That guy's a Maniac...

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...

Last year, Nintendo made the slightly uncontroversial and in line with what competitors have been doing for decades business decision to start charging for the service to play games online with the Nintendo Switch. In order to sweeten the deal somewhat a paid membership gets you access to online play, exclusive offers (such as cosmetics in some games and those stupid but cool but stupid but expensive but worth it NES Switch controllers), sometimes cloud saves and most controversially gives you access to a growing library of NES games playable as long as you're subbed up. Some vocal gamers, however, did not like this decision at all because they either already own and play the NES games on offer (lies nobody ever intentionally bought Super Dodge Ball let alone played it on the go) or they didn't want the NES games but wouldn't mind free N64 games or SNES games perhaps? Like winged monkeys with neckbeards they took to social media en mass to whine about it. This level of...

Not got enough Nintendo accounts? In between your Nintendo.com account, Pokemon Global Link account, Nintendo ID, Nintendo Online Store account and MiiVerse accounts, Nintendo has recently launched MyNintendo the new-all you need account for worse news and updates that independent Nintendo fan sites and the first vehicle that uses the MyNintendo account is mobile 'app' Miitomo .  Ninty has been trialling gentle-disgustingly fierce micro-transactions from free to play games like Pokemon Shuffle and Pokemon Rumble World through to not-ware Nintendo Badge Arcade and presumably a lucrative line in customising your handheld with 3DS themes.   Miitomo , like Nintendo Badge Arcade , takes pay-to-not-really-play to the next level. What is Miitomo ? It's a hyper scummy new social network that uses Miis. The app is so blatantly aimed at capturing the social network hype, for example, you can earn large amounts of one of the three new MyNintendo currencies just by linking...

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...

It has become clear to me that Pokemon X/Y is the best game ever, there will never be a game to trump it. As someone in the industry this dismays me, but that dismay is bittersweet as I can just play Pokemon X/Y. Also, I am embittered by this post, as it is eating into my Pokemon Time. Love and Pokemon Z? Richie X

This image has very little to do with the film. Richie and I were supposed to be saving watching this for a girl's night in but now we live within 600 miles of each other we don't see each other half as much as we used to. So I caved and watched it and unfortunately I roped my better half into watching it. She'd sat through the first Silent Hill film and it had such an impact on her that halfway through the film she confessed that she thought Silent Hill was Hellraiser . In a way I was wishing it was too. This film is bad in a generic and inoffensive way delivering a double dose of cringe. One cringe for it just been a not very good film. Another cringe for it being yet another not very good movie adaptation of a video game. I've not checked the rankings recently but surely in the order of genres of film, video games adaptation must be down near the bottom of the list just below 'American TV dramas about big city people falling in love with a rural '...

Chuff's back and he's backing down. He's compromising his principles and it's disgusting to watch. I would like to take this opportunity to whole heartedly apologise to fans of Mutant Mudds and all members of the Galactic Senate (not you ET, never you). When reviewing the aforementioned game I confess I was under severe pressure due to missing a year of deadlines, and was suffering from depression due to flashbacks of not handing in book reviews on time in Mrs Lawrence’s English class. This lead me make glaring errors in my reporting and missed out on a key feature that Mudds has that truly elevates this game to another level, I did not appreciate this during my first play through. Once again, I apologise. I genuinely do not realise how I came to miss this, there is an idle animation. Mutant Mudds: 9.5/10

So yeah a "collection" of the older PS2 Dragonball Z games is due out for 360 and PS3, HDified. This collection has Budokai and Budokai 3. Budokai 2 was missed out entirely, mainly because it had a stupid story mode which involved a board game interface. The first Budokai was not brilliant and seems to be a token in this "collection". However we should all be excited about Budokai 3. It include a huge roster of characters a lot of nods in the fans directions, and better game play than the 360/PS3 successors, "Raging Blast". Raging Blast  attempted to  inappropriately  touch fans of the series and keep it a special secret, it stripped down the number of characters, which honestly felt like they were doing it to: a) Make DLC for monies b) Make way for a slurry of sequels which died with Raging blast 2 and its lack of any real additions. Most disappointing Raging blast was less fun to play. Interestingly enough, did you know that...

