That guy's a Maniac...

We get lost in nostalgia for old PC games! We talk what defines a PC game, and the games that "define" the platform Love and Aural-Hugs, Richie + Farley!

WIMMD: A little micro feature on the the buttons we press and joysticks we waggle! Recently I was rummaging around in my computer detritus box. A box which contains, SD card adapters, proprietary USB cables for devices I have long since lost, devices which have long lost proprietary usb cables, external dvd drives, scratched DVDs with ancient Linux distros etc etc and Controllers, I have collected quite a few, and I'd like to share a few of my favourites. With the advent of the WoW Classic release (ed: Dude that was half a year ago?!!) I decided to dust off an old PC controller from the late 2000s the Belkin Nostromo N52 . I initially briefly mentioned this over a decade ago when I had a sour rant about Steelseries' crappy WoW mouse . Now I know it looks like an abomination of a peripheral, akin to that of the weird human/alien hybrid in Alien Resurrection: Except rather than Ripley/Alien it was a genetic material threeway with a mouse, joypad and a keyboard. S

While looking for images of anthropomorphized versions of the new pokemon with their tits out, we stumbled upon some clickbait. Not just any clickbait, metacritic showing us a definitive fact based, unbiased top 50 games of the 2010's: 1. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii, 2010) 97 2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch, 2017) 97 3. Red Dead Redemption 2 (PlayStation 4, 2018) 97 4. Grand Theft Auto V (PlayStation 4, 2014) 97 5. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch, 2017) 97 6. Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360, 2010) 96 7. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Xbox 360, 2011) 96 8. The Last of Us (PlayStation 3, 2013) 95 9. The Last of Us Remastered (PlayStation 4, 2014) 95 10. Red Dead Redemption (Xbox 360, 2010) 95 11. Portal 2 (Xbox 360, 2011) 95 12. God of War (PlayStation 4, 2018) 94 13. Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360, 2011) 94 14. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS, 2011) 94 15. BioShock Infinite (PC, 2013) 94 16. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (Xbox 360, 2010) 93 17

A.K.A it's 1998 again, A.K.A Richie and Cunzy's gaming tastes are so on the beaten track that there's a well worn runnel slap bang in the middle of the beaten track, the very beaten track if you like, and that's the only place we'll ever walk. Apologies to all those indies, new IPs, unique genres and innovative games we're only playing stuff we know, stuff we played already, remasters, re-releases and sequels. Looking through the games of 2019 I made myself actual chunder with how boringly quotidian our games list was going to be. We apologise to both of you in advance. IT WAS ALSO A BUMPER FUCKING YEAR FOR GAMES. It's like 1998 again. The Switch is the new PlayStation and we've not been excited for """"""new""""" releases like this for a long time. I think we picked up almost all of these on launch day and it's been a long time since a year has inspired us to do that. In no apparent ord

Konami announced a Castlevania collection ( among others )  due for some point this year in summer, for some anniversary. As ageing gamergirls, one would expect us to be "flooding the basement" on this one. Nah. One of us once played the one with Jean Luc Picard and Begbie, and found it too hard, so we locked it away. We did play "that bit" in Smash bros adventure mode, does that count? Due to the impact these games had on us we listed out the full titles as best as memory serves, I'm sure the right one is in there? Castlevania: Shadow of dark Castlevania: Dark shadows Castlevania: Shadows Lords Castlevania: Lord of Shadow Castlevania: Lord of Shadows Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Castlevania: Lords of Shadows Castlevania: Simon's revenge Castlevania: Belmont's revenge Castlevania: Samus' revenge Castlevania: Castlevania two Castlevania: Dark of the night Castlevania: Shadow symphony Castlevania: Fates of Shadow Castlevania: Retur

Now just quickly I would like to emphasise that I ain't no geek, I don't know anything about vampires or shit like that, certainly nothing about rolling D20's for initiative, or the white wolf series, that sort of stuff is for nerds. So Paradox have recently teased us with some tweets and images of some new project they are working on. This has lead to an out cry of journos everywhere going, "Oh my god that is that bit from the original Vampire: The Masquerade game!" Which is in part right, they are locations from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, however Bloodlines was not the Original game, it was Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption. People tend to forget the original Vampire: The Masquerade game overshadowed by its sequel, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines ( ed: so many colons! ), yet VTMR ( ed: phew ) really caused a stir for being an obscure PC game from 2000. VTMR was released at peak Nihilistic Antihero trenchcoat time. Post-Matrix, when e

