#day note

Franz Kafka

I have holiday and I've been trying to bust as many games that I've half started as possible. Kirby's Epic Yarn A lovely little game that appeared quite easy to 100%. I was wrong. Clocked it in at just under 20 hours in the end. Stupidly, I left all the challenges until the end so the last hours or so was just burning through the repetitive and sometimes tricky challenges. Soundtrackwise, many of the new tracks are as sublime as the classic old tracks. Fun. Little King's Story I'd put Little King's Story on the back burner for a long time. Typically because when I play it I get sucked in so I don't attempt to play it unless I know I have time free. It's a game that still gives even late on where lesser games tend to add all the padding. It is also still challenging although I do end up restarting a lot because I'v become very attached to a little hunter of mine called Stella. She was one of my first citizens, she's married to a guard and has a child and I can't help but restart every time she gets killed just in case she doesn't wash up the next day. I'm currently on the hardboiled king (what does the fucking suggestion box look like?) but there's a nasty Red turnip guardian I'm too scared to fight right next to my kingdom. Every time I try he turnips all my guys. I understand that if you haven't played one of the greatest games of all time then you won't understand much of the above. Eternal Darkness. Another game that I started, loved and then suddenly it's four years since I played it. A really brilliant game in all kinds of ways. I love the spell combinations, I love the storyline and the way it is delivered. It's not all good though. Another example of a Gamecube game that boots you to the menu screen every time you die. Is