That guy's a Maniac...

Acid rounds is a semi-regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Richie: Sunday is the day of God, apparently it was made his day cuz he had just churned out a 6 day week, and decided he was gonna rest on his laurels. Every week we do the same, except instead of resting on our laurels we brag about games we have beasted from start to finish, Last week I went off on one about Oblivion this week Cunzers tells us about yet another spaceship game ! So What's this one about? Cunzy1 1: Starlink: Battle for Atlas is an interesting mix, it's part space game, part planetary exploration and part RTS with a more-complex-than-it-needs-to-be toys to life element. Pilots, ships, wings and weapons can either be changed on the fly by plugging and swapping around physical parts or used to unlock parts and pilots for time limited use in digital/handheld mode. The story in Starlink won't be threatening narrative titans of Sci-Fi, Starlink is a b...

Having historically shown but a half-arsed interest in video game development and support to date it's interesting to see that both Google and Apple have recently announced half-arsed plans to continue. In the Red Corner we have Google Stadia. A website which...YouTubers...terraflops at 60 fps which is technically very impressive. In the Blue Corner Apple have announced Apple Arcade which will...games...apps... so expect to see that in coffee shops all over the world! The pixellated elephant in the room however is WHAT VIDEO GAMES ARE WE ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT? The administrators and system designers have spent so long on the beanbags in the flexible working open plan offices, they forgot to tell us the key part of these boring projects. Fortunately, dear readers, we have the ultimate inside source, it's Alcamoth Citizen reporting from inside Xenoblade Chronicles and she has EXCLUSIVE news on the games to share. This, her first report from the stream cloud piss:   ...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Richie: So! What trope has bested you this time! Cunzy1 1: Super Mario Brothers 3. Level 3-3. You're having a good time with your brother Luigi fighting the Koopalings and making progress then this level happens and it gets real. It gets brutal. Boss Bass just outright murks you. It's not so much the being swallowed by a big fish thing it's just the sheer bluntless of it. You're there one minute, fish boy jumps, open gobbed then. Gone. I want to remove Boss Bass from gaming so I can sleep at night without waking up bolting upright and screaming because I thought I'd been swallowed out of fucking existence. Richie: Just dodge him/...

With the advent of the  Nindies  and the recent  Konami re-releases , over the past few weeks the term Metroidvania has been slung about a lot at me. While this has not really given me a desire to play either Castlevania or Metroid, is has made me wanna play their estranged cousin - Turrican on the SNES:  I decided to pick up the SNES version of Turrican and burn through that, though... my first fond memories and experience of Turrican was on the Commodore 64: On the C64 the game was a different beast, for starters it was just "Turrican", not "Super Turrican". Note:And just to add further confusion to the whole thing, there was also a "Super Turrican" on the NES, which was a mix of Turrican and Turrican 2... Phew... Turrican on the C64, or the original Turrican had vast expansive levels and despite Turrican being referred to as a "Run and gun" it had many secrets and paths and caves to negotiate and explore which you certainly were ...

Acid rounds  is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Cunzy1 1: Ahhh yes the game that started it all The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion . Aside from a few ill fated forays into Skyrim, I've not touched the Elder Scrolls games at all so interested to see what you have to say. First up this is that sword one in first person with the dragons, dwarves and fairies right? Richie:  Just the one dragon in this one, unlike Skyrim where it's hard to move with out one overencumbering you with bones. No Dwarves or Fairies either, Dwarves are in Elder Scrolls are long extinct, dunno about fairies, maybe. But yeah this is the fourth Elder scrolls game, set in Cyrodiil, notably with Jean Luc Picard, Wonder Woman and Ned stark doing the voiceovers. Cunzy1 1: Did you play any of the other Elder Scrolls games? Richie:  Well, Skyrim, to death, but back in the day I did play Morrowind, but it suffered very heavily from PC-game-itis. Rely...

