Giant enemy Guitar Hero Speaks Yet Again: Assasin's Creed review

Dude, I rented Assassassassinssss Creed over the weekend and busted that bad boy right open - CAUTION, OPINION WITHIN MAY NOT BE OF THE POPULAR VARIETY.

First off, I DO like this game, it is fun and looks pretty. However, it is also, misleading, rushed, boring, repetitive, annoying and overrated.

Fun. I finished this game and enjoyed it, I liked the story and the characters, I thought the future elements were nice and especially that you are a Bartender called Desmond (Spoiler?), though very divisive (this game is basically a setup for a new franchise, even EA would be ashamed of the obviousness of this) and the game felt cool to play, it does a good job of making you feel like a badass (except the main dude swings his hips a little too much.)

Badassedness. Of course, this is what *every* game should be about. Altair isn’t supposed to be a ‘badass’ for Fuck’s sake, he’s from a religious sub-sect from post islamic intent on destabilisation of the muslims. Duh.

Looks pretty. Oh yes, this game is a looker, shame all three cities are essentially exactly the same boxes tinted blue/yellow/green to differentiate them.

Ah yes, the middle east in the 11^th century was well known for it’s wide and varied architecture. GUESS WHAT EINSTEIN? Those cities still look much like that today:

There are no interiors in the game (well there are a couple but essentially all the buildings are just pretty boxes - there is also no interaction, you can't remove a plank bridge to stop people following you for example.)

OMFG! THIS GAME IS SHIT - ALTAIR IS A HUMAN CHARACTER, WHY CAN’T HE REMOVE HIS ROBES AND MASTERBATE??!!!!???!!!111

The docks in Acre look are sweet though - except you can't fucking swim, not even a doggy paddle, I'm not gonna go on about this, we all know how frustrating is.

EVERYONE IN THE WORLD CAN SWIM. YES, ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE, NO EXCEPTIONS. FFS.

Misleading, because while you play an assassin, and are told to avoid conflict and generally attempt to be stealthy we know this is a lie because there is no "hide behind shit" button, there are no real sneaking sections in the game, and when you upgrade between missions, reclaiming weapons and ranks (Spoiler) they are all for extra fighting mechanics, not stealthing mechanics. So really you play a role more akin to Rambo, on a horse (Part III, but without the Russians and guns), I must have killed over a 1000 guys during play, all open combat. This extends to the Assassination missions themselves, all of which I did by running directly up to the target and stabbing them in face, except then they ran and I stabbed them in the back.

Good lord. There’s just so much wrong with that last paragraph I don’t know where to begin. Sigh, let’s have a go then.

You play an assassin and are told to avoid conflict (yet, you’ve killed over a 1000 guys in open combat – nice way to not play in the spirit the game was intended)

There’s no ‘hide behind shit’ button, because there are ‘hiding places’ scattered *THROUGHOUT* every map.

There’s no real sneaking sections in the game? Do you mean apart from the sections where you’ve got to sneak up on people to assassinate them? Like the first templar you have to kill as requested by the informer (because you cant approach him head on)?

Yes, you upgrade with weapons between missions because KILLING IS WHAT ASSASSINS DO. WITH WEAPONS.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but to call your dude an assassin is a bit of stretch, you are more like a crazy merc or something, a killer for hire, taking on all comers face to face, rather than a stealthy-stealthy-catchy-monkey type ninja, this is not Tenchu.

LOLZ. Quoted from Wikipedia: Assassination is the murder of a political figure.^[1] An added distinction, among assassination and other forms of killing is that the assassin has an ideological or political motivation, though many assassins (especially those not part of an organisation) also demonstrate insanity; other motivations are money (contract killing), revenge, or a military operation.

You’re absolutely right, an Assassin *IS* a killer for hire taking on all comers face to face rather than a stealthy-stealthy-catchy-monkey-type ninja.

