That guy's a Maniac...

Resident evil is 20 years old. People love this fucking stuff, "Oh my god this movie came out X years ago, doesn't it make you feel, like , so old" Well yes, and it more pertinent for us as we define ourselves with Resident fucking Evil! Anyways.... I have Played Resident evil SO MANY TIMES when it first came out I was speedrunning that bad boy to get the infinite Rocket Launcher. I have owned so many versions of the game, remakes, directors cuts, imports, whatever... I dont even want to think about the time/money I have spent on Capcoms franchise... Any way I bought it AGAIN, this time on my Vita! A great wee 20th anniversary bundle of all 3 original games... Lovely. I rattle up Resident evil 1 watch the opening video,, smile as I reminisce about using real actors in FMV sequences, go though the starting dialogue, hear that annoying grandfather clock ticking away in the dining room, DO a quick turnaround at the terrible white face zombie... blah blah. I get to

Well... Dragon Age. What an immensely huge, I mean really massive game. And honestly I'm 70 hours into it and I think I have barely scratched the surface! It a fantastic way to lose several hundred hours of your life. The sweetness of this come from pretty much just giving the player what they want... a novel approach. The game merges the greatest things from western RPGs: Such as Skyrim, WoW and of course the previous 2 Dragon age games (with plenty of fan service to those who have played them). The exploration alone in this game is just fantastic, akin to Skyrim with little hidden quests for those who are willing to take that little extra time to look for them. The difference with this dragon age is the multiple sandbox areas, which are brilliant and feel unique This is what reminded me of WoW*, with all of its varied zones and questing through them with the odd dungeon to enter really hit that home. And there is all the wonderful other bioware greatness in there. You h

We've been on a bonanza of buying older Wii games to add to the collection. We avoided the original Red Steel on account of the awful reviews but wanted to try Red Steel 2, partly because it's one of the few games to use Wii Motion Plus. We're about halfway through but feel it's enough to put down some thoughts about it. It's a perfectly functional if somewhat generic game. The motion controls irk at first, swordplay isn't mapped one to one to the Wiimote, the reason for this is so that a multitude of attacks can be mapped to flick, twisting, holding and tapping buttons in combinations with flails. After a couple of hours the controls become second nature and every enemy encounter can be played a number of different ways similar to the encounters in Resident Evil 4 . It's not quite mindless and if you aren't paying attention every enemy goon can take you out.  Oddly, the game  just sort of starts. There's very little in the way of introdu

...because every time I sit down at a keyboard my fingers default to WASD. And because some of my best memories and games have been on the PC, from the heady sprite driven days of DOS games; pointy-clickies like Discworld or the ancestral king of FPS's Doom.  SETSOUND= SB16  Through to the graphic driven monsters that plague benchmarking sites. My gaming memories start with the humble Commodore 64 in the 8-bit era and Amiga 1200 in the 16/32 bit era. Yes I flirted the consoles of that time, NES, Mastersystem, Super Nintendo and Mega Drive, but weirdly I remember playing Street Fighter II on the C64: But my first PC was an ex-office PC that ran windows 3.1 akin to the specs below: But as time went on I learned more about PCs I upgraded my 33MHz CPU, to 166MHz. My GFX card got a much needed boost, and as time went on upgrading just became a thing that had to happen, not necessarily just to play a game, but to keep a PC ahead-of-the-curve for a few more years

Ugh I cant stop playing Taptitude. Yeah I know I have a Windows7 phone, get your giggling out. I had an android phone for a while, and where it is good with all the (then) free apps, its gimpy linuxy experience couldn't do simple stuff like texting or phoning... big fat fail for me. And Apple, well I'm still on the fence. Firstly I don't really want    to conform to the millions of "individual snowflakes"out there, and secondly  are still no proper games for Apple... there is iOS games, re-imaginings of older games, which look pretty much the same as they did ten years ago or jumped up browser games. They are pretty but not for me. So I decided to go for a Win7 Phone, it tied into my 360 account, its fast, it works, it's more user friendly than the other "smart" phones, but there is fuck all for it, and no fucker wants it, nobody believes windows may have a product that is "easy to use"  Anyways, there is a couple of games for win7 Ang

So that's that busted then. Not wishing for the 11 or so hours we spent on the game to be completely wasted we thought we'd fire our thoughts about the game into the ether because, you know, there are millions of people out there wanting to read a two year late review of Metroid: Other M . Its those millions that keep us going. Well for those of you who made it to this bit, we've got some exclusive behind the scenes stuff right here where we talk about our feelings and stuff. We're letting you see our soft squishy innards rather than the darksteel exterior of our shared internet persona. We find ourselves as the unlikeliest of Nintendo fans. If you could turn, turn back the hands of time to the PS2 days we'd happily bet money on the fact that we wouldn't (well I wouldn't) be playing a Nintendo home console pretty much exclusively. See there's nothing wrong with Mario, with perhaps the exception that almost everything has a smiley face and eyes, bu

