That guy's a Maniac...

Wow, just wow... Doki-Doki Literature club  is an amazing piece of work. A truly horrifying, 4th wall breaking,  experience, all wrapped up in a cutesy visual novel about school life. And that is so true, the game really messes you around on several occasions, making you believe you are making choices but you are not and that terrifies you even more. Warning *spoilers* ahoy! After a certain event the game glitches the fuck out and send you in a weird spiral of messed up events as if something never happened... You are then approached by an in game character who orchestrates a series of events to prove her love, and even after this confession the game still continues you down a path of truly fucked up madness. Seriously, its free, play it! A whole new approach to gaming, more immersive than that time you had to change controller ports in metal gear. Love and only Monika. 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 that ancient game Outcast has been marked for a remake, and some of the original Syndicate (Wars) guys have appealed to the kickstarter community to give them money to do so. I feel that this week the games industry just flicked through gog.com  and chose a couple of randoms. First of all! That Syndicate game, which is called Satellite Reign; dont get me wrong I'm excited about the appeal of a successor that is not an FPS, and it ties in nicely with my recent cries for a proper dystopian megalopolis type game. But I cant get round that video : those guys are really off-putting, just seeing them there pitching their idea on kickstarter, it really feels a bit too much like begging, sorry guys. Some other kickstarters have done well in advertising their products and appealing, mainly because they are mostly creative types, but this seems like guys out of their depth trying to learn how to do a sales pitch. Secondly why Outcast?! Outcast was a great game, for its time, it...

In ordered to be accredited with any kind of standing, or respect within the pseudo-community of gamers there is a plateau of geeky knowledge that is a standard, however as more and more niche corners become mainstream... On a side note I refer to this phenomenon as ironic-hipster-reversal ; bringing to attention obscure elements of information to appear more knowledgeable in a subject, yet unintentionally bringing it to the foray for everyone i.e. Wearing a a T-shirt with the konami code. Pay attention to this people, this level of marketing and advertising is more powerful than social media!  ...as I was saying as video-games-geeky-knowledge becomes more mainstream the level of knowledge to be respected within the community becomes more convoluted and obscure. There has always existed a level of this autistic desire within games culture, from the early days of imported rare japanese titles. But nowadays games culture has expanded to a respected and widely used ...

We're all about being open and transparent with YOU, the homeless transsexual checking the Internet when you should be working and this post, friend((ette)?) is going to be a short one. London indie game store GAME FOCUS has closed its doors ( EDGE has the scoop ). This is a fucking tragedy and much more sad face for us than the whatever-the-fuck-is-happening-with-GAME.  Game focus was a lovely little store that we'd frequently go to just browse. Not only did they have OLD FORMATS, pretty much every GBA and GC game I bought was from here but they used to have amazing displays of limited edition games, consoles and peripherals. Also they sold PlayStation promo copies for like a pound each. They did not give a fuck even though they were emblazoned with "PROMOTIONAL COPY NOT FOR RESALE".  The shop took a bit of a dive when they moved all the DVDs upstairs and the games to the basement and for some reason their amazing display cases got culled and the...

Round 2 of understanding gamerish (round one here ). Today we take on understanding scores out of ten. Many gamers lack a coherent framework for prolonged discussion of merits and downsides of commercial products. Combined with attention spans shortened by obligate internet use means that reviewers often use a simple one to ten scale, often at the bottom of a review to help the pressed for time gamers decide which game they should chip, rip or steal next. Unfortunately though rather than use the X/X system as a rough indicator of quality many gamers endlessly squabble over scores of their favourite games neglecting to notice that scores are merely one person's take on a game and that the reviewer's employer is probably a more important factor on what score that game gets than actual quality. Furthermore, many assume the one to ten scale to be a normal scale but it's actual more complicated than that . Here's how the gaming scale works. 0 - Not often used at all even for...

We're less angry today but we spent yesterday evening watching cutscenes from Metal Gear Solid 4 which made us angry again. Let me explain. Back when I wrote this post I did a lot of research into the top rated games for each platform. Obviously for two of the consoles this was a bit of a task. For the PS3 it was much easier due to the paucity of quality exclusive games on the platform but I kept seeing Metal Gear Solid 4 come up again and again. I was concious that we might get some backlash from people arguing that MGS 4 should have been on the PS3 list but then remembered that Duffin and Richie haven't played it. So that accounts for 100% of our readership. My relationship with Metal Gear Solid began at the PlayStation one and ended with watching my brother play through 2. So I decided last night to ruin a game I was unlikely to play by watching a couple of cutscenes. At the time MGS4 came out I looked at it and thought it was pretty much going to be more of the same but I...

We already mentioned ALREADY JESUS CHRIST ALREADY GET OFF MY BACK MOM ALREADY! That we are big fans of video game soundtracks. Be it the official tunes, an inspired remix and very occasionally we even allow songs which have merely sampled an OT. to creep onto our MP3 player. PRO TIP : Never ever, ever be tempted to listen to a video game related song which has been filed under the 'comedy' or 'humorous' genres. They are almost exclusively 11 year old boys who sound like girls on helium doing the first season Pokemon theme tune. Tetris remixes aside, of which we are veritable connoisseurs, we do like hard copy soundtracks. They are often objects of beauty as well as magically trapping the music onto a disk. Here's our top 5. Yeah that's right bitches. Doing a list. Lists are normally the reserve for the green around-the-gills, unskilled new video game bloggers. But when you've been blogging as long as we have you are allowed to sometimes ironically do a list...

Today we are tacking a few questions from the games industry and its state of play (sic): Dear Thatguys, Everybody loves me, they all want to be like/with me. I am great, my games are great. I am a modern day Da Vinci of the games industry, My cock is so massive, marvel upon the cock of me, gaze upon its stature, admire it’s spectacle, erect a statue in it’s honour…. [Edit it goes on like this for 17 A4 sheets, front and back.] Your Saviour, Molyneux Well Molyneux, not so much. All of your games suffer from mediocrity, but you don’t seem to get it. Every time you announce a game you over-hype them to the point of vomiting, in the hope that the next generation of players will buy into your elaborate Molyneux-cult like fantasy™. I could go into much more detail about the shoddy implementation of (Heads-up, compliment incoming) what is quit unique and interesting artwork. In a shallow unfriendly shell of a game (RE: Fable 2), but I wont. Because then it becomes constructive criticism...

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...