IF YOU WANT THAT GO AND PLAY FUCKING TENCHU. :S

Rushed. There are some odd glitches (though funny), I fell into a table and stayed there with my legs pointing skyward, fell through a couple buildings, and into the floor. I guess the main problem with the whole game is that you only do the same six or seven activities in each section of each city, over and over and over. Example, "Save Citizen" this occurs nine times (approx) in each section there are three sections in each of the three cities, so that’s 81 (approx) save citizen missions, this is not fun. Well it IS fun as the fighting is pretty coolio, but it's lazy design-wise and is a strong representation of how the rest of the game is structured.

Yup, and collecting 1000 fucking rings in Sonic or Mario is *real* variety.

Boring. The future bits are nice as the story expands but are dull as hell to play. We have already covered the repetition of the main game.

No, you’re boring. And stupid.

Repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive. Even the dialogue is the same for EVERYONE who is not a main character. You do the same shit from start to finish with no change in pace, except for the very end of the game which ups the pace a notch.

Here’s an idea: Instead of saying ‘hello’ to anyone you meet tomorrow, use a random word or phrase instead. This’ll cut out you having to say the same word over and over again.

Annoying. God damn this game can piss you off! On the whole the controls are really well though out and considered, however to run up a wall you need to hold the right trigger and "A" however "A" is also the jump button, so if you forget to release "A" (and you will because most of the game you are running up walls) you try to navigate up a tower and accidentally push "away" from the tower you will leap off the building, yay, broken legs.

WRONG! Procedure: Approach wall. Hold right trigger. Character will put hands on wall. Press ‘A’ button. Character will safely run/climb/jump up wall without ‘accidentally pushing away from tower’. See, I was right about you being stupid.

The mental cases and the drunks, these dude stumble around not harming a fly until you happen to wonder too close, when they push you as hard as they can, this has two effects; 1. it's just fucking annoying as they don't push anybody else, so it feels kinda personal, 2. Say you have just assassinated some dude, and are trying to get away without being busted, all you need do is press "A" and you look at the floor and put your hands together, this fools people… I know. However while in this mode you walk real slow, which means you can't get away from the drunks who home in on you like you're a walking kebab, when they push you it breaks your magical "I am not an assassin" mode and all the surrounding guards fucking pounce on you which instantly fails you mission.

DO YOU GET A LOT OF DRUNKS ON THE ROOFTOPS? HM? *NO*.

Some of these mission require that you assassinate five dudes in under three minutes, which can be tricky, especially when you have just busted the last dude and the above happens. HOWEVER, this is not the end of this particular rant my friends. You see, now you have to kill/escape from the soldiers, once you do the mission resets, you go back to the dude, which reinitiates the mission, great! BUT the fucking bodies of the fucking guys you previously killed are still there which means that the guards are on high alert the whole time and the drunks/retards are still stumbling round pushing you! Arrgghhh. My advise, hit that reset button and all will be gravy once more.

ROOFTOPS. FREE OF DRUNKS, THEY ALSO CONTAIN HIDING PLACES.

Now for a major issue I have with the game. The big assassination missions that round out each city section are LAME, you would think you would have to do something interesting, maybe sneaking up on a dude over roof tops, silently taking out guards, clearing away defences, scoping out movement patterns etc. But no, this is how most of these missions pan out:

1.You collect a bunch of bullshit information that sounds cool but doesn’t actually affect the gameplay.

BECAUSE GAMES THESE DAYS DON’T NEED NARRATIVE.

2. You trot over to the flashing mission marker on your radar (yeah you have a radar, because you are really in the future and anything other that a radar is too difficult for us retards to work out, like I don’t know, following an eagle to your kill or making Altair gesture the desired direction? But whatever.)

DON’T LIKE IT? TURN IT OFF – WHAT’S THAT? YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO GO NOW? OH, SORRY I FORGOT YOU’D PREFER TRAINED EAGLES GIVE YOU DIRECTIONS TO YOUR DESTINATIONS. GOOD LORD.

3. Cut scene initiation, that's right, while a whole bunch of games these days allow you to carry on open play while the story telling happens around you and makes it feel unobtrusive - see Half Life 2, here the game stops and we get a whole monologue from the bad guy, while you are left scratching you balls thinking "now if I were an assassin I would have taken this opportunity while the target is entirely distracted to maybe fire an arrow through his face." Oh yeah, you're not allowed a bow and arrow, even though the "bad guys" have them, and the whole game takes place in the open, where a bow and arrow type deal would be real useful.

