That guy's a Maniac...

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

AI in video games is often an oxymoron. Developers will boast about their superior AI and in the days when games came in boxes you might even seen it as a bulletpoint on the back- Most advanced AI ever! Yet with sad predictability chances are within ten minutes of playing you'll see a man with a gun take cover on the wrong side of a sand bag or take time out of the hell-on-earth battlefront to inspect a wall for ten minutes. One of our favourite moments of AI failure was when playing the original Red Faction on the PlayStation 2 (maybe?). The last remaining guard in a unit of 6 claimed to have us surrounded. Surely, you can program a guy to not come out with that particular sound bite when he is the only one in the room no? However, FPS AI is the drooling propellor hatted idiot when compared to thinking men's games, particularly RTSs. Recently, I was bested on a map on "retro" game Advanced Wars: Dual Strike. The map was Point Stormy if you know it. Image from Wars

Internet fiend and Leaderboard legend the Hockster just gave us the tip-off about the new Resident Evil 4 HD version. We're pretty sure this is breaking so you'll see it in a TTECNK on lesser sites soon. Here is the original: Here is Resident Evil 4 HD. You can see that Capcom, fingers burnt from Resident Evil 5, have played it safe and set the whole thing in Asia land. Can't racist yourself! Except you are being racist if you just racist yourself and not everyone. Try again Capcom.

Exclusive from the legendary RAM RAIDER! There has been a walkout at PC Zone magazine! A guy, a guy and some other guy and another guy have walked out leaving the Future Publishing magazine in potential jeopardy! We asked our source in the heart of Future Publishing some questions surrounding the ordeal: Us: So what is a "PC". Our source: Umm it's like a machine for making books and graphs. Us: Oh. Okay. So what was the magazine about? Our secret source whose name shall never be revealed: It was about how to write good books and to make cool graphs and to print out labels for CDs and shit. Us: Shit. And why the walkout at the magazine? Our super spy inside the actual heart of the "enemy" in between the valves: I think someone accidentally printed out a graph on the wrong side of some glossy paper and someone called it the worst F*****g graph they ever saw. Us: Damn man! So what is the future for the magazine? Our source: Both readers of the

Yes children! This weekend I actually played some games. Shock and awe is what you are no doubt feeling now. Not satisfied with persistently sitting on the sidelines poo pooing any game that someone else might be interested I decided to see if I still had it and played me some games*. First up I played Turok for the Xbox 360. Totally bog standard shooter that borrows more than quite a lot from Gears of War from the token black guy who carries big guns to running around for six levels for the sake of some comms device. However, it had dinosaurs in it which means an instant 10/10. I totally busted it too! It took me a shocking 15 hours-ish but I enjoyed it nonetheless. All that crap about decent AI was still total bullshit too but it did have some nice boss battles. It is sad that the cheevos were so poorly thought through with the majority linked to multiplayer crap . Then I busted up Dinotopia The Sunstone Odyysey. It took about 5 hours and 50 minutes of my life. The game started

Aaaaron Greenberg is some guy . He was saying some thing about games earlier. But he does have a massive SLAP. Just look at it. It goes on and on. Aaaaaaron Greenberg you have a fine SLAP sir. A fine SLAP. Do you get security guards to patrol it? Do you? Do you sell parts of it for advertising or mineral prospecting? Is your slap self sustaining? It could be. That is some prime farming land you have above your eyes there sir. Yes it is. So there we have it. Greenberg-Slap.

Dear Chandra, or whoever. I won't say I'm a fan of ONM but I am a regular buyer as the free gifts are sometimes good and you do get the lowdown on games that your Future Publishing colleagues gloss over because they have real games to review like GTA and Dead Rising. In addition I have been diagnosed with the deliberating ( UPDATE: I totally meant deliberating and not debillitating ) condition GFP (Gay for Pokemon). Sadly this means that I often pick up a copy of your magazine. Monthly your magazine offends me. You seem to be stuck in a 1990s time warp where you OMG! in the magazine when you get a female member of staff and you think that comments about your hair and staff member's real lives are of interest to the reader. Frankly I don't care if Chris or Martin or some other office monkey is looking after a new born baby. Furthermore you really have to stop making captions about curries every time you use a screenshot with fire coming out of a characters mouth or anus.

Yes, perhaps it is better than even Dead Fantasy I and II ! This is what gaming TV should be like. Kudos for anyone who can name everyone in this semi- who's who of British videogames before the credits roll.....

Listen. Learn.

So Google is telling me it is St. Patrick's day either today, yesterday, tomorrow or this week sometime. St. Patrick's day is a day when the English get excited because for the lower classes it's an excuse to get special on Guinness and vomit on a car because we're not allowed to celebrate St.George's day because any kind of patriotism is racist these days. So in honour we're going to remember some of our favourite Irish gamers: 1) Keith "no saves" Blarney Ne'er before or since Keith "no saves" has the world experienced a gamer so committed to busting games without saving. One time we were interviewing Keith at PAX and he ate a GBA in rage because someone was auto- saving in the booth next to him. Alas, Keith passed away in 2005 after four days straight of playing GTA San Andreas. He leaves behind a widow, two children and an unused PlayStation Memory Card we imagine he received from a well intending Grandma one Christmas. 2) Kieran

