That guy's a Maniac...

  We'RE:Back for the first episode of the fifth season of the TGAM Podcast! Will this be the season the maniacs don't neglect the blog despite directing everyone to it every episode? Well just between you and me listeners I'm already an episode behind! As ever we've got SEASON GIMMICKS including a bit that we're not sure if it works or not THE WHOLE SEASON. Just like old times (remember the office skit? Like that but worse!). We also debut new game Character, Item, Level to the world. 

So WoW Classic came out ages ago, and I have finally reached the pinnacle of lvl 60, which is less of a pinnacle than a plateau before you continue to hike up that mountain. Having debated what I wanna do at 60 with my little Paladin I have decided I would like to get into at least a couple of raids and have been doing my attunements. As well as this I have been picking up that all important gear! But as a Paladin I have many options open to me, the go to is healing, but you can also Tank, or create soloing builds, or even RET-LOL, I have decided to take this further and dive into a niche retadin build! The Spelladin What is a Spelladin? Spelladin is essentially a ret-pala, with very similar talent setup, however rather than using Seal of Casino, it uses Seal of Righteousness and is with buffed spell power. The benefit thereof is that SoR is straight damage applied to every hit, and SoR is boosted by spellpower. As such the difference between Ret and Spelladin is Gear/enchants

The Kotaku version of this post would go into detail with some wistful unimaginative bunk like how the dragonball characters related to the tough times that we were going through in IRL and how despite the lack of IRL friends,  the dragon ball have given me great memories, akin to the first time you fingered someone, but hey we are not kotaku and we do not condone that sort of practice! No Sir! No fingering here... Much Anyways! Dragon ball: Kakarot is out so soon 17 January. For the longest while we were a religious consumer of dragon ball games harking back to SNES. there was a glorious time in the PS2 when the games were brought out yearly, allowing you relive the iconic blake-esque "epic" that is following Goku (Spoilers: AKA: Kakarot) through his life and sees him battling foes, finding friends and love. At this point we believe it is customary to write a list of every dragon ball game ever But wikipedia can do that better than me: https://en.wikipedia.org

In roughly a week a swathe of 30-40 somethings are going to relive and re-start a habit in a bid to re-misspend a misspent youth. There is a swell of hype in niche pockets of the Internet as people get more and more excited for the launch of World of Warcraft Classic . But why? Why is there the familiar toot-toot of the hype-train on the horizon for a product that is over a decade old, has a newer shinier iteration currently out and available to play, and a product that held marmite-like, positive and negative criticism when it was out. Just to clear things up I have bought my ticket (e d: and a train drivers hat, matching t-shirt, undies and socks and the special edition coke cans ) and I am on the hype train! I am genuinely looking forward to Classic, but my goals and approach are going to be massively different to it, as will it be for much of the community. So I'm gonna play a little bit of devils advocate here... Upon launch many, many people will just be diving in fo

Games. Cost. Money. well, in most cases, unless: You are a thief or pirate. You have managed to get some bundle with free titles  Some 24 hour Xmas day promos to get game X (released X years ago).  Or! That one time many years ago Xbox gave away a submarine game (?!) cuz Xbox live was buggered. Games are odd beasts, they offer literally infinite hours of entertainment. Yet through the variety of platforms such as, Steam or PSN Store, and somewhat even when they were physibles, we 'collect' them, literally increasing our potential hours played to the schoolyard idiom of "Infinity x2" There are SO MANY out there competing for your attention. Most of them frantically and avidly jumping, shouting and screaming, while the hypetrain still has momentum - just after their release window. But slowly as they begin to age, the respective platform stores (valve) start to hug them tighter bringing them close to their bosom, they whisper sweet nothings, offering the

On August 27  Blizzard is launching their WoW re-boot: WoW Classic.  15 years ago, as our steadfast and loyal readership will remember, I just wouldn’t shut up about WoW, offering almost daily updates on the most mundane aspects of my (crappy) fire mage. And I shall be re-joining the masses this August, this time as a Human Paladin.  I have dipped my toe in and out of WoW, over the course of its evolution, to it’s current iteration. Though I have not partook in the past 3-ish expansions. WoW has changed a lot it's so fast paced and it’s almost impossible to die, but I will lay out my grumbles on what it has become at another point . One of my favourite things in WoW was “Transmog”, which initially was collecting pieces of armour or weapons and by taking it to a dude in-game, he could make one look like the other. Previously this worked by having to own the armour you wanted to Transmog with, resulting in bags and banks full of low level armour. Nowadays, however you “colle

