That guy's a Maniac...

I like my Vita. Millions don't, hell even Sony Don't. But I have has a shit-ton of fun with it. It's hard to justify Investment in a system that wont be supported, but there is a lot of greatness on that system (if you like 100 hour long RPGS). Straight off the bat you have: Tales of Hearts Hyperdimension Neptunia  and its may sequels and spin-offs Akiba sTrip But Most importantly I am revisiting FFX-2 HD Remake, yeah that's right, not FFX, but FFX-2. Yeah that's right the one with the dresspheres! For the FFX remake, all Squeenix did was pretty it up a bit. But for FFX-2 they added new Dresspheres! They added a whole new Monster Arena thing, which I have spent far to many hours thoroughly enjoying. The whole thing is wrapped up in a touch of catharsisism for me the first time I played through FFX-2 I fucking loved it, I mean it's hella girly, however,,, I never hot 100% to unlock the final dressphere (Mascot), I fucking missed it by...

So its back again a special Remuxed HD version on Steam. This will be the 3rd time I have "Bought" the game: Way back in the heady days of 1999 I went into a Virgin Megastore, I walked past the new fangled DVD's, muttered under my breath, "As if these will catch on". I carried on through the Videos, the VHS's the plethora of massive series Box Sets. I made my way to the escalator and Up to the CD's, rows upon rows of CD's, determining what area was what genre by the clothing of the figures flicking through them. Again another escalator, walking through the "Specialist" music section, folk, classical and Pan Pipes. To the darkened corner of the "Games Area" The most acne ridden of all the Virgin Megastore's clerks, reside here, disgruntled yet proud, with the word Virgin aptly stamped across their chest. There I saw FFVIII for the PC. Yes PC, and I genuinely bought it for the PC. My beloved PS1 had packed in no more than a f...

We know, we know . Yes you can touch it.

We bought BIT.TRIP Complete when it came out and we've voluntarily relegated ourselves to the naughty step for not telling the TGAM Massive all about it.  For those of you unawares, BIT.TRIP was a series of six Wiiware, PC and devices-beginning-with-a-little-i games that came out from 2009 until 2011. They got good reviews but we weren't tempted to take the gamble. Plus, downloading new Wiiware is preluded by an hour long mini game called "Try to micro manage the selection of Wii games and channels you want with the tiny amount of space the Wii hardrive has" which is not intuitive, slow as fuck and all-round frustrating. However, the gods of gaming have smiled upon us by using divine intervention to convince the publishers of BIT.TRIP to release all six games and a soundtrack as a boxed Wii game. It will never sell huge amounts. Despite being multi-platform the brand is not well known and you'd be hard pressed to know what the games are about from the box ...

Its time to pack it all in, I made myself very ill when GAME briefly closed down thinking of the vast amounts of GAME reward points I had collected for over 10 years. I had been telling myself that I would spend it on the next console release... ...but fuck it! It a slippery slope the GAME group is on, so it's getting spent, diced up and never to be thought about again. Love and I hardly knew ye, Richie X

Apologies to regular readers but here is yet another angry rant about game retailers in the UK. Fortunately, most have been driven to extinction by failing to see the writing on the wall over a decade ago when online mega retailers could beat the high street specialists in choice, price and service. PLUS the only convenience that high street retailers offer is immediacy. I can pick up a game there and then and be playing it that day in theory. However, as a concerned citizen it saddens me to see the decline of the high street retailer. Last week I found myself with some extra money following my birthday and consulted 'the list'. Now, I'm an avid gamer. I've played thousands of games, own hundreds and write for three gaming blogs. However, I also have a fairly demanding job, a family, friends who I don't see half as much as I should, passions other than gaming and a hundred other little things that take up my time. Not only does this mean that those heady days and ni...

Report just in from our very occassional reporter on the Street. Chuff_72. I swear this just happened, no exaggeration. In Game, Central London: C72 - Hi, I'm looking for a copy of Monster Hunter Tri? Man1 - *Blank look" C72 - It's on the Wii. Man1 - The Wii? C - Yeah M1 - Have you looked in the Wii section? C- Yeah, couldn't see it M1 - Sorry what was it called C - Monster Hunter Tri M1 - Monster Hunter Trial? C - Tri, T, R, I M1 - Right, I'll have a look C - *Waits for a few minutes* M1 - Sorry can't find it… What was it called again? C - Monster Hunter Tri? M1 - *To Man2* Ever heard of The Monster Trial? M2 - Monster Hunter? M1 - Trial M2 - No. Have you have a word with Steve? M1 - *Bearing in mind they are standing next to me!* No. Turns to me, yeah we can't find it. Holy. Sh*t. I know we have this all the time but come on dude! At least get the f*cking name right and don't then ask a guy about it in front of me and essentially lie about whether you...