Similarly, there are a whole bunch of games these days that don’t allow you to carry on open play while the story telling happens around you. See ‘Halo 3’ or and ‘Final Fantasy’ game. Oh yeah, you’re not allowed a bow and arrow. Do any of those bad guys have swords, throwing knives or a hidden blade? THE PEOPLE IN THIS VIDEO-GAME WORLD AREN’T ALL EQUAL! QUICK, CALL JESSE JACKSON!

Or, maybe this is so you can’t do cheap long-range kills and make the player use the tools at the character’s disposal.

4. Cut scene ends, you run up to the dude/chase dude for maybe a minute at most and stab him in the neck. You then get another monologue in "cyber-space," I shit you not.

BECAUSE GAMES THESE DAYS DON’T NEED EXPOSITION.

5. Escape. This is so easy it's frankly pathetic - climb up a wall, threat indicator goes orange (you have threat indicator because, did I mention this? it's really set in the future… blah blah bollocks,) climb in a box, sit on a bench, stand with some monks, whatever. End.

BUT…BUT..>YOU SAID THERE WERE NO ‘HIDE BEHIND SHIT’ BITS…BWAH!

Overrated! Every magazine and website who mark this game over seven should be fucking ashamed of themselves, yeah yeah I know Jade Raymond has tits and all, I guess the magic these exude should not be underestimated, well I ain't buying it Jade, fuck you.

IT’S A PITY YOU DON’T HAVE TITS, THEN AT LEAST YOU’D HAVE *SOME* USE.

Also the end boss fight is rubbish, you go from playing a (semi) realistic game, with a good strong story line with a smidgen of biblical mythology to a stupid fucking derivative video game, I wonder what magic (yeah, magic) the guy will use? HOLY SHIT, he goes invisible when you hit him, he can make multiple versions of himself, and laughs manically all through! (Spoiler) The only interesting bit is when you fight a bunch resurrected dudes (Spoiler).

UBISOFT SHOULD HAVE USED A GIANT ENEMY CRAB AS THE FINAL BOSS.

So overall, like I said, I really did enjoy playing through this game, it was in turns fun/original and boring/repetitive. I guess I'm just a bit steamed that all the press has been glowing, except UK IGN, WAY TO STICK IT TO THE MAN, GUYS! I swear it's the power of the boobies.

You’re a bit steamed that a game got good press because you’re an idiot.

C_72 out.

p.s. Fuck Halo, CoD4 rokz.

P.s. Fuck you, Assassin’s Creed rocks.

Chuff_72 Speaks Yet Again: Assasin's Creed review

Yes, here at TGAM, we have lost the plot a bit. We don't actually play games anymore but we like to think we are characters in a Douglas Coupland book*. Fortunately, Chuff_72, our man on the street, does play games. Here are his thoughts on hyped to the max Assasin's Creed. SPOILER_O_RAMA

Dude, I rented Assassassassinssss Creed over the weekend and busted that bad boy right open - CAUTION, OPINION WITHIN MAY NOT BE OF THE POPULAR VARIETY.

First off, I DO like this game, it is fun and looks pretty. However, it is also, misleading, rushed, boring, repetitive, annoying and overrated.

Fun. I finished this game and enjoyed it, I liked the story and the characters, I thought the future elements were nice and especially that you are a Bartender called Desmond (Spoiler?), though very divisive (this game is basically a setup for a new franchise, even EA would be ashamed of the obviousness of this) and the game felt cool to play, it does a good job of making you feel like a badass (except the main dude swings his hips a little too much.)

Looks pretty. Oh yes, this game is a looker, shame all three cities are essentially exactly the same boxes tinted blue/yellow/green to differentiate them. There are no interiors in the game (well there are a couple but essentially all the buildings are just pretty boxes - there is also no interaction, you can't remove a plank bridge to stop people following you for example.) The docks in Acre look are sweet though - except you can't fucking swim, not even a doggy paddle, I'm not gonna go on about this, we all know how frustrating is.