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

It's Tanks! from Wii play. It's the greatest game of all time. The best multiplayer experience since the original Half Life. It has everything. Tanks, trumpet noises, wood, wouldn't, mines etc. Just play it with a friend and you'll be playing for the rest of your life, endorphins dripping from every orifice. It's the game WoW should have been, it's what all the Zelda games have been aspiring to. It's the darkest survival horror game since the Net Yaroze classic Haunted Maze. It's faster than Wipeout, longer than all the Final Fantasy games put together. It's more tactical than Advance wars and Kurushi put together. It's more addictive than the PlayStation version of Hidden and Dangerous. It's more stealthy than the-as-yet-unreleased Metal Gear Solid: Ultimate sneaky sneaky time. 10/10, five stars, five thumbs up, TGAM official gold seal of approval. Maximum out of any positive rating system ever . We're serious about this kids. Deadly

Last week, Richie and I travelled to snowy Estonia for the wedding of our old friend Randy McSporran . Suffice to say the event was chaotic and it's probably a good thing that Cunzy and Richie are normally seperated by several hundred miles. Memory is still a bit hazy but here is the summary; Stansted at midnight, vodka, coke, Pokemon Diamond, smking, checking-in, vodka and red bull at 3 in the morning, legendary battle, Ponyta, Omastar, Focus Band, Cunzy afraid of flying, airport dimensia, immaturity, Doug and Liz, Easy Jet, flying, landing, Randy and Ollie, new friends, sniffer dogs, bus, 'fit' or 'fat', hotel, mini bar, spluff on beds, snooker, MacDonalds, Kat, supermarket, Seaman's shot, Absinthe , Dark Dog , cheese waffles, Kent fags, drinking, raging, stupid cocktail, some other liquer, mixers, bull pish, more absinthe, Richie vomit, pub, Pokemon talk, stag night, kissing men, fighting, beer, Richie wiping things of his shoe onto a girl, strip club, lots o

Video Game Music. The music of video games. Some of it is epic, some of it is very evocative and some of it is nausiating in the extreme . There are a lot of very active video game music "rearrangers", remixers and performers from the grand Video Games Lives concert , hit and miss OCremix , very raw soundclick to TGAM favourite Diversion (check the show every Thursday). From the weaboist of obscure JRPG music to the new tunes of Portal a vast swathe of it is shit. It is, don't pretend otherwise. Do you remember in the 90s where every game had an American "ROCK" soundtrack? Instantly forgotten by the next loading screen. And if video game music is mostly bad the remixes are even worse. The world does not need tinny electric guitar "rock" versions of the three notes in the chorus of the Hyrulian Field theme. There also seems to be a race to remix the dullest least memorable theme from the most obscure Japanese RPG. For god's sake just remix One Win

This month's EDGE (181) featured a cool virtual tube (underground/metro or playmobil train set in the case of Glasgow) map on the inside of their back over. Scans coming soon. Anyway each stop featured a virtual setting. Can you name the games? Can you name them all? Cerobi Steppe,Frosty Retreat, Station Square, Nibenay Basin, Gates of Rixis, Brinstar,Ironforge, Bowerstone, Thunder Bluff, Jolly Roger Bay, Dullstown, Skingrad, Gizzard Gulch, Burial Mounds, Cosmo Canyon, Mammago's Garage, Vinewood, Barheim Passage, Nova Prospekt, Monkey Islands, Wario Stadium, Big Surf Groove, Goro's Lair, Blood Gulch, Battle Creek, Mushroom Rock Road, Shady Sands, Kamiki Village, Silk Road Ruins, Phendrana Drifts, Quartz Quadrant, Zack Island, Portland, Sherman Dam, Carrick Point, Death Peak, La Razza Canal, Modesto Heights, Gaia's Navel, North Point, Kakariko Village, Old Bullworth Vale, Ravenholm, Sunset Penninsula, Terramax, Mumbo's Mountain, Tulip Garden, Simian Acres, Spring Val

You may have heard of a machinima called War of the Servers already. If not watch it now! That's an order private! Here's the trailer: It's good machinima it has a classic plot retold and revamped, it's beautifully shot, plenty of action a splash of drama, there are in-jokes,,cameos. It really is great, the score even. If you have never liked or even watched machinima then give this one a go. It's all on Youtube, some meaty 7 episodes and over an hour of material. Watch it! Watch it! Watch it! You won't be sorry. http://www.waroftheservers.com/ "Kind of like Blue Screen Of Death without the cringeyness mixed with Red vs. Blue without the boredom of all the bopping men" Four Stars, Cunzy1 1 TGAM Put that on the DVD box Stoneman you mentalist

Alright dudes and dudettes TGAM is back. Our temporary exile from this most fantastic blog has mean you guys missed out on some excellent posts: 1) The post that was a parody of this one from UK:Res. Oh man it was pretty funny and included some out of the box fresh images. 2) Our belated game-themed christmas carols sung in the style of you're average yanky warbler like "Saiiiii ay ay ay yai halent hill, Ho oo ooo oo oo oo ly hill ayll is braaiyaiyaiyaiyaiyiayyiayt". That was a genius post I'm telling you. 3) You missed some of Chuff_72's anecdotes like the time he believed he liked Tekken and the time he hated the XBox 360. 4) You missed the congratulations, congratulations, commisserations posts for Richie getting a stunning girl, marrying her and then subsequently she died. Of the face AIDS. 5) Our photo exclusive of what happens when you drink 7 pints of wife-beater (stella artois) or big wkd blues (for Richie) and then play Wario Ware smooth moves on