That guy's a Maniac...

So I fucking bought San Andreas... Again. (Currently owned: PS2, Steam, Windows Phone, now 360) It was really just on a whim, £2.99 on XBox Live seemed well worth a punt. I had a dick-about with the iOS/Windows Phone version and as cool as it is to have San Andreas in your "pocket" the controls are just wank. Nobody likes a fake dual analogue stick game. But the 360 version is worth it. Its prettier than 10 years ago, it now has achievements, it actually stands the test of time! Downside is after playing the iOS version I am very aware that this is the port of the iOS version and now a newly reconditioned version, there are obvious giveaways with the controls. And it crashed a couple of times. Love and Hot Coffee, Richie

A beautiful bit of "16-bit" work. The whole thing is just the epitome of the crazy Japanese pixel are you come to expect from the mid 90's You don't see shit like this nowadays, no siree, Its all fucking hyper real sci-fi men with brown hair. Where's the fantasy where is the off-the-wall utter madness you used to see in games. Even the fucking F2P Monstrosities with cartoon graphics still settle into the old D&D tropes. Love and Fuck you, I'm old, I get it, Richie X

#GamerGate continues to tear the gaming community apart. Brothers and sisters fight. But there's a shining light. Writing letters to end the hate, harassment and nastiness that haunts our hobby. Theoretical game developers and community managers wrote their letter  and gamers have their petition  but as a community, video game journalists have not yet spoken out as a group. Until next week that is. An anonymous source who wants to remain anonymous sent us this letter which will be going out next week.  Dear Gamers (R.I.P) Please stop the hate. The only thing we have is the power of our opinion on games and gaming related things and if you don't like that then we don't get paid. Well a lot of us don't get properly paid in the first place. In fact being a games journalist sucks. We should really do something to improve our plight. Anyways. If games journalists stop writing are we not just gamers? Please stop the hate. Signed 7 of 9 Albert Brooks Andre

Here! You know Kotaku right, in between all their "journalism" they do crap about Japanese Culture. Like stuff about food shaped like an obscure animal from the most talked about cult dating sim from that week. Or when they talk about their favorite Anime from this season and genuinely discuss the quality of the "boing" noise that the overly endowed female character's boobs make when they bounce/jiggle/squish. Well here is our favorite bit of Japanese culture: Babymetal! They are hitting western shores now. I'm too old now for Dubstep and following Radio 1. But this I can get behind. Be warned Babymetal, TGAM may just go Full Stalker on this one. Love and KAWAIIIIIIIIIII, Richie X

With the gaming community tearing itself asunder, the developers, gamers and gamers who get paid to write about games turning on each other like cornered animals (online of course, nothing is happening in real life) this conflict between brother and sister is spilling over into game worlds too. Our in-game correspondent,Alcamoth Citizen reporting from Xenoblade Chronicles has this to say about the burning issue: 'Why isn't anyone excited about Jigglypuff being potentially leaked for Super Smash Brothers?'. So there we have it. If only other game journalists took this news quite as seriously.

This last couple of weeks there's been a storm in a teacup that seems to have culminated in the gaming community doing a sea cucumber and eviscerating itself, turning itself inside out and ejecting all it's internal organs as a defense mechanism. You can follow the 'story' on the social media under the hashtag GamerGate. We won't go into the specifics of how this kicked off because the spark that lit the part of the fire we're interested in is sort of irrelevant. The short version is that some pretty strong evidence has come to light reminding us once again of the rampant cronyism and amateurism within games journalism. The funny thing is that what may or may not have happened to kick this off is almost completely by the by. In between the feminists, the white knights, the trolls, the griefers, the journalists and the developers all rallying to four or five different calls and fighting with each other, some are using the #GamerGate  to call for clearer transpar

Recently I was gifted a PlayStation 3 and a fairly comprehensive catalogue of games which is great for two reasons. Firstly, free games! Secondly by being gifted one it allows me to maintain that the PlayStation 3 never reached a critical mass of games for my tastes that warranted a purchase of the (still) overpriced console. One of the games that was on the shortlist that never reached critical mass was Valkyria Chronicles.  Released in 2008 to generally positive reviews, Valkyria Chronicles is a mix of all the best bits from Advance Wars , Battalion Wars and quirky PlayStation 2 game Ring of Red . It's a 3D turn based strategy game which is a lot of fun with a beautiful art style. Playing games slightly time shifted from the climate in which they were released is interesting. Although I can see the appeal of VC when it came out, having played and loved Fire Emblem: Awakening last year, VC is probably lower in my estimations as there are some great mechanics which shou