Misleading, because while you play an assassin, and are told to avoid conflict and generally attempt to be stealthy we know this is a lie because there is no "hide behind shit" button, there are no real sneaking sections in the game, and when you upgrade between missions, reclaiming weapons and ranks (Spoiler) they are all for extra fighting mechanics, not stealthing mechanics. So really you play a role more akin to Rambo, on a horse (Part III, but without the Russians and guns), I must have killed over a 1000 guys during play, all open combat. This extends to the Assassination missions themselves, all of which I did by running directly up to the target and stabbing them in face, except then they ran and I stabbed them in the back.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but to call your dude an assassin is a bit of stretch, you are more like a crazy merc or something, a killer for hire, taking on all comers face to face, rather than a stealthy-stealthy-catchy-monkey type ninja, this is not Tenchu.

Rushed. There are some odd glitches (though funny), I fell into a table and stayed there with my legs pointing skyward, fell through a couple buildings, and into the floor. I guess the main problem with the whole game is that you only do the same six or seven activities in each section of each city, over and over and over. Example, "Save Citizen" this occurs nine times (approx) in each section there are three sections in each of the three cities, so that’s 81 (approx) save citizen missions, this is not fun. Well it IS fun as the fighting is pretty coolio, but it's lazy design-wise and is a strong representation of how the rest of the game is structured.

Boring. The future bits are nice as the story expands but are dull as hell to play. We have already covered the repetition of the main game.

Repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive. Even the dialogue is the same for EVERYONE who is not a main character. You do the same shit from start to finish with no change in pace, except for the very end of the game which ups the pace a notch.

Annoying. God damn this game can piss you off! On the whole the controls are really well though out and considered, however to run up a wall you need to hold the right trigger and "A" however "A" is also the jump button, so if you forget to release "A" (and you will because most of the game you are running up walls) you try to navigate up a tower and accidentally push "away" from the tower you will leap off the building, yay, broken legs.

The mental cases and the drunks, these dude stumble around not harming a fly until you happen to wonder too close, when they push you as hard as they can, this has two effects; 1. it's just fucking annoying as they don't push anybody else, so it feels kinda personal, 2. Say you have just assassinated some dude, and are trying to get away without being busted, all you need do is press "A" and you look at the floor and put your hands together, this fools people… I know. However while in this mode you walk real slow, which means you can't get away from the drunks who home in on you like you're a walking kebab, when they push you it breaks your magical "I am not an assassin" mode and all the surrounding guards fucking pounce on you which instantly fails you mission. Some of these mission require that you assassinate five dudes in under three minutes, which can be tricky, especially when you have just busted the last dude and the above happens. HOWEVER, this is not the end of this particular rant my friends. You see, now you have to kill/escape from the soldiers, once you do the mission resets, you go back to the dude, which reinitiates the mission, great! BUT the fucking bodies of the fucking guys you previously killed are still there which means that the guards are on high alert the whole time and the drunks/retards are still stumbling round pushing you! Arrgghhh. My advise, hit that reset button and all will be gravy once more.

Now for a major issue I have with the game. The big assassination missions that round out each city section are LAME, you would think you would have to do something interesting, maybe sneaking up on a dude over roof tops, silently taking out guards, clearing away defences, scoping out movement patterns etc. But no, this is how most of these missions pan out:

1.You collect a bunch of bullshit information that sounds cool but doesn’t actually affect the gameplay.
2. You trot over to the flashing mission marker on your radar (yeah you have a radar, because you are really in the future and anything other that a radar is too difficult for us retards to work out, like I don’t know, following an eagle to your kill or making Altair gesture the desired direction? But whatever.)
3. Cut scene initiation, that's right, while a whole bunch of games these days allow you to carry on open play while the story telling happens around you and makes it feel unobtrusive - see Half Life 2, here the game stops and we get a whole monologue from the bad guy, while you are left scratching you balls thinking "now if I were an assassin I would have taken this opportunity while the target is entirely distracted to maybe fire an arrow through his face." Oh yeah, you're not allowed a bow and arrow, even though the "bad guys" have them, and the whole game takes place in the open, where a bow and arrow type deal would be real useful.
4. Cut scene ends, you run up to the dude/chase dude for maybe a minute at most and stab him in the neck. You then get another monologue in "cyber-space," I shit you not.
5. Escape. This is so easy it's frankly pathetic - climb up a wall, threat indicator goes orange (you have threat indicator because, did I mention this? it's really set in the future… blah blah bollocks,) climb in a box, sit on a bench, stand with some monks, whatever. End.

