That guy's a Maniac...

Sharla who? Yes in the second of the Operation Rainfall titles we've been playing through we think that our crush on elastatits has been completely replaced by our love of the heavy-drinking, fun loving, foul-mouthed Syrenne of The Last Story . Plus she's disabled*! A strong, disabled female video game character who puts the typical JRPG male protagonist to shame.   *She has a Northern accent.

Making what passes for 'news' today is the story that the X-Factor final last week had the lowest viewer figures since 2006 . Why might this be? Well we can speculate. People may be tired of the format, people may have better things to do on a Saturday night. TV may need to reexamine the way it judges the success of failure of shows because with so many ways to catch up online, on mobiles or through set top boxes that allow pre-recording. The notion of having to be sat at home to watch something at a fixed time (complete with annoying ads) is probably alien to people of the generations after mine. They may have just found the contestants boring or figured that it wasn't really a contest anymore given that the finalists comprise an uncharismatic Liverpudlian, an uncharismatic shy guy (not that kind) who insists on having a haircut that makes him instantly unlikeable and the one who can actually sing and seems a bit interesting. These all sound like possible causes for the

So here it is then, the future: long gone are the days of plugging your console into your TV, long gone are coaxial cables, even scrabbling to put the SCART in, whilst trying to trace the input with your finger to make sure it's the right way up, is slowly becoming something you will wistfully retell to your grandkids. Nowadays everyone has a digital device and can "game" on anything. We have finally come to a point where these devices have higher quality games, no less than a few years ago colour mobile devices were playing glorified Commodore64 games using your 2,4,6,8 keys as a joystick.  Now we have easily PS1/PS2 quality games on the bog standard SMART phones, in no time at all its going to be the same tech everywhere expanding/improving at the same rates. As someone who has lived through the advent of home gaming, through generations of consoles, I can consider this a kind of golden age of gaming... Its everywhere! Yeah its fucking everywhere and sponsored by

We're... urgh... digital natives and we're now of the generation where mainstream media journalists don't really represent us. They's falling over themselves to appear trendy and more than a little obsessed with Twitter. Last week we read a fascinating story in the Evening Standard about Z-Celebrities reactions to Z list Celebrities leaving Celebrity reality shows for 'medical reasons'. This was whole page. This is loser generated content at it's worst and for those of us who grew up on the mean streets of long forgotten forums and who cut our teeth trolling wicca websites the constant obsession with who said what onTwitter and the sheer laziness and naivety of reporting drives us insane. Richard Bacon's answer to the problems of Trolling (pronounced Trollllling not trole-ing apparently) is to make everyone's profile with their real name and photo.  yeah, because RealID worked out really well . Anywho. Who are we to complain? We're just the

Who wants a review of a nine year old game? Who DOESN'T want a review of a nine year old game more like? Yes Wii U is almost upon us and all those retarded journos, the morons who run GAME and those ridiculous early adopters won't stop bloody going on about it. However, much like the 3DS it feels like a series of reruns. There's genuinely nothing original on the platform bar Nintendoland but I can tell you now that 90% of Wii U games won't pick up on the brilliant idea of hiding information on the game pad or asymmetric gameplay.  It'll be like motion controls all over again. Everyone and their dog will make platformers where poor old player 5 (the mum character in the current TV spots) jabs the screen to create platforms and generally has far less fun than a quick spot of rub the man in the boat.   But fuck new games. I'm still catching up with the Gamecube releases. I distrust those pricks online who claim to be 'bored' by a console (normally

Fortunately, Alcamoth Citizen our journalist from Xenoblade Chronicles is in a place where the press can't touch her. She truly has freedom of speech. So Alcamoth Citizen, lay it on us. What's the haps? I think that that says it all. I hope we haven't implicated anyone directly or indirectly with this post....

So despite GAME disappearing, our local store has curiously reopened (so that's why the lights were on 24/7 for the whole six months it was closed). A couple of weeks ago my better half was away for a few days so I conspired to waste my money on a game and revel in it until she returned. I could hide the game in the cupboard of things I have to keep in storage because they give out the wrong message to visitors when they visit the house tm. Despite giving up on GAME numerous times I was on a time sensitive mission. I needed a silly game, it had only just come out and I couldn't wait for online delivery. On an unrelated note here is a play I just penned called Some Things Never Change Some Things Never Change By Cunzy1 1 A HANDSOME MAN who looks very well hung and charasmatic and could pass for early-mid twenties walks into a GAME store. He wanders around the store with intent and eventually queues up for the till whilst a MORON is trading in 50 copies of Fifa to a