Breaking Timesplitters 2 Noise

This is breaking news. This news occurs nowehere else on google. It is regarding a weird noise you get when you die playing through Story Mode on Timesplitters 2.

Here's how to access the noise. Start playing through story mode on Timesplitters 2. Die and then the restart/quit screen comes up with a big floaty blue thing in the background with some loud music.

Just put the pad down and listen to the music. It trails off and then you get some scary noises. Then right right right at the end after the scary noises a woman's voice asks "Is that too much?".

In the interest of full disclosure here is the email I have sent to LEGEND Graeme Norgate for info:

Hi Graeme

Huge huge fan! Huge. I became aware of your work through Timesplitters and restrospectively found out you did the music on Killer Instinct too! What a legend. We used to listen to Killer Cuts all the time until the CD wore out.

Anyway fandom aside I was playing through Timesplitters 2 again last week (Siberian Dam if you must know (on hard as well)) and I died. I went away to make myself a cup of tea and when I came back the you died screen was making scary noises and then a woman says "Is that too loud" or maybe "Is that too much?".

I had noticed the scary noises before but never listened to it all the way through to the end. My question is what is that noise and who is the woman?

I'm your biggest fan CZY1 1

Until Big G emails back, you can try to find the noise yourself!

Little Big Planet and Spore revisited

So....

Spore. Guess we were right about that one then. Anyone still playing it? Anyone at all? No. Told you so.

Little Big Planet. Team TGAM doesn't own a PS3 for a number of reasons, the one we most like to pretend is true is because we have standards. The real excuse is that the fucker is still too expensive and there still aren't anywhere near enough decent games to justify a purchase. Anyway, if we did have one I would probably get LBP because I like creating shit in games like gay little designs for Animal Crossing, Crap Levels in Timesplitters or Miis that look like Charles Darwin. We do have some friends (21 to be exact). And some of those friends own a PS3 (12) they aren't gamers in the classic sense. They are normal people with cars and houses and the like. They don't obsess over games or write 2 and a bit games blogs. Aside from dusty copies of Resistance they all own LBP and without exception:

1) Haven't even tried to make their own levels. Some don't even know that you could.
2) Haven't gone online and tried any of the community levels. Or even now that they could or if they did, didn't realise that the levels were made by real people.
3) Played it online at all.
4) Bought any of the DLC.
5) Designed their own sackboys.

Which is sad but also it goes to show that if you are going to go for the casual audience you should give them a paint by numbers book and some crayons (Wii Sports) rather than a blank canvas and a selection of media to use (LBP).

In related news:

Also, none of our PS3 user friends have even heard of Home let alone tried it out. Which is a shame because in a year or two I predict it'll be doing some very interesting things. The same is true for things like Flow, Flower, Echochrome or Pixeljunk. I feel bad helping Sony out by spreading the word about these things.

This is comparable with all of our Wii owning friends who haven't downloaded a single (free) Wii channel or ever browsed the Virtual Console or WiiWare libraries. I've now done it at least eight times on friends consoles. Maybe Ninty should educate people about the expensive things they bought?

Maybe we could get paid for some of this community work too? Just write a check out to TGAM and send it to hotmail.com.

Thx thx bye!

The REAL reason why EDGE-Online's Whole Team Quit

Because copying and pasting articles from the magazine and news from Kotaku can get really really tiring quite quickly.

Nomoreheroesthereview

We have totally forgotten to review No More Heroes. Even though we bought it ages ago. With Zack and Wiki for £20 from amazon.co.uk


It is a very very good game.


You drive around and something.


We're addicted to watching the lucky star video on repeat.


We scoffed at playing with the cat in other reviews. But it is nice sometimes.


It has nice controls too.


The bit where you use the wiimote as a phone is probably our favourite so far!


We must admit though. We haven't finished it yet. We're savouring it.


The bike is good as is finding all the T-shirts. What's more is that the T-shirts are backwards in the mirror. Genius!


The trash collecting mini game is second only to the lawnmower one.


This is for the person who searched for pregnant samus and found TGAM. Sorry but it's the best I've got. The Samus mission is by far the best. Quite how they convinced Nintendo to have her as a boss, we don't know but it is brilliant.


