itself enough from last generation, Nintendo's little handheld is just hitting it out of the park and Richie and I are both exclusively playing 3DS games (well excluding a dabble with Diablo 3 and Hearthstone ). I picked up LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins ( LCU:TCB ) , the correct position of the colons in the title completely elude me. I'm a pretty big LEGO fan (I guess you could say I was an AFOL ) and both Richie and I have picked up most of Traveller's Tales LEGO games over the years, enjoying the gentle but colourfully fun action and the official license tie-ins. By all accounts LCU:TCB is inferior to the Wii-U original but it's fun enough nonetheless. Think, a sand box city with a smidgen of a 'story mode' but by far the thrust and fun of the game comes from finding, collecting, riding, unlocking and buying a cornucopia of widgets, MacGuf...

Right, fine I'm caving. After all this drama, outrage, scandal and out of court settlements. I'm just going to give you guys what you want. And that is apparently another half hardhearted incite into yet another 3DS game. Eat it up chumps. Right so. Tales of the Abyss, a wonderful little gem, a PS2 cult-classic remake for the 3DS.  I jumped on this title as I was a huge fan of Tales of Vesperia on the 360. Its an expansive story driven RPG, and a fantastic port at that too! However! That is a double edged sword... Its a port it's really not meant to be a pick up and play title I was enjoying it on the commute until the story progressed to... Dungeon number 1, which left me with little to no save points. I mean that is fine for a PS2 title, sitting there 15 years ago in front of a TV, but the game pushes you to go through a dungeon. Which means you either just have to close the DS and hope that the batteries don't run out, or time how far you get into the dungeon ...

Warning! more 3DS content below! Whilst Cunzy1_1 witters away his hours on the non-game, Tomodachi Life, forever hoping that the next patch update will allow same-sex marriage. I took a punt on Project X Zone! It's on sale in the Nintendo shop right now! And honestly it's fantastic. The only reason I had not purchased it by now was the Demo. The Demo was shit. It showcased some of the art styles, bit did not introduce the player to the concept of the game. I got the impression it was a shallow but pretty button mashy title. Totally not! The game is mental! It has a really loose story about why Characters from so may different IPs are there, something about tears in reality, but you just dont care, it's fun as it is to just have Streetfighter characters in a RPG setting but when they are interacting with the likes of Virtua Fighter and Tekken characters, It's just so fun! The game has a pseudo-strategy element, it does not punish you badly for mis...

The brick path was laid out before me. The sky hung above me, empty save for one cloud, the air was charged with tension; an electric blue.  Behind me the proud outline of a hill, distant and calm. I ran forward. I ran with determination, as I ran past some bushes I noticed a strange floating square, golden and flashing with an inscription. But before I could investigate further, a creature came ambling towards me, as big as a man, round and with a terrifying stare. Instinctively I leapt into the air, soaring as high as I could, then came crashing down onto the creatures head, flattening it. My foe dispatched, I decided to investigate the floating golden block, but yet there appeared to be more squares. Throwing myself into the air again, I raised my fist and punched the block. The block went dead, turning into a dulled brown, however as a I landed I realised, through whatever trickery, I now had a coin!  Venturing forth with my new found power, I slammed into the next gold...

Well there you go, after a few months of Constantly looking for streetpasses, Streetpass Quest (and 2) is complete, all items obtained, i never need to rescue the King and his offspring again. I am nether elated or deflated about this. I now need to find something else to occupy my time for 3 minutes on a commute. The streetpass games are not games, they are at best glorified puzzle games with an evil addictive core to make you a completionist. I'm not sad Streetpass Quest is out my life, I'm not even that excited I completed it. Well, there you go... Love and indifference, Richie X

Hey sports fans. Long time no see. The reason why I've been absent from these pages leaving Richie to hold the fort since January is because I got burnt out by video games. This probably happens to most gamers every now and then but since January this year, I've just become so frustrated with games and the games industry I pretty much cut them out of my life for a while.  I haven't stopped playing them. At the moment the magical trilogy of Resident Evil Revelations, Pokemon Y and Fire Emblem: Awakening in my 3DS keep me ticking along but my perception of what the video game journalists and industry would consider, I'm not really playing games. Those games are old. Nobody is talking about them still. Why play those? Why not shell out a still-ridiculous amount of money for a new console that it appears nobody wants and nobody seems to know what to with.  I get a bit obsessive about things and most frequently, video games is one of those things I obsess about. I...

Right so, blizzard have brought out a card game thing. A. Card. Game. Not a massive expansive world, not a spin-off to Starcraft, not a rotational life cycle DoTA clone... A card game. Aaaand, its good, so fucking good! It shouldn't be, but it is. Right now its a PC game, again, it shouldn't be, but it is. Its a Mobile game that was beta'd on PC but just works great. I remember playing the card games like Pokemon Card game on the Gameboy Colour and even the old Yu-Gi-Oh! Power of Chaos PC games. And see its all its not about the mechanics of the game, which I will not bore you with, or the tie in to the WoW franchise; Its that the game is so beautifully polished and wonderfully balanced. All of the characters are unique and offer a different experience in play. The other impressive part is its free, entirely free. Well... Not really free, I mean it does give you the option to buy packs of cards which is very enticing because that is the only way to get new cards i...

Alright troops! ohmygotlookapostaboutagamethatisnota3DStitle. Its back, FFXIII in its final (ha) form. Dropping the party based shenanigans, the game is all about controlling just Lightning, who is getting down, dirty and quite sexy with the badguys/monsters/Chocobos at the end of time. So this is the third installment of the FFXIII "Trilogy"... And well in my opinion a welcome addition the FFXIII mechanics have been refined, reinvented and remain familiar yet different. It strikes a wonderful balance and achieves something very few games sequels can do: it doesn't feel like you are starting off from scratch again, especially since you have over leveled your teams from the previous games. Lightning returns is odd, it a beautiful game and in this iteration you have a million costume options and all of them can be customized. I swear I have spent more of my time in-game pissing about in menus than running about in the over-world! The story has the usual ...

Oh look at that, what are we doing now? ANOTHER commentary on a 3DS game... Yeah Yeah we know, its a dying system with jumped up mobile games (with shittier Graphics) we PROMISE we'll do something on a proper system soon! But for now: shut up and shove this in your eyeholes, dicklips. Well well, Richie look at that, what the fuck are you trying to pull? Not only are you talking about yet another 3DS game but you are talking about one of those "download only" ones from months ago. Yeah well... Its fucking cheap on the eShop, deal with it, if you have a problem that... then seriously dude, take a long hard look at your life and the things that are important to you, reflect for a while on your priorities, because frankly its our fucking blog, and we do what the fuck we want! We have been resident in this little corner of the internet for seven years, we write pure gold, maybe it doesn't make sense to you now. But some day it will, don't think we don't hav...