That guy's a Maniac...

Earlier this year, life-sim lite, Tomodachi Life came out for the Nintendo 3DS. Unfortunately 90% of the coverage from the red top gaming sites exclusively focused on Nintendo's controversial decision to exclude same-sex relationships in the game. In itself that decision rightly deserves highlighting but as ever, the proper journalism parodying gaming press reported nothing but this, resulting in a lot of coverage that failed to explain what a ' Tomodachi Life ' was in the first place. I don't know if Nintendo were happier to receive any coverage at all or unhappier that it was all negative. Interesting, especially given how the press fall over themselves to create content every time a GTA or Saint's Row comes out, with only a handful of the more thoughtful hacks sparing a sentence or two for the inherent misogyny, sexism and racism that those games portray (hastily followed by hand waivey 'but it's alright cos it's GTA isn't it?'). Anyway, tur...

The facts are, you read them elsewhere. Discounting the WiiU, our next next gen shall arrive this year. PS4 and Xbox One, The powerhouses of console hardware have entered the foray with media hub like set top boxes, with internetTV, social media integration, communications, and happen to also play games too. Don't get me wrong, the stats are amazing they will be delightful machines with future-proofed methods for maintaining the prettiness of games. However I think I am most saddened by the lack of back compatibility, I mean suddenly my 360 collection is now dedicated to the 360, and well we all know that the 360's are far from reliable. But what gets me is all those digital purchases, the arcade and digital download versions, they are simply now attached to my gamer tag, but will they be transferred over? It seems not, and the same goes for digital purchases on PSN (Heartbreaking if you just bought FFX/Kingdom Hearts). It just makes me think I w...

You know saying things are "like Marmite", is like Marmite you either love it or hate it. That's right there's no middle ground its black or white no shades of gray, no 6 out of 10's, its either 0 out of 10, or 10 out of 10! They are opposite ends of the spectrum, Violet and Red. missing out all the greens, blues, oranges and yellows in between. And Squaresoft are apparently the same, their games are either "teh SuXXorZ" or "Epic wins". After a slew of Epic wins: VII, VIII, IX, X, everything just seemed to go wrong for them, they made a very girly sequel to FFX, an expensive niche MMO (for PC AND consoles), a single player MMO at the end of a consoles lifecycle, and then XIII finally! After nearly 10 years since FFX, Square made an actual RPG where you level up your dudes and you know chocobos and stuff. But something was wrong... there was grumblings in the internet there was horrible talk of a 30 hour training section, but still we ...

Artist rendition of how Miyamoto actually sees the world. So recently he said: “I don’t think everything needs to be 3D, or that just because we’re seeing more 2D games now, that everything’s going to shift back to 2D. Instead, I think that what’s going on is that people are realizing the benefits of a 3D game, and at the same time, remembering what the benefits of 2D games were. When going 2D, you need the courage to not be so attached to visual appearance of the games and to really pursue the gameplay experience.” Interestingly this also reads well if you replace 2D for SD (Standard Definition/Poor-man's TV) “I don’t think everything needs to be HD, or that just because we’re seeing more SD games now, that everything’s going to shift back to SD. Instead, I think that what’s going on is that people are realizing the benefits of a HD game, and at the same time, remembering what the benefits of SD games were. When going SD, you need the courage to not be so attached...

P.S. Fable 2 is just Fable with a dog. Richie.

Kotaku has the scoop, but the news that Left 4 Dead will have the cheevo "Zombie Genocidest" whereby you have to wipeout 53,595 zombies (one more zombie than Dead Rising's Zombie Genocide achievement) makes us smile. Well done Valve, have a cookie. Let's just hope Capcom don't sue.

*Is it because you stop looking or is it because the press coverage runs out?

Finally!