Yuffie gets annoying towards the end but there's a great twist before the credits roll. Just buy this game, play it. Enjoy it. Love it! 9.5/10*


*The minus 0.5 marks is because Yuffie dies. Ooops. Shit. [Spoilers]. Is it too late?

Back to Black

Two 'interesting' articles went up this week Why are black game characters failing audience on EDGE and Resident Evil 5 Coverage Reignites Racism Debate up on some shit blog we found. It appears that discussion about racism, race and games once again rears it's ugly head for do gooders to send their good thoughts out into the ether. However, this time around it is black history month and Resident Evil 5 demo is live so it's kinda topical.

However, both of these posts completely gloss over the main meat of issues about race in games. We've all played the Resident Evil 5 demo by now and realised that there's nothing there really. Anyone wanting to single out things that they think are racist are overstretching a bit and any gamer who has been around a while can easily cite other games where the race scenario is reversed, irrelevant or ambiguous. And no one got the heeby jeebies then or had to try so hard to fight for race rights. On the internet. On a blog.

No these authors are missing the race issue that quite frankly has gone unaddressed for over two years now.

It's Otis from Dead Rising. He is a fucking annoying prick. And black. Yeah we'd throw that out there for ya. Please send your theses to krisgraft@edge-online.com and who knows? Maybe you'll get a job?

Other TGAM posts in the 'tackling racism from the armchair' series:

Where's the black Wii?
Marvin Branagh (Will Smith) cancels party for Leon Kennedy.
Black lead character only sleeps with dead white man in Fahrenheit.
Barrett in FFVII only character to have a child.
Jade from Beyond Good and Evil has a Pig man as a best friend.
Echochrome: The new apartheid?
50 Cent game given awful reviews by racist game reviewers.
Links hatred for dark Link: Nintendo's hidden agenda.

Welcome Strangers

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 next?

Then overnight we recieved an influx of Kotakuites (3662 to be exact) which brings our total visitor figures to TGAM up to 2461. Some of them were kind enough to leave comments here, which I wil now take time to respond to a la Soloman or Smith. Names have been changed because most of them pussies went anonymous.

Thumb it in said "Uh on the 24th tip, how bout not reading the day and night notes?Would help in the not being annoyed by them, wouldn't you say?"

Well Thumb it's not a problem since day note and night note seem to have mysteriously dissappeared following our glorious link.

Matthew wrote us an essay "SO WE WERE ALL IN JAPAN THE OTHER DAY AND WE WENT TO A JAPANESE PLACE AND AtE SOME JAPANESE FOOD AND IN JAPAN FOOD IS DIFFERENT THAN IN AMERICA AND IN JAPAN THEY HAVE DIFFERENT TRADITIONS AND STUFF. buy my book".Wow that is great. It does seem that all I ever hear on Kotaku is about Japan if it comes out of that guy.I'll have to return to finish reading this when I have more time, but it's great so far.

and later

OK, it took me a little time to go through it all, but I have confirmed you are insane. Just give up, is one tip. The only tip I ever got posted was one about the Call of Duty 4 beta release. I've sent in cool stuff before of varying subjects (All related to gaming), but now that I understand how many emails they get, I can give them a little slack.I do like what you said here:. Yesterday must have been cold without a hot tip so here's one that's been scorching a hole in my faceDon't bother with Second Life.I think the best tip you ever got is from Kotaku themselves (The link that is), so you're probably peeing yourself right now, congrats.

Thanks Matt although we gave up peeing ourselves when the cold weather settled in that nice warm feeling just doesn't stay warm long enough. Although, if we see a fire engine, who knows?

Leadbythenose said "What a waste of time, I wish kotaku hadn't linked me here." It's nice to see such frank honesty these days and glad to see that at least Lead got the joke unlike:

>9000 who helpfully pointed out that "Your tips are lame. seriously they are weak tips are supposed to be for information about new games not game guide help. and duh ashcraft lives in Japan I think he is going to be slightly japanese...." We feel so embarassed the whole time we thought we were being helpful! Thank god women like +900 are here to point these things out.

Hotnblack said: "Its easy to hate kotaku, I mean I know I do at times...but their coverage is too good to overlook. Every other game site/blog out there is just copy and pasting off their feed." Which is pretty much what we said in the post he had just commented on when we went:

"Kotaku is a gaming news site, probably the best one actually at least in terms of volume and frequency, not neccessarily consistency....... From here the escapist and then EDGE copy and paste all their news." But it might have been worth reiterating I guess.