In between, twitter, reddit, forums and comments on all those fucking sites that never repay the favour I think we've given away a bit of our soul. We're all gamed out* Here's a thing. A feature. What she said until we've got some more inspiration. Uuuuuuugh. THAT WAS THE BAD THING. E3. We just remembered. Oh god. *Without actually playing any games. Aside from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon again. That barely counts. That's us in coasting mode** ** NOT TRUE, NOT TRUE we played Paper Mario. It's s'alright.

It's hot outside which means vidjo games, in contrast to cricket, have to be cancelled due to fine weather. Everyone, literally everyone, else is going to parks and filling up beer gardens and the social pressure is for us to do that too. Plus, because we have to open the windows, we can't see our screens anymore. Lastly, because all our energy has melted away, the slightest excuse prevents us from playing most games. Can't play Sonic Mega Collection to unlock Comix Zone without finding the right memory card first? We'd probably die of dehydration trying to find it. Have to take the Wiimote our of it's condom to put it in the Wii-Zapper? Death unless you've got a parasol to protect you. Standing up to play Kinect? Make sure you take at least five litres of water. Luckily though, there's always Pokemon*. Nice safe, friendly Pokemon sitting in the DS, flick it open, turn it on. Gaming happiness from our melted pool on the floor vantage point. We can even secr...

It looks like the Resident Evil 5 racism issues is back on the agenda but this time from someone who, you know, has actually played a game, any game but also all of the Resident Evil games. The piece makes for some thought provoking reading but here at TGAM we've been concerned about the racism from Resident Evil 1 onwards. No one would listen to use before but now that the issue is under the spotlight here's a republished blog we did way back in 1998. Still relevant dontcha think? Totally tl;dr Oh and if you still haven't played it, SPOILERS. After playing through Resident Evil 1 on the PlayStation I was like, “Mental, clearly not a single scientist worked on this game.” Because I wonder if Capcom isn't some kind of anti science organisation. I wasn't offended that there were scientist zombies, still adorned with lab coats and the such but there was a lot of locations and text that cam straight from the anti science movement. But what was sort of poignant is that...

Dear Team 17 Please just stop it. Please. You are embarassing yourself and the former glory of the Worms franchise. How many iterations are there now? 15? 16? Don't get us wrong the first one was great. We spent hours playing it and the recent revamped versions have been okay but please innovate or move on. Are you happy with the consistent " 6-7/10 more of the same " reviews. Shake the series up a bit. I haven't purchased a worms game since the PlayStation release because every single one of the new ones feels so similar that I'm content to dust off the PS2 to play the original should I want to. Hogs of War was amazing why don't you do something like that but better? Oh and Worms 3D doesn't count at all. Why wasn't the last DS one online? Why don't you do clever things with the stats and camera angles and playbacks? International tournaments or something? How many people do you employ to do the same game over and over again. Wikipedia tells me 75....

So what? We get lots of letters. But this one was written properly and all thought out and stuff so it would be rude not to reply no? Plus it was from a girl. Catherine Martin writes to thatguys: Do games have a moral obligation to be politically sensitive? In recent months we have seen a handful of games clumsily attempt a politically savvy narative and blunder into every stereotypical pitfall they could. Now, however, games are about to breach an almost untouched setting: Africa. Both Far Cry 2 and Resident Evil 5 have chosen this setting as an environment in which to destroy countless hordes of digital natives. More importantly, however, their plots are likely to involve the distribution and flow of medicines in the area. Here I am making a slightly educated guess about the plot of Resident Evil 5, but the evil drug company Umbrella and its infamous T-virus are bound to crop up somewhere. These are controversial and current issues surrounding the African nations as warlords illegall...