Every now and then the internet helps us to find family members and lost friends. We rediscovered Miss Bea Havin from 90s game magazine Playstation Pro and we even found our sister . Our real sister not the one we made up . And today we may have found one of our cousins "droolingmaniac". We found him commenting on some bullshit post over at Game Daily ? (Who? The site looks like IGN and reads like joystiq so were not even linking it). Anyway the article is about reviewers "seven deadly sins" but the author of the post forgets that writing a review isn't some kind of herculean task. Anyone can do it. Few can do it well. Our cousin, who we will refer to as "drool" put him in his place with this lovely comment: "This piece of superficial nonsense doesn't inspire confidence in the gaming press. So much of it points to the author's inability to follow his own advice. He's conscious of some of his transgressions, but at the same time his ...

In order to belatedly celebrate our 2nd birthday and Capcom's 25th birthday and because there is nothing happening in games at all we're going to sell out like IGN and do TGAM top 25 no a top 50 ultimate TGAM top games best list of best games of all time ever. To shake up the usual format we're going to start at number 50 and work our way through until we get to number 1. Then we're going to stop and do other posts. Given our recent activity levels this will probably take 38 years because we'll lose enthusiasm after number 47. So don't just sit around wanking over big brother for the next 38 years. Instead start pointless forum posts hypothesising about who is going to be number 11. Write a letter to EDGE when we include Final Fantasy XI but not VI or VII! Try to convince us to put any Zelda or Metroid* games in the list. You even have your chance to vote** for the top ten in this list so try to get all those underated multimillion selling games like Ico ...

So instead of the normal whinging about games as if we played games (we just play Resident Evil 2 over and over again). This bank holiday meant that I had some pretty full on game time. Heres some reviews for the usual reasons; 1) Dynasty Warriors 6 Unbelievably, significantly worse than Dynasty Warriors 3. 2) Haze. Imagine Half Life on the PC set in the jungle from the original Crash Bandicoot with a sprinkling of AI taken from Marvel Super Heroes. From now on, Free Radical did nothing after TS2 in our eyes. They went under and will be missed. 3) Zack & Wiki. Genuinely very good, beyond our normal Capcom bias, actually very very good. Wii owners please stop buying shovelware and pick this up. Ya? 4) Endless Ocean. Game of the decade. 100/10. Deadly serious. 5) Devil May Cry 4. Yeah, well I used to be a fan of DMC. Too much annoying capcom checkpoint saving annoyingness. :( 6) Grand Theft Auto IV. Life draining, fun but a bit bland? 7) Resident Evil Umbrella Chro...

We got a reply!! Which will go down in TGAM history because no one normally replies to our open letters. Here it all is: Hi Cunzy1 1, or whoever. Thanks for your email. I always appreciate it when somebody takes the time and effort to contact us, as you have done, regardless of your opinion. Thank you also for continually buying the magazines. Your loyalty pays our wages and funds our passion. Thanks for your points and the detail of your email. All criticism is taken on board. It's kind of flattering to see that you're 'onto us hacks'. It's always nice to hear that people actually read the words and don't just look at the pretty pictures. I look forward to reading further analysis of the magazine, should you see fit to provide it. Lastly, let me reassert the point that I/we really appreciate the fact that you continually buy the magazine despite thinking it's far from the standards needed to satiate your refined gaming ideals. Have a great Bank Holiday, Cha...

Aussieman: So I'm really tired today. I was up till four last night playing GTAIV. Aussieman's friend: Oh yeah? Any good? Aussieman: Well it isn't as good as Gears but maybe I haven't played it enough yet. Aussieman's friend: I used to play Vice city on my housemates PS2. It was sweet. Aussieman: Yeah well it's okay but there was another game on the 360 that was much better. The graphics were smoother and the story was better. No one I know has ever played it though so.. Aussieman's friend: What game was that? Aussieman: Saint's Row. O-o. So yeah GTAIV. I had a bit of a throw down with it the other day. It's good but as you are pissing around you know that this game is huge and you start to feel a bit scared and overwhelmed. The side missions, cheevos, hidden packages? and silly easter eggs. But as Aussieman shows maybe GTAIV isn't such a big thing for the casual gamer. Oh well time will tell but at least someone may notice when Saints Row 2 com...

