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Sin and Punishment Do You Want Me To Call You A Cab?

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We recently picked up Sin & Punishment Successor to the Stars, Star Rod Sky Pirates Knights. Surprisingly, despite 3 years of rave reviews and fond reflections by everyone who ever played it, it is rather good.

When we get a new game, we have a ritual. We pour over the instruction book first, reading the "plot" bit (which is still the place where most games actually describe the context of the world you're about to visit). Weirdly, the above image is in the instruction booklet illustrating the biography of Kachi one of the two playable characters.

It appears she's hurriedly getting dressed, bra is out, one boot on. Fine. Maybe she's a ditsy character and her thing is always being late or something? We've not yet played through the whole game yet but this doesn't seem to be her deal.  

It's just a weird image to use isn't it? I mean yes, please let us perve over the female characters at our own leisure just don't start the misogyny in the fucking instruction booklet.

Meloetta Get!

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Last weekend, once again we went through the humiliating ritual of busting down to the nearest GAME with our DSi and copies of Pokémon White and Pokémon Black Version 2 to download Legendary 'mon Meloetta. That takes us up to a sweet 648/649 (Deoxys aaargh) in our eternal mission to Catch 'em all, this generation of Pokémon is the closest we've come.

In all our years of playing these ridiculous games, Nintendo seem to have finally realised that yes, Europe is a viable region and that some people do play their multi million selling game series. For previous generations we'd get shafted over special events and event only Pokémon meaning that unless you turned to an Action Replay you were destined to have to live with empty spaces dotting the pokedex.

That's not to say that all regions are treated equally. Oh no. With Pokémon Black and White Version 2 there's now a multitude of ways to receive special gift pokémon and items from Mother Ninty. gifts can be distributed through the Pokémon Global Link (the PC client), via Nintendo WFC (over the internet without having to go to the internet) and via local WiFi- i.e. you have to schlep to a certain place at a certain time to download a piece of code. All three methods have been used to essentially unlock free DLC and presumably maintain interest in the game series. Our preffered method is either through the Global Link or Nintendo WFC because there's nothing more embarrassing than having to use your DS publicly (especially when we're 20 years older than the other participants). However, through the local WiFi downloads it's getting a bit like LARPing, the rarity of GAME stores make finding a participating store like the in game actions of hunting down rare and legendary pokémon.

Europe and non US or Japan parts of the World receive far less of these online, in store and NWFC content which is odd considering it can't be that much effort to broadcast a bit of code. 

So we don't know if we're idiots for caring about these things in the first place or idiots for having a Stockholm Syndrome relationship with the Nintyship. Should we be angry for not getting the same content as Japan or boot-lickingly grateful for getting anything at all? Amateur psychologists email us at the usual address.



Now Showing: Nintendo Channel LAST ORDERS AT THE BAR PLEASE

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MCV reports that Nintendo will be shutting down several Wii online services. Our heart skipped a beat for a second thinking that maybe the plug had been pulled on Monster Hunter Tri or Mario Kart Wii and our hunter might be trapped in subexcellent armour or our online ranking on MK might be forever frozen at a measly 8500 points. Fortunately, for the meantime, these games aren't affected but come the 28th of June Nintendo, News, Weather, Everybody Votes and Mii Contest Channels will be mothballed forever. Also going is the ability to send messages on the Wii Message Board This illustrates something that really pisses us off about modern consoles; increasingly the console and games you buy are really just a license to use services until such time as the servers are unplugged. 

Now most people probably won't mourn the loss of these services but as this series has shown we thought they were pretty great albeit underused service. We've had some hands on time with New Super MArio Brothers Wii U on the Wii U and we hope to god that you can turn off some of the online interaction in games because the last thing we want is anonymous plebs invading our game with twee but ultimately pointless comments. Here's what we'll miss about each service due for the chop.

The Nintendo Channel. Often a under used service and the content was pretty hit and miss. Series would abruptly end after two or three parts and the weekly download videos highlighted just how rubbish most Wiiware games really were. Recently they got it right by streaming Nintendo Direct straight to your console. Hopefully the records and recommendations service won't go too because we've found it a goldmine of interesting information about how gamers perceive and receive various games as well as being able to compare the times played, average time played and total time played for different games. Hopefully our archived Now Showing series will archive the weird an wonderful channel.

News and Weather. Okay so the weather channel was pretty pointless. We got excited when it was hinted that the real world weather would be reflected in games but this feature never came to pass. Also, as useful as it was to know the weather and pollen count for your area (within the nearest hundred miles) googling the weather was far easier and more accurate. We did love the news channel though, scrolling through the news whilst munching cornflakes on a Sunday morning was a ritual we'll miss. 

Everybody Votes. I really wished I'd archived every single poll on this channel. Some of the responses once overlaid on a UK or World map show some of the mental cultural differences between countries. For example did you know that Japanese people are four times more likely to be carrying tissues with them than Americans? Or did you know that the majority of people form Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales and the Shetland Isles think that the end doesn't always justify the means but in the Channel Isles and the Isle of Man Wii owners resolutely think that the ends do justify the means?

Mii Contest Channel. This channel was an ongoing demonstration of how creative many Wii owners were. With  such limited Mii creation tools, Miis have stood the test of time whereas the Xbox avatars and PlayStation whatever they were never seem to hit the same chord. Also entertaining were the contests that highlighted how many Mii creators lacked imagination and knowledge of the world. We fondly remember the contest to create a Mii of Florence Nightingale showing how clearly the majority of people had no idea what a Florence Nightingale was. Also, one of the few channels or games to use the Wii Message board (more of this below).