Overrated! Every magazine and website who mark this game over seven should be fucking ashamed of themselves, yeah yeah I know Jade Raymond has tits and all, I guess the magic these exude should not be underestimated, well I ain't buying it Jade, fuck you.

Also the end boss fight is rubbish, you go from playing a (semi) realistic game, with a good strong story line with a smidgen of biblical mythology to a stupid fucking derivative video game, I wonder what magic (yeah, magic) the guy will use? HOLY SHIT, he goes invisible when you hit him, he can make multiple versions of himself, and laughs manically all through! (Spoiler) The only interesting bit is when you fight a bunch resurrected dudes (Spoiler).

So overall, like I said, I really did enjoy playing through this game, it was in turns fun/original and boring/repetitive. I guess I'm just a bit steamed that all the press has been glowing, except UK IGN, WAY TO STICK IT TO THE MAN, GUYS! I swear it's the power of the boobies.

C_72 out.

p.s. Fuck Halo, CoD4 rokz.

*I apologise for the literary reference. With hindsight it was wanky and uneccessary. Sorry.

Pokemon Summer Camp: That was ages ago

Yes in our long running series (2 including this one) of up to the minute live blogging of videogames events posted a month after the fact we are proudish to relay our thoughts on the Pokemon Summer Day Camp way back on the 25th of August.

Yes after all my fanboy whinging about how Nintendo hates europe, it seems that they heard my whiny plees and decided to do a Pokemon Summer Day Camp which promised much pokemon related fun and the oppurtunity to get a Mew for the GBA games, which is sure generous Nintendo. How many other games let their players wait 4 years to get something they should have had anyway.....

So Chuff_72, our TGAM street correspondant and myself went along in the interests and purity of videogame journalism. Definitely not because neither of us wanted to go alone and one of us, really, really wanted to go. As it turns out we were both movinghouse that weekend but promises and pleading with our better halves meant we busted down to sunny Brent Cross in London for our chance to catch the elusive Mew.

Upon finding the Toys 'R' Us car park after a pleasant stroll through London surburbia we were unsurprisingly the tallest people there, excluding parents, and of a minority being between parent or children ages. It was predictable but unpleasant still. The sun at this point was beaming down and as the English are want to do we joined a lovely queue.

We were so enthused and a little less self concious so we whiled away the time by taking pictures of the queue a là MTV mid 90s
Then, as the English in queues are want to do when we are queuing, the complaining started and Lo! We were at the back of a queue that wasn't due to move for another 30 minutes our diligent loud mom sources revealed. So very self conciously we took out our DSes, confirming to any suspicious parent that we hadn't spontaneously joined a queue but that we were there for the pokeymans or possibly to fiddle their kiddies.

Then the queue got much longer and we were proud that we had had the foresight to turn up so early. Foolish fools at the back of the queue. How we laughed! And then the queue didn't move for ages again. Then it was announced that the queue would split into two. The queue we were in would be for the goody bags and the new queue would be to skip straight to the Mew download. About four people moved to form the Mew queue but we were confident that we'd swipe a goody bag then pick up Mew and ride off into the sunset to help our better halves move house. What a day!

And then the sun got hotter and hotter and higher and higher. Still the queue refused to move and the Mew queue started to grow. Using our expert navigation skills learned from Windwaker we used a boy dressed as Pikachu to mark the progress of the Mew queue and for what must have been an hour we watched him not move from our own stationary position. By now the grumbling was discernable up and down the line and a few parents, probably of adopted children, started to implement time factors for their children. "If this queue doesn't move in 15 minutes we are leaving". Bastard parents but they were right, it was unbearable like some form of torture, the heat reflecting off the asphalt and burning our chins. For what? Well Mew of course. Also, at this point I found out I had locked my girlfriend in the house. Alarm bells began to ring that I'd got this far for nothing.......