Acid rounds is a semi regular, irregular spot on TGAM for games we have beasted from start to finish. Cunzy1 1: So your game this week is Ghost Master another game I have never heard of. I assume it's an espionage military shooter who is a dominatrix at the weekend? Richie: Oh Man, dude, this was a Randy_McSporran classic, I'm surprised you don't remember, maybe it was all that weed you were smoking at the time... And no this ain't no Call of Tom Clancy: Gear Solid Cell generic shooty game. No sir. Ghost Master rips of an entirely different genre. Ghost Master is, upon first look, a rip off of the sims, and has its place in a genre that has somewhat lost it's way to microtransactions nowadays, the "God" game. But you don't do building or character creation. Instead the locations are premade populated characters with different quirks floating about in them, but the twist is you have to unlock and use ghosts to drive insane/scare off

Hey guys! Do you want a game that makes you feel: Nostalgic Scared Inadequate Then Lakeview cabin collection  is for you! Lake view Cabin collection is a fun re-release of an older browser game. It is entirely 2D and with little pixel-arty graphics.  It's very simple, straightforward controls and wandering about just allows you to discover fun little Easter eggs in the game, picking up and throwing backpacks makes items fall out, falling off high platforms causes your character to lose a leg, which you can then use as a weapon, there is even pixel orgies to set up! But it doesn't end there in your little world of pounding pixelized six packs and hitting pixelized bongs (which make the screen/controls all jankey) there are terrifying copyright infringing bad guys determined to come hunt you down and turn your characters in to gory piles of pixelized flesh, bone and sinew. In order to defeat/run away from these guys you are given the task of setting up

So I jumped straight in at number 3 in this series, mainly because that is all Steam has, missing out on 1 and 2, though I doubt i have missed any complex plot devices. This game is a re-skinned version of dynasty warriors, with one piece characters. and is a fine example of the sum of the parts being greater than the whole. Its really great to play the faithfully recreated One Piece characters in little skirmishes which loosely follows the plot of the extremely long running anime. And on top of that some fun RPG elements to level up and fiddle with the stats of the characters, and the perverse pleasure of the free mode allowing you to use any characters in any of the any of the story events. There is a nice rating system at the end to which I am ever so proud to have spelled out the word "Ass" Also: Boobies!! Love and what more do you need from a game? Richie X

Like most people with a steam account, I buy things on a whim... I have around 150 games in my steam library and still complain that, I have nothing to play... One such of these whim-bought games is Freedom Force . I, at the risk of being one those dicks who say, "OMG this movie came out X years ago, doesn't that make you feel so old!", remember this game fondly when it came out. It wasn't Marvel or DC but it was a comic book style (even though I do not read comic books) game. I remember it being pimped to me as Diablo 2 with Superheroes, even though it is not a hack and slash, nor features any loot whatsoever. I do remember spending until the wee hours customizing and clicking on these copyright infringing polygony superheroes. So I bought it and loaded it up again, well I say "Loaded up" as with any game on Steam, more than a few days old there is always a bit of jiggery-pokery to make it work, so let me rephrase: So I bought it, clicked pla

So based the greatness of South Park: Stick of Truth I took a punt on the Family Guy Game and fucking frankly I'm glad it was only a couple of quid. It is the curse of the steam sale, you see something that you wouldn't normally buy and you buy it because it's super cheap. Which incidentally is the steam sale ethos, it's £1.99 that they were not actually going to see. But anyways: fuck it have a list. Played through it, it's painfully easy up until the last boss, where it is just cheap. The plot is not even in tone with the show. The audio is simply lifted from the show. The game looks pretty shitty, the 3D does not work! Its a straight up generic 3rd person shooter. Like super generic. I mean why do they have guns? Like proper guns! Not even themes, just guns, shotguns etc. Anyway it only lasts few hours, fuck it. Try not to buy it, it's really not good. Love and Richie X *I'm not writing one, I feel dirty enough after playing that ga