Wii Message Board. Scandalously underused facility highlighting how lazy many developers are. Off the top of our head only Wii Fit, Wii Sports, Metroid Prime 3, Mario Kart Wii, Mii Contest Channel and Bonsai Barber used this functionality. For us, those little icons on the Mario Kart Channel, messages from Nintendo about competitions, messages from Bonsai Barber clients and a reminder of how afraid you were to have a weigh in on Wii Fit kept us logging into games. It really is that simple to guilt us into popping that disc in again. In fact if it wasn't for the Mario Kart channel reminding you that there was a live competition or that you hadn't done a ghost race in while we probably wouldn't still be playing MK six years down the line (and still beating our lap times). Also if you participated in special Mii contest contests you could pose your Mii artisan and your contest entrant against a special background. Our favourite was Albert Wesker bumming Samus Aran on a throne of fruit. Alas no more such works of art will be created on this platform.

How long do other Wii services have? We're going to download all the Wiiware and VC titles we've been meaning to buy just in case the shopping channel bites the bullet and we're also gonna jot down all our statistics off the Nintendo Channel before it pops it's clogs. We're also gonna get in a few online games of Battalion Wars, Mario Kart Wii, Monster Hunter Tri, Bomberman Blast and We Love Golf  because surely it's a matter of time before these services end.

On the upside? Deleting these channels will free up some precious space so we can shift some of our VC and Wiiware games off the SD card.


You Can Have My Steel

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We've been on a bonanza of buying older Wii games to add to the collection. We avoided the original Red Steel on account of the awful reviews but wanted to try Red Steel 2, partly because it's one of the few games to use Wii Motion Plus. We're about halfway through but feel it's enough to put down some thoughts about it.

It's a perfectly functional if somewhat generic game. The motion controls irk at first, swordplay isn't mapped one to one to the Wiimote, the reason for this is so that a multitude of attacks can be mapped to flick, twisting, holding and tapping buttons in combinations with flails. After a couple of hours the controls become second nature and every enemy encounter can be played a number of different ways similar to the encounters in Resident Evil 4. It's not quite mindless and if you aren't paying attention every enemy goon can take you out. 

Oddly, the game  just sort of starts. There's very little in the way of introduction or story and for the opening levels we couldn't help but feel that the game was on the shallow side. The level design and quest structure do give Red Steel 2 a bit more depth but quite quickly a feeling of going through the motions sets in. Basically, you do the same thing over and over again in each area. Find the Sheriff, find Tits (see below), collect some gubbins, destroy some other gubbins, activate the communication beacons, upgrade your shit, fight some mobs, fight a boss. Move to the next level. Rinse. Repeat six times.

The visual style and sound design reminded us a lot of the solid PS2 title XIII but unfortunately the game doesn't reach the same heights. Destroying boxes, barrels and bottles for enough cash to upgrade items, weapons and armour very quickly gets monotonous. There's a drip feed of enemy types to try to force using different attacks but once you unlock some of the better moves there's little reason to mix it up. 

The exploration side of the game pads out the playtime and hunting out well hidden cash items does make you check each zone carefully. Transitions from area to area hide the loading screens behind suspiciously long time door opening animations.

The western samurai setting is a great idea but sadly one that's a bit wasted in this game that goes through the motions but never truly excites or challenges. However, considering you can find this game for as little as £5 new, we'd recommend giving it a try. At that price point it doesn't really matter but we'd have hated to have splashed out full price for it. 

An Omastar Is For Life

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Meet Omastar, the (Oma) star of Omastar Comics and of twitter fame. You could say Omastar is my favourite Pokémon but you'd be wrong. My favourite Pokémon is Dactylocer, MY Omastar. let me explain.

One of the wonderful and often overlooked features of the Pokémon series of games, including the main series of games and some of the spin offs, has been the ability to transfer Pokémon not just from one game to the next but most importantly from one generation to the next. This feature goes as far back as Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire. Pokémon were transferable from one game to the other in the Green, Blue, Red and Yellow games and these games were compatible with the Nintendo 64 Pokémon Stadium, and Pokémon Stadium 2 but sadly the Pokémon caught in these games couldn't be transferred beyond that. Since 2002's Ruby and Sapphire games it's been possible to transfer pocket monsters from one game to another up until the latest generation Pokémon Black Version 2 and Pokémon White Version 2. For us this has been what keeps us coming back to this series in between other distractions and we thank the Nintendo gods for making it possible because it's a subtle feature that I don't imagine most Pokémon fans bother with. Even though I know that it isn't 'my Omastar' being transferred from one game to another, it's merely the (genetic) code being replicated in the next game and permanently deleted from the old game I can genuinely say I have a sentimental attachment to this guy (and it is a male) who has now been my digital companion, more accurately, the digital companion of many of my trainers through each game, for just under a decade. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, part of the series' enduring legacy and Nintendo hallmark is the deep game mechanics and the competitive scene that sees the constant arms race of strategies for competitive play. These aren't the reasons behind my attachment to Omastar, in fact he isn't even properly EV trained to stand a chance in the global competition scene (let alone our own TGAM clashes) but I make sure that he's the first to get sent over from one game to the next and Nintendo willing he'll keep getting transferred over. Here's the story of Omastar, my VINPC.

