That guy's a Maniac...

Well, there you go them we have been isolated and shut in, and we have all seen memes akin to the Tom Cruise laughing one, in this meme he enjoys the idea of being mandatatorially told to "stay in" as he is a metaphor for the gamer population to are supposedly ecstatic as all they do is sit in a darkened room and caress their joypads. Even before Covid the blogosphere internet was rife with the boomer crowd bemoaning getting old and having too many responsibilities/not enough time to invest in video games. As today we are all shut-ins with reduced commutes and more time in the house, in theory, this should in part make the moaning quieten down as you have been gifted more free time. Does lockdown give you more time for games... Yes. Ultimately, "Yes" is the spoiler filled gist of the remainder of this post, in most cases being at home, lacking the commutes, lunch hours and ego-driven CEO town-hall meetings will give you more time, so either you choose to fi...

Acid rounds is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Richie:  Oh another Animal Crossing game! I take it you are back to the island, lording it up as Mayor, collecting bugs, paying off your Mortgages, but this time with Amiibos? Cunzy1 1: No . Not even . I'll level with you. This is one of the worst games I ever played . Imagine an Animal Crossing themed Mario Party board game. Without the minigames. And one board. And you have to have an Animal Crossing amiibo figure (not cards) for each player. And instead of using a controller you tap amiibos. That is this game. Richie:  Does this one address the disturbing relationship between the typically predator type animals and the more "prey" type animals i.e. How do Bianca the Tiger and Chief the Wolf maintain acceptable relationships with the plethora of herbivores which normally serve as food out there? Cunzy1 1: No . Richie:  I mean the townsfolk and NPCs...

Acid rounds is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Richie: Oooh a spaceship, flying game that is a change of pace for you , what made you snap this one up? Cunzy11: Since Colony Wars and Rogue Squadron series ended back in the 1890s, it feels like there's been a drought of proper space 'em ups. Sure there's been variants on the theme like spreadsheet manager EVE Online , top down ships FTL , almost ships flight fighting in the new Battlefront but no real proper space games ( Elite Dangerous , No Man's Sky, Kerbal Space Program ?). I'd been lucky enough to catch the single tweet from Gamescom announcing that  Everspace was coming to the Switch, got too excited and decided to pick up Manticore: Galaxy on Fire in the meantime. Richie: What sets this one apart from all the other sci-fi shootery games that swell the marketplace? Cunzy11: That it was out at the time. Seriously. It's extremely playable ...

Acid rounds is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Richie: I heard that Into the Breach is a game by indie cunts for indie cunts, why are you an indie cunt? Cunzy11: Okay, so yes. In some circles. It's one of those indie darling games. Particularly amongst those bearded, shoes and no socks PC boyos. I'd managed to miss all the hype completely and against all the odds spotted it on the eShop on sale and thought it looked cool. Imagine my surprise to see it on every fedorad arm-tat hipster's game of the year lists. And quite fucking rightly too. I liked it well after it was famous. Richie: So its a hipster strategy game? X-Com: Avocado edition? Cunzy11: *clears throat*  it's a retro styled, tile-based, time travelling, rogue-like, dungeon runner with mechs, tanks and kaijus. Yes. Yes it's X-Com: Avocado edition.  Richie: Right so you beasted this on the Switch, What made it tear you away fro...

We've burned out bridges with GAME . We tried but they've been failing us as consumers for the last half decade. Probably longer if we could be bothered to dredge through the archives. However, I happened to pop in to one today just to check. One in central London, the capital city of the United States of England. Here's what I saw: The store is now divided in half. One half if PS4, the other half is Xbone. I didn't spot the Wii games and the 3DS section only had five different new games and a pre-owned section chock full of absolute shite shovelware.  This last week neither the PS4 or the Xbone demo terminals have been working. Great showcase of that expensive new exciting next generation right? No new copies of GTA V. Pre-owned only. In the ten minutes I was there two people asked for it one didn't want pre-owned and the other one begrudgingly bought one. But it is 3 months old now so it's basically a legacy game. Why would they sell it.  No Xbones in...

You know, its not often I talk about the games industry and the depravity and filth within, however today I would like to bend your ears, open your eyes and perhaps even educate the cretins and executives out there. For the non-industryer "crunch time" is when a game, DLC or whatever is reaching it's deadline. This deadline will suddenly make everyone involved on that project start working at 200% (usually up from 50%) to get everything done, creating a great deal of stress on budgets, quality and people. The deadline itself is usually enforced by marketing, or by a separate publisher, who has dictated that, "this needs to happen by then". Now, why does this exist? In short, this exist because of poor project planning. The tl;dr version is: Persons are placed in positions of authority and management, due to internal promotions i.e. low ranking programmers, developers and even testers who get given these tasks, without professional qualifications or certifi...

