That guy's a Maniac...

Recently I was gifted a PlayStation 3 and a fairly comprehensive catalogue of games which is great for two reasons. Firstly, free games! Secondly by being gifted one it allows me to maintain that the PlayStation 3 never reached a critical mass of games for my tastes that warranted a purchase of the (still) overpriced console. One of the games that was on the shortlist that never reached critical mass was Valkyria Chronicles.  Released in 2008 to generally positive reviews, Valkyria Chronicles is a mix of all the best bits from Advance Wars , Battalion Wars and quirky PlayStation 2 game Ring of Red . It's a 3D turn based strategy game which is a lot of fun with a beautiful art style. Playing games slightly time shifted from the climate in which they were released is interesting. Although I can see the appeal of VC when it came out, having played and loved Fire Emblem: Awakening last year, VC is probably lower in my estimations as there are some great mechanics which shou...

Okay so everyone is going on about it but here's our exclusive lowdown on the PS2x2, that is two PlayStation 2s taped together. We've unboxed ours, here's the extensive feature list. Extensive Game Catalogue . What is it they say about buses? You wait a whole generation for a decent game (thanks PS3) and then hundreds come along. The PS2x2 can play some of the best games ever released straight out of the gate. Backwards compatibility . You can play all your favourite PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games and playing them couldn't be easier. Just put your old games in either of the disc slots and play away! With a PlayStation or PlayStation 2 memory card you can even continue your old games from where you left them. No rebuying games you already own. No waiting for downloads. Microsoft are going to have to really nail it to beat this. Forwards incompatibility . The PlayStation 2x2 is completely incompatible with PlayStation Move , any Resistance games or Heavy Rain ...

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...

With the hype train for the PS4 having left the station, we're going to take an opportunity to look back at the PS3. The first couple of hours of Heavy Rain were alright. So there we have it. The malformed son of the greatest console of all time, the PlayStation 2, really transformed the way we gamed. Roll on PS4!

Mad Catz are getting more and more credibility these days, i remember the days when 4 people sat round a console and "player 4" got stuck with the cheapy 3rd party controller that everyone dreaded. That controller used to be made by Mad Catz. Now they have released these controllers specifically for the gaming elite, for the "pro-gamers" allowing for things like interchangeable team plates. But most excitingly interchangeable D-Pad/Thumbsticks, making the 360 more like the PS3 controller, and vice versa. I'm still pining for this, 5 years on from getting the 360 I still prefer the DualShock PlayStation layout. However what bothers me about this incarnation and the thought and process put into it is that the 360 D-Pad seems the same. I really really fucking despise the 360 D-Pad, and have done from the start, firstly it's in the wrong place, though this is fixable on this gaypad, but it frequently just does not function well. It suffers from I-pr...

That means it's still not legal :( But yeah statutory rape jokes aside, fifteen years ago we were eyeing up that one big parcel under the tree crossing our fingers that it was a Playstation! Then on 25th being delighted and playing Demo1 over and over. Ah memories Tomb raider, Crash Bandicoot, Broken sword, Descent, Wipeout, and that weird thing where you could control a T-Rex... Yeah so 15 years, bet that makes you feel old! Merry playstaionmas, Richie XX