2004 Pokémon Fire Red. 
Kanto Region Cinnabar Island, Pokémon Lab* 
Here's where the story started way back in 2004 when trainer Cunzette (I'm pretty unimaginative when it comes to naming my trainers so this might get confusing) revived an Omanyte from a helix fossil. This Omanyte, named Dactylocer after a genus of ammonite, would then travel all around Kanto and the Sevii Islands, evolve into an Omastar and formed part of the first team to beat the Elite Four then..
... he was transferred over to 2003's Pokémon Sapphire as part of Hoenn region trainer Cunzy11's bid to complete the national pokédex, beat the trainer tower and, according to the in game Hall of Fame records, go on to beat the Elite Four in this region over 150 times. It was during this stint in the Hoenn region that Omastar picked up 10 competition medals in the cool, beauty and cute competitions naturally.

Not content on ending the region hopping there, Omastar then made the trip via a Game Boy Advance-Game Cube cable to Pokémon Colosseum's Orre region as part of the team that bested the Epic Battle Tower (dinging level 100 and catching Ho-oh) and then repeated the feat in Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness helping to tame shadow Lugia XD001 and end the reign of Cipher organisation. Omastar will forever carry the Legend Ribbon to mark these two feats.

No rest for the wicked however. In 2007, Omastar was then transferred over to the DS via the Pal Park never to return to the GBA console of origin to take on Pokémon Diamond's Sinnoh region under the trainer Cunzita. Whilst there, Omastar snagged a Sinnoh Champ Ribbon as well as picking up a host of other accolades and decorations whilst helping with the challenge of collecting a whole new generation of Pokémon. This was the first time that Omastar battled other trainers from across the world over the Internet. From here, Omastar  enjoyed a couple of months quiet time over on the Wii's My Pokémon Ranch (top image) helping in the effort to get given a Mew by Rancher Hayley followed by some intense months of battling trainers from around the world on the Wii in Pokémon Battle Revolution.

Omastar then went back to where it all began, albeit to a slightly expanded Kanto region, upon being transferred to 2010's Pokémon Soul Silver. Here Omastar experienced the Johto region for the first time, once again beating the Elite four, picking up a couple of coveted tower ribbons in the Battle Frontier as well as being the first Pokémon to receive a leaf crown. Omastar also turns out to be quite the athlete picking up numerous medals from the Pokéthlon and spent hours on the move in the Pokéwalker. In 2011 Omastar was literally beamed out into space and over to Pokémon White to explore the Unova region, taking part in musical performances, beating yet another set of Elite four trainers and earning some well earned rest. Although even in dreams Omastar was put to work via the PC client Pokémon Global Link Dreamworld. Again in 2012 Omastar moved games for the last time (so far) to Pokémon Black Version 2 and is currently supporting the intense training of some younger, greener pokémon as well finding time to become a screen idol at PokéStar Studios.

Not bad for a piece of code hey? This short list belies the full list of accomplishments and I don't even want to check the clock times for those games. At least one of them is over the 400 hour mark. From humble origins on the GBA, Omastar has travelled across ten games, through the hands of 10 Cunzy/Cunzina/Cunzita  trainers via half as many console and handheld generations. He very much is the old veteran of the team, there are a handful of others that date back to the Sapphire days, but the shared experiences we've been through together provide a very strong attachment as well as easing me from one generation of games to the next (plus keeping me putting money straight into Nintendo's bank account). Imagine if you were able to transfer your MMO character from one game to another and not have to start from scratch every time killing 10 rats and 2 mudcrabs for leather boots** or not having to redevelop your character in every sequel. Compatibility with upcoming Pokémon X and Y has not yet been confirmed but the second it is I won't be taking bets on who will be the first of the old guard to make the trip over.


* I recommend Pokearth to get your bearings.

** To be fair, with a few exceptions you do have to 'earn' the right to transfer pokémon from one game to the next and quite often this takes 10+ hours.

From The Collection: Introduction

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There seems to be a lot of discussion at the moment about defining the language we use to describe gaming and more broadly defining the culture. One of the things we worry about here is how we preserve gaming. It's a medium we're still in the position to save most of but very little is being done to preserve it. 

This recent Extra Credits video rather nicely sums up some of the major barriers to preserving the physical stuff of games. We aren't ardent institutionalists but we'd really like to see gaming museums seriously explore preserving and celebrating (museums are more than just historical archives). Museums have started to look at gaming and there have been a number of exhibitions on or incorporating gaming but to date there hasn't been an concentrated effort on displaying gaming for it's own sake. The Smithsonian exhibition The Art of Video Games and the Game On exhibition at the Science Museum were both good starts and both the Victoria Albert Museum and the Design Museum have featured games in exhibitions about design. The UK does have a national collection but this is not gaming. These are merely the devices in which we use to access gaming worlds.

None of these exhibitions really explore or celebrate gaming on it's own merit. What is gaming? It's so many things. It's the hardware and it's the software. But it's also cosplay, action figures, comics, film, blogs, books, novelisations, websites, manifestos, flash mobs, LAN parties, e-sports, one of the most active online communities, critics, coders, stories, anecdotes, flame wars, hackers and more. Where do you even start trying to capture all of this activity that we can call gaming? Why is it that the hobbyists are leading the way in preserving and celebrating this culture? From Robert Ashley's oral history/oral exhibitions series A Life Well Wasted to the thousands of people who give up their own times to keep older games playable, often illegally and often without the support of the original developers (if the rights of the game haven't vanished into thin air) to the thousands of gamers who write and produce videos and fanzines promoting older games. This is one of the things that frustrates us most about the current 'game industry'. Games journalists, publishers and developers would have you forget about today's games in order to get you to buy what's new and a certain part of the gaming community happily buys into being the ever consumer, demanding new games and discarding old ones to the extent that some of them have convinced themselves that games older than year 'aren't worth playing' or are 'unplayable' because they don't have online play or HD graphics. They are avatars of the marketeers and for my liking too promiscuous in the message boards and fora where the gaming community exists. 