Konami announced a Castlevania collection ( among others )  due for some point this year in summer, for some anniversary. As ageing gamergirls, one would expect us to be "flooding the basement" on this one. Nah. One of us once played the one with Jean Luc Picard and Begbie, and found it too hard, so we locked it away. We did play "that bit" in Smash bros adventure mode, does that count? Due to the impact these games had on us we listed out the full titles as best as memory serves, I'm sure the right one is in there? Castlevania: Shadow of dark Castlevania: Dark shadows Castlevania: Shadows Lords Castlevania: Lord of Shadow Castlevania: Lord of Shadows Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Castlevania: Lords of Shadows Castlevania: Simon's revenge Castlevania: Belmont's revenge Castlevania: Samus' revenge Castlevania: Castlevania two Castlevania: Dark of the night Castlevania: Shadow symphony Castlevania: Fates of Shadow Castlevania: Retur...

Mario Kart 8 was released for the WiiU in 2014 and the Deluxe version of the game came out for Nintendo Switch in 2017. The Mario Kart series of games remain highly popular and although the longevity of these titles through online racing means that these games demand high prices years (almost decades in the case of Mario Kart 7 ) after release, the communities that build up in these games are rarely subject to academic enquiry or basic coverage in the average games media.  Fascinatingly, because Nintendo EAD, the developer of the game and Nintendo the publisher take online harassment and bullying seriously players of online Nintendo games and games on Nintendo platforms often have a highly limited mode of expression to communicate with other players when playing online together. This is of interest because enterprising players use the limited tools they have to contrive and develop new languages and forms of expression through cosmetics in games (costumes, 'emotes', equip...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Cunzy1_1: What're you flaming? Richie: So you have completed the story of this sandbox game. Congratulations! Now go to all these places on the map and find 100 of this thing. I hate this! So many games, specifically around the advent of achievements and trophies, would have this additional achievement to walk round the map finding glowing orbs or such.  They dub it in the name of exploration, but is just often descends into a nightmare of keeping track of an online item location guide. This is also usually coupled with a lack of any reward short of perhaps a 10GP blip. Tacked on and just annoying. Cunzy1_1: But Richie, people sp...

Now just quickly I would like to emphasise that I ain't no geek, I don't know anything about vampires or shit like that, certainly nothing about rolling D20's for initiative, or the white wolf series, that sort of stuff is for nerds. So Paradox have recently teased us with some tweets and images of some new project they are working on. This has lead to an out cry of journos everywhere going, "Oh my god that is that bit from the original Vampire: The Masquerade game!" Which is in part right, they are locations from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, however Bloodlines was not the Original game, it was Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption. People tend to forget the original Vampire: The Masquerade game overshadowed by its sequel, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines ( ed: so many colons! ), yet VTMR ( ed: phew ) really caused a stir for being an obscure PC game from 2000. VTMR was released at peak Nihilistic Antihero trenchcoat time. Post-Matrix, when e...

Acid rounds is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Richie: Oh a Pokémon Game! that's different does this game have new types, how do you transfer Pokémon across? Cunzy1 1: Well, I'm a sucker for the Pokemon series and that's somehow translated into almost all of the spinoffs from pinball to a feudal era Japan isometric tactics and typing game to whatever a trozei is. Detective Pikachu is not quite the weirdest of the lot but it's certainly up there. Its a perfectly playable and extremely pretty point and click detective story that came out as a downloadable game for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan and then two years later got an expanded physical version of the game worldwide. You play as Pinocchio nosed Mary-Sue Tim who meets a talking Pikachu who likes coffee, has amnesia and is a detective. You can tell it is a detective because he has a deerstalker hat. Tim's Dad is also a detective but is currently missing. ...

Scoop! The next set of Season Pass from Koei/Temkc/Team Ninja's Buxom Bosom Bouncing Brawler: Dead or Alive 6 Also definitely no way this was mocked up! no way, no sir, nuh-uh... ...Jokingly when dicking about with these images, I put that section on "Glasses for Everyone", but any variations on the glasses would have to be purchased extra. However it ended up being accidentally metaphorical and ringing a little too close to the truth, it does not sound implausible, especially based on the recent trends of DOA6 DLC Just to be clear, our stance on DoA6 is that this latest batch of outrageously expensive DLC is, more pornographic and offensive than any fucking video of DOA players pausing and moving the camera to make it look like they are sexing! But ultimately not that different as someone is getting shafted/screwed! Allowing this game to happen, when the base game is not even complete and the DLC is more costly outright is wrong, there cannot really be a...

