That guy's a Maniac...

Remember when we promised content ? Here's some of it. About four years ago we played Rise of Nightmares on the Kinect and on the Xbox 360. We weren't impressed with the Kinect line-up at launch  (still aren't to be honest or happy about subsequent Kinect games) it was a rushed gimmicky effort to try to sway some of the bajillions of people who had played Wii Sports into buying an Xbox 360 and then, presumably get them onto proper games or something. Although games seem to be a low priority for Sony and Microsoft who seem to be fighting to be the all-in-one home media centre of which games is a small part. Then, it turns out that everyone and their dog is doing cool things with a Kinect. Everyone except people who make Kinect games that is.  That would have been absolutely fine an' all except the Kinect games were all a bit pap. Including Rise of Nightmares . Under no circumstances should you play Rise of Nightmares single player. It is an exercise in extreme...

In a moment of not being particularly inspired at the book shop I ended up buying Dead Space Martyr, knowing nothing about it other than it is set in the Dead Space Universe. We really liked Dead Space, something set it apart from the overflowing bundle of sci-fi future space shooters. It stuck with us in a way that other games in the same pool haven't. See, we've played Halo and Gears of War. Worse even we've read every single Halo novel and watched the anime compilation Halo: Legends. Yet if you were to ask us what happens in Halo. It's a total blank. The whole SPARTAN programme we remember and then there was a Halo? And some Zombies? And the Pillar of Autumn. That was all Halo, Halo 2? No idea. You could duel wield. Halo 3? The theatre mode was amazing. Oddly we remember more about Halo:Reach even though it's probably the worst of the bunch. Gears? Well there was emergence day and then a giant worm. When Epic ran their poll to determine whether or not the thi...

For no reason whatsoever we decided to watch all of Consolevania and Videogaiden . It's all over though. It's all finished. A couple of years ago. This video about the Scottish games industry is brilliant I think. Sums it all up. This time of year we always get a bit melancholy. I'm sure we'll get over it but right now we'd be hard pressed to recommend gaming to anyone. It's meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. Throaway culture created purely for the generation of income. Sad face.

In the big, bigger, biggest tried-and-tested format.

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...

Perhaps it is because they couldn't get it off steam? Or maybe because they had to actually watch TV and they haven't done that for ages. Rock Paper Shotgun summed the show up pretty well. Richard Cobbett continues to look like David Mitchell. But if there is anything the men, who have mostly had marginal success writing for dying magazines and a niche following on the old blogosphere (RICH, SO RICH COMING FROM US), have said that makes sense is that the show felt very cobbled together because it was trying to do justice to the whole of gaming kind in a single show. And for an audience wider than the gamer gamers (see pie chart, the red slice). It could easily be a 420 part series but then who would watch it? Gamers think they know it all. The average TV watcher probably doesn't give a shit. Then again the same demographic expressing dissapointment at Gameswipe are the same people who regularly bemoan TV for being totally shit. So you can't have it both wa...

After years of attention seeking it finally happened. It's the fourth biggest day of our lives. We got a link on Kotaku after we sent a link to this post after Brian C (Big C we call him) didn't take to kindly to our latest tip. Tip 25 reposted here for your eyes only: 25. Rumours abound tips too Handwashing and gargling? Seriously. Are you even trying over there? Here is a good tip for you though which might cause your stomach to erupt if handwashing floats your boat! In the game 100 Classic Books for the Nintendo DS, the summer evening BGM makes a fine accompanyment to a quick read of the Hunchback of Notre Dame because, wait for it, it has bells tolling in the background. Share this tip carefully boyos. He replied with "Hey how’d that happen? You’ve landed on my spam filter." Then I shared the link to the post and it turns out he was a lie head because he then went on to share the link with the whole of Kotaku. What happened nex...

Griefing has been in games for a long time. A modern definition would certainly be mostly about racism, sexism and all the other 'isms' towards other players particularly in multiverses, MMORPGs and online games with text or voice chat. However, griefing has been around in games for a while. Lets look to the origins of this much maligned behaviour. Griefing first originated in games where you could directly affect other players. For me and the Catch The Monkey And Other Games B69 (the name given to the merry band of gamers that I used to play with) peeps the first precursors to griefing behaviour could be found in Micro Machines on the Mega Drive. A well timed nudge before a jump or on a thin walkway would send the other player spiralling to doom. Remember this is a Micro Machines before weapons and powerups. Then strategies would start to develop to counter act nudging. The classic braking before someone goes to nudge you means that they end up facing the other way and ...

Because blog the eye of Google will blog see you everytime blog. Even when you blog make key blog mistakes when trying to make a blog point.

Hi, my name is Cunzy1 1 and I have an axe to grind. I'm going to spout my point of view as fact and back it up with misinformation and uninformed hearsay. Today, I've got an issue with kids reading books, especially homoerotic books about wizards and dragons and the such. Gone are the days when children would come home from school, play a few rounds of Quake 2 with their friends and then sit and talk to each other over a nice dinner between friends and families. These days kids are obsessed with reading books about 'wizards' who use 'majicks' to 'save the day'. They are becoming mindless zombies sat tranfixed with words on a page barely moving save to turn a page or to 'shoot up' some heroin which they learned from another book about drug abuse. People in bookshops don't care, they rarely check ID when the lazy slob children come in to buy the next installment of Manly McMan's book about shooting and killing real people from nearly real ...