Right well Today www.thatguys.co.uk is now 1 year old, I know some may argue that we are actually older than that, but it has been 1 year since we got the domain name. And we had to do a lot to get it too! I had to bare-fist-fight through legions of the undead, and Cunzy… well lets just say he's never been able to sit down properly since then. Image from the formidable Way of the Rodent who's award ceremony we sadly missed :( . To be honest we are all amazed that we have lasted this long! and we are very curious to know who actually looks at us?!?! Although to be fair "lasting this long" really only requires that we keep updating the site. We would like to thank all of you that have supported Thatguys in the last year, we hope that you will continue to support us too! We had an amazing year, we won a BAFTA for our ritings and we raised over £250,000 for a non-existing charity. We slagged of a bunch of people we thought would be petty enough to come down here ...

Taken from some genius anonymouse over at RAM RAIDER , regarding Jeff Minter's RR Games Writer Twat Of 2007 Award: This is probably the most deserved award of the lot.Despite the fawning of EDGE and a few other rags, Minter is plainly a childish, petulant charlatan - he knocks out a half-broken game based on someone else's idea anyway (that he then messes up still further with updates), takes half a decade to do so, throws a hissy fit so extreme when someone didn't like it (and what did he fucking expect? It's hardly as accessible as Mario is it?) that he and all his mates felt it necessary to tromp all over the Live! scoreboards to show how fucking ace they are, and STILL expected the world and his dog to bow down at his feet, tell him how great he is and throw money at him. Space Giraffe did do one good thing: it went some way to finally exposing the lie of the Minter "legend" - he's just a backroom indie programmer knocking out rehashed games barely abo...

As about 2 of our 5 readers worked out, I recently wasn't fired but was sham fired, mirroring the recent oxymoronic Gaming Journalism integrity fiasco over at Gamespot. If you don't know the haps by now, basically, some guy called Jeff Niderman, who is/was some kind of editor over at Gamespot, did a text and video review of the much hyped, always looked-like-it-would-turn-out-mediocre, game, Kane and Lynch:Dead Men. Kane and Lynch: Dead Men was published by the "haven't done anything good since Resident Evil 3:Nemesis" publisher Eidos. The review gave it a 6 and Jeff Groberlein repeatedly described it as ugly throughout the video review. Then after some initial grape vine rumours it turns out that Jeff Gleistmeyer was unceremoniously fired at Gamespot and as it happens around the same time, "thanks for ruining Tomb Raider" publisher Eidos had also planned to do a big marketing campaign on the face of Gamespot for Kane and Lynch: Dead Men. The gibbering h...

Shit it like a polaroid picture. Props to Chuff_72 for showing me how Christmas is going to get even more expensive since this post . Yes that's right Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure for the DS. Advance apologies to my niece and nephew but it's another 11% towards my life dream. When you are my age you'll appreciate that I went for it. x x Review from the box art : Tricky. Very tricky. Could be amazing if done in an Endless Ocean kind of way. Probably going to be a bit dodge-modge kind of like a Tamagotchi but with even less functionality than eat, poo and sleep. COntains prehistoric monsters 9.5/10* *The use of the word "monsters" over extinct mesozoic marine fauna loses the 0.5 point

Dude, I rented Assassassassinssss Creed over the weekend and busted that bad boy right open - CAUTION, OPINION WITHIN MAY NOT BE OF THE POPULAR VARIETY. First off, I DO like this game, it is fun and looks pretty. However, it is also, misleading, rushed, boring, repetitive, annoying and overrated. Fun. I finished this game and enjoyed it, I liked the story and the characters, I thought the future elements were nice and especially that you are a Bartender called Desmond (Spoiler?), though very divisive (this game is basically a setup for a new franchise, even EA would be ashamed of the obviousness of this) and the game felt cool to play, it does a good job of making you feel like a badass (except the main dude swings his hips a little too much.) Badassedness. Of course, this is what *every* game should be about. Altair isn’t supposed to be a ‘badass’ for Fuck’s sake, he’s from a religious sub-sect from post islamic intent on destabilisation of the muslims. Duh. Looks pretty. Oh yes...