And then just before we thought about missing out on the goodie bags and skipping to the Mew queue before it got too long there was a sudden slow movement. We were slightly winging our way to a goodie bag!

Half an hour later we were nearly getting our goodie bags. By this point the Mew queue had grown into the longest queue I've seen in at least five years. We grabbed our recently filled-out trainer cards, complete with answers stolen from a knowledgable five year old and ran to the counter to receive, what I believe to be one of the poorest goodie bags I have ever queued two and a half hours for. An A4 school planner (pokemon themed), a Pokemon diamond/pearl bookmark, a Pokemon diamond/pearl postcard, two pokemon movie posters which were adverts for Pokemon toys on the back, a set of pokemon stickers and a pokeball badge, which might have been wearable, was I the type, except it had CARTOON NETWORK emblazened on it, covering the bottom half of the badge, ruining it's wearability as some kind of secret sign to other Pokemon players. With heavy hearts lifted, slightly, by the prospect of getting a Mew each we moved to the now infinitely long queue to get the Mew download.

This is the Mew Q about an hour into it. By this time sweat is dripping from every pore and my forehead is blistering. I had one go on the DS and I went to the underground but the wi-fi was so slow and my old DS became unviewable with the shining sunlight I turned it off. Children all sides of us were making ridiculous trades and Chuff_72 was visibly distressed at seeing and hearing so many shiny DSes getting dropped on the floor in all the excitement and heat. Until finally we get near to the tent.
At which point this prick (above) totally pwns some kid half his age and quarter ours with a hacked shiny Rayquaza. Chuff_72 eggs me on to speak out about the injustice and to take cheaty boy on in a (pokemon) fight but I'm too hot and not at all afraid that he'll beat me with his hacked team. He smokes the whole time too which is jarring because I had run out of all smokables. Also, quite why a guy who had audibly hacked to get a shiny Deoxys, Celebi and Rayquaza was queueing to get a Mew is also, perplexing.
Has the word queue lost all meaning yet? I hope it has because it is a little way to how Chuff and I were feeling this far into our epic adventure. Then:


The end is in sight. A poor woman who has been going up and down the queue telling people to free up a space in the party on their game all day is clearly annoyed and frustrated that no one has been listening which is why the queue is so slow and that the command is so foreign to the parents that they can't even enforce their kids to do it.



We're there! And rewarded with tits as well as Mew which ever so slightly comes near to almost beginning to make up for the awful conditions we endured. Both of these people were very nice and didn't make a comment about two 20 somethings with childrens goody bags at a Pokemon event and we didn't make snide remarks about how one gets to become a Pokemon Summer Camp helper because we were secretely jealous that they could get as many Mews as they wanted.

So that's the story of how we got Mew and much like Ash Ketchum we had to endure hardship and many trials to catch this legendary pokemon. But we made it. I've been Cunzy1 1 and this has been TGAM. Thank you very much and goodnight x x

Chuff_72 Speaks Again Again!

Chuff_72 is our maniac on the street and he regularly send us stuff to post when we are too busy doing pointless challenges and mixing up T-Virus to destroy the world if Capcom doesn't deliver vidjogames on demand. His stirling efforts have earned him at least a cameo in the TGAM film and he is an unlockable character in TGAM the game.

Anyway, here at TGAM we are dedicated to doing what everyone else already did before us, and doing it twice! Here are some more thoughts on that game what came out recently Halo 3. Take it away Chuffty:

"Dude, just a quick email to tell you how much fucking fun halo 3 is online. I didn't play any of the various deathmatch types or any of that bollocks, and while I checked out some co-op story which was okay, though pretty hard to follow with myself, the Dr and two fellow TFUs, shouting about the Gheys in the trees, most of the time I had no idea where to go apart from follow the little countdown marker thing, AND friendly fire was on, with infinite re-spawns? The Forge dude, the FORGE!!! This is the sort of thing that I expected Free Radical to be doing, can't tell you how much fun it is!

Essentially a level building/editing tool, where every player is the builder and it's all real time. By pressing "Up" on the d-pad you turn into this little round ball and can fly round the level, picking shit up (like tanks!) and you are supposed to place them in strategic places then save the design and play deathmatchs and stuff - Fuck that.

