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

Minor content spoilers ahead, major if you've somehow managed to avoid one of the most rereleased games of all time For veterans like us, Pokémon Let's Go is our fifth tour of Kanto starting with  Pokémon Blue and  Pokémon Red in 1999 then returning to a future version of Kanto in 2001's Silver and Gold, then a redux/remix with 2004's Fire Red and Leaf Green and the last visit to the region with 2010's SoulSilver and HeartGold. We've been there, done that. Got the T-shirt, medals, badges, magnets and pokéballs to show for it. So what does  Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu and Pokémon Let's Go Eevee add to the well worn roads and highways of the game that kicked it all off? Silver lining an all that The answer is strangely, not nearly enough. If like us, you've followed the  Pokémon games for a while, there is something satisfying in seeing the evolution (no pun intended) of ideas across the games. Pay close enough attention and the best elements f

Every now and then someone makes an extraordinary claim about an upcoming game that makes us turn our heads and get excited about gaming again. Then from hype to eventual release it turns out that said revolutionary feature was just a bunch of guff. Molyneux is king of the hype lies, David Cage frequently overstretches stating what his games can achieve. You know the kind of stuff we mean, the "your choices really matter stuff" that Mass Effect nearly got right or the "your actions will permanently change the world"  stuff that inevitably gets watered down by release time because it seems most gamers are babies who hate not being able to turn back the clock (or reload their save games) when things don't go their way. We've got our Patrats and our Watchogs on red alert particularly as we're nearing the beginning of the next generation and lying about future games tends to see a bit of a spike. Today's porky pie is courtesy of EDGE magazine's Q&

Out-fucking-rageous. This advert is on the actual telly-vision. Except unlike the version in that link it carries the disclaimer along the lines of "visionary applications only".  Basically, Microsoft have created an advert for the Kinect, yet another advert featuring a chilled out version of the Pixies' "Where is My Mind?", showing a whole host of things that might be possible in the future using Kinect but which aren't at the moment.  Amazing new low from MS when it comes to Kinect. Can't sell any when you show what you can actually do with it today? Then hypothesize about the future. When the product might be useful. I think more ads should be like this one. Fuck four wheeled cars, just advertise flying cars with the disclaimer "made-up future bullshit in no way reflects existing product". Tobacco companies should advertise non-existent anti-cancer medicines to allow us to smoke as much as we like. Just occasionally take an "n

Games Industry biz has the scoop parsed via Kotaku because we can't be arsed to register for GIZ! Because that means cum. Basically, a bunch of nobodys are whinging about Nintendo not doing enough to advertise WiiWare and DSiWare and all the online stuff. Unfortunately, this coincides with Nintendo running some rather good adverts on the telly box about how to get your Wii online and why you should. Unfortunately neither umm Pong Toss or Christmas Clix are featured in the ad.

Okay, okay, who had 1.14 on the 8th of January for Peter Molyneux to start making big huge bullshit hype claims about big games that will ultimately never be realised upon release and end up as 7/10 this-game-had-some-great-ideas-but-totally-cacked-up-the-rest? Did anyone have that late in the year? No? Looks like 2011 will be a rollover! To be fair to the guy, as much as we kid , Civilisation was an awesome game.

Recently, we've been playing through Pikmin 2 (the wiimake) and boy it is still a great game and playing it makes us feel a little bit sad inside that a gamecube port can get us more excited than some of the latest releases. You've can't help but love the little guys and feel genuinely mortified when you see those little ghosts signalling you've just lost one. Speaking of new releases here are our reviews of all the games to come out this month: Bayonetta : Surprisingly good and out Devil-May-Crys Dante himself. Darksiders : Looks like a World of Warcraft character crossed with Devil May Cry and Prince of Persia on acid. Plays like Excalibur 2555 A.D. on poppers. Dark Void : Worse than Resident Evil 4, better than Spyborgs. Dark Ciders : Better than Strongbow, worse than Belgian beer. Dark Darkers 2 : Pretty dark considering. Darkstalkers : We wish. Mass Effect 2 : Will be as talked about and played as much as Mass Effect was for that week . MAG : As much fun as those t

This one is from the only other fellow  gaming celebrity   Leigh Alexander. "I prefaced this post with a reminder of the business realities major blog networks face because I find it hard to believe that Brian, who taught me quite a great deal about going the extra mile on news reporting -- because our audience deserves the whole truth -- would thumbs-up a porn star's "celebrity" advice column unless it were part of a larger and necessary Gawker initiative" Brian Kotaku Brian? The whole truth? Good one Leigh. Good one.

Those of you living in the United Kingdom Emirates may have seen a couple of the recent Fallout 3 GOTY edition TV spots. This makes a refreshing change from the constant Wii adverts. We looked for a relevant video on Youtube but there are so many gameplay videos it was tricky to find. So instead we're going to go back in time to 1950 and explain the advert using only words *. THE GUY WHO DOES ALL THE VOICEOVERS FOR AMERICAN ACTION FILMS : Play Fwallout 3 NOW! 2 second clip of someone doing a head shot. 2 second clip of someone hitting someone with something else. 2 second clip of someone having an explosive device thrown at them. 2 second clip of someone having something [indistinguishable] violent done to them in slow motion. THE GUY WHO DOES ALL THE VOICEOVERS FOR AMERICAN ACTION FILMS : Gwame of the Ywear Edition out No[Gravel, gravel, Gravel]w. 1 second shot of credits. End. Now we're all for televisual adverts for great games but is the advert really capturin