Dear Diary, Last night I dreamed of World of Warcraft: classic. I dreamed I fired up my old account and ventured again into WoW at level 60 . I dreamed of Hunters with mana. I dreamed of saving gold to level skills. I dreamed of running out of quests at lvl 40. I dreamed of buying reagents to cast spells. I dreamed of sitting down for to drink the water you just conjured to replenish the mana you just spent on the conjuring the water. I dreamed of senseless Alterac Valley. I dreamed of waiting for Zeppelins. I dreamed of no navigation. I dreamed of escort quests, and enevitable ganks. I dreamed of corpse crawling. I dreamed of General: LFG 1x Tank 2x DPS I dreamed of Buying bag space If World of Warcraft is a feeling, then as the Red hot Chilli pepper once said "I dont wanna feel like I did that day" #Apt Love and I'll probably play it anyway, Richie X

This weekend, it'll be Adios Alola and Alola to, errrr, Alola as we leave Pokémon Sun and Moon to start the adventure once again in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon. We initially reviewed Sun & Moon back in December 2016  so in this cutting edge piece of investigative journalism we interview the writing team behind award winning gaming blog That Guy's a Maniac to see what impression the game will leave a year later and some hopes for the new games out this week. How many hours did you clock?  Cunzy1 1 : So I ended up clocking nearly 330 hours on Moon, it's only Sapphire on the GBA and Y that I think I've played for longer. Richie: A meager 250 hours on Sun, my lowest clock up of hours for any Pokémon game (X was over 1k hours!) What did you like about Sun & Moon? CZY: I thought there was a lot to like about Sun & Moon and part of that tried and tested iterative design from the Pokémon Company brought and bettered a lot of good ideas from

Right so, blizzard have brought out a card game thing. A. Card. Game. Not a massive expansive world, not a spin-off to Starcraft, not a rotational life cycle DoTA clone... A card game. Aaaand, its good, so fucking good! It shouldn't be, but it is. Right now its a PC game, again, it shouldn't be, but it is. Its a Mobile game that was beta'd on PC but just works great. I remember playing the card games like Pokemon Card game on the Gameboy Colour and even the old Yu-Gi-Oh! Power of Chaos PC games. And see its all its not about the mechanics of the game, which I will not bore you with, or the tie in to the WoW franchise; Its that the game is so beautifully polished and wonderfully balanced. All of the characters are unique and offer a different experience in play. The other impressive part is its free, entirely free. Well... Not really free, I mean it does give you the option to buy packs of cards which is very enticing because that is the only way to get new cards i

Yesterday I found myself trying to explain the origins of Puzzle Bobble, it went a little something like this: Well originally the characters are from a game called "Bubble Bobble" where little dinosaurs blow bubbles to trap enemies in them then burst them.* And this started me thinking, where is this type of game nowadays? It seems to have been relegated to the smartphone medium. All main blockbuster titles are a "man shooting another man." I find myself thinking what happened? Somewhere between PS2 and current gen all main characters became human , or at least human looking: elf, dwarf etc. I wonder if this is a safe bet from marketers that people can identify more with a human protagonist. I miss the abstractness the otherworldly environments, rather than the scant familiar distopyas emerging in all games. This atmosphere of breaking the rules of reality had existed in games for so long, creating characters and worlds within the constraints of the machine all

Our part of the Internet is all a flutter about A not THE Steam Box (Piston or something) and now some biometric gaze tracking thing but I for one couldn't care less. Note, American friends it is couldn't care less not could care less. Could care less means that you still care about something. You could lower the level of care about something. Couldn't care less. Could Not. Anyway, I'll probably never be a PC gamer. Don't get me wrong I think PC games can be brilliant. Rock Paper Shotgun is my little window into the world of PC games and every now and then I'll get a little bit jealous of the gaming opportunities I'm missing out on. I love the stories that come from the RPS team and the unique gaming experiences that can only be had with mods, indie platformers almost as good as older platformers, the 'five second' games and loser generated stuff that really reaches into the upper echelons of what gaming is capable of being. On the other hand t

First up read this , it's Richard Browne (pictured below) from umm, well he's an industry veteran okay. And he's finally willing to bring to the table that much missing piece of evidence to prove that pre-owned games are killing kids, raising house prices and toppling the game industry. At last. Some actual evidence to scrutinise rather than a dev sounding off because their last poorly marketed shite game that sat on the shelves for two weeks didn't sell as much as Wii Sports . That key piece of evidence? A colleague of mine brought to light how bad this has become just the other week. He went into his local GameStop and was point blank REFUSED the option of buying the game he went to get new. After pressuring the sales assistant for a few minutes he finally got his new game - but only after the assistant got his manager's approval to sell it to him. [via Gamesindsutry international ] Ah, okay. That appears to be an anecdote and a suspiciously tall tale. Bro

