That guy's a Maniac...

E3 is a constant disappointment to us. This year we didn't even make too much of an effort to absorb any of it until long after it had passed. It's explicitly been why despite our blog age taking over our mental age recently we've been underwhelmed into a shocked silence. One thing is clear though gaming no longer appears to be for us.  Now this isn't just the typical gamer reaction. We aren't the type to jump onto the forums and announce how we hate it all and we're boycotting it all and we're giving up (only to return in a week or two when out favourite license signs an exclusive deal). We're actually real life gamers. The gamers who don't seem to work in the industry, who don't seem to be heard by the industry and who don't have infinitely deep pockets.  Since before E3 the creeping sensation of all this not really being for us has crept in. How anyone can seriously talk about the PlayStation 3 as being a viable platform (or the

We played Ghost Trick on the DS! For so long we've gotten used to the DS being the machine that plays Pokemon we almost completely forgot it plays other excellent games. Remember how we used to be a blog about Resident Evil (hence the name That guy's a maniac)? Last week we looked at a game with zombies in it. Today we're looking at a Capcom game so that pretty much means we're back on track as per our strategic vision . It totally counts.  So what about this game then? Well it is over a year old so we're probably the last people on Earth to play it. Others reviewed it and better than we will. Read those reviews. We enjoyed it. It was fun and aaargh. We can't write this long without a numbered list. Here's a numbered list of things we liked about Ghost Trick: Unusually, for Capcom the save system isn't totally fucked. So far there's no checkpoints just before a long unskippable cutscene or a ridiculously difficult difficulty spike(y).  B

Wii game Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is due out in less than a month and already, with some predictability, it is picking up some great reviews. The EDGE review goes as far as to say "How apt that this ultimate tale of hero-making should see Nintendo’s hardware become the console it was always meant to be." and ONM gives the game 98%. The editorial of this month's EDGE encapsulates how we feel about modern gaming. Oh how we've forgotten what "proper" gaming was with the seemingly unstoppable tide of "games" you "play" on your phone. This is gaming. That sense of wonder at a virtual world that is unique to the feeling that games give you. We should be happy. LoZ:SS is evidence (alongside Xenoblade Chronicles and the upcoming project rainfall releases) that there's life in the Wii yet and further proof that graphics do not necessarily make a great game. Much like the Gamecube, at a time when the Wii is increasingly referred to as a &

I've been wanting to play Deadly Creatures since it came out way back in 2009. The premise is simple you play as a Desert hairy scorpion and a Texas brown tarantula and go about Arachnida business somewhere in the desert of the southwestern United States. The game is fucking brilliant and also flawed, totally linear but the game drives you on just because you want to see what's next. The game is also incredibly frustrating and right up to the end, death is only ever around the corner leading to occasional rage when a checkpoint is the wrong side of an unskippable cutscene in particularly tough sections. There's some odd reusing of the same level, a particular section of which you return to on four occasions and later level design tends towards laziness with invisible walls stopping you from wandering off piste. Also jarring is the end FMV sequence which is of appallingly low quality. Play alternates between the tarantula and the scorpion, the former is by far the best one

All the time, the cold lonely empty silence of the comments section and TGAM's email inbox seems to be asking me "Why if you are the official Capcom website do you never do anything on the Street Fighter series?". I'm sure that is what the silence asks of me. And if I were to answer it, my answer would be a three parter. Firstly, why do we only seem to ever write about Pokemon and Resident Evil? This is the bigger concern. Why pick out Street Fighter? Jeez. Secondly, I hate Street Fighter but it isn't because I think the fighting genre hasn't progressed at all in over a decade, it isn't because now there are stupid bars everywhere and nobody tells me what each of them mean or how to activate any of them so I just button mash until something explosiony happen and it isn't even because 'So there is this fighting tournament' has been the standard plot for fighting games since forever. Thirdly, the real reason why I hate Street Fighter is beca

