That guy's a Maniac...

Acid rounds  is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Cunzy1 1: Ahhh yes the game that started it all The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion . Aside from a few ill fated forays into Skyrim, I've not touched the Elder Scrolls games at all so interested to see what you have to say. First up this is that sword one in first person with the dragons, dwarves and fairies right? Richie:  Just the one dragon in this one, unlike Skyrim where it's hard to move with out one overencumbering you with bones. No Dwarves or Fairies either, Dwarves are in Elder Scrolls are long extinct, dunno about fairies, maybe. But yeah this is the fourth Elder scrolls game, set in Cyrodiil, notably with Jean Luc Picard, Wonder Woman and Ned stark doing the voiceovers. Cunzy1 1: Did you play any of the other Elder Scrolls games? Richie:  Well, Skyrim, to death, but back in the day I did play Morrowind, but it suffered very heavily from PC-game-itis. Rely...

...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-c...

Oh yeah, fuck remembrance day! Today is Skyrim-day! Right now I'm installing that bad boy ready to launch into it, expect updates today.... Love and the only reason I'll be silent at 11am is because I'm so engrossed in character creation, Richie X

Over at that other filthy site I sometimes write for I have a new article up about what would happen if Jesus, Charles Darwin, Adolf Hitler and Albert Wesker went head to head in bloody battle played some gentlemenly sports against each other. Something is wrong with the writing because at least three people have asked about the scores after the golf game. I say to ye, read the text carefully. Anyway as a special little gift to the TGAM faithful, here's the footage for the rounds that didn't make the final cut: Adolf and Darwin go head to head in the dress up as a cowboy and catch a slippery grumpig competition. The winner was the one who identified the 'real pretty mouth first'. Darwin doing pretty bady in the chat up a bitch round. There was also the hide the sausage round but that's a post for a slow news day y'know? Bonus features!

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.

An Elder Scrolls book : Fuck that shit, get the finger out on Elder Scrolls V! Stop fannying about with Fallout 3 DLC! Jesus... What we're all thinking, Richie V

Our glorious hobby is now so almost mainstream that it is time to give it up and complain how it was better back in the day before it got popular and spolied. Last week I couldn't sleep so ended up watching people trying to sell a Wii on one of the shopping channels. A year ago I would have smirked and sniggered my way through it as the orange hosts said the names of games wrong or struggled with the controls. Sadly it turns out the presentation was almost flawless and at one point the male orange went on a tangent about Super Star Wars and Metroid. I died a bit inside. But shopping channels, TV shows, proper adverts aside you know that gamin has made it big when Museums put on exhibitions all about gaming. Museums are the vanguard of culture and no matter how great you thought your latest tweet was in 50 years time if it ain't in the museum then nobody will know about it. In recent years there have been a number of gaming exhibitions. Some good a la Science Museums...

This is breaking news. This news occurs nowehere else on google. It is regarding a weird noise you get when you die playing through Story Mode on Timesplitters 2. Here's how to access the noise. Start playing through story mode on Timesplitters 2. Die and then the restart/quit screen comes up with a big floaty blue thing in the background with some loud music. Just put the pad down and listen to the music. It trails off and then you get some scary noises. Then right right right at the end after the scary noises a woman's voice asks "Is that too much?". In the interest of full disclosure here is the email I have sent to LEGEND Graeme Norgate for info: Hi Graeme Huge huge fan! Huge. I became aware of your work through Timesplitters and restrospectively found out you did the music on Killer Instinct too! What a legend. We used to listen to Killer Cuts all the time until the CD wore out. Anyway fandom aside I was playing through Timesplitters 2 again last week (Siberian D...

Over the weekend we had a hands on ( this time ) with the Xbox 360 Mii creator. Unlike Spore, the system is unbelievably flexible for avatar creation and this application is a great way to pretend you have a Wii without so much as spending a penny! We made this as our first avatar: See how easy it is! Then we got creative and made this one: Ha ha har! All our British Xbox friends are gonna laugh so hard when they see this on the 360 version of Home when it comes out (due out November 2009)! Unfortunately due to video games and television stunting our imagination we literally couldn't think of another avatar to make that wasn't already a videogame character. We tried to make mario but around the time we got to adding the tits the microsoft execs looked at us and shook their heads very slowly. In summary then, this could be the tool to bring the Xbox 360 out of the stinky underground and to the masses. I'm not too sure how much we are allowed to say about an...