Although obviously we'd be callous to not empathise with friends and strangers whose lives will be disrupted by whatever ends up happening with GAME group's stores, the company only has itself to blame. Of course, only now is everyone jumping on the GAME bandwagon. It isn't a charity. It is supposed to be a commercial business. It hasn't been serving PC gamers (a massive chunk of the market) for quite a long time and it hasn't been serving us for almost as long. Our gaming tastes aren't niche but we don't tend to go for the BIG AAA releases and as such GAME hasn't been catering for us. Here's a summary of our whinging over the years about GAME. Hopefully, with whatever succeeds it we won't have call to type up our frustrations and send them into the ether to be ignored by all. In June 2009, GAME performed poorly on our store survey when we used to write for that other site occasionally. In February 2010, we wrote to Konami abou...

Wow a proper review. Makes for a change huh? We were huge fans of the first game and although it didn't set the world on fire sales-wise it has a dedicated following. The second game is an improvement on the first in every way. The first game was a very relaxed adventure, leaving the player with relative freedom to explore the fictional region of Manauri, discovering various oceanic animals, photographing them and guiding visitors around the ocean. There was a very loose story driving the game but fittingly, the game was endless. You could (and we did) just keep playing forever with the goal of collecting all the species information and salvaging treasure. Each species has three bits of information, unlocked by finding an animal and then tickling, feeding or drawing for it. However, some of the creatures were a bit too crytpic and very hard to find once let alone three times (our playtime is up to well over 100 hours and there are still four species we've yet to see). Salvagin...

As you may well know 25% of Team TGAM is totally hot for swim 'em up Endless Ocean. Well guess what dilwads? Endless Ocean 2 has been dated for the 5th of February this MUTHAFUCKING year. The first Endless Ocean was our game of the year 2007-2009 so it goes without saying that I am looking forward to Endless Ocean 2. Some people dismiss titles like this as being too casual or easy or not really a game. Presumably these are the tards that prefer shit like Bioshock and Portal which is the casualist shit going. Get over it losers. This game is all about science and exploration and shit. You might learn a thing or two about some real animals which impresses the chicks* inifinitely more than the fact that you can do no scope headshots 1 in 15 times that you try it you lazy fucking adolescent fagballs. Also, it will be compatible with Wiispeak so in out fantasy world where we actually enjoy online play you can speak to people you dive with as well as drawing luminous penii wi...

See that blog title? That's what you can expect from TGAM: cliched post titles. That and tits . Anyway, today I am proud to bring you an interview with someone who properly works in the Games Industry, unlike us scrotes who sit on the periphery. Below is an interview with a lady who has had years of experience in games testing and went on to set up her own games testing company, which, is widely regarded as one of the best QA Testing companies around and doesn't let schlep pass through the door and out the other side unlike other companies. She has chosen the synonym Jill Valentine for this interview which, sure is nice for us because it's like Jill was actually here. C11: Hello, Jill, welcome to TGAM. JV: Hello. I'd like to say it's nice to be here but.... C11: Isn't games testing just an opportunity to get paid for playing games? JV: Yes and no. Do you remember some of the ridiculous time limit challenges in the original Goldeneye that you had to complete to u...

Last week, Richie and I travelled to snowy Estonia for the wedding of our old friend Randy McSporran . Suffice to say the event was chaotic and it's probably a good thing that Cunzy and Richie are normally seperated by several hundred miles. Memory is still a bit hazy but here is the summary; Stansted at midnight, vodka, coke, Pokemon Diamond, smking, checking-in, vodka and red bull at 3 in the morning, legendary battle, Ponyta, Omastar, Focus Band, Cunzy afraid of flying, airport dimensia, immaturity, Doug and Liz, Easy Jet, flying, landing, Randy and Ollie, new friends, sniffer dogs, bus, 'fit' or 'fat', hotel, mini bar, spluff on beds, snooker, MacDonalds, Kat, supermarket, Seaman's shot, Absinthe , Dark Dog , cheese waffles, Kent fags, drinking, raging, stupid cocktail, some other liquer, mixers, bull pish, more absinthe, Richie vomit, pub, Pokemon talk, stag night, kissing men, fighting, beer, Richie wiping things of his shoe onto a girl, strip club, lots o...

"Endgame" was originally some word used in chess for the final moves, or something similar to that, but no-one cares about that nowadays, endgame is a mystical place where the 1337 live. The most common and arguably the most recognised is WoWs endgame. It used to be lvl 60 (Highest level you could reach), once you hit lvl 60 you would then team up and do really hard quests to get better "gear", to "enhance" the gameplay experience. Sounds quite cool doesn't it. Bet you have always thought after completing games like Mario or Zelda, "Woo, I have beaten Bowser/Ganon lets take a stroll through Mushroom kingdom/Hyrule and bask in the glory of how great i am" Well its not all Peaches and cream. Take Pokemon Diamond/Pearl... I beat the 1337 4 after about 40-50 hours, and now i have clocked up 200 hours... what have i done? Well I have been basking in the the world of endgame One you beat the 1337 4 you then (in theory) have to collect the remaining...