Preserving games and the material culture of games is clearly something that, one of our favourite writers, Robert Florence occasionally thinks about. This brief diary entry accurately sums up our fears and worries about the 'collection' we have stashed away in cupboards and crannies. The collectors amongst us will know this sentiment, quoted in full from this Cardboard Children over at Rock Paper Shotgun

We have too many toys. I think it’s been the Steam Summer Sale that has made me think about all of this. I’ve bought maybe thirty games, and I don’t have enough lifetimes to play all of them. I’m just used to having nice things, and buying them when I want them. I do the same with board games. I do the same with action figures. I do the same with everything. I have too much shit, and not enough time. I have too many toys.
When I was young I didn’t have too many toys. I just had some toys. And, in truth, some was plenty. Some is all anybody ever needs. Too many is useless, unworkable, whereas some is exactly the right number.
I have a writer friend who once got rid of all his stuff. He had loads of Star Wars shit, and collectible stuff, and toys and crap. All that stuff we have. And one day he just got rid of it all. Why? Because, as he said, “It’s just more stuff to go in the skip when you die.” It was Donald McLeary who said it. One of the funniest and most brutally honest men I know.
It's kipple. But I guess people like Robert and Us aren't even the hardcore collectors. I'm amazed at the levels some collectors go to collect different versions of games. I remember seeing a poster on NeoGAF proudly display three versions of the same DoA game (4 maybe) that they'd added to their collection. Apparently each one had been slightly rebalanced and there were some regional differences. Now you could say that that person has too much time and money. Alternatively, I'd say that person was a hardcore curator of games. Then there's nuts like this and this. That last guy has a collection and knowledge exceeding the UK's national collection. But these dedicated individuals aren't alone. Collecting games is a whole series of museums events and exhibitions alone.

But this is just the stuff of gaming and as cool as it is, it is only half the story. It's the gamers, their stories, thoughts and feelings that make gaming. We'll be running this new series under the tag From The Collection to explore our meagre collection but also as a place to collect our stories, thoughts and reflections so that when we die, when the council are cleaning out our squat they can give all our kipple and these reflections to the National Video Game Archive and hopefully they'll get their arses in gear. 

Mini Review- Slayin

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Chuff_72 is back. He's stranded on a isolated island somewhere and only has his mobile phone to play games on. He's been kind enough to wire his reviews over so we can laugh and point at mobile 'games'. They'll never be the future.

This is Slayin (no “g”, no fucking apostrophe either, apparently RETRO means bad grammar too).


Despite looking like shit it’s really enjoyable, and a cleverly condensed RPG in the mould of the infinite runner, because that little blue lump keeps on running, but only on one screen.

If you run into stuff with your pointy thing they die, if they run into your back passage you lose a chunk of life. There is a jump button, it’s the massive grey button on the right. The controls (left, right, jump) work for once, which is cause for much rejoicing.

During levels you can run into a shop and buy upgrades to keep you running, there are boss fights, and cheevos. It’s really good. That’s pretty much the review, below is all moaning so feel free to stop reading when I give the warning.

STOP NOW, THIS IS IN FACT A WARNING TO STOP.

Let’s talk Graphics shall we?

Yes, it is possible to make your game purposely look like shit, well done. I spent 69p on your shittified game, I actually quite like it, but for the betterment of mankind please can we strive for a little self respect and plug some more graphics in?

It’s a weird sort of self imposed shitness, like, I can’t complain about 1-bit Ninja, that used the iphone to cleverly make the game look shit, but stealthed a super sweet 3d graphic element in there to look for hidden bits in the level. This game just straight up looks old and shitty, blobs moving around over blobs with knobs on, there is a super limited colour palette.

I get that it’s a chosen “aesthetic” but come on, really it’s just an excuse for getting your younger brother to do all the sprite work and pay him in dog biscuits.

I don’t really have a point to make, I guess it just irritates me that this has become acceptable, they have literally made no use of the console (that’s right, I might start calling my phone a console, deal with it) it’s on.

Also, if you are going for the “retro” look and want the icon on the phone to look like a “retro” cart then make it look like a “retro” cart:

WRONG

RIGHT
On to Pricing.

This game cost 69p, let’s be honest that’s basically nothing, however it’s not actually nothing, and on top of that it has In App Purchases. However, you won’t hear anyone on the internet shitting themselves to death over it, because the developers were very careful to make it look as shit as possible, which makes internetters go “awwwww aint it adorable! Is it on Android so I can get a ripped copy?”

If you strive for excellence and rub some of that graphical salt into your gamic creation and then charge NOTHING you get bumbdered to actual death, for example:

REAL RACING 3 – ACTUAL IN GAME SHOT OF A GAME ON A PHONE IN MY POCKET!!!

That is some next level looking shit right there, some 360 driving games don’t look that good, it’s mental, but because there are IAP and in game timers, and it’s published by EA, internetainians went mental, DEMANDING to be able to pay for the game, instead of having it for free. Yes, there are timers for shit, it’s a bit annoying, but not actually annoying at all unless you are a complete spaz and can’t drive for shit. You’ll notice I have steering and brake assist completely off too as this game handles better than most driving games I have ever played.

Just to see if I got my money’s worth from this FREE game I checked the hours played:

Over 15 hours. Only completed 90 of 961 events. NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY ONE.

FREE.

Next Review may be Heroes and Castles, or the Jonathan Ross Game, something about aliens, and probably more running. Did I do that Temple Run review? It’s alright, you run in to the screen, so it’s like all the other ones but INNOVATIVE and grannies and dogs can play it.

P.S. BONUS Temple Run review above.

