That guy's a Maniac...

No Acid Rounds this week. To busy beastin' games

We like to play games and we love to read about games. Sometimes it's hard to get the balance right so the reason why we've been quiet in past months is because it was all reading about games and snarking about games and very little actual playing games. We also like to read books about games. We've recently picked up Grand Thieves and Tomb Raiders : How British Video Games Conquered the World and it'll be a nice addition to the growing library of good books about gaming and Resident Evil novelisations. As ever it says a lot about the coherency of gaming beyond the insides of consoles and boundaries of the Internet in that there isn't a massive section in the biggest bookshop by you called 'video games'. Invariably, books from This Gaming Life through to critically under-read Replay the History of Video Games might be under the Internet or indoor games or computing or web/graphics. I'm not going to get on my high horse and say that all gamers are i

Hey. We've been super busy playing all the new gems out. We bundled them up into this super review right here; 6/10 That's it really. Everything is good enough to function (barely) but there's nothing to set your balls on fire and send us with a G-con in one hand and a prima guide in the other to evangelise about our former hobby. Maybe we've hit the 'magical age', the ludopause, where we realise that actually games are all a little bit silly and most seemed to be aimed at angry American 11 year olds who think shootan' and blood and gore are cool and pretty much the be all and end all of all media. Well media that can be considered acceptable to lie about having played in the playground. 

MCV has the news y'all. I'm so excited about this. Here's the best of Gamestation: 200 Mint copies of FIFA 2001 A NES without any games, cables or controllers. Two G-Cons (not compatible with modern TVs). A copy of Halo 3 without the instruction booklet or sleeve. The Resident Evil trilogy. The films. The second third and fourth ones anyway. Well this'll get GAME back into the market.

Last time we were all gushy over five Wii games that have re-ignited our passion for games. Today we pick up that blog post, flip her over only to see the puss filled and warty fissures caused by the ingrowing hairs that is average Wiiware games. Just in case you've been a fanboy of other formats up until this second, Wiiware is the Nintendo Wii's downloadable game service. It is a real mixed bag. There are gems and they are the likes of Lit, Maboshi's Arcade, Jet Rockett, Final Fantasy: Subtitle subtitle, Nyx's Quest, Sword and Soldiers, Lost Winds 1 and 2, World of Goo, Art of Balance ... wow now that we start to list them there's quite a few good 'uns and many that put bigger box release games to shame. TO SHAME WITH YOU.  The problem in the past has been that Nintendo (Europe at least) has been fickle in the extreme. The ficklest in fact with allowing players to try Wiiware demos before they buy. Sometimes NoE releasing a dribble of Wiiware demos. S

First up read this , it's Richard Browne (pictured below) from umm, well he's an industry veteran okay. And he's finally willing to bring to the table that much missing piece of evidence to prove that pre-owned games are killing kids, raising house prices and toppling the game industry. At last. Some actual evidence to scrutinise rather than a dev sounding off because their last poorly marketed shite game that sat on the shelves for two weeks didn't sell as much as Wii Sports . That key piece of evidence? A colleague of mine brought to light how bad this has become just the other week. He went into his local GameStop and was point blank REFUSED the option of buying the game he went to get new. After pressuring the sales assistant for a few minutes he finally got his new game - but only after the assistant got his manager's approval to sell it to him. [via Gamesindsutry international ] Ah, okay. That appears to be an anecdote and a suspiciously tall tale. Bro

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

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) Arrogant c)

Quite! Screenie from the excellent Syberia.

Last weekend was my stag do, which was organised by my gay partner, Richie! Unlike your traditional stag do there was not a stripper in sight. Or going out. At all. Instead it was this groom to be and his bezzy mates playing the games that we all grew up with. I couldn't have asked for a better stag do, I laughed until I cried, I drank until it hurt and we had one last gaming session with all my Slads in one (well, two rooms). Sadly on Sunday I realised this would probably be the last time we'd all be together with nothing but time for playing the games that we cut our teeth on. But enough of the gay stuff! AWARDS TIME! Group Awards. CLICK FOR BIG IMAGE. This will mean very little if you weren't there. Some of the games that came out: Quake 2, Mashed, Mario Kart, Boom Blox, Geometry Wars, Resident Evil 5, Timesplitters 2, Puzzle Fighter, Blazblue, Street Fighter IV, Soul Calibur, Pod Racer, Red Faction Guerilla, Wii Sports, Army of Two and even a spot of doorsies. The weeke

Over the weekend we watched the first episode of The Virtual Revolution . A series all about the history of the web innit. Presented by I'm-A-Doctor-Now-Former-Bits-Presentertator-Aleks Krotoski. Anyway here's the breakdown just in case you missed it: 10% Gratuitous shots of Dr Al's breasts and butt. Really gratutitous. 5% Aleks nodding/glowing/gushing in the presence of an old San Franciscan. 15% Dr Aleks walking around looking pensive. 15% Dr Aleks walking around looking pensive with her shades on. 30% 5 of the richest men in the world celebrating how the web is the great 'leveller' specifically their software. 5% Bitter hippies claiming it's all gone to shit now. 7% Aleks looking into the camera and flicking her hair out of her eyes. 5% Aleks typing away on her laptop WITH HER MAN HANDS in the street near a famous landmark. 3% HIPPIES! 10% Some pointless graphic which was being 'unveiled' for the first time ever. Episode two i