Treasure Island Dizzy: The pain isn't over yet... The year was 1989, I had a Commodore 64. Games like Outlaw, Double Dragon and Bubble Bobble frequented my tv screen. My favourite however was Treasure Isand Dizzy from Code Masters and the Oliver Twins. The plot was basically, you're stuck on an island and want to get back to the 'yolkfolk' . Through a series of inventory based puzzles you build a boat and get off the island by paying the shopkeeper character 30 Gold coins (which you have collected throughout). For those of you who are unaware, this was seen as the most difficult of the Dizzy Franchise, unlike the predecessor which you had 5 lives and the sequel which had 3, in Treasure Island Dizzy you had one life. Consider that for a moment, one life. One life, with no ability to save the game, it was all or nothing. This also wasn't an easy game, you had to essentially memorise the side-scrolling map, often jumping blindly in to the next...

As if this week wasn't painful enough, LEGEND Dr Wo 69 has an eleventh hour entry! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee got a 419 in North East Banana Grove. It took a stupid amount of concentration to get to Vice City in the OG GTA and when it came onto the PS2 in full 3D glory it was the version that I played the most and enjoyed the most in a murdering sense. I tried San Andreas but it was just too god damn big! Yeah you can do all this crazy stuff in it with bikes and parachutes but I could never recognize a landmark to let me get my bearings. Vice City, 3 islands, couple of bridges, airport all you need to have fun in. I took a vow on this game that I would NEVER CHEAT! EVER! Not one for anything, if I needed a weapon I would go and find it, if I wanted armour I would buy it, if I wanted an Apache Gunship I would have to steal it. The reason for this, is that I wanted the best Criminal Rating possible and by entering the cheats your rating gets a rapin...

Dead or Alive 4: FUCK YOU ALPHA-152 Fuck you, you cheaty, cheaty fuck! Alpha-152 is the final boss of Dead or Alive 4, so I had played the "perfect game" i.e. I had played through to Alpha-152 with no continues (if I defeated Alpha-152 without continuing I would earn an achievement). I get to Alpha-152 and she pumps me, like seriously; Teleport, unblockable combo, teleport, throw, death. But never mind I remain calm it was only a crappy achievement, I knuckle down to do this boss yet again... and again... and again... and again... and again... and again... and again... and again... *Twitch*... and again.  RAAAAAAAAGE! I WAS FUCKING FED UP OF GETTING MY ASS HANDED TO ME BY THE CHEAP CHEATY EXCUSE FOR A "CHALLENGE". I frantically search for something to take my anger out on, I contemplate kicking the 360. No, it's to expensive. I see a pillow, I could totally punch that, no I need to break something. Then I see my phone, the Sony Ericsson K8...

Final Fantasy X-2: No, my "worst moment" is not actually playing through this hyperactive girl-power dross, though it is a major factor. When I bought the game I knew there was a "New Game+" mode so I was determined to complete everything I could on the 1st playthrough, reaching for the FFX2 equivalent of the holy grail; the Mascot Dress Sphere , which would be playable in New Game+. To get this, it involved getting an Episode Complete on all levels.  When I reached the point where I should have unlocked it, it did not happen... Now after a load of research as to why or how this could possibly be. The only thing I can surmise is that; very early on in the game there is a mini-game where you have to protect some crates on a wagon from bandits, I must have not saved enough crates. And well, the game can FUCK RIGHT OFF. It was a poor excuse for a sequel and considering the main bulk of the game was like I had just been brutally anally shafted with a 13...

The Simpsons Game: Now this game was a fun romp, I really enjoyed the storyline, parodying many other games, even referencing their tropes (every so often Comic book guy would pop up, announcing that a video game cliché such as "Double Jump" or "Exploding barrels" had been found).  I had been playing it (couch) co-op, and after an epic session taking us to 5am, we were approaching Matt Groening's mansion, to what felt like a final boss character. Given the late hour, we decided to call it. The next day we resumed, or so we thought. Cue that wonderful message; "Your Save File is corrupt". And sure enough, exit to the dashboard and check the file, big yellow exclamation mark. RIGHT. BEFORE. THE. FINAL. BOSS!! Personally I blame EA for this one; "This game features and Autosave feature". And boy does it, it saves every couple of minutes and after every pickup etc. Constantly writing over the same section on the hard-drive over and...

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion   Oblivion was one of my first experiences on a 'next gen' platform and looking back I was a far more innocent gamer. I wasn't bothered by achievements, or consulting any guides to make sure I didn't miss out on any weapons or plot developments. I was just happy exploring the world and seeing what happened. I remember the first time i was afflicted by Vampirism and having to abandon the main plot while I dealt with this truly surprising plot twist, I miss that innocence and it was only a couple of years ago. Anyway I digress. Oblivion for me was a return to the days of Diablo, which lent itself to multiple playthroughs where you could share equipment across save files and over time I had amassed a huge collection of equipment. This hoarding nature was quickly appearing in Oblivion too. As I ventured innocently across the world of Cyrodill I started to acquire a lot of cool shit, Unique Weapons, Daedric artifacts,...