The Ideas Factory

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We're full of good ideas but lack the skill and will to see them to fruition. We're so charitable though, we're giving these away for free! If you're one of the 140,000 people who make video game videos and other video game content on the Internet, please make one of these. We don't want any credit beside the credit line (c) Thatguysamaniac, www.thatguys.co.uk all rights reserved. 

1) The Hunk Umbrella GMV. Make it happen people, it's been six years already. Nobody wants to see your Final Fantasy videos. This is that the people want.

2) Capcom Cam. Like candid camera but with Capcom instead. This idea requires quite a big budget but should be a spoof current affairs show with only female panelists and talking heads. At the end of every show, they find out that the cameras have only been filming them above their knees and below their face.  Then Kenzo Tsujimoto pops up and says "Congratulations! You're on Capcom camera". Guaranteed hit.

4) Talk like a video game protagonist day. We all know that Comic Relief and Talk Like A Pirate Day are celebrated by people who should have been drowned in a bucket at birth. Talk like a video game character day will be exactly the same. For a full day men are only allowed to say the following four phrases:

Am I poisoned?
What is it?
...
Nooooooooo

In addition midgets and dwarfs have to speak with a Scottish accent and woman have to make grunting noises which could be interpreted to be either sex moans or moans of pain. All the money raised will go to the charity Child's Play.

3) Movies with game endings. We're all sick of Hollywood taking video game licenses and pissing all over them so we should give them a taste of their own medicine taking classic films and re-cutting them with a video game ending. The new Citizen Kane would end with Charles Kane finding out he is the half clone of Mr. Bernstein, himself a clone of a character called Big Boss who is married to a woman called the Boss and who is a clone of herself. Every movie would be significantly improved with Silent Hill's infamous UFO ending. In the new Breakfast Club, they all remember that they used to go to the same orphanage together but forgot because they used Guardian Forces too much. All the new Alien films end with Cliff Bleszinski looking straight down the camera and saying that there won't be a sequel to this movie.

5) Edit Anita Sarkeesian's video to be more effective. Part 1 of Anita Sarkeesian's video is already out but with a quick edit it could be much more powerful. The whole video should be replaced with somebody playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl and desperately trying to get the perfect up skirt shot of Princess Peach for the full 23 minutes (it shouldn't take you that long).

BONUS IDEA!

6) Classic Paintings Now With Pantsu. Art in museums is boring and all that and that's because unlike fanart you can't see a hint of knickers on every character. Photoshoppers amongst you should remedy this situation by shopping in a hint of biff bringing a bit of class to all those ol' paintings.

Five great ideas right there, go ahead, go and create them you crazy creative people. Don't forget the credit line: (c) Thatguysamaniac, www.thatguys.co.uk all rights reserved.
  


NextGen: A wishlist

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Its coming this year, whether we like it/are ready for it or not, the tidal wave of new technology, titles and marketing.

For now we dabble in the foreplay of specs; as the industry giants stand before us hands on hip proudly dangling such numbers and technological acronyms as, 64 separate cores of GPU spinning many trillions of numbers every second or multiple Gigabytes of DDR5 doing what ever RAM does. Teasing us, leaving us salivating, moist with anticipation, gagging for more.

But before we get down to it, we have expectations, its not how big the tech is, its what you do with it that counts. We have been burned before, so before we go all the way, we'd like to set some ground rules.

Keep it pretty, there is little to no excuse now, most of this hardware is dedicated to prettiness and quick prettiness at that! You have the tech, set a bar and stick to it: no clipping/collision issues, no cheap grainy filters, no slow loading unreal textures, and lets keep NPCs properly animated. We want perfectly round bouncing boobies, TR: Survivor was there, lets keep it that way.

Don't fuck up the console UI, the current 360 interface is going in the wrong direction, it shouldn't take "tea-making-time" to boot into a interface which is 99% Ads and one tiny section devoted to the entire reason you turned on the console.

Not every showcase game should be a sequel FPS with ever so slightly prettier GFX.

IN. O. VAT. ION. Lets have some fun different titles, bored of the same tired mechanics with hit-or-miss -story-lines. Lets get the fucking boxing eggs and bubble blowing dinosaurs back into the console industry. Its not about nostalgia, its about looking back at the roots. If mobile apps can do it, consoles can do it better.

F2Play is fine just make sure it is ethical.

to be continued...

Love and does everything have to be an innuendo with you Richie?

Richie X

Kotaku: Scraping the barrel

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Ok ok, I know we all hate Kotaku, hell even Kotaku hate Kotaku. I shouldn't even grace their hits with a link to their tired under-skilled gawker site.

But sadly it occasionally fawns upon my radar, partly due to out-of-the-loop developer/publishers giving it credible news, thinking they are still the mainstream go-to gamer site from 6 years ago.

But you gotta check this one out it has completely obliterated the line between irreverent and irrelevant. Its a post about how one Kotaku writer doesn't like Cheetos.

That is all.

Love and irreverent irrelevancy,

Richie X

GDC 2013 Proposal

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We submitted this proposal to GDC. Fingers crossed we get picked!

Session Title: What about the consumers? 
In the Business and Marketing Track.


Session description 
Video games we are told are an ever growing market and medium. So why is it that product windows for making a profit are six weeks after launch? Why do game studios continuously close and rise from the flames under a different name? Why don't developers demand more of their publishers? Why don't publishers demand more from the retailers? Why are developer websites horribly out of date? Why does the industry seem to do its best to ensure that the legacy of gaming is destroyed as it is created? Why was Deus Ex Human Revolution at a 75% discount six weeks after launch?