As ever, Yahtzee Croshaw delivers yet another enjoyable zero punctuation *. This time it's super smash brothers brawl. However, it's obvious from the review that he struggles with the control system. Now, we aren't haters here but people who can't play SSBB? We're no experts ourselves and in fact the antipenultimate time the maniacs met up Richie and I didn't enjoy getting double-team-violated by Fox and Falco up against the Great Fox. :( Still. Yahtzee loses some of his cool points because he can't work out the controls. It's not rocket science and it is the third iteration. He tries to cover his noobishness with layers of fanboy baiting and talk about "friends" and "multiplayer situations" but he has exposed a weakness. In fact he even comes across as a bit girly (not racist-girly like Anne Diamond's game reviews girly ) and this is coming from a PC gamer so he should be used to retarded controls. And games. And PC gamer ...

It's just rumours or whatever but if it ain't. Fuck off you money wringing wankers. What's wrong? do you not already have enough money? How about stop pissing about with a new DS and get some decent franchises on the DS instead of all that awful animated film tie in shit that literally fills the shelves of GAME and spills out onto the street knocking over frail Grannies and blocking traffic. By decent franchises I very specifically mean: Resident Evil 2 Yes "it" isn't a franchise. But it is. Just pay Capcom all that money you are sitting on and stop making crappy Mario, Zelda and Metroid games that no one even likes or remembers and get them to remake, no reimagine, Resident Evil 2 and make it 140000 player co-op online, no friends codes or stars instead of other players and all that crap that prevents losers like us from actually playing online. Oh and don't mess around with Mp3s and SD cards and all that crap that only "homebrew boys" and gadge...

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....

Nintendo are allegedly very displeased.

Please! There's been an accident and we need help from all comers. Gamers across the web, please unite. It seems that after all those close calls, depsite everyone's warnings, the people over at Terra Nova have finally FALLEN HEAD FIRST UP THEIR OWN ASSHOLE. For those of you who don't know it Terra Nova is a blog about virtual worlds. Fair enough you might say. There's a few of those about. However, the problem with Terra Nova is that they take it way too seriously. The blog is written by various contributors who have tenuous job titles or tenuous connections to 'virtual worlds'. They only ever discuss Second Life, WoW, Guild Wars or EVE online. In addition there are a few crackpots who go on and on about MUDs. Anyway, so what you might say, you do a blog about old capcom games and sex toys. Yes. This is true. But we don't take ourselves so painfully serious and we don't make sweeping assumption about virtual worlds, catalysed by the matrix movie...

You probably don't remember when webcomic cretin Tom Bickley of Catl Ult Doll gave us a secret nod. If you don't here it is . Well after several years of randomly emailing Ryan North and telling him that he stole my idea, Omastar Comics , for his longer running comics series Dinosaur Comics (the similarity is shocking Mr North), he has finally given us the nod we so deserve here . Whaddya mean you can't see it again? Here it is: It's obvious to you and me. Once again it is shown that That Guy's A Maniac is a site for the discerning millionaire Canadian, time travel-to-steal-ideas webcomic artist. Just another reason why we are the World's Second Greatest VideoGame Blog of All Time as proved by science You are only part forgiven Ryan. The head, one arm and one leg specifically. You get to choose which side you get to keep. Nooch.

Yes number 2 ! That's right kids. Another feature right here on your monitor. You can thank us later. Anyway 'TFU' a so called Clan on Halo sent us these images. We don't get sent much these days so it's going up. Chuff_72 sent us this. Nice Jump. This is TFU Mr Cyclopse [sic.]. ummm jumping Yes, more jumping. It's all a bit Quake mid-90s if you ask us Thanks guys. Miss you too x x