That guy's a Maniac...

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

Breaking News:  Capcom confirm Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5  are set in the same universe, Claire and Nico share the same genetic trait of increased vertical overlapping of the mandibular anterior (lower front) teeth by the maxillary anterior (upper front) teeth, usually measured perpendicular to the occlusal plane. Nicoletta Goldstein from Devil May Cry 5 Claire Redfield from Resident Evil 2 (2019) In other breaking news:  World's Second Greatest Video Game Blog - That Guy's A Maniac have found that two games from video game developer and publisher Capcom contain characters with a prominent overbite, but struggle to find some kind of joke to tie the two together. thatguys.co.uk have reportedly brainstormed ideas such as "What would these two look like in The Simpsons" and attempting to work around the phrase "biting off more than you can chew". thatguys.co.uk have apparently opted for a relatively unfunny shared universe link, with a medi

#GamerGate continues to tear the gaming community apart. Brothers and sisters fight. But there's a shining light. Writing letters to end the hate, harassment and nastiness that haunts our hobby. Theoretical game developers and community managers wrote their letter  and gamers have their petition  but as a community, video game journalists have not yet spoken out as a group. Until next week that is. An anonymous source who wants to remain anonymous sent us this letter which will be going out next week.  Dear Gamers (R.I.P) Please stop the hate. The only thing we have is the power of our opinion on games and gaming related things and if you don't like that then we don't get paid. Well a lot of us don't get properly paid in the first place. In fact being a games journalist sucks. We should really do something to improve our plight. Anyways. If games journalists stop writing are we not just gamers? Please stop the hate. Signed 7 of 9 Albert Brooks Andre

This last couple of weeks there's been a storm in a teacup that seems to have culminated in the gaming community doing a sea cucumber and eviscerating itself, turning itself inside out and ejecting all it's internal organs as a defense mechanism. You can follow the 'story' on the social media under the hashtag GamerGate. We won't go into the specifics of how this kicked off because the spark that lit the part of the fire we're interested in is sort of irrelevant. The short version is that some pretty strong evidence has come to light reminding us once again of the rampant cronyism and amateurism within games journalism. The funny thing is that what may or may not have happened to kick this off is almost completely by the by. In between the feminists, the white knights, the trolls, the griefers, the journalists and the developers all rallying to four or five different calls and fighting with each other, some are using the #GamerGate  to call for clearer transpar

Ok ok, I know we all hate Kotaku , hell even Kotaku hate Kotaku. I shouldn't even grace their hits with a link to their tired under-skilled gawker site. But sadly it occasionally fawns upon my radar, partly due to out-of-the-loop developer/publishers giving it credible news, thinking they are still the mainstream go-to gamer site from 6 years ago. But you gotta check this one out it has completely obliterated the line between irreverent and irrelevant. Its a post about how one Kotaku writer doesn't like Cheetos. That is all. Love and irreverent irrelevancy, Richie X

We're... urgh... digital natives and we're now of the generation where mainstream media journalists don't really represent us. They's falling over themselves to appear trendy and more than a little obsessed with Twitter. Last week we read a fascinating story in the Evening Standard about Z-Celebrities reactions to Z list Celebrities leaving Celebrity reality shows for 'medical reasons'. This was whole page. This is loser generated content at it's worst and for those of us who grew up on the mean streets of long forgotten forums and who cut our teeth trolling wicca websites the constant obsession with who said what onTwitter and the sheer laziness and naivety of reporting drives us insane. Richard Bacon's answer to the problems of Trolling (pronounced Trollllling not trole-ing apparently) is to make everyone's profile with their real name and photo.  yeah, because RealID worked out really well . Anywho. Who are we to complain? We're just the

Remember the GMAs? You know the Games Media Awards? Well it is a UK awards thing for people who write about games. one of last year's nominees was Chris Scullion who writes for the Official Nintendo magazine in the category SPECIALIST WRITER PRINT. Sadly he didn't win and presumably he was having an off day in OPM 79 when he writes the following about Dragon Quest X: Also making the decision tricky [about whether to get the Wii or Wii U version] is the fact that, as it's the first RPG [on the Wii] to focus more on online adventuring (much like Monster Hunter Tri)... Is it the first or is it not? Snark snark snark.

The only good thing about the Escapist has this to say: Gaming could be one of the most exciting new forms of storytelling in all media but you're all cancelling Pride & Prejudice to show the Friday night football. It's like being stuck at some excruciating wedding reception with a lot of extremely drunk and raucous relatives who are trying to get you to join in the conga. I do not have the same concepts of fun as you. I would not have a good time if I just let my hair down. Having to share physical space with squawking maiden aunts who still forward lolcats to each other makes me want to spit up my kidneys. Now bugger off and leave me to my cake. The whole post here . He's just specifically talking about stories in gaming but he could be talking about a lot of aspects of gaming.