Attendee takeaway
This session will give attendees a ground level view of how the average consumer will, if you are lucky stumble upon the game you invested years of your life, blood, sweat and tears into. This presentation will ask where those evil marketeers we read about every other week on MCV and CVG are when it comes to selling your product. It will also help attendees to get publishers and retailers to work for them rather than the other way around.

Intended Audience
The intended audience is all those bloody creatives who occasionally trick themselves into thinking that they are acting like professionals whereas they're keeping the industry in a prolonged gestation built on a toxic relationship with the gaming community and each other. This discussion is intended for an audience of people who really want to make the games industry a proper industry rather than a pastiche of the other creative industries. The prerequisites are to have developed a game that was good but that utterly failed for 'inexplicable' reasons.

Session focus/ Abstract
The main focus of the talk will be about how the high street game retailers have collapsed and why that's a warning sign for the community and the industry. Popping the cork of a champagne bottle on launch day is really where the work should begin not end because as a studio celebrates bringing it's product to market as much as 90% of the intended audience is ignorant of your product. They don't read the magazines, they don't spend all day on NeoGAF or Reddit. They didn't know that there was a Bioshock let alone a Bioshock 2 and don't really want to start on what's deliberately titled as a sequel or not the original. They walk into a shop and look at the pictures on the box. At best they talk to a cashier who also hasn't heard about your game. And that's launch day.

Far too often does a developer of studio head take the soap box and blame second hand sales on killing the industry/platform/studio. Is that argument valid when you legitimately can't buy a new copy of the game a month after launch?

Of course digital distribution is the new ball in the industry's perpetual game of schoolboy football. Let's chase that until one of the industry gurus tells us we should be chasing something else (social games anyone? casual titles? Motion control?). Because we failed when there was a brick and mortar representative of gaming on the high street and when magazines at least gave the average gamer a chance. Have you looked around the town where you live recently? If I asked you where I could buy a physical copy of your latest game would you even know?

And we've got the little shit munchers right where we want them! They (the gamers and the CEO of GAME) are begging us for the next generation. They actually bought the excuses that we gave them for simply not being creative enough or taking marketing seriously. "The technology just isn't ready for what we've got". Works every time.

As for celebrating the legacy of gaming, in the UK we all work very closely with the National Video Game Archive based at the National Media Museum and we generously support the modding and hacking community who help preserve our old games because we can't be bothered. Politically we're also acting like a grown up industry, well Tom Watson likes video games doesn't he? I'm sure he does some lobbying for us. 

We're also very vocal when video games get bad press (thanks Vaz!) and we don't leave it up to the amateur writers and journalists to squabble about what we do or don't think about the serious issues we largely ignore.

We've come so far since the days we'd endlessly keep reiterating (well get the community to keep reiterating) that games are a new medium and are taken very seriously as an art form, a positive medium for change and a genuine professional career path.
Game Credits
I beat Sin & Punishment: Successor to the Skies on normal once.













Silent Hill Revelation is not very good

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This image has very little to do with the film.

Richie and I were supposed to be saving watching this for a girl's night in but now we live within 600 miles of each other we don't see each other half as much as we used to. So I caved and watched it and unfortunately I roped my better half into watching it. She'd sat through the first Silent Hill film and it had such an impact on her that halfway through the film she confessed that she thought Silent Hill was Hellraiser. In a way I was wishing it was too.

This film is bad in a generic and inoffensive way delivering a double dose of cringe. One cringe for it just been a not very good film. Another cringe for it being yet another not very good movie adaptation of a video game. I've not checked the rankings recently but surely in the order of genres of film, video games adaptation must be down near the bottom of the list just below 'American TV dramas about big city people falling in love with a rural 'merican town they were sent to close down'. Because of our community's unwarranted reverence for film I'm probably not alone in hoping that one day a video game adaptation will go some way to helping the non gamer understand why we spend so much time looking at women's tits and shooting soldiers in the face instead of making it look even more like the hobby of a unsophisticated subperson.

This film is definitely not helping with this message.

You could almost guess why the film sucks so bad. Are all video game adaptations doomed to failure? If you don't reference the games enough the gamers will get pissed off. If you stick to the plot of the game too much the film is crap because you have bundle in 20, 50 or 100 hours of characters, plots, settings, big show downs and inevitable twists into 90 minutes. It's been a long time since I played Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 and in my mind they've merged into the same game so I couldn't honestly tell you how well this film mirrors the games but I don't think they did a bad job. I imagine the production crew sat down, wrote a big list of what elements make Silent Hill 2 and did a good job of covering the essentials. Unfortunately, squeezing it all into a film just result in a jumbled flavourless, colourless and nonsensical mess.

The pacing of the film is all wrong and it feels like nothing really happens in the first half at all. Spooky girls with lank dark hair and momentary flashbacks to scary worlds are so over done they're practically quotidian. I get more scared in a film when a little girl with black hair doesn't snake all over the floor and pop out of the mirror that's how worn out this imagery is.

The bit where we finally gave up holding out for any kind of saving grace is when Pyramid head reprises his role from Capcom vs Konami and fights a she-demon in an arena in one goofy action sequence. Oh wait, Pyramid head isn't a character from a Beat 'em Up at all. That's not what has made the character such a popular one amongst gamers. It's almost the complete opposite of why he(?)'s such an icon. At least if he'd unexpectedly done the 110m hurdles you could have excused it for referencing New International Track and Field.

We're tempted to ask why publishers aren't a little bit more picky with how their IP is translated into film but then again:
This is probably exactly why video games get adapted into shitty movies. This shelf of eternal hope and broken dreams I'm sad to say belongs to me. This is just half of it actually, it's double stacked. Morons like you and me keep buying the bloody things and regardless of how awful they are the movie company has already got my cash at that point. It's now not even worth my time trying to sell these on. Instead I look at them and seriously question if I didn't waste just a tiny bit of my life so far. 

