So all of you out there in internetland are probably dying to know what TGAM think about the Ouya.
Well, we have talked about Digital Convergence before, and this could be interpreted as an inevitable step or perhaps even a step backwards. Its essentially a little PC that plugs into your TV, it’ll run Android (i.e. Linux) and let you play Android games. Granted this gives you a new platform to play Android games, but is it even worth it? 99% of Android games cant even compare to iOS graphics and playability, and yet the ability to play iOS games on a TV or Desktop is just there, no hype, no random internet folks paying 5 million for it either.
Oh yeah and PCs thy plug into your TV they have an infinitely larger back catalogue and you know… fuck it you can emulate most generations too (or indeed, if you are that way inclined, play certain android games from within the chrome browser)
There needs to be more to get us excited about this “platform”.
Love and Ounah, more like,
Richie X
The Comic-con, the platform for all the announcement about films, games, media, and apparently comic books is upon us yet again. Its time for the socially inept to don their steampunk bugs bunny body suits and get involved in some hype.
So far it’s all been Twilight and Expendables news. However there is one film that is piquing our interest, exposing our tip, jangling our change, giving us that special feeling, that good hurt, stirring up some violent repression…
Wreck-it Ralph. Disneys take on computer games. Ralph is the main bad guy in a fictional retro game, seeking redemption to be the good guy. As can be see from the trailer it features some cameos from Street Fighter and Nintendo. Spanky.
TGAM will keep out special eye on this one, not that we like Disney or anything…
Love and Hakuna Matatas,
Richie X
Now a few months back I mentioned bootleg from qhimm.com, it simply takes your original install of FF7 and updates music, graphics to make it much prettier to play (also you can add silly, but well thought out, mods like Aeris resurrection). Squeenix say: Optimized for PC – FINAL FANTASY VII has been updated to support the latest hardware and Windows Operating Systems. But will it be prettier, like will they optimise it for widescreen? will the models be updated? will it still have the terrible midi music when it can be replaced so easily with MP3s? That’s the information, for some reason, I care about.
Meh, I bet it doesn’t. But then I suppose there is always the argument that it wouldn’t be a “pure” re-release.
It was great fun to replay when I did, what I will say is, when it came to Chocobo breeding it was nowhere nearly as bad as I remembered, don’t dread it.
Love and Midi samples,
Richie X
However we should all be excited about Budokai 3. It include a huge roster of characters a lot of nods in the fans directions, and better game play than the 360/PS3 successors, “Raging Blast”. Raging Blast attempted to inappropriately touch fans of the series and keep it a special secret, it stripped down the number of characters, which honestly felt like they were doing it to: a) Make DLC for monies b) Make way for a slurry of sequels which died with Raging blast 2 and its lack of any real additions. Most disappointing Raging blast was less fun to play.
Interestingly enough, did you know that DBZ:TB3 (yes that is the full acronym) is one of the most emulated PS2 games, most of the PS2 emulation community use this as a standard, something to do with graphics pipelines and console architecture. Yeah there you go, little factlet for the day, go home and tell your Grandmother.
Note: Actually who is this targetted at? I mean this game game out five years ago and was already 5 years after DBZ had finished being shown. Is there a new generation of Dragonball fankids?
Love and Kamehamehas,
Richie X
And we went to the V&A (AKA Victoria and Albert Museum). After shyly looking away when we thought some girl looked at us whilst we were trading Pokemon with ourselves on the train, we paid our &13.50 to see the British design exhibition. The exhibit is littered with some really kitschy examples of British design, from simple things like the font used on Road Signs, to Ziggy Stardust outfit.
But the exceptional part was the brief Computer games section… Exceptional may be a tad over-selling it. The fact there was a Computer games section which was pretty much mind blowing in itself. There were no descriptions is was just a darkened room with the following:
Speaking of Rockstar:
Who knows. San Andreas was blatantly there as Rockstar North are British…
In all, it was exciting to see a games section in an exhibition of design. I think it was the correct titles to choose for a British design Exhibition, however I feel it was a little poorly executed with no descriptions of the “displays”, no interactivity and fucking annoying music.
The best one was the Lemmings displays.
Love and now you can save yourself £13.50,
Richie X
E: And can you really just pick up side quests by following a complete stranger?JM: If a character looks suspicious you can follow him. And if something happens you can intervene. It has to be that way because when we started to play the first iteration of the game, you’d see someone talking, you’d listen to it and think,’This guy is up to something.’ But then the simulation would stop. No! You need to be able to do something.Of course it’s a big system but we’ve been working on it for two years and it is consistent: everyone has a unique personality, and if you go back to the same NPC six times it is the same person- it’s not random and meaningless.
Ugh I cant stop playing Taptitude.
Yeah I know I have a Windows7 phone, get your giggling out.