EDGE has had a redesign. Here's what we think of it in an EDGE style Continue/Quit thing: Continue - Post Script The new 'post script' bit at the end of reviews. Before, they'd hype up a game in preview then review it for the rubbish it was the month after in reviews. Now they just do both together. I wonder how long before devs and producers stop giving these interviews if a game gets a six (gaming's 3). - No more Kroal!? Hoo. Ray. - Spinal For a second we thought the quote on the inside editorial staff page was gone. For a second we were wrong. - Aspirational Reading Finally a gaming magazine its fine to read in public and look like a metro sexual wanker rather than a gaming one. - People, Places, Things A great idea. Quit - Alexander the not so great Leigh Alexander has a column. We like what she's trying to do but her writing has taken a holier than thou aspect of late. That and she links to music on her blog like a music waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanker.

They're everywhere! Spoilers in my feed reader. Spoilers as my recommended reading. Spoilers everywhere. Soon you won't be able to open a web page without video game morons, fancying themselves as games journalists, alleviating you or the need to play a game because you've measured, weighed and decided a game is a 7/10 without pressing a button. The Official Nintendo Magazine are doing their level best to spoil the shit out of Pokemon Black and White, despite the fact that all of that and more is already up on Serebii albeit it not stretched out into over 100 'articles'. Marvel vs Capcom 3 has pretty much been spoiled too. If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it for you now but if you have seen it, just take a second to the think how cool it would have been to have come across that in game without knowing it was coming. It would have been awesome times. There's probably a fucking FAQ up already on how to spoil the spoil out of that spoilers spoiled sp

Today is EDGE day! (In the interests of appeasing long suffering TGAM WaG/BS we've been asked to make our content more accessible so here goes). EDGE is one of the finest magazines about gaming in our humble opinion. It's the [INSERT ACCEPTABLY RECOGNISED FASHION MAGAZINE NAME] of gaming. It normally takes us a good fortnight to read through all of it, every single word, but on the first EDGE day the ritual is to read the editorial and the first couple of articles (the looking forward article in this month's mag is both excellent and depressing at the same time) then flick through reading Continue/Quit, Website of the month and internet game of the month before absorbing the ever wise words of Steven Poole . The magazine is then closed until a deeper reading sometime later. However, on the flick through earlier our eyes were caught by an ad similar to this one-but not this one, for what looks like yet another fantasy MMO we're not going to play called Rift . For blind r

Is a great little (well, big actually) book compiled by the usual suspects (I wonder if the guys from ONM ever wonder why they never ever get asked to contribute to anything like this?). Put simply, this book lists 1001 video games you must play before you die. It is of course obligatory to now go through and list the shocking omissions and where they chose the wrong games but it is a very well balanced selection. Normally lists like this tend to neglect recent games but there's a good spread of games throughout time and space. There are 1001 of them though. How many have we played? Well I've played 155 of them. There's some odd choices but I don't envy making the selection. For example, which Street Fighter games make the list and which don't? Also, if you were to take the premise of this book very seriously and only had months to live must you really play both Advance Wars and Advance Wars Dual Strike? The book isn't without its errors don'tcha know? After

This excellent little piece is up on Inside Voice about what we mean by the average gamer. It's worth a read. We're constantly worried on behalf of the nation of gamers in that the term gamer doesn't mean anything anymore. "I play WoW exclusively" is not the same person as "I only play Fifa and CoD on Friday nights after the pub". But what we love about the post is the following list quoted word for word: * Facebook has become the platform of choice for the average gamer. * The iPhone has taken over as the most popular platform for the average gamer. * The console continues to be the primary gaming platform for the average gamer. * Due to the massive popularity of free-to-play, the average gamer won’t pay for anything anymore. * The average gamer has a subscription to Live. * The average gamer loves microtransactions and cannot wait to buy absolutely anything offered for sale. * The average gamer doesn’t have any online friends, is unfamiliar with chat