So again we are reviewing a game that came out ages ago. But man... we just completed this bad boy and its fantastic. First up is the animation! It's flawless the whole thing plays like watching an episode, all the story events include your character right in there wearing what ever clothes you have given them, outside of that the player moves in familiar areas and it feels exactly like South Park. Extreme Kudos on that. Gameplay is sweet, the RPG mechanic they put in there is so much fun to play the character attacks are fun, if a bit repetitive, to watch. You level up you gain access to new and funny attacks, you can even ply with perks and customise your character further. The plot, The game is plot driven and it's so fucking funny, there is so many nods to references throughout the entire 20ish years South Park has been running. It's got the same laugh out loud, shock, cringe, factor as the show, brilliantly done. There are some familiar references and a couple

This just in, stoic TGAM contributor Chuff_72 who hath spake the BIG ONE , Sold Out , and spake t h r i c e, wades into our flip flopping about PC Games to speak once more. Chuffty: I did not grow up owning a PC, but my best friend always had the most up to date system, 386, 486, Pentium etc, so I played all those games when they first came out; Wolfenstein , Frontier , X-Wing , Warcraft 2 , Dark Forces 2 , etc. Great times. Then at a certain point “Graphics Cards” and “ETC” came along and suddenly there was no standard PC anymore and everything stopped working. I didn’t touch a PC to play a game from about 1999 to 2004. In late 2004 I gave a mate £400 and asked for a PC that could play Dawn of War (“a good 40K game, holy shit take my money!”). My custom built PC died about a year and a half later, Limewire + 4gig of porn resulted in about 3000 viruses (literal, not figurative). After a deep cleanse the graphics card stopped working, at no point could I be arsed researching

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

So all of you out there in internetland are probably dying to know what TGAM think about the Ouya. 2/10 - More effort needed. A glorified PC gimped with Android. Well, we have talked about Digital Convergence before, and this could be interpreted as an inevitable step or perhaps even a step backwards. Its essentially a little PC that plugs into your TV, it'll run Android (i.e. Linux) and let you play Android games. Granted this gives you a new platform to play Android games, but is it even worth it? 99% of Android games cant even compare to iOS graphics and playability, and yet the ability to play iOS games on a TV or Desktop is just there, no hype, no random internet folks paying 5 million for it either. Oh yeah and PCs thy plug into your TV they have an infinitely larger back catalogue and you know... fuck it you can emulate most generations too (or indeed, if you are that way inclined, play certain android games from within the chrome browser) There needs to be more t

More chatter about the Final Fantasy VII re-release. A few days ago some intrepids spotted squeenix had written a menu for what seemed like a FF7 remake, this however turned out to be simply a re-release, most likely a digital download for iPad or the like Now a few months back I mentioned bootleg from qhimm.com, it simply takes your original install of FF7 and updates music, graphics to make it much prettier to play (also you can add silly, but well thought out, mods like Aeris resurrection). Squeenix sa y: Optimized for PC – FINAL FANTASY VII has been updated to support the latest hardware and Windows Operating Systems. But will it be prettier, like will they optimise it for widescreen? will the models be updated? will it still have the terrible midi music when it can be replaced so easily with MP3s? That's the information, for some reason, I care about. Meh, I bet it doesn't. But then I suppose there is always the argument that it wouldn't be a "pure" re-

Wow! just Wow. For the past week or so I have been having cravings to play Zelda: ocarina of time. So through the wonders on the internet I dug out an emulator. I also dug out my 360 wireless adaptor. I set that bitch up! Plugged my PC into my TV, set the Graphics to all maximum settings, and set the Controller like an N64 pad. And started it up. Amazing, I never new that all those details were possible despite the backgrounds and some of the textures being a bit pixelly its flawless, and plays really well with the 360 controller! Here's to Retro Games and HD. Love and Saria's song Richie X

Finally it looks like Capcom are getting around to making the game we dreamed about waaaay back when just after our third visit to Raccoon and before that awful broken Outbreak business. Still, it's a far cry from a GTA-Raccoon City that we imagined and since Outbreak the zombie game has been taken in all kinds of directions with Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil 4 and 5 and Dead Rising. From the looks of the above trailer they've gone for a PC FPS kind of vibe which we here at TGAM find thrilling for three rounds. Part of what made RE2 and 3 and even Outbreak so great was the sense of the city (before descending into underground laboratory madness). RE4 and RE5 really lost the sense of a location that used to be a living and working settlement. RE4 takes you through nonsensical shooting gallery locations after the first village and it's best if you don't think about the quite dull or ridiculous locales of RE5. Where would you head in a crisis? The hospital? The Town Hall? Th

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