I had an android phone for a while, and where it is good with all the (then) free apps, its gimpy linuxy experience couldn’t do simple stuff like texting or phoning… big fat fail for me. And Apple, well I’m still on the fence. Firstly I don’t really want to conform to the millions of “individual snowflakes”out there, and secondly are still no proper games for Apple… there is iOS games, re-imaginings of older games, which look pretty much the same as they did ten years ago or jumped up browser games. They are pretty but not for me. So I decided to go for a Win7 Phone, it tied into my 360 account, its fast, it works, it’s more user friendly than the other “smart” phones, but there is fuck all for it, and no fucker wants it, nobody believes windows may have a product that is “easy to use”
Anyways, there is a couple of games for win7 Angry birds, Plants vs Zombies etc. But a few months ago 4bros studio brought out Taptitude. It is hard to describe, it has several tiers of different games most of them are shameless knock-offs of retro titles Puzzle bobble, Pac man, or indeed simple minigames, like mahjong, solitaire or Poker, and rather amazingly a customisable 16-bit dungeon crawler. However the game is very meta, in almost all of the games you can purchase upgrades, I will clarify here, that is using in-game currency, not MicrosftMoney or iMoney or even real Money. You gain money from wining games and can exponentially increase the money you gain by buying these upgrades, so you can buy the more expensive upgrades. There is also a section in the game called “craftitude” this is like Mincraft without the running about, you start with basic elements, quarks and colours and by mixing these and their creations you can get atoms, elements, animals, plants etc. Each of the creations can then be sold or used in different games to help you get better stats or money (eg. in the breakout rip-off you can use your Earth elemental to increase the bat width). The crafting aside there are stats ruling everything, they are like trackable achievements which currently dont give you rewards… but man when they do… but they do give you fun information, like simply, how many times you have tapped the screen in game. The game also has dailys, weekly riddles and you have played the game X amount of times rewards, for in-game items or monies.
In conclusion, Mobile games are not really that much better. They are however more addictive.
Love and fuck your gingerbread,
Richie X
I still feel sad after I heard news of this: The Loading bar.
We have, for years, contemplated the possibility of our own little gaming themed pub, though admittedly it was supposed to roll off the success of thatguys.co.uk. Which, if we were to take our market research from, we would have Sheeva Nude, and Gay Dante themed bar.
However where does this stop? Gaming culture has come leaps and bounds since our blog started a little over six years ago (SIX!) there is a definite acceptance and hip-mainstreamism (akin to geek-chic) of gaming. It has taken much longer than I expected for a theme bar to be created, at least in the UK. The Mana-Bar in Australia aka Yahtzee Croshaw’s bar has been open for ages now. But why only bars, we have nightclubs for music, cinemas for Movies, we used to have arcades for games (Ha!). We occasionally have E3 and other over hyped corporate events. But these are yearly, and as much fun as it is to get confirmation that Game X has been confirmed at these shows, games do not come out yearly. Why is there not an events platform for game. Why, rather than people queueing for hours round the block dressed up in cosplay, for the latest expansion, why don’t we have and events platform, celebrating all that is gaming all year round for gamers free from the monotonous corporate churn (is that possible?).
Well business plan is in the works investors please email us at thatguysavenue@thatguys.co.uk
Love and wishing you had done it first,
Richie X
So we finally got DMC:HD Collection. Despite not one fucking retailer selling it any more, I mean seriously… There is no copies of this anywhere, this collection came out when the GAME group was in receivership, liquidation, bankruptcy or whatever bullshit umbrella term they were using for the poor business model of forcing the unwitting public to buy the latest pap that paid them dividends. Anyways it came out when GAME was briefly shut, and as such they never got it in, but also it seems no other supermarkets or other retailers seem to have it either (which makes us consiprationally question the distribution of games!), so it was off to the internets where, without fail, we got it, and first hand too, so no more fuelling the pre-owned machine.
But yeah digressions aside…
We fired this up a couple of days ago starting with DMC1 and to sum it up; first impressions were that the game was hard! I remembered most of the locations and hidden items/secrets, but I was really struggling to attack the simplest of enemies, however this was soon rectified when I was able to buy some moves. Yeah DMC is hard until you can buy some moves, then that much abuse idiom comes in: It was like riding a bike. Most of it was pure “Muscle Memory” but you start automatically pull off the moves without thinking, and when you haven’t purchased the skills this does nothing, and really messes up boss fights. But once you have them the gave got infinitely easier. DMC2 suffers from this less; Dante seems to have all of his skills out the box, the upgrades in the game are purely based on the power of the weapons which you upgrade throughout the game, but DMC2 just lacks too much Dante is stale, bitter and not fun but the gameplay is all there. DMC3 however returns to the DMC formulae, Dante is useless, like a definition of nerfed, struggling on the first enemies. But only getting worse with a plethora of weapons and a whole multitude of skills with them. DMC3 gives us a bit of remorse… Why cant all those PS2 save files be magically transferred to the 360. WHY GODS WHY!