Too painful to talk about again. /sigh

*Oh spoilers, but if you haven't fucking played it by now, I have no sympathy for you and I really shouldn't cater to you* There is a bit in the game later on, where you have to get by some whirlpools by equipping and unequipping the "iron boots": Time it just wrong and you get a KO from being sucked into the whirlpool and you return to the start of the whirlpool. Which happened over and over and over, keep in mind that to equip or unequip the boots means menu juggling, so it was getting more and more frustrating, till eventually I, out of rage, grabbed the controller and twisted it.  As I did so, the the 2 moulded halves of the controller prised apart However it didn't snap, or break... It did however revert back to it's original state very quickly, the controller snapped shut, the 2 sides closed together pinching a strip of skin on the palm of my hand. Well, not just pinching it actually scissoring the strip right off, forcing me to wear a ...

Pretty much my whole family plays video games but occasionally, my brother and I would end up having little competitions. I still have all the old notebooks with the score for various one v one competitions that would span hours and sometimes days. My brother was an absolute demon at (bizarrely non cart based) driving games and anything to do with the Second World War and I was competent at beat em ups, kart games and FPS so often the competitions would be quite tight. One time we started to argue about who had 'completed' the most games. It was a stupid argument but he had completed more games than me so I insisted that it didn't count unless you had the save game to prove it. So we end up going into the memory card management screen of the PlayStation and counting up all the provable 'completions'. My brother argued that this system wasn't fair especially when games he liked took up more than one slot. In particular, Gran Turismo took up 5 slots, a third of a ...

SSX: Tricky The Year was 2002 and Richie! and Cunzy11 had been playing SSX:Tricky with various Portsmouthians on the PS2 all year. Summer came along and Richie! introduced it in to my life and thus started many many hours and many many sessions of Tricky. Now although we all completed the game to get the best boards/characters etc, the main focus was one of the first tracks, Garibaldi. The tracks simplicity lent itself to a points frenzy, so the game was simple; how many points can you grab in one run by hitting as many x2, x3, and x5 multipliers as possible. Over the months, we poured endless hours in to devising the best route that gave the best pay off in points. Often we would incorporate part of eachothers run in to ours, constantly refining the process. We even theorised about what score a 'perfect run' would yield. The right of passage target (before you were considered a contender) was 1 Million points, however quickly 2M was achieved and everyo...

Viva Piñata: Trouble in paradise: This cutesy game is really fucking good, there is very little like it out on the market, and as it turns out, it's hella addictive! I had come quite far in the game, I had managed to collect most of the species, even managing to collect the elusive Choclodocus . However disaster struck, I load up my "garden" and get presented with "Your save data has become corrupt", Motherfucker! I had spent fucking ages collecting those piñata species! But Salvation! As it turns out there is also a rolling save, and it had registered my progress with collecting species and their stats. So I proceeded to start a new garden, collect the remaining species, send them off to parties, essentially completing the game. Except, I was missing one entry... the Choclodocus... Which, as it turns out it is, in effect, tied to your Gamertag. Restarting the whole process for collecting him again would not allow me to re-obtain him. He is lost in...

I can't remember quite how but one of our group of friends had managed to get hold of a not so legal version of the PlayStation game, Thrill Kill. Thrill Kill, for those of you who don't know was infamously unpublished, at the time 'unpublishable' due to its violence and mature content. BDSM, cannibalism, Gimps and various circus acts duked it out in such gritty locales as a sewer, a car park, a car park sized mental institution and a car park in hell. Remember kids, this was back when Carmaggedon had to be heavily edited in order to see release. Thrill Kill obviously piqued our interest because of the 'senseless violence' promised but more appealing to our small gaming clan was that it was essentially a four player beat em up. Yes, the amazing Shaolin offered up to Eight player fighting (still one of the best multiplayer experiences ever) and later Gekido allowed for a similar four player fighting experience but for this one day we had Thrill Kill, a chipped P...

Cast your mind back 10 years to the heady days of the Nintendo 64, and that gem: Goldeneye. I'm sure we all remember it well, it had 4 player deathmatches, on the same screen! now that is tech! So one afternoon there are 4 of us lounging about playing deathmatches, one of the modes you could get was "The man with the golden gun", where one shot was an auto kill. At that point we were playing 1 vs 1,  one of the guys  got the Golden Gun, retreated to a ramp where my only hope of killing him was to climb that ramp.  Every. Single. Time. boom dead, boom dead, booooooom dead.  Now I'm a persistent guy so I kept going at it, he had accrued a score of around 50 kills and I was getting madder and madder, redder and redder, breathing heavier and heavier through gritted teeth. Eventually at one point I had breached the perimeter where I would usually die, I got closer, scrambled with the controls out of pure excitement. then boom dead, yet again. I exploded... ...