So around the start of February there was as a bunch of releases I was getting hyped* up about but now... a few weeks later... I couldn't care less. Game sites seem to have ignored their release even happened. No news except meta-reviews with the odd smattering of DLC rumours. I mean I know that games are considered nothing more than interactive entertainment mediums, akin to movies, but with more button presses (dependant on DVD extras). But I'm a little sad that for the first time, I have not given into hype, and I seem nonchalant about the whole thing. Maybe I didn't want FFXIII-2 or Soul Calibur V? Maybe, games are not worth the hype. Maybe the whole system is wrong! rant... should have continuous promotion... ramble... accessibility to all games ever made... rant... But that won't change, this is the machine we all made, hyped up media bombs, based on demographics and trends. Defining people by terms and desirability to play a game. Love and di

It's our first look at the Wii's Nintendo Channel in 2012 ( here is all the previous Now Showings). What will the hit-and-miss Nintendo channel bring this year? Our money is on- inconsistent videos, series that inexplicably end after one or two videos and in general poor use of an otherwise extremely well placed marketing tool. So what do we have? Bizarrely, Nintendo TV  the monthly show from the Official Nintendo Magazine, has been reset back to episode one again for the new year. There's now a woman presenter rather than that Welsh chap but sadly it seems the script writer hasn't changed. Expect cringey dad-joke "humour" in spades. One improvement in this awful ONM vehicle is that the episode is now divided up into different sections. Hopefully this means we won't get quite so many Mario/Zelda retrospectives/love letters. There's two tutorial videos up for Boom Street , Nintendo's odd Dragon Quest/Mushroom Kingdom/Monopoly game. The tra

Wiiware has demos, Wiiware doesn't have demos. Wiiware sorta has demos but there are none avaialable. Wiiware has demos of weird games. We keep out eye on demos that sometimes get put up on the Nintendo channel. Sometimes we download the demos. We then play an excellent mini game called "juggle the channel data" where we try to free up enough space in the Wii memory to be able to play the demo just downloaded onto the SD card. We try to do it in as few moves possible, leaving the minimum amount of free blocks spare on the Wii. Right now as we type you can download the demo of Fast: Racing League , Kyotokei and some micro racers game. We downloaded Kyotokei. First impressions aren't great. It looks like an amateur webcomicist did the characters. Erk. The music is also annoying. Not a good start. The game itself is quite cool. I don't know how original the concept is but it is basically a side scrolling shooter but you can change the colour of your guy riding a bir

Silent Hill, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil , Beyond Good and Evil, Zone of the Enders, Ico and SoTC and Halo Anniversary. All of these franchises have HD re-releases due out or out already. Although, we're hugely appreciative that older games are kept alive we're fans of being able to play the versions we already own. Important to note that aside from the original Halo it is impossible to play SH, DMC or RE on current generation platforms (okay so if you have an old PS3 or Wii you could still play some of these). But of course, HD re-releases are different from straight up re-releases but I can't shake the feeling that this kind of stuff is happening because the ideas are running out. Is this spate of HD re-releases a confession that this generation really wasn't much cop for innovation besides a graphical enhancement? Team TGAM is probably split on the issue but I'm of the opinion that technology has progressed faster than game designers and developers can keep up

Pokemon White Pokedex. SEEN 642 OBTAINED 640 Probably won't mean a lot to most people. The translation is, I've spent a shit load of time on this game and I've only got 8 more Pokemon left to get*, five of which have never been made available in Europe. I spent a long time yesterday trying to get two more. Each generation of Pokemon games is normally released in two editions (possibly with a third remake). Red and Blue, Gold and Silver, Ruby and Sapphire, Diamond and Pearl and Black and White. The "genius" move is that some Pokemon are only available on one version and not the other requiring players to trade with each other or failing that buying both copies of the game to ahem, catch 'em all. In the DS iterations of the games, trading has been made much easier with the Global Trade Station. You don't have to physically meet up with another player, you can go online and leave a Pokemon of your choice on the GTS, specify what you want in return and nine ti

Hey kids, remember Omastar Comics , TGAM's hit webcomic featuring everyone's favourite fictional ammonite parody? Well there's a reason there hasn't been a new comic since April and that's because we've been in discussions with a major film studio to turn it into a film! Because films based on comics are always awesome right? There might be a game of the film too but that is still under discussion. Imagine being able to play as Omastar in a video game? Amazing. Here's a sneak peek at the current draft of the script for Omastar: The Movie. OMASTAR: THE MOVIE AN ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BY Cunzy1 1, Richie!, Đoþþelgänger September 10, 2011 Directors' Revisions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ OMASTAR: THE MOVIE TITLE: OMASTAR: THE MOVIE -- ON BLACK, DISSOLVING TO COBALT BLUE EXT. OCEAN/UNDERWATER Blue, deep and featureless, the twilight of fi