The first DSi only games were announced last week. I just don't understand why they would do that. Why so quickly? Why wait until half the world have a DS or DSlite, then bring out the DSi then bring out DSi only games. Wouldn't now be the time to be bringing out the DS games now that everyone can get in on the action? Realistically, it is probably something to do with the DS having an average attach rate of 3 games. Which means anyone wanting to accrue a collection or play through all the decent/semi decent DS games gets fucked with a stylus but the average punter gets to keep that shit-eating grin on their face. Everybody sing it with me! [In eastern European propaganda stylee] R4 cartridge! R4 cartridge! Giving the consumer a genuine chance at experiencing! This wonderful culture! They killed R4! They killed R4! Now the only option is to buy Kirby: Canvas Curse on Ebay! For a hundred bucks! R4 cartridge! R4 cartridge! Giving consumers the dream! The only way to play them a

Yes that's right, it's number 49 in our highly successful TGAM top 50 ultimate TGAM top games best list of best games of all time ever. After yesterday's non game we decided to include another non game. And todays 49th TGAM top 50 ultimate TGAM top games best list of best games of all time ever? Resident Evil Confidential Report: File 1. Never heard of it? Shame on you. It's oft* been described as the mobile phone Halo. Yes, Resident Evil Confidential Report File 1 makes up for what it lacks in being a good game of any sort by having Resident Evil in the title. Did you know reader that in Japan Resident Evil is known as Gendengi Shen Doru Obu Natsuome Ou? Well it is! Imagine such titles as Gendengi Shen Doru Obu Natsuome Ou: Director's cut or Gendengi Shen Doru Obu Natsuome Ou: Outbreak File 2! It's batshit crazy upside down world is what that is. So that's 49. 49 is so today but what does tomorrow bring? Well thanks to the vast number of votes in our

But Dacav still has the title for best Tetris remix yet. This one is good, the vocals mix it up a bit but as with a lot of Electrance the repetitiveness kicks in. And your talking about Tetris in the first instance which isn't amazingly varied. It needed a bigger ramp up to. Possibly, the B game theme could have flitted in as a bonus for those able to mark subtle auditory mix ups.

More Nintendo lies this month with this post over at the "Official" Smash Brothers Dojo. This site is so fake they can't even get the name of the game right. The real name is Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Anyway we brought you the scoop on the real SSBB characters and stages two months ago ( check it fool ). But! Whoever is behind the farcical Dojo site is fucking cruel. It's OK to goad the Fire Emblem geeks but picking on Sega fans is a crime against humanity. Don't build their hopes up. I can here the frantic bashing of keyboards already as they plan their Sonic Faninima's shot with SSBB to add to the steaming pile of Sonic Machinima that already exists. Be advised Dojo webmaster, I'm emailing Google to get you taken off the listings. You've taken this joke too far now. Whilst we are on the subject of shitty fan made crap, this following public notice is brought to you courtesy of our latest "if you can't beat em join em" ti

Well this is a different post to any other that I have written here. You may have noticed that since our one year birthday we haven't made any posts. That is because Richie doesn't make posts and well because I... I don't know how to say this.... but I. I'm going to leave the blog. My reasons? Well for the last time. It's time for a list: 1) As one of the only women writing on the interwebs about games I have faced nothing but persecution from people. One commentor said "You make me feel sterile". As a women and I blogger I could clearly translate this L337 as "You are sterile". Now I can take jiggery-pokery like the next person but when people make assumptions about my reproductive system and it's functionality then I say No! You can't tell me that. It's my ovaries and uterus and nothing but a spot of untimely blood or a doctor is going to tell me about them. 2) I'm happy in "real life" so I don't need a bl

"News" from "this" week ] A nice report via boing boing about how most games are now old games. There have been an equal amount of PS3 and Wii consoles sold in space. Thatguy's a Maniac, the world's second best videogame blog of all time is nearly one year old! Check out under "events" to join in with the birthday bash. Hellbound Angels finally signing off. Or only one of them or something. Which I, er guess means that we won! New Gears of War clan TFU (The Fuckest Uppest ) are now top of the UK and US leaderboards . Well done boys and girls I knew we could do it. Nintendo announce another Gamecube remake exclusively for the Wii . Man I can't wait to play another game I've already played but with spacky controls. Everyone blogs about some shooting and videogames . Not us. We've taken the higher moral ground and gone for anime , anti- anime week. JOY FOR US! And that's how, for now. Catch you next w

Griefing has been in games for a long time. A modern definition would certainly be mostly about racism, sexism and all the other 'isms' towards other players particularly in multiverses, MMORPGs and online games with text or voice chat. However, griefing has been around in games for a while. Lets look to the origins of this much maligned behaviour. Griefing first originated in games where you could directly affect other players. For me and the Catch The Monkey And Other Games B69 (the name given to the merry band of gamers that I used to play with) peeps the first precursors to griefing behaviour could be found in Micro Machines on the Mega Drive. A well timed nudge before a jump or on a thin walkway would send the other player spiralling to doom. Remember this is a Micro Machines before weapons and powerups. Then strategies would start to develop to counter act nudging. The classic braking before someone goes to nudge you means that they end up facing the other way and

Today children we are looking at Comic Book Superheroes. We are going to make some sweeping judgements and then try to apply deep philosophy to it just like all those Geeks did to the first matrix. Do you remember that readers? After the first matrix, the people who dressed up as Neo would go around touting how deep the film is and that it touches on some really deep issues. Then someone else dressed as Neo would say "Hey dude!It's not that deep it's just based on this book/anime/thought experiment". Then loads of those media university lecturers wrote books on the Matrix and how it marks a turning point in the late 20th century, cyberpunk became the new stupid thing that hip lecturers and literature teachers would teach in a vain attempt to appear with it and with a finger on the pulse. Do you remember all that reader? Then the Matrix Reloaded came out and pretty much shat on all those people. It was brilliant. But it's time for Comic book superheroes to back