Flame rounds lets us fulfil our yearning passion to be Frank Skinner, taking on his role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Room 101. We will be presenting a case for a particular Trope/Character/Item/UI element that pisses us off and then trying to justify whether this thing should go into room 101 (get flame roundsded?). Richie: Last time on Flame rounds we found a verdict was suspended, due to a creepy revelation .  Yo Cunzy, what do you got for us this time? Cunzy1 1: Right, we had a bit of a discussion already about what the collective name for these things are. This week, I want to consider those publisher 'Social Club' type websites that are annoyingly advertised on menu screens (even after you sign up) with the incentive being that your data will be harvested, sold or just leaked   logging into this side app (link your Facebook, Twitter, Google and Insta accounts for no reason!) rewards you with 'icons', 'epic loot' and probably a smattering of o...

In what was a rather typical week in gaming for some reason journos gave a lot of air time to that rape game, crap opinions about  Anthem evolved and game journos all had the same opinion about Nintendo Labo VR Kit. It continues to be disheartening to us that games journalism just isn't very good still. The broader games industry has a wealth of issues from understanding employment law to widespread amoral attitudes foster on the forums and in spite of this rather than because of it, it produces those games we love to lose ourselves in. Having a respected and professional industry of critics around it would also help a little bit to raise the perception and cultural standing of gaming instead, with rare exception, it's a race to the bottom for coverage of the hot topics and well, why read a hungry hack's regurgitated press release when you can watch your favourite streamer play the thing for four days straight instead. Considered critical opinion is very rare and many of ...

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible. Addendum, so is love to the lovable . And I FUCKING LOVE the new Devil May Cry and It's Super Sexy Style! I'm sure is you are even half interested you already have googled/youtubed the hell out of this one, and quite rightly so! So I shan't rant on about Nero Exceed or V's fluid combat. What was a little surprise to me was the setting being London! the Game opens up on Tower bridge with Nico doing some jumps and stuff in her Mystery Machine. But later on what really hit home was V's opening section which is the streets around Burrow Borough amazingly recreated in game! I mean I cannot wait for more Surprises like this! Love and just fucking play it! Richie X

Acid rounds  is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Cunzy : Theme to this week then is there? Richie : Yeah, I am old and I have been getting some SMW nostalgic feelz recently. It happens every so often, this game is so heavily inscribed in my DNA.  Occasionally it works it way up through social responsibility, financial woes and my crippling suicidal depression, and I get prangs to play this chirpy early 90's platformer again. To my mind I have beaten this game at LEAST 5 times, and by beaten I mean doing every level getting the alternate colour "96" Cunzy : It is a great game and to my mind Super Mario World really mixed it up. It's the technical Super Mario game as evidenced by the Super Mario Maker  SMW levels I have no idea how to beat with spin, run and toss tech. Richie : SMW itself touches only very lightly on tech the tech you mention and is more forgiving than its predecessors on heart breaking f...

Introducing a little micro feature on the the buttons we press and joysticks we waggle! Recently I was rummaging around in my computer detritus box. A box which contains, SD card adaptors, proprietary USB cables for devices I have long since lost, devices which have long lost proprietary usb cables, external dvd drives, scratched DVDs with ancient Linux distros  etc etc and Controllers, I have collected quite a few, and I'd like to share a few of may Favourites. First up is this bad boy! The expertly knocked off SNES Controller, the 8bitdo SF30: Oh man there is so much to love about this controller. First up, just look at it! Its a fucking upgraded SNES controller. It is a thing of beauty, and honestly I had my doubts and reservations before I took the plunge and bought it. Given how good it looked, it was a bit concerning: what were the sacrifices here? Is it going to feel cheap, is it going to me heavy cuz its wireless etc. Most specifically I was concerned about tho...