Nothingbuthenews found a third use for his arsehole and said: "I totally agree, I wish I hadn't followed this link. This is what you do with your time and call news? Ugh." HE JUST CAN'T STAND THINGS WHICH PEOPLE SPEND THEIR TIME ON THAT ISN'T NEWS. Which is most things.

Slowbutsteady doesn't know his sister started her period. All he knows is that his Dad's dick taste funny once a month: "I, for one, very much like the Day and Night Notes." Then it's a shame they've gone now then [replaced by just Note but whatever].

RegIII resisted the debilitating FIV long enough to choose a poor turn of phrase to suggest he has tried email stalking men and masturbating, preffering the latter: "Seriously? This is how you waste your time? Here is a scorching hot tip for you...... jack off.... far better than email stalking guys."

Nicoffiend goes: "Congrats on wasting two years of your life attempting to get a rise out of someone you don't know and who couldn't give a rats ass about you." Dude. We took breaks.

What happened next

Thanks to our traffic tracking software we were able to follow the kotakuites. Well over 1000 of them then 'found' the CG Boobies tag. They then spent an average 30 seconds looking at the posts. The little quiz box on the right went up 5 votes for put my bum in his willy and 4 votes for put my willy in his bum. Sadly, RegIII died of the FIV. The world is a slightly better place. Then they all went back to Kotaku for some good old fashined naivity and some circle jerking. It'll take some time for the chip smell to go away though.

I never did say which email broke the will of the Big C. In fact for a guy who didn't notice he said this after the Second Life tip: "Does the hole, perchance, lead to your brain?".

How many emails does it take to get a rise out of Kotaku?

Almost exactly a year ago, we started emailing tips to tips@kotaku.com for those of you who don't know, Kotaku is a gaming news site, probably the best one actually at least in terms of volume and frequency, not neccessarily consistency. Anyway the above email address is for Kotaku readers to email in tips or rumours so that Kotaku can copy and paste the post on their site with some insightful sentence of commentary from one of the editors, 80% of which are called Brian. From here the escapist and then EDGE copy and paste all their news.

So, for the last year we've been emailing in 'tips' sometimes once a day, other times once a month. But we did get a rise out of Brian Crecente once before they presumably blocked any email we send to them anymore. Question is can you guess after which one we got a response? Answer is on the reverse.

1. Hot Tip

If you look at the ground in Golden Eye on the N64 you run a tiny bit faster.

2. Another Hot Tip

In the videogame Halo, jumping around can make you harder to target by those who would "do you in".

3. An Even Hotter Tip

When playing Final Fantasy games, unlike real life, it is always prudent to talk to dogs and children. They may help with story progression.

4. An Even Hotter Tip

In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis on the PlayStation pressing square and down will make Jill Valentine (or Carlos) turn on the spot for a quick getaway!

5. Another flaming hot tiperoo

In the Wii game, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, on the driving 'boss levels' both A and B buttons can be used to sound the horn and to get those pesky cows and baboons to get out of the way.

6. A Scorching tip today

Sorry for the lack of tips. Man's been ill for a couple a days. I'm making up for it with a scorching hot tip though!

In most videogames, just like in real life, characters cannot perform normal tasks whilst crouching. If you find your character isn't interacting with the environment, walking very slowly or not reloading weapons, check that they are not crouched down. If they are, try standing up and many of your ailments should dissappear.

7. A burning tip, burning. Flaming hot tip.

If you're gonna do a post about a video game drinking game, make it the original hardcore drinking game [prison rules version]http://www.thatguys.co.uk/2007/09/pokemon-drinking-game-prison-rules.html

8. Hotter than the surface of a hotplate tip today..

...just for you Kotaku slaves. Don't pass this tip on else everyone will be using it THUS NEGATING THE BENEFIT FOR YOU.

In Command and Conquer: Red Alert, you can tell you are about to be attacked because e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g l-a-g-s. Use this early warning system to bring back all your exposed whore trucks*.

*This is what all the cool kids call the ore trucks. Calling them whore trucks to other C&C Red Alert players instantly identifies you as "in the loop".