The other day we were reading the TGAM archives and laughing out loud at ourselves. Out loud. That’s pretty wrong no? But it was when we were reading the TGAM archives that we realised that WE ARE FUCKING GAMING CELEBRITIES! Yes folks, without actually knowing it we went from mediocrity to gaming celebrity stardom. Like that news about the goose that levelled up and became a swan that time. Here is the story about how we discovered we were celebrities (this will probably be in our second autobiography when we publish our book now we are gaming celebrities). We got a link on Kotaku once and not one of those news stealing links a proper link for creating something unique. Our best friend totally met Pentadact , secretly James secretely Tom at University. He even emailed him to check and Tom emailed back. What a nice chap. We insult Richard Cobbett on a regular basis and he doesn’t even hate us. We interviewed that photographer who did the Devil May Cry shoot for Front magazine. We are

Those of you living in the United Kingdom Emirates may have seen a couple of the recent Fallout 3 GOTY edition TV spots. This makes a refreshing change from the constant Wii adverts. We looked for a relevant video on Youtube but there are so many gameplay videos it was tricky to find. So instead we're going to go back in time to 1950 and explain the advert using only words *. THE GUY WHO DOES ALL THE VOICEOVERS FOR AMERICAN ACTION FILMS : Play Fwallout 3 NOW! 2 second clip of someone doing a head shot. 2 second clip of someone hitting someone with something else. 2 second clip of someone having an explosive device thrown at them. 2 second clip of someone having something [indistinguishable] violent done to them in slow motion. THE GUY WHO DOES ALL THE VOICEOVERS FOR AMERICAN ACTION FILMS : Gwame of the Ywear Edition out No[Gravel, gravel, Gravel]w. 1 second shot of credits. End. Now we're all for televisual adverts for great games but is the advert really capturin

Gaming is trying hard to be mainstream, even though it already is but not in the way many gamers gamers can appreciate because they are too busy grinding and cyberring to spend enough time in the real world. A world without elves and muscle men and barrels and princesses and invisible walls. One thing that might help the deluded to believe that gaming is more mainstream is if we create some Gaming Celebrities. That way we join the common woman by slating off how fat, ugly, beautiful, stylish, hideous and underweight our favourite gaming people are and we can OMG to our hearts delights every time Jeff Minter takes a crap and it makes headlines. Our part in all this is to interview the top 100 gaming celebrities pushing them from blogosphere obscurity to the heady heights of celebrity and maybe see them take part in ice skating, ballroom dancing and orgies-on-islands television programmes like real celebrities do. This is not Leigh Alexander. We emailed over 500 gaming celebs and

A new video game created by celebrity scientist Baroness Susan Greenfield is set to finally harness the power of video games to make children do 'good things' rather than 'bad things'. Ever since 1996, children have been playing video games to kill zombies, pilot futuristic spacecraft and connect gems of the same colour in a line to make them disappear. "And what we've seen is that children go out into the real world and do these things" Greenfield explains. "Scientists reckon that video games are more powerful than influences from parents, peers and even television". "So rather than control them to manage a house of people as in the Sims or identify Pokemon footprints as in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time, we've harnessed that power so that children will do better in life by playing this game". The new game called The best you could probably do given your socio-economic background will launch ready for the Chris

Semi-retired Ram Raider have come back out of retirement again again to bring us this news about a game called Darkfall . The essence of the issue, for those too lazy to hit the link is that Eurogamer staffer Ed Zitron was unfairly treated by the company behind Darkfall Online, Aventurine. Including the not deleting of personal details put up on a forum. Or something. This is unfair treatment and an issue that we are happy to bring more attention to, through the time honoured review of Darkfall Online Boxart. Cunzy1 1: What? No boxart? Richie: No due to the cutbacks we can't afford to google images anymore so we'll have to review the game title itself. Cunzy1 1: Another world first from TGAM. Second greatest etc. etc. Richie: Hmmm. Darkfall. Doesn't that game exist? Cunzy1 1: No you are thinking of Darkwatch. Richie: No. I was thinking of the Darkness. Cunzy1 1: Isn't that a band? Also, I was thinking of Dark Stalkers. Richie: Racist. Cunzy1 1: Not racist. But by findin