Love and bike riding,
Richie X
In between, twitter, reddit, forums and comments on all those fucking sites that never repay the favour I think we’ve given away a bit of our soul. We’re all gamed out*
Here’s a thing. A feature.
What she said until we’ve got some more inspiration. Uuuuuuugh. THAT WAS THE BAD THING. E3. We just remembered. Oh god.
*Without actually playing any games. Aside from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon again. That barely counts. That’s us in coasting mode**
** NOT TRUE, NOT TRUE we played Paper Mario. It’s s’alright.
I haven’t been able to see the exhibition and sadly I don’t think I will get to unless it tours but what about this book business then? Well it is a lovely big glossy book. The production values are high here and there’s some great content, it has clearly been put together by people who know and care about games. Which is great because gamers can smell a pretender from 100 miles away. Yes we may be typified by the crass, chauvinist, everythingist man child but we stay true to our nerdy/geeky heritage. Get a fact or piece of trivia wrong and it is…. it is….. GAME OVER. Yeah, we went there. The biggest problem I have, bearing in mind that I said originally that this exhibition was not supposed to be comprehensive, is that the game choices for inclusion (decided by the community) are a bit odd. 80 games are the focus of the exhibition but is it really necessary to include two Phantasy Stars and three Panzer Dragoons? Is it? Is it? Is it? IS IT? Is it now? Is that needed? Is it? Is it needed? Do we need that? Is that what we’re in need of now? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Two Phantasy Stars? Need those? Do we? Do we need those? If we’re putting together a selection of 80 games charting the development of the art of games, would you need two Phantasy Stars and 3. 3. THREE. Panzer Dragoons? Do we? 6%. 6% of the games. Need it? Need it? Do we? Do we need it?
So it’s E3 again. Already. Everyone gets way too excited, few let important things such as facts get in their way. We’re going to be extending all of our tendrils during E3 and we’ll keep updating this post when thoughts occur in our brains.
- Errr steady on MCV, this year’s isn’t even over yet and they’re starting coverage about the next one. Hmm.
- More Wii U speculation. This time it’s Mass Effect. Possibly. So that’s yet another AAA game that’s already on the HD platforms that may appear on the Wii U. Forgive us for not wetting our pants yet.
- There’s a Painkiller sequel. To go with the four ports and 200 expansions. CARE FACTOR = 0
- Crysis 3Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Will this one even turn a profit? No. No of course it won’t.
- We just can’t hide our surprise. Sony, the makers of PlayStation. Are making an accessory that turns the PlayStation Move into a steering wheel well into a hang glider thing! Wow! If only I could be bothered to dig through the forums to find the Sonyponies pissing their pants over the Wii wheel six years ago. SIX.
- Big Vita news from the Sony conference: you can now play all those PSOne games you already own for the PSOne and for the PSP on the Vita now. Probably if you buy them again.
- EDGE’s coverage of the Sony conference is well worth a read. It captures our general disdain and sense of underwhelment from the whole thing. Piss all for the Vita, when it needed to be blown out of the water and well, where are all the games?
- MS’s conference didn’t exactly whelm us either. Halo, Gears, Madden, Ass Creed and CoD. Most people’s existing Xbox 360 shelves then. Good work guys. Good work. Market leader right there.
- RPS’s John Walker says some wise words about E3. Although he neglects to mention that the PCification of consoles is making them shit and the consolification of PC games holds them back.
- Beyond:Two Souls from Quantic Dream. Meh is the best we can muster.
- There’s a new trailer for DmC. We’re huge fans of the first three (four was alright). Still not too sure if we’re happy with the character reset. Dante was always cocky but not necessarily a cock. Oh well Ninja Theory know how to
handle an IPcreate mediocre games that sink at retail. - A new Resident Evil 6 trailer. Please make it split screen co-op, please make it split screen co-op. Ut-oh vehicle sections?
- Not even properly announced yet and already the Wii-U has another fucking controller for the mountain of Nintendo Crap.
- Do I really want social networking in my New Super Mario Bros? No. No I don’t.
- Wii-U Batman now with all that console exclusive shit like with the other consoles. Fucking great.
- Scribblenauts will get a reimagining so now it’s Little Big Scribblenauts. You know, abandoning the core concept at the heart of the game. Good then.
- Wii Fit U and Sing. Fair do’s keep the non gamer happy but not in my conference hey?
- Wow. Nothing new on the 3DS front. Actually, nothing. This is bad.
- Lego City on the Wii-U. Yes, okay but why isn’t everything made of LEGO? Completely misses the point of LEGO. GTA with a few studdy bits on.
- Nintendo’s conference in general was poor. A mario game, a mario game, a mario game, Wii Fit again again, Dance dance again again and umm Nintendoland. I’m still none the wiser about how the Wii U is going to be something I would buy. Weirdly, Ubisoft’s ZombiU was the best game. Sad. I’m not on the edge of my seat waiting for this to come out at Christmas. I’m hoping they’re going to hold it back until they come up with something that’s going to shift the console.