We spent 3 hours stacking shit up on one of the big towers (Sandtrap) and trying to drop tanks on each other. You have the ability to grab anything in range so there was much stealing vehicles mid air and playing reverse Jenga (dropping Warthogs onto a tower of tanks and the loser is the one that makes the tower topple). You can also use the whole thing as a sort of impromptu deathmatch with no rules and superpowers cos the game keeps track of all the kills you score and betrayals and then posts these scores every 30mins so you can claim victory.

However, the bestestest thing EVER though (and I can't confirm if this is true to all modes) is that if you get close to someone on the opposite team you can hear them out the tv! Until you actually get to try this you won't really appreciate it, but hearing someone sniggering out the tv before they twat you in the back of the head is fucking priceless as is the ability to call that person a cunt and have them hear you! And yes in other games you can hear everyone etc but to actually have your team come through the earpiece and the other guys out the tv just makes it awesome, AND it fades in out depending on distance.

So there you go, as far as Richies "Things wrong" post, I agree with them all (probably, though I haven't really played the story), however IF you can get online then DO and when you do, find a bunch of twats and just piss around in the Forge.C_27 out.

P.S. Not really a massive Halo fan by the way, I hate the auto aim, I hate the jumpy jumpy bollocks and the Chief runs SO SLOW, plus if you're getting shot in the back you WILL die unless you set the sensitivity right up but then it becomes hard to aim so it becomes less fun, also it's not Timesplitters which means its not as good as Timesplitters, which means everyone is lying when they give it 10/10 because TS never got 10/10 except from the Official magazine, and that doesn't count. Ever."

So there we have it. Our second Halo 3 review. Wow. Next on TGAM: Due to fan requests Richie and I prove once and for all that we actually are 12 year old girls and not two 20 something men. Also, we start a new war with these cretins who are a blight on our and Capcom's reputation because they dare to call themselves TGAM (Train Game Addicts of Malaysia), which should clearly be TGAoM but, whatever.

Bye loves!

WORLD EXCLUSIVE WEATHER THEMED REVIEW EXCLUSIVE OF LOST pLANET EXCLUSIVELY BY Chuff_72

Here in the good old U of K it is snowing. In England (Scotland can handle snow and no-one has heard from Wales for years) when it snows everything breaks. Trains, cars, airplanes, TV reception, Everything. However, Lady and Gentlemens even though we are currently all snowed in, with only a couple of cans of Heinz Beanz for sustinence until Spring, wonder-commentor and Honorary Hardcore Maniac, Chuff_72 has written the world's first review of Lost Planet to coincide with more than a little bit of snow in England's capital. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IT HAS HAPPENED PEOPLE, you saw it here first*

Take it away Chuffter:

"Is it cool to tell yourself, "I told you so"? I watched all the video's, downloaded all the demos and masturbated over my copy of EDGE, yet at the back of my mind there was a feeling that there was something wrong with this slice of arcade pie...
To begin with I followed the crowd, the Dr (Dr Wo 69, also a stalwart Maniac and long term gamer. He also does Dr Wo's surgery for this site) and I managed to convince ourselves that yes, we really did enjoy the two steps, then explode multiplayer and the repetitive single player demo, the finished game would have loads more to it, right? Right?
At TGAM we have a couple of tests for all our Next-Gen purchases, one of the most important is this; Can you shoot the glass out of the windows? I hate to bring up Timesplitters (actually I don't, I like to bring up the TGAM Game of the Year 2006 as much as possible) but in that game you can shoot out frikin stained glass windows and there's even a level devoted solely to smashing glass with a brick, so any Next-Gen product best be able to match that... Enter the 360 and CoD2, I don't want to talk about the disappointment suffered here. In Lost Planet you can blow up a car with three rounds from your shotgun, but can you smash the glass in the background? Can you fuck.
So this small detail has put me on the defensive, I start noticing other things, like how the snow, the main element in the game doesn't react in any way to the game, foot prints don't stay, furrows vanish, when you walk forward big white lumps fly around but no trail is left, if Motorstorm can do it, then why can't Lost Planet? Massive explosions don't make holes, RED FACTION ANYBODY? The auto aim removes the need for precision, the levels are basically linear tracks, the grapple hook is completely under used, why follow the Tenchu model? Why not make it so we can Spiderman our way through the levels, especially as Wayne runs like a fuckin Joey!
And what happened to the Capcom factor? Where's the little hidden quirks, the dashes of humour, where's Megaman (just for the record most TGAM posters and commenter's hate fucking Megaman, just so you know), why can't I unlock a Tyrant to play as or some stupid hidden weapon? I know this being a Capcom game I run the risk of being branded a Gayer, but honestly, this game could have come out of any number of studios.
So what did they get right? While there is no story and the graphics are decidedly underwhelming they nail the atmosphere right to the wall, and when played purely as a dumb arcade run and gun from one end to the other it IS good fun. The multiplayer is also good for a laugh, but I can't see it holding anyone attention past a couple weeks, the lobby system is as much to blame for this as anything, which must have been designed by a donkey on crack. The levels are far too large, even with a full complement of 16 players (quite rare, and will get rarer... how Resistance is gonna fill up with 40 remains a mystery to me), but there are a few smaller levels that means you can get up close and personal, but don't use the melee cos it's about as effective as furiously masturbating in the face of a charging gorilla. So, like the single player, it's good fun in short bursts, but becomes flaccid over time.
Final thoughts? I look forward to the inevitable sequel in the hope that they fix some of the above and maybe add a co-op mode, but for right now, I can get £30 on trade in at Gamestation to put towards Crackdown..."

*It's this kind of service you can expect from the World's Second Greatest Videogame Blog. Harvind1 we're coming for you

SICK

So this arrived in the post today!

Now all I need is a computer that can run it. Stupid PC gaming. Still, in the event of the end of the world I can travel from town to town scrounging tractor batteries to run top of the range PCs and I don't have to worry about finding the game. I'm going to put this game and all my other dinosaur games in a bullet proof CD case and carry them on me at all times just in case the end of the world happens.

On that note, I'm now cheating on That Guy's a Maniac with my new blog Cunzy11'sdinosaursingames blog. I'm going to be the world's leading expert on dinosaurs in games and co-author of the World's Second Greatest Videogame Blog! Just see if I ain't.......

In other, non-dinosaur related news, Chuff_72, long time commentor, member of Catch the Monkeys and other Games B69 and guest writer is on a mission to discover London's greatest game stores.
Here's a sneak preview of his antics on Saturday, tune in to catch the rest sometime this week:

I did it dude, I fully did it, and you know what? It was genuinely a bit depressing! I mean there's a reason we all buy coffee from Starbucks, it's cos it tastes the best and has a greater selection.
Holy shit, I have no idea how they survive! Awesome Games was selling a copy of Gran Tourismo 1 for £25 What The Fuck. I hit Shekhana World of Games, Awesome Games, M R Games, and Tower Games (also two Gamestations and one Game - my feet STILL fuckin hurt!) They were all sooo bad, except one M R Games, which has changed it's name to something I can't remember, which had some Streetfighter figures and a copy of Metroid Pinball (SIIICCCKK).

Anyways, I completely forgot to bring my notes with me, but I've got to write it up from home cos I took pics of all the shops (holy shit, Tower Games was fucked up, it had a load of bongs and blue neon in the window, and three fat greasy fucks at the till - and there were NO GAMES, I think they had some Fifa's). I walked bastard miles and saw some wacky shit, the GStation in Holloway Rd was these two dudes in a glass box, with two racks of games, in a Blockbuster - and I bought a copy Lylat Wars for £3 of some drugged up black woman in a tent (I shit you not). Definitely worth the effort though, you gotta come on the next one.
Catch you later (just remembered I tried to call cos I could have got you Turok 2 (boxed) and Dinomasters Party for £2.50 each).

Where was I that I didn't pick up my phone readers? WHERE THE FUCK WAS I? I could be two more games towards being the World's Leading Expert in Dinosaur games but I blew it. Turok 2 and Dinomasters. Next time gadget, next time......................

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