So that's it until the Ratchet and Clank movie came out or is it Jak and Daxter? Weren't they originally popular games ten years ago now suffering from Asscreed syndrome, whereby there's so many of them we've completely lost track. You could tell us that Ratchet and Clank 12 was coming out this year and we wouldn't know whether that was true or wildly off (Jesus Christ, the next one would actually be 12). 

Here's hoping that series survives the translation, we've still got a bitter taste in our mouths from Wreck It Ralph, luring us in with promises of being the 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' of video games only to turn out that the 4 cameos from established characters are exactly the bits from the trailer. 

Loading Bar: London

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AKA: MADD

Tucked away in the porniest part of soho in amongst the sleazy strip clubs, exuberant gay bars and depressing peep shows, there lay our nemesis: a pop-up version of  Loading bar. Years ago we came up with the idea of the games themed pub, then some fuckers did it. We just lay here writhing in our own jealousy.

The problem with the Loading bar is that it is miles away from anywhere, in Cornwall. To analogise this via the medium of Final Fantasy VII its like having a major metropolis like Midgar and putting the gaming pub on the island with the city of ancients. Or Zelda: Ocarina of Time... Its like having a major metropolis like Hyrule Castle/Village and having the pub in the Gerudo desert.

In any case they spotted this and decided to put a pop-up version of the bar in London. In a creepily placed mango enthusiasts cafe? The interior was sad, tired and far from the hi-tech branded wonderland we had imagined.There was a counter with some cakes, an A3 sheet with some games themed drinks on it, and as you delved farther into the cavernous cafe you found a smattering of tables and board games, a 360 with Naruto running on it, and a SNES with a plethora of games. Suffice it to say, we were so underwhelmed we played dominoes. When we got round to ordering, the service was abysmal, for a couple of guys in the catering business with a tech savvy games industry theme they sure had trouble taking drinks orders, and pressing the buttons on the till.

All in all its um... and experience and sadly, sad.

MADD: Loading bar pup-up
Gameplay: 2/10 Dominoes was a classic
Replayability: 6/10 Scary dark and bad service, but maybe return to try other drinks.
Graphics: 3/10 Some odd murals.

Love and analogiseifications.

Richie X


Omastar Comics #35

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Exciting news, Omastar Comics has been published in a hyper-limited-super-rare edition print run of one copy. And that one is ours. So, just look at these pictures I guess. Look and be jealous. Mwa ha ha ha!

The first edition includes the first 33 comics (including two comics 26 and no comics 27). The second edition will cover the comics 34-66 so expect to see it published some time in 2018. Woo hoo! In the meantime here's Omastar Comics #35 back in the retro format.

 
That Omastar, he just wants to have his cake and eat it. All actions have consequences Omastar. We learned that lesson, the hard way from an episode of He-Man. Until next time Oma omastar!

Dystopian Nostalgia

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Dystopia
Noun
An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.

By Dystopian nostalgia, I actually mean I am nostalgic for the classic dystopian atmosphere created by the games of the 90's. The 90's did dystopian really well, with films like 12 Monkeys, The Matrix, Dark City, Terminator 2, Tank Girl, the influential series Aeon Flux, and the anime such as Ghost in the Shell and Akira. These all created hi-tech Sci-fi worlds, where capitalism/totalitarianism is the new world order and the masses are oppressed  90's games did dystopian. In fact a great deal of games at this time encapsulated the dystopian vibe. The early 90's had great story-driven titles like Syndicate/Syndicate wars, Chrono Trigger, or Beneath as Steel Sky. The late 90's with the advent of the original Sony PlayStation saw many titles encapsulating this dystopian atmosphere fore-mostly the introductory area of Final Fantasy VII, Midgar held this rich sci-fi atmosphere, it had the corporations, it had the darkened jury-rigged power systems of the oppressed masses. Many other games of this time simply followed the theme, the underlying sinister background of a dystopian society, Wipeout racing game with a twist, there was no plot around this but the hyper res sci-fi mixed with the industial-techno music of the tile implied it.

You may have noticed throught that entire paragraph I managed to circumvent the word "Cyberpunk". Cyberpunk is synonymous with the dystopian hyper-technological themes of early 90's however now it is also associated with Cyberdog and other such fashions. But also because of the up-and-coming title Cyberpunk 2077.


For quite a while now mainstream dystopian games have not been meerly happy with a futuristic style, everything must be a fusion genre; retro-futuristic. Your prime examples of these types of retro-futuristic titles are fallout, mixing 1940's with laser guns, and bioshock with its steampunk "art deco" vibe. The recent Blood Dragon meta-squared videogame-videogame parody has touched on this dystopian nostalgia, referencing its precursor seen in the 1980's toy commercial cartoons. as the game is violent it simply takes the roots of the 90's cyberpunk style in another direction.

As I said, I am feeling nostalgic for the 90's sci-fi games; I miss the Phillip K Dick/William Gibson inspired techno-verses. I miss the hyper-industrial, corporation driven megalopolises (megalopoli?) where the downtrodden proletariat have underlying rebellions against the totalitarian regimes, and occasionally there are cyborgs with blurry subtexts about souls.

Love and Persuadertrons,

Richie X


Game OS's enter Brand wars.

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The great brand wars of our age include: VHS versus betamax, Megadrive versus SNES and HD-DVD versus BluRay. But soon we are going to see a slew of budget "Android" platform devices. These devices are projected to be one of the next steps in gaming, budget range hardware to play mobile platform targeted games; I predict there will be another brand war.

