That guy's a Maniac...

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...

Round 2 of understanding gamerish (round one here ). Today we take on understanding scores out of ten. Many gamers lack a coherent framework for prolonged discussion of merits and downsides of commercial products. Combined with attention spans shortened by obligate internet use means that reviewers often use a simple one to ten scale, often at the bottom of a review to help the pressed for time gamers decide which game they should chip, rip or steal next. Unfortunately though rather than use the X/X system as a rough indicator of quality many gamers endlessly squabble over scores of their favourite games neglecting to notice that scores are merely one person's take on a game and that the reviewer's employer is probably a more important factor on what score that game gets than actual quality. Furthermore, many assume the one to ten scale to be a normal scale but it's actual more complicated than that . Here's how the gaming scale works. 0 - Not often used at all even for...

From Dante to Mario. Can it be done? Started off quite hard because we figured we couldn't get out of Capcomland. But here's how it is done kids. Dante-Viewtiful Joe courtesy of Viewtiful Joe. Viewtiful Joe-Ryu courtesy of Tatsunoko vs Capcom Then we go Ryu to Mitsurugi courtesy of Namco X Capcom Then we go from Mitsurugi to that Link chap via Soul Calibuuuur 2. And finally from Link to the podgy plumber via Superu Smashu Brotheru! Can you do it with less degrees? Do have a go. And while you are at it see if you can beat: Mickey Mouse to Sonic the Hedgehog- 4 degrees. Master Chief to Solid Snake- 3 degrees (cheating a bit). Megatron to your own Mii- 2 degrees. And if you can get those you can get practically anywhere! Anywhere worth going anyway. Characters with no degrees to anybody just aren't worth it people.

Apologies if this is not new news to everyone, but I just saw the creators of of Penny arcade, i.e. Gabe and Tycho. This reminds me how horrible IRL can be in the games industry, nobody wants to see that. As such this will be my farewell salute to Penny Arcade. It was fun while it lasted*, but it is now time for us to part ways Original here *i.e. keep you open in one if the firefox tabs, and read you when the boss is not looking. Dismayed, Richie X.

Semi-retired Ram Raider have come back out of retirement again again to bring us this news about a game called Darkfall . The essence of the issue, for those too lazy to hit the link is that Eurogamer staffer Ed Zitron was unfairly treated by the company behind Darkfall Online, Aventurine. Including the not deleting of personal details put up on a forum. Or something. This is unfair treatment and an issue that we are happy to bring more attention to, through the time honoured review of Darkfall Online Boxart. Cunzy1 1: What? No boxart? Richie: No due to the cutbacks we can't afford to google images anymore so we'll have to review the game title itself. Cunzy1 1: Another world first from TGAM. Second greatest etc. etc. Richie: Hmmm. Darkfall. Doesn't that game exist? Cunzy1 1: No you are thinking of Darkwatch. Richie: No. I was thinking of the Darkness. Cunzy1 1: Isn't that a band? Also, I was thinking of Dark Stalkers. Richie: Racist. Cunzy1 1: Not racist. But by findin...

It's too easy right? Deadline looming, traffic dropping, you need to say something, anything. Well that's alright because you are a gamer. Just pull a top ten out of your arse, it's easy to write and provokes a lot of responses. The key to writing a good top ten is to namecheck some really fucking obscure titles and then spaff some big cheesy blockbusting games in there too. The point is, no one will agree perfectly with you and everyone will argue. What's that? You are writing a top ten now? Well, here's my Top Ten, top ten writing hints. 1) Don't ever mention Zelda or Metroid. In their heart of hearts every gamer knows them to be truly shitty series but about the only thing Nintendo has going for them in terms of real games. Still, just leave them out now. Surely we are all grown up right? 2) When everyone least suspects it pull out a really shitty retro game to fuck off all the youg'ns. If you can't think of a good retro game (because essentiall...

Ahahaha! Let's all point and laugh at Gamespot! In a feat of pure embarrassment gamespot have made a woopsie (typo) on nothing less than their front page! Look: Mortal Kombat: Armageddo? Armageddo? ARM-AG-EDDO? *Tut tut tut* Silly gamespot. Please note: I am aware that perhaps focusing on the misspelling of “Kombat” would have been a more amusing route to go with this one, leaving the glaring typo. However due to the nature of game titles, which can be as grammatically, punctually and semantically incorrect as they like. Couple that with the fact that Mortal Kombat : Armageddon was not a huge hit, I reckon this would cause more confusion than it would hilarity.