A common counter argument for those trying to interpret games, either with an agenda or without, is that they haven't played enough games to warrant their opinion being worth even contemplating. In a post which has just vanished from Kotaku (who knows it may or may not be here ) Salman Rushdie has something to say but, you know what, he hasn't played as many games as us so let us just discount everything he says. But exactly how many games does one need to play so that the gamers will listen. Here's our handy guide for when you want to say something about games but may be worried you aren't qualified enough. 0 Games- Rogert Ebgert or whoever, resides here. You ain't got nothing. You got no stock. Anything you say will cause knee flinching reactions and anywhere up to six months worth of everyone chipping in, ironically, about how you have nothing to say on the matter. 1-10 Games Alright Johnny casual? We hate to tell you but Farmville, Snake, Angry Birds, Wii Spor

Three working days is up bitches so I'm posting my letter to Konami here. Then maybe we'll put it on twitter and start a facebook group and maybe make page 416 of the Guardian Guide this weekend until Konami reply to us. Dear Konami, We here at the blog That Guy's A Maniac have been debating buying the new Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Game. It has received excellent reviews all around and we are a fan of other Konami games. Silent Hill is excellent. Not so much Metal Gear Solid but each to their own. Anyway, despite being just over a month old it is already retailing for less than £20 in some places. LESS THAN £20! How is this sustainable? I'm a discerning gamer and the above game price is not even for a second hand copy but I bet the game cost a fair million to make and is already discounted to a half/third of the price. Perhaps a bit longer pride of place in the spotlight would be better for the game? I couldn't see a copy on the shelves of the largest GAME store

Ready-Up are hiring so we sent them a job application. Well, I say a job application, it was exactly this one . We're quietly confident. However, because we had to go and visit Ready-Up to find the details about applying for the job we noticed a few things on the application form. A rare opportunity is available to work on the UK’s fastest growing gaming community website. Ah, fastest growing. That immeasurable indefinable measure of success. And it is a pure lie. We just visited www.thatguys.co.uk for the first time this morning which takes our growth from 0 visitors at 9am to 1 visitor at noon. That's growth of MORE THAN INFINITY. We're the fastest growing gaming community more like. Applicants must have solid spelling and grammar. Shit. We missed this on the application form. Abort. Abort. Here are our future work colleagues and a free bonus game! There are five 'woulds' and three 'wouldn'ts' can you work out which are which? Don't worry TGAM read

News story from here . Shame on you Paras.

Congratulations to out favorite Uk-based Official Nintendo Magazine on their new Guinness Book of Records (Gamer's Edition) World Record for: Most articles published on least content [Nintendo Franchise] The prestigious magazine picked up the tenuous award upon posting the article titled "New Pokémon outed". This record breaking article made the books as the 2210,0067th article on the unreleased game Pokemon Black and White. So far, a handful of screenshots and a dozen confirmed new pokemon have inspired the skilled team at ONM to: Write more news articles on this one game than Pokemon in the pokedex (with the new editions). Produce articles which when printed out and bound, forms a series of volumes larger than that human genome book series that twattish scientists keep banging on about . Write more words than neurons in the average human brain. Draw more inane comments than bricks in the Great Wall of China. The record was previously held by blogger Ed Green, who, due

E3 again folks! E3 again! Want to see the games you'll be picking up for £10 in two months from now? Sure thing . Need some more ammunition to keep up those tired old 'console wars' between you and other moron-losers on the forum? Hey fuckface. It's Efunking3. Want to be told what shit you'll be eating next and exactly how to grin whilst you do it? Well then, you may have heard of a lil ol thing called E3. Here's our how to guide: 1) Find the official live E3 presentation stream a Danish pirate stream that occupies a small 2 by 3 cm screen with six or seven pixels worth of definition, get some popcorn and settle in to watch the laggy presentations whilst clueless meatheads keep asking "So am I supposed to play Gears 3 standing up?" over and over and over again in between the indistinguishable Danish chit chat in the 'open chat box'. 2) Milliseconds after anyone says anything Alt tab to the one of the myriad of fora you have open and type in LO

Prostitutes. More specifically, killing prostitutes. Having sex with a prostitute and then killing her and getting your money back. This is but one thing you have been able to do in Grand Theft Auto games since GTA III. Sure, you could view a thousand beautiful sunsets, save lives as an ambo paramedic, drive a motor bike off of a fuck-off great mountain and parachute to earth or, if you were so inclined, elope with a white priest on a yacht to a secluded stretch sea for some serious inter-racial homosexual making out sessions*. There were thousands of things you could do in GTA which is one of the many many reasons why the games flew off the shelves. It's kinda what 'sandbox game' means. Sadly it seems none of those other possibilities piqued the interest of newscasters, alarmist journalists or lazy politicians quite so much as the prostitute scenario. To labour the point, you could, if so inclined, you could just drive real slow and careful, looking for blacks . But of