As summer begins to close its legs to the sporadic penetration from the suns rays, and winters chill creeps its icy fingers up those luscious thighs, we get stuck in the limbo that is Autumn, leaves turn brown and fall, but most importantly the nights get longer and darker. And thus we are justified in sitting in front of the box rather than constantly saying to ourselves that we need to get outside and soak up that hokum "Vitamin D". Rather than catching up on that latest drama series, or episodes of Family Guy, don't you thing you should give your console some love? This Autumn, Xmas comes early with a plethora of KILLER games, we kicked off the season a week ago with the much awaited and highly regarded sequel to Deus Ex! Booya some Sci-fi Action RPG with some beautiful and haunting sci-fi goodness. A long awaiting sequel that is a swing and a "hit" that hardly ever happens! but we also has some mishaps XBLA and PSN got the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollect

If you believe the moronic notions of some of the bigger internet games """"journalists""" and seasoned developers then the Nintendo Wii , aside from having the dust continuously wiped from it is now a legacy platform. You know, now that the Wii -U hasn't even been released yet. Anyway, judging from the output on the Nintendo Channel the hype might be true. This is what we find odd about the Nintendo Channel. It is essentially a marketing tool for Nintendo products that comes with every Wii and according to the software data there's at least 500,000 players that watch it. That being said, the coverage is inconsistent at best. A number of promotional series have started and then abruptly been discontinued (the Warioware and Monster Hunter ones spring to mind) and since ONM have been in charge of the 'regular' Nintendo News episodes the quality has been very hit and miss. The recent E3 round ups were pants and there hasn't b

Shock horror, dismay and tears. Over the past ten years of playing pokemon there were certain things that caused me dismay, the battery on "Red" depleted loosing all the hours spent on that. Telling doppelganger to get Pokemon, then further down the line him thrashing me in a 6v6 battle. And most recently, Taking my DS on holiday with Pokemon Black. I lost it, I left it on the plane, I spoke with KLM several times to see if it had been handed in, but no :( it's lost... gone... stolen... moved on... It is... no more Well it's not the worst thing in the world, the DS can be replaced, I may even get the 3DS for the hell of it. The thing that bothers me most is Pokemon Black and the time I invested. Along with that I have lost my Celebi, Zoroa, Zoroark, and Victini. Several event-only (i.e. time-sensitive) Pokemon, Zoroa and Victini were actually ones I was using when going through the game too! So, i dont know, do I play through the game again? do I ju

I only recently found out about Project Rainfall from that homo-du-jour Jayjay-Fahid Sulley, editor of a little website called videolamer we used to write for. Turns out Nintendo of America hates JRPGs. With a passion. Amazingly, there are currently no plans to release The Last Story , Xenoblade Chronicles and some other emo game in the United States of America. Crazy news huh? I thought Europe had it bad but Another Code R and the awesome Disaster Day of Crisis didn't get stateside either. I guess it's because Nintendo don't want people playing the old Wiis with Wii-U around the corner. God forbid people keep buying games for one of the best selling consoles of all time. That would be insanity. Can't wait for this crap though. Give me a poorly controlled generic cockney simulator over some crappy japanese games anytime you muggy bint.

In today's Observer Carole Cadwalladr (who?) writes part of her column on the interesting statistic that wikipedia is a very mael dominated site. Fair enough. She then however, equates this to men controlling human knowledge (wikipedia's version of it). Pathetically she compares the word count on the page for menstruation against Star Trek and gender inequality against William Shatner. Something Awful have been covering the patheticness of wikipedians for a long time and to be frank, a lot better than award winning Carole's attempt. To look at these statistics and come to the pithy conclusions she does and to try to equate this to equality is special pleading of the kind reserved for Sunday newspaper columnists struggling to make up the word count for their articles. Wikipedia is written by volunteers. Draw conclusions about what men do with their free time as compared to women (shopping? being duped by cosmetic adverts? shoes?), fine. But men controlling knowledg

I have holiday and I've been trying to bust as many games that I've half started as possible. Kirby's Epic Yarn A lovely little game that appeared quite easy to 100%. I was wrong. Clocked it in at just under 20 hours in the end. Stupidly, I left all the challenges until the end so the last hours or so was just burning through the repetitive and sometimes tricky challenges. Soundtrackwise, many of the new tracks are as sublime as the classic old tracks. Fun. Little King's Story I'd put Little King's Story on the back burner for a long time. Typically because when I play it I get sucked in so I don't attempt to play it unless I know I have time free. It's a game that still gives even late on where lesser games tend to add all the padding. It is also still challenging although I do end up restarting a lot because I'v become very attached to a little hunter of mine called Stella. She was one of my first citizens, she's married to a guard and has

When we can't play games, read games or think about games in our head we find time to watch videos of games. Watching game vids is a tireless pursuit. For every fun and interesting video out there, there are hundreds of poorly edited, humourless, boring and idiotic videos. Here's what we've been watching recently. Two Best Friends Play. Yes games can be thought provoking, worrying, scary, addictive, intriguing and brilliant. A lot of the time though they are stupid and embarrassing. The tropes of games aren't something to be mourned though! it is where the source of fun can come from. In a world where online grimfest shooters seem to be how our community mostly interacts, Two Best Friends play reminds us of happier times of goofing around whilst playing games with your buddy on the couch. The video above is our favourite of the series but all the others are worth watching. Fail of the Weak We're big Halo fans here. Oh yeah, sure it's popular so lets rip into

Race Rating: 8012.