Well the Hunk competition is over. After two years we've had no entries. This can be taken as proof that you can't trust the Machinima community. Fuck you Machinima community. Fuck you. How will the fanfiction guys fare? We're running another competition (wow now we're just like the official Mega Man site !). As you may well now, Wesker is to appear as a rip off DLC pish in Lost Planet 2. What we want to know is how did he get there? Feel free to dick around with the "Resident Evil Canon" as Capcom so frequently do but do make sure your fic. contains the following elements: 1) Barry Burton's daughters Polly and Moira. 2) Tits McGee from Dead Rising. 3) Dante slicing a whole train in half. 4) A non racist justification for Sheva's totally racist costume in RE5. 5) Jill and Rebecca talking about who they fancy in S.T.A.R.S. 6) Cheryl Jones' supplementary mission in it's entirety. 7) A recurring joke about how Mega Man is into Moir

This weekend we got a copy of Resident Evil Degeneration, the new CGI Resident Evil film. Despite watching the first ten second trailer a hundred times we managed to stay away from any kind of exposure of the film at all. After watching it, here are out thoughts on the film and exactly where capcom got it all exactly wrong everywhere. Warning: SPOILERS, although technically there has to be a plot in order for it to be spoiled at all. What we wanted. You may remember this post (before all the Wow gayness) about our hopes and fears for the film that takes on the most precious game in the entire world, Resident Evil 2. Here was our wishlist: 1) Will Smith cast as the face of Marvin Branagh. 2) Zombie and/or Claire tits. 3) Herbs. 4) The line "That guy's a maniac, why'd he bite me?" 5) The exact same plot as Resident Evil 2. In fact don't spend money making a whole new film just record someone playing Resident Evil 2 and stick it on DVD that would be bes

This week Omastar travels to a universe where copyright and anachronisms don't exist. Christ! Just what the fuck is wrong with the people who upload shit to deviant art? For God's sake, it doesn't even make sense. Why would this happen? Who appreciates this abomination? /fap

Yes we (I) did. If it's all part of LEGO's masterplan to get 20 somethings who grew up with lego to use their now disposable income to buy more LEGO after their Dad threw away all the original old LEGO whilst they we were away at "university" then it is working. Here's the story: I picked up a copy of Lego Star Wars II the other day. It was cheap in Morrisons and it was kind of my birthday (in a few days anyway) so I thought I would treat myself. I have the original one and seeing as we're not proper gamers here at Thatgirls anymore (thanks Giant Lego Hamstring Enemy) I wanted something to play to make me feel like I was being an accomplished gamer. Spontaneous review based on the first four levels: It's good. What you expect although the cantina could be more populated, especially with the old save characters. Also, it would have been nice to walk around the hub as your custom character but whatever it has multiplayer without having to go online,

Ok. Enough now. This is a public notice to all game developers currently in the "hype" stage of development. Please stop dropping the "We've got some great AI" bomb during interviews UNLESS . You do have some great AI. FPS are by far the biggest culprits of just throwing that line in there after they've talked about the graphics and the story. A recent playthrough of the Turok demo shows that those cheeky guys at Propaganda games are living up to their name. Check this whole article about it over at IGN. Fair dos you might thinking. Now, this would all be believable if after about two minutes of play you couldn't sense that all of that talk about AI was absolute bullshit. Chuff_72, the man allegedly made of pure candles, waxes lyrical: "WHY can't people who make these things try something a bit different, like, the raptors that attack you, they look cool and move nicely, and look dangerous, but behave like any normal retarded FPS e

Woah, now there is a lot of female attention happening in the games industry at the moment. Like we need more… Seriously I think girls have got their quota in the games industry and are recognised enough nowadays. Girls have: 1. Personalised Systems, such as the Pink DS and a variety of Pink Peripherals. 2. A selection of shite games, Pony Friends, Barbie shopping, Cooking Mama etc… 3. Zelda?!? Apparently??!?! The Phantom hourglass is advertised as one of the DS’s “Games for Girls”, when the fuck did that happen? Why does the fairer sex get this franchise? 4. The DS in general, all titles for it seem to cater for girls in some way. 5. The Rezibator. Guys are not allowed attachments to games to get them going (apart from the guitar in guitar hero). 6. An unfair advantage in MMOs, due to all the guys being desperate. 1. [General] [Legolaas] ZOMG!!!!11 Nerf Girls they are IMBA 7. An inbuilt ability to multi-task. 8. The “years of persecution” card which they never play,

W00t, joy of joys! Today will go down in history as perhaps one of the greatest days in gaming history. We have spent years upon years waiting for this day. From the days of Pong, though the days of 8bit, all the way up to the snazzy HD consoles, its all been leading to this one gem. This one Holy Grail, the ultimate game of all games: Rest assured we can all die happy now. P.S. Sarcasm P.P.S. To all those concerned, please stop this… not only are you encouraging Mr Chegwin, but you are giving birth to more gaming filth into the world, and its not like you have an excuse, like it was an accident. The Game was pre-meditated, you have given birth to a fully-fledged downs syndrome game with congenital abnormalities. This should have been aborted from Day 1. Are you proud of yourselves? Sickos.