9. This is the hottest tip you ever received. Scorchio!

This is a tip for the fellas! Many women you come across may find your gaming "hobby" or worse, "lifestyle" a bit immature or sad. All that money wasted and you have nothing to show for it, except a bunch of save files! Don't fret though because many women like to spend extortionate amounts of money on shoes! Shoes! But there's more, it's not even shoes that enable walking, it's often shoes that cripple their feet, prevent them from walking over 1mph and cause them to whine after an evening out because their feet hurt! Now that's a waste of money, shoes that deliberately don't enable the very simple function of pain free walking. Mental.

10. Coming atcha like a volcano, truly the most burning tip yet

This one is for the ladies. In Dead Rising, when the yellow anorak cultists turn up, allow Frank to be "killed" by them (they should spit a powder in his face at which point he will black out). Instead of dying you'll awaken in a box in just your pants! Check out some schweet man ass and bulge for free!

Just don't tell anyone I told you!

11. Yesterday must have been cold without a hot tip so here's one that's been scorching a hole in my face

Don't bother with Second Life.

12.It's winter outside but here's a tip to warm you up

Shaking trees in Animal Crossing and Animal Crossing WIld World may reveal some furniture or better yet a bag of bells! Watch out for bees! If your quick enough you can catch the bees and sell them to Tom Nook for EVEN MORE BELLS!

13. The weekend looms, why not make it better with this tip!

In FPS (first person shooters) you should always strafe left to right. This makes you a harder target to shoot. You shouldn't strafe backwards and forwards because, although half the time you are becoming a smaller target, the other half you are becoming a larger target!

14. This tip comes for free but boy is it a hot one!

In the UK at least most gaming chain stores stock titles for little under a month before they are replaced with the new and shiny titles and piles of multiplatform releases like Catz or Cheggers' Quiz. Shopping online for games can be risky too because it's always disheartening to open up a second hand game you've received to find a scratch on the disc and jam all over the instruction booklet. Fear not though gamers because pawn shops often have a nice selection of games, in good nick and all the best titles aren't snapped up the minute they go one the shelves. This weekend I bought mint condition Code Veronica and Resident Evil Outbreak (I know! But I had to) for the PS2 for £6 ($12056US). Bargain!

15. I'm back from the centre of the earth, a journey that ook days to discover this hot tip!

Gamers, why not use valentine's day as an excuse to revisit Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil 1 and three and Soul Calibur? Why? You might ask. Well to play as Jill, Vincent and Ivy Valentine! Yeah, yeah, put that in your stand up show, I'll let ya.

16. Just a tip but you might want to read this one.

If you get low on ammo in Resident Evil games, fear not because you can use the knife!

17. This tip is so hot men and women want it

In Resident Evil Outbreak press start to skip the cutscenes. For most other Capcom titles select works too!

18. England has had the Typhoid again so there hasn't been any tips for a while.....until now

In Crash Team Racing for the Sony PlayStation, make sure you always jump off of ramps and ledges. The higher you jump the bigger the boost you get upon landing!

19. I've been to the Congo, where I found this tip for you

In Brain Training for the Nintendo DS, holding select when you touch the Brain Training exercise lets you select the activities on which your brain age will be calculated so you can avoud the ones you find hard.

Blog that mofos, I'll be out tip hunting on your behalf.

20. Slow news day huh?

Well here's a fricking tip for you so post this so the readers don't die of not enough posts to devour! In the game Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles the RING OF FATES, make sure you "Add material" when making weapons and armour from a scroll. If you are not going to add material then the man next door will sell you the armour ready made for cheaper.

How did you like that tip kotaku? Because I tell you now. THERE'S PLENTY MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM SON-SHINE

21. YET ANOTHER HOT TIP

How do I do it you ask? Well, that would be telling. Today's tip is for the game "Mashed".

If you aren't very good at mashed then always choose the red car. It's a little bit faster.

No, don't thank me, really. Just be glad to have the knowledge. It is power.

22. A new year and a new hot tip.

Wasn't dead guys just out, tip hunting.