The Ironman Challenge I'm not keen on following WoW nowadays, but this challenge is interesting. Its essentially a community of WoW players who have created a personal challenge to make the game, well... Challenging. WoW nowadays is very easy. There is far too many quests, there are items to increase how fast you can level, you can instantly transport to dungeons with randoms etc etc.  For a while now I always wanted a Diablo like Hardcore version of WoW, you die... you are Dead. and it seems so do others a proper Solo challenge! So should I, make: That Guy's an Ironmaniac? If you care suggest Class/Race combos for me. Love and bits of metal in your heart, Richie X

I was on the continent for Christmas and when I wasn't dying I was pining for some gaming action. It was Christmas after all and for me Christmas just isn't Christmas without the family gathering around the yearly multiplayer game or gaming long into the night, freed from the constraints of early starts the next morning. Just after Christmas, the wife and I went into town. She spent shit loads of money on books ("they're for work") which normally gives me free reign to spunk some dough on a new game. The problem was nothing that I wanted was reasonably priced, what I did want and was probably reasonably priced wasn't stocked and even games that were just over reasonably priced and that I kind of wanted I was put off by the couloured triangle on the spine of the box ruining the gaming shelf ( Dead Space Extraction's yellow triangle already taunts me every time). I then spotted a copy of 1000 video games to play before you die but it was more expensive in

...another whinge about the problem with pre-owned games. Our stance is very clear and we've bored each other (and hence 100% of the readership) silly with it but until news posts about it desist we won't desist looking on in amazement. Our problem with retailers is that they, in no way, really try to offer up the best of gaming. Older platforms vanish from shelves within weeks and new games enjoy the spotlight for a couple of weeks. We for example are keen discerning gamers at the time of life with a little bit of disposable income yet time and time again we have to head online or buy second hand games to get the kinds of games we want to play. At all. There isn't a brand new copy sitting on a shelf with convenient distance that I'm ignoring. I prefer to buy games brand new (although not on launch day and certainly not at the ridiculous prices some games are). In most cases, these games aren't obscure or limited run games. They're fairly big releases (recent ex

Oh Great Jaggi how Great are you? Not that great anymore the Great Baggi is greater than you you are still greater than jaggis and jaggias though So comparatively, your name is apt. The first time I tried to hunt you, you won. And the second time. Not the third time, although I did have help. Stupid shoulder barge That used to take off 80% of my health. Now it does very little. Go ahead. Call your buddies. All they do is dance around. Baggis spit ice stuff at you and make you sleep. Unless Cha Cha helps me. Cha cha never helps me. I'm gonna leave you in the village next time you little shit. Maybe I should sell all that Great Jaggi stuff In me box. BUT MAYBE I'LL NEED IT LATER. I'll hang on to it for a bit. See you around 'Great' Jaggi. In the meantime I need A Rathian Plate.

Tits? Check. Big gun? Check. Progress is so over rated. This is a screensht from Koei's Samurai Warriors 3. Not Samurai Warriors 3 but the Capcom one that looks just like it. In other news. This is an image of the new pokemon called Scrapebotto. Scrapebotto is a scraping the bottom of the barrel type Pokemon. Other new Pokemon announced are household appliances (did that), letters of the alphabet (also done before) and a new Pokemon which takes the shape of other Pokemon . All the ideas have been used. All of them. Just go for a squirrel thing, a walking ball thing and a Dr Robotnik Pokemon . Oh FFS.

Yes. It is indeed Xmas. The time of year for family, eating, drinking from 11am, presents and sleeping. But as Sir Bob highlighted we should also think about all those people living in the third world who don't get to celebrate christmas at all. They also get stomped on by a dungaree wearing maniac too. Sucks to live in the third world. Believe it or not, this post was inspired by an excellent joke in ONM issue 51. Kidding you, I am not.

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

In the past humanity has got by with descriptions of the passing of time using the seconds, minutes, hours etc. units of time measurement. However, today TGAM is proud to launch a new unit for the measurement of time. It is the TTECNK . Which stands for Time it Takes the Escapist to Copy News from Kotaku. It is pronounced Time it Takes the Escapist to Copy News from Kotaku and is the standard measurement of time it takes writers at the Escapist to copy and paste news articles which Kotaku stole from around the web and to publish them. It is equivalent to 'about six hours' in the previous units used to measure time. Here's some tips on how to use the new unit in conversation: "I haven't seen you in three TTECNK s" "It was a short game it only took me a TTECNK " "She only lasted for 1/20th of a TTECNK before climaxing. And to think I'd waited 2920 TTECNK s for it" That is all.