What with being listed as an "industry link" over on RAMRAIDER and now knowing** the top Geometry Wars Galaxy player in the world surely this is the year of the maniac. And look!, Games Media Awards people, no ads so perhaps we should win the Best Commercial Non-Commercial Commercial Website Or Blog this year yeah? Yeah? Then we can finally give up our jobs packing battery chickens and write posts about Resident Evil full time! So without further ado, congratulations to DR Hamhock MD who by now must have been signed by Nintendo and is currently developing a Dr Hamhock limited edition Wiimote holder and/or DS stylus for mass release. Well done, you made it son*****, you made it. * By we I mean me. Cunzy1 1. Richie left the blog about two years ago and since then I've been dressing up as her and doing posts about dildonics and naruto. That was until Claire interrupted me when I had the Richie wig on and was posing in the mirror talking in a Scottish accent. I went ...

Challenge failed: Yeah I kinna gave up after Friday, after spending 2 hours gaining ‘cheevos in Oblivion I decided this was not the proper way to spend a Friday/Weekend night and as such proceeded to party the rest of the weekend away. Also, it was AV bonus honour weekend so what little gaming I did over the weekend was spend grinding honor. Anyway this is my final score for 1 week (just under 10 hours gameplay :S): Apprentice, Fighters Guild (10) Apprentice, Mages Guild (10) Arch-Mage, Mages Guild (50) Assassin, Dark Brotherhood (10) Associate, Fighters Guild (10) Associate, Mages Guild (10) Bandit, Thieves Guild (10) Bloodletter, Arena (10) Brawler, Arena (10) Cat Burglar, Thieves Guild (10) Champion of Cyrodiil (110) Champion, Arena (10) Champion, Fighters Guild (10) Closed an Oblivion Gate (50) Conjurer, Mages Guild (10) Defender, Fighters Guild (10) Delivered Daedric Artifact (50) Destroyed the Great Gate (50) Eliminator, Dark Brotherhood (10) Escape...

Poor! Very Very Poor! I managed to play for an hour yesterday… 1 hour I managed to slam a load of the Mages guild quests… But I’m still on them. I was hoping by this time to have completed the Mages guild and to have progressed within the Fighters guild (maybe arena). Though it’s not all bad, I have the last remaining Arch-Mage missions left which are not huge challenges, if I can get them done in an hour, and maybe complete the Fighters guild and Arena at the weekend then I will be back on track… maybe. Either way I think we can all see the benefits of NOT having friends when taking on a challenge such as this. The other minor achievement that I got last night, my character is now a Journeyman in Alteration, with Illusion a mere midges baw-hair behind it. Status: Level 7 Apprentice, Fighters Guild (10) Apprentice, Mages Guild (10) Arch-Mage, Mages Guild (50) Assassin, Dark Brotherhood (10) Associate, Fighters Guild (10) Associate, Mages Guild (10) Bandit, Thieves G...

OK, Ok, enough grief already, yeah halo 3, biggest selling media opening thing EVER (194 million copies on the opening day, more than any movie or game ever.). I’m still pressing on with my Oblivion quest. So far it is not going as well as expected due to 2 major hitches: 1. I spent far too long pissing about with character creation. I rolled the character last night and spent ages choosing a race and the features etc. I opted for a Breton and created a custom “Paladin” class for this venture. For those of you that don’t know, when you roll a new character in Oblivion you have to do a little section where the way you have played it will be judged and a class will be suggested to you. You can then opt to choose this class, choose from one of the 21 pre-designed classes, or create your own class. I created my own class but spent far too long on it… 2. I got fucking ejected from the Mages guild. Yeah, I was firing though all the stupid Mages guild associate quests, where...

After some serious thought I have decided that it may be entirely possible to get 1000 gamer points in 1 week (whilst maintaining a social life) I have never personally owned Oblivion, all of the playtime that I have amassed is on a friends 360 and his copy of the game. This however does give me a basis for the game mechanics. This will be entirely an “achievement speed run”, and does not include the shivering isles expansion pack. The achievements in Oblivion are split into 6 different sections: Main Quest 6 Achievements – 360 points Fighters Guild 10 Achievements – 140 points Mages Guild 10 Achievements – 140 points Thieves Guild 8 Achievements – 120 points Arena 9 Achievements – 130 points Dark Brotherhood 7 Achievements – 110 points My plan is to start a “Paladin” class fighter/healer focussing on blade and restoration. Upon leaving the sewers I will then venture to complete the mages guild quest line, which is arguable longer than the main quest line, ...