Took me fourteen months of research and 10 years of work in the field. In that time I saw generations come and go. I saw the dawn of a new millenium but nothing would stay my hands and eyes looking for a tip in the event that you could do a post about it. Many times I wanted to give up on it all you know? Jack it all in. Live an easy tip-free life. But every time my heart drew me back in. I've seen things you can only dream about one of your friends dreaming about. I saw the face of god but I did not know madness. Very well, you may say but give up the tip. You can have the tip in a second but bear in mind the awful cost it took to get it. Use it wisely and it will guide you to a better place. Use it frivolously and life won't ever be the same again. Very well gentlemen, the tip:

If you get stuck on a wall in Mario Kart, reverse yourself until you can go forward and get off that wall or something.

No need to thank me but look into the eyes of your children tonight and know that you did best by god.

23. Here's another tip I trust you will take it?

In most Doom games you can pick up a weapon called a BFG. It is a very powerful weapon but do not use it at close range because you will kill yourself.

Just some L337 tech for ya to help you up your game, y'know?

24. A tip pure and simple, from me, to you

Hey guys another tip, free of charge for now. I'll put it on your tip tab yar?

Just drop the Day Note and Night Note yeah? No one likes it. Not even Crecente. And Bashcraft is like. "Dude me an my japanese wife who is japanese are in japan and we saw something that you only see in japan and we were in japan and my son who was in japan asked if japan is the same as America and I turned to my japanese wife and said in japanese no it isn't."
And Crecente is always like. "Great. I uh. Yeah. That must have been great". Then Bashcraft is back on the "SO WE WERE ALL IN JAPAN THE OTHER DAY AND WE WENT TO A JAPANESE PLACE AND AtE SOME JAPANESE FOOD AND IN JAPAN FOOD IS DIFFERENT THAN IN AMERICA AND IN JAPAN THEY HAVE DIFFERENT TRADITIONS AND STUFF. buy my book".

It's rarely about games at all. No one is particulalry interested and we all have friends who live in countries but who have made no attempt to ingratiate themselves. How about you change up the format? Like try and play some kind of videogame themed word game or six degrees of megaman. Anything else really. Give it a shot. Thank me later dudes.

It's a game for all the family! Cunzy1 1

Ask a silly question....

We're thinking of doing a big 2008 retrospective because we are lazy, like to recycle content and love to use any opportunity to show off our unforced 'whacky' comradorie?, comradory?, comodorarody? and witty office banter.

So I've been going through the archives, pulling together bits for this epic post about what we did this year, shifting computers every time I finish checking through a month in order to up our unique visitors. Whilst doing so I found this piece where we managed to stay focussed enough to ask our future selves some questions.

Now it is the future and I will answer our pastselves' questions for my own pleasure.

1. Did all the above games come out in 2008 (Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 5, Silent Hill 5, Super Smash Brothers Brawl and TGAM: The game based on the blog based on the games that influence our lives.)?
Yes, Not yet, yes, yes and no. After seeing the shitty Penny Arcade game TGAMTGBOTBBOTGTIOL got shelved.

2. Were they good?
Yes, don't know, ish, hell yes, N/A.

3. What were the surprise releases of 2008?
Megaman 9 was a bit of a surprise. The least surprising releases were probably Little Big Planet which, if you are a follower of blogs, was so over exposed you felt like you'd played it, discussed it and got bored of it before it was even out. We are surprised that Killzone 2 still isn't out and Home is kinda out but not really despite being on of the Top 10 gadgets of the year according to Time magazine. In fact this was probably the year of least surprise as publishers paid through the nose to hype and advertise shit before it was even finished.
Perhaps the true genuine surprise this year was that Microsoft so brazenly copied the idea of Miis and got away with it.
If we were truly hilarious individuals we would have just answered this question with Fifa 09 and been done with it. Unfortunately, we can only aspire to Gamespot-esque levels of humour.

4. Is Richie still playing WoW?
Hard to say. Our one avid reader may have spotted that Richie hasn't really contributed to the blog since before September. So probably yes then but no one really knows for sure.

5. Is there yet another expansion for it?
Yes which might be the cause of above.

6. Did the Wii’s sell out again this Xmas?
Looks like it, who would have thought. Well past us clearly.

7. Is the Wii any good yet?
Totally depends on which console you are a fanboy of. I reckon this year both the Xbox 360 and the Wii have had a good run of it and both are worth owning if you are truly a discriminating gamer. Although the Wii doesn't have the sheer number of games the 360 does, they do tend to either be classics or shovelware. The 360 has a fuller spectrum of quality from classics through mediocre to crap. But if you like No More Heroes, Mario Kart, World of Goo, Super Smash Brothers, De Blob, Okami (cheating), Warioland, Chocobo Dungeon and boomblox then yes, in the UK at least 2008 has made the Wii good.