Don't get me wrong I am not condoning these devices, in fact my official standpoint on these Android devices is quite negative. They remind me of the 50-in-1 games "my first console" plastic abortions you could get in Argos. Further to this, it bothers me that the OS is a platform, consoles are a platform, they have traditionally had vast improvements budget-wise over a typical PC due to dedicated architecture, these android devices are just running a gimped version of linux on an underpowered PC.

Despite all this it will more than likely succeed in the casual market all it needs is focused marketing iterating how much "better value" these devices will be. In short these gimpy little boxes will play mobile games, and pretend they are consoles while they do it, they will be the indie "unity fuckabouts" go to access machines. They will be filled with flash clones and micro-payments supported by occasional gems for companies who can easily port their titles. The occasional playable title in found by wading through a fetid sewer system marketplace flooded with throwaway bits of parasitic code.

And these council-consoles will have a brand war they each have their own tweaked android OS and try to outbid/homogenise each other much like a filthy local street market, except the dirty cockney peddlers have taken up real-estate on your TV.

I for one welcome our new legitimate console overlords, PS4 and XBox 720.

Love and Lexibooks,

Richie X



Xbox One: The facts.

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The facts are, you read them elsewhere.

Discounting the WiiU, our next next gen shall arrive this year. PS4 and Xbox One, The powerhouses of console hardware have entered the foray with media hub like set top boxes, with internetTV, social media integration, communications, and happen to also play games too.

Don't get me wrong, the stats are amazing they will be delightful machines with future-proofed methods for maintaining the prettiness of games.

However I think I am most saddened by the lack of back compatibility, I mean suddenly my 360 collection is now dedicated to the 360, and well we all know that the 360's are far from reliable. But what gets me is all those digital purchases, the arcade and digital download versions, they are simply now attached to my gamer tag, but will they be transferred over? It seems not, and the same goes for digital purchases on PSN (Heartbreaking if you just bought FFX/Kingdom Hearts). It just makes me think I would have been better paying money to a different platform, like the Steam.

Our old nemesistress Leigh Alexander quoted this new gen as "rich boy's black box for playing Call of Duty and Halo on" (sexist). And though I'm inclined to agree with her, I feel these devices will still speak to the console gamer, unfortunately the quality of releases will have to justify throwing away our digital purchases, and back catalog. On a similar vein having mostly used a 360 for current Gen, I now realise there is little to keep me tied to the xbox franchise. So i may just dabble with Sony for Next gen. SEE That's what not doing back compatibility does, wank-jobs!

Love and sad,

Richie X


649 Mother Fuckers!

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We're a bit Pokémon upped a bit recently. It's our go to game and if we're playing it, it probably means there isn't much else out there at the moment and AMEN AIN'T THAT THE GODDAM TRUTH.
   

 Two days a man called GARRETT gave me the greatest gift a person can give to another. He gave me a level 44 Tornadus. Fine, you might say. That's done on street corners the world over. Well. You'd be wrong fucker because this Tornadus was the 649th Pokémon for my pokedex. This is huge news. I finally 100% legit CAUGHT THEM ALL. They said it couldn't be done. But it is. What's that, you calling me an Internet liar? I ain't one of them Reddit sun bitches go tellin' lies of this magnitude just to sound cool. Here's the proof that couldn't have been replicated of falsified in any other way because them photos are in COLOUR.
 

It's been a trial and for the longest time it was darn near impossible to catch them all because those handful of elusive Pokémon you could only get from going to Nintendo events didn't come to Europe nearly as often as other parts of the world. With the Nintendo DS being able to go online, getting those event only pokémon has been a lot easier of late, with Deoxys, Genesect, Meloetta and Keldeo recently being generously given to the masses by Overlord Nintendo, may the generosity of their hearts be blessed. This is the first game in which I've filled out the pokedex, the rarity of legendary Deoxys, only available from the mother ship, created a painful blank spot in the records since 2003's Pokémon Sapphire and Pokémon Ruby. I even trudged through My Pokémon Ranch, Pokémon Collosseum, Pokémon XD, Pokémon Ranger and Pokémon Channel to get Mew, Ho-oh, Lugia, Manaphy and Jirachi respectively (annoyingly some of these would later become available without having to play through a whole game first). 

So that's that done. Until fucking October when a whole bunch more turn up in Pokémon X and Y. How do I feel now though? Well there's nothing quite like the thrill of the chase. Now I just feel like I wasted thousands of hours of my life and all I got was this lousy blog post.

TRAINER AMONGST TRAINER Cunzy1 1

7 Years Later

Alien Resurrection

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Alien Resurrection for the PlayStation is fucking brilliant. The recent car crash that has been colonial marines has led many so called games journalists spout that there have never been any brilliant Alien games. Of course, because they were probably foetuses when many of them originally came out (and gamers who play older games are some sort of messed up because as a medium it's constantly improving unlike any other medium that has ever existed so any game released this week is obviously and by default better than last week's RANT CONTINUES HERE). Alien Resurrection was one of the good ones. At the time, EDGE gave it a 9 and compared it to a GCSE in terms of how rock solid it was. I would link to that review except the EDGE website is awful and they haven't realised how uploading all their really good older content might get them some hits.
However, it is rock solid and a bit scary even today. I've been stuck on the same section for over a decade. Every year I load it up, give it a shot and get killed about once every five minutes for a good half an hour then turn it off. In addition the older that the game gets, the harder and harder it is to return to the weird controls. So here's to another year. 

I'll beat it next year I think.
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