8. Is the PS3 still shit?
Yeah totally. Such an awful year and so many hopes dashed as PS3 exclusives went multiplatform, weren't noticebly different to 360 versions, delayed, slagged off as difficult to develop for or just plain ol' cancelled. Just look at this gamespot top 2008 PS3 games list. Take out the multiplatform releases and there is nothing worth forking out for a PS3 for. Truly sad times.

9. Does TGAM still exist?

Barely. Posts are just juvenile rants or copied from other sites. Richie doesn't chip in anymore, we lost our only full time troll and the spelling and punctuation has gotten worse if anything. But technically we're still here so yeah, woot us.

10. Does Cunzy own any next-gen machine (or powerful PC) yet?

Maybe depends if you include the Wii as 'next-gen'.

So there we have it past selves. Happy now? Here's some questions for our future future selves.

1) Did Killzone 2 come out yet?

2) What new element, colour or precious stone will the next pokemon games be? Where do you go after platinum? Maybe radioactive elements? Or poisons? Pokemon Antimony would be pretty sweet.

3) Was Home any good?

4) Did it save the PS3?

5) Has 'next-gen' managed to expunge any of the following from games yet: Crates, Barrels, indestructible scenery, childish or cliched storytelling, bullshots, too much hype, dodgy AI, lies about different storyline/morality system, too many wii peripherals, lava, ice and water levels, lense flare, bloom, FPSs set in linear corridors, boring tutorials, unskippable cut scenes, online abuse, PC gaming frustration, annoying cameras, boring MMORPGs? Or is it still all about the graphics looking nice but sticking to 1990s game design.

6) Did the gaming magazines finally go under?

7) Did everyone realise that Metal Gear Solid 4 was a bit silly really?

8) Was Resident Evil 5 really racist?

9) Did LBP finally sell well?

10) Is there still a TGAM/habitable planet?

Why do you always find things in the last place you look?*

*Is it because you stop looking or is it because the press coverage runs out?

Fan Service

Did you set up a website to discuss the hot topics in your lifestyle/hobby area of interactive gaming? Were you underwhelmed when nobody cared about what you had to say because the coverage on Kotaku was more even handed and up to date? If the answer to any of those questions is yes then fear not. You are a sad fanboy but by following our hot guide you'll have that template blog up and running again before you google your site url to see if anyone linked to you this week.

Step 1: Even if your site is really shit, get sponsored ads almost before you have any other content. This makes your content-lite website look professional and if you get any hits in the future you might generate an income! To add a further professional air get that advertising that highlights words throughout the blog. There's nothing less frustrating than boxes of text popping up every time the cursor accidentally floats over words like "here" or "price drop".

Step 2: After taking a step back you will probably realise that all your posts are about the Xbox 360! Whoops, no one is going to believe that you care about the other consoles out there! How do you broaden the appeal without giving up your ardent fanboy standpoint on issues around how microsoft can fight their way up to second place in the market despite having a three year head start? Easy, go multi-author. Four or five authors is best. To those who don't know any better it looks like you will have a diverse point of view on every topic. In reality, two of them probably won't contribute but they will comment making your site look much better. There's nothing worse than 0 comments all over the fucking place!! We should know!

Step 3: Create a forum! It's easy, you'll continually attract people who get kicked out of other forums and it adds yet another professional edge to your site. Before you know it the circle jerking will begin and for a sweet short while the reality that the console your mum bought you is shit will be a distant nightmare. What really impresses people is if you go to the effort of creating an image advertising your forum but put a deliberate spelling mistake in. The below example is from thatgamingsite another popular weblog about interactive video games.

Step 4: Coming up with games news is hard but stealing it is plain wrong. Instead the polite thing to do is steal news that is fourth or fifth hand. That way nobody cares that 6 out of 8 of your front page stories "stories" are just copied from the relevant Xbox sections of IGN, Kotaku or god forbid 1up.

Step 5: Name your blog something similar to the first or second greatest video games blog ever as proven by science that way you get to sail in the slipstream of their good name and get oodles of free publicity. Ideally, target someone who doesn't regularly google parts of their site name otherwise you'll end up in some kind of a blog war. And it's important for you to realise, that we've never lost.

This Geekend

?

Editor of ONM replies! Is smug.

We got a reply!! Which will go down in TGAM history because no one normally replies to our open letters. Here it all is:

Hi Cunzy1 1, or whoever.

Thanks for your email. I always appreciate it when somebody takes the time and effort to contact us, as you have done, regardless of your opinion.
Thank you also for continually buying the magazines. Your loyalty pays our wages and funds our passion.

Thanks for your points and the detail of your email. All criticism is taken on board.
It's kind of flattering to see that you're 'onto us hacks'. It's always nice to hear that people actually read the words and don't just look at the pretty pictures. I look forward to reading further analysis of the magazine, should you see fit to provide it.

Lastly, let me reassert the point that I/we really appreciate the fact that you continually buy the magazine despite thinking it's far from the standards needed to satiate your refined gaming ideals.

Have a great Bank Holiday,

Chan

Yes, we're aware that we're not very good but you keep buying the magazine. Ha ha ha! HA HA HA! Naturally we replied again because someone at the factory got typhoid from one of the chickens so were not at work at the moment :(

Dear "Chan"

Thank you for your amazingly prompt reply. I'm glad you took time out of your busy schedule to respond to one of the readers of your magazine. Yes, of course you had to toe the company line which is why I don't take issue with your oozing smugness reply. To be fair I only buy it for the Animal Crossing and Pokemon free gifts. The decals are good too. So were the fridge magnets. The Mario encyclopedia wasn't too shabby either. It's just a crying shame about the rest of the magazine. Perhaps you could team up with N gamer? They can do the mag and you do the gifts? Nice?

However, if you really are taking the criticism on board can I suggest that you tell all your colleagues and copy editor (if you have one) that it should be PlayStation, not playstation. I know, I know that you are a Nintendo magazine but that's the way it should be spelled and I noticed in recent issues that it wasn't. You don't want your readers to grow up stupid now do you?

Regards

Cunzy1 1

Machinima...

...isn't all pointless shit. Some of it is cool pointless shit. Yeah so Wow was so a year ago and even Portal is starting to get old. Just you wait. GTA IV is gonna land and you won't ever have to hear that cake song again!

WoW Videos

Congrats to BaronSoosdon.

Oh and also, if you've got time to waste Halolz is GOLD at the moment.

We* know** someone*** famous****

What with being listed as an "industry link" over on RAMRAIDER and now knowing** the top Geometry Wars Galaxy player in the world surely this is the year of the maniac. And look!, Games Media Awards people, no ads so perhaps we should win the Best Commercial Non-Commercial Commercial Website Or Blog this year yeah? Yeah? Then we can finally give up our jobs packing battery chickens and write posts about Resident Evil full time!
So without further ado, congratulations to DR Hamhock MD who by now must have been signed by Nintendo and is currently developing a Dr Hamhock limited edition Wiimote holder and/or DS stylus for mass release. Well done, you made it son*****, you made it.

* By we I mean me. Cunzy1 1. Richie left the blog about two years ago and since then I've been dressing up as her and doing posts about dildonics and naruto. That was until Claire interrupted me when I had the Richie wig on and was posing in the mirror talking in a Scottish accent. I went 'special' for a bit then but I'm okay now.

** By know, I mean straight (not gay) flirt with in the comments section on UK:Resistance every now and then. I also mean, have been meaning to add as a link (to the right) for three months but have to wait until I have six months off work to wait for blogger to republish the whole blog. That was heterosexual flirting by the way.

*** Presumably it is someone but we don't know for sure. It could just be a bot or spider******

**** Really depends on your definition of famous I guess. Some people might argue that gamers on the top of leaderboards aren't famous, some might argue that gamers the top of a nintendo leaderboard aren't famous because to-date only seven Wii owners realise that their Wii can go online. But then most people are stupid and poor.

***** I wish I hadn't used "son". It's a bit American, pretentious and condescending. With hindsight I should have used "King of the World" or just "the good Doctor". Oh well it's done now. No way of taking it back.

****** Technical terms for software developed by the FBI in collaboration with the American government that create websites to make real bloggers feel useful and important when they get a new comment or link from another "blogger". According to Boingboing there are only five real bloggers on the internet.

Tomato Juice and Black Umbrella

Sup maniacs? We were at GDC and we've had precious little blogging time so here's a brief catch up in the form of a numbered list:

1) The Guiness World Records: Gamer's Edition is now out (already reduced by 33% in many shops) and it is worth picking up in the future when it is somewhere around the £5 mark. Packed with a lot of tenuous records and inaccuracies but it's worth ignoring the blindingly obvious mistakes (Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 are not PlayStation2 games, why didn't anyone consult us?) to discover some lesser known gaming related gems. So for example, did you know that David Lynch directed the PS2 'Third Place' adverts? Or that the PSOne could connect to a number of Sony mobile phones? I don't know what they could do when they were connected but you could do it. In Japan.

2) Both myself and Richie have had our IPs banned from the Resident Evil Wiki for trying to add the articles "Jill Sammich" and "That Guy's A Maniac". Quite frankly a "Resident Evil wiki" without those articles is a misnomer. They don't even have an article on Akuma for christ's sake. So in facetious spite we looked at all 1843 articles on the REwiki over a gruelling two days and discovered 1223 and 1/2 mistakes and didn't correct them! Ha! Wiki that arseholes.

3) Despite claiming to quite like the Resident Evil Series neither of us had ever played the reportedly bad Resident Evil Outbreak.... until now that is! And yes. It's bad. Here's a brief list of things that are wrong: story is non canon :(, characters can make vocalisations that are pointless offline, way too many cutscenes (14 cutscenes on the first level, a level which takes about 14 minutes if you are fast so that's one cutscene per minute of gameplay! Must be a record Guiness!), AI characters are frankly arseholes and will run off or just refuse to follow commands despite getting mauled in the face and the dub on some of the cutscenes is completely different to the subtitles. This list is not comprehensive but all these issues do mount up and unfortunately bring the score down to 9/10: best game on the PS2. It could have been so much more though.

4) Someone needs to go to Tim Buckley's house and check that he's taking the proper meds. First there is this ridiculous I'm not too sure what it even is "storyline" that smacks a bit too much of Bouncer's Dream in Neighbours. Be it an early mid-life crisis or a bad break up, someone should check on Tim. You know, just in case.....

5) GDC was okay but as with every year, a bunch of Peter Molyneux's and Peter Molyneux himself were bigging up the "next big things in gaming" (online gaming apparently). I think they meant to say Brain Training 3, Halo 4 and shit like Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games. The sandwiches at GDC were really nice although next year some kind of sticker or flag to highlight which ones are fish, vegetarian or meat would save some valuable time.

6) After hunting 6 different high street shops I managed to pick up a copy of Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles. It's a nice little game, a bit too easy perhaps but nice nonetheless despite being a bit non canon thus confusing the new kids who weren't there from the beginning. Nonetheless 10/10 best game on the Wii.

7) Following the purchase of RE:Outbreak I've been skimming a lot of FAQs recently and this is a formal public service notice to FAQ writers: There is no need for the sections: version history, author's notes, disclaimers, special thanks or game controls sections. No one ever reads that shit and no one cares if Jigglypuff12 helped you out on the section about where to take upskirt screenies. Just skip to the bits where you start giving up the information straight away if people can't work out the controls themselves then I doubt they can translate your broken english anyway and I imagine they are beyond help in the first place.

So that's what we've been up to campers, what sandwiches have you been avoiding recently?

That Guys is now a blind cave salamander!

Yes it is. Five points if you can get the reference.

Day note: FINE! I'll do everything my fucking self then!

To:1 1
From: "Type-0"

Wow! This new set up is very interesting Cunzy1 1. Your day note was quite boring you should really make an effort to learn japanese or some shit. I'm not doing the Wii jokes again!

Anyway, here at TGAM Towers everything is great. We still have the same asinine commentors and a whole bunch of posts from the puerile to the interesting.

What you missed (because it is possible to miss stuff that is posted on a website if you can't detract your eyes from the puke inducing colour scheme):

Bewbs
Bewbs
Bewbs
Oh hawt bewbs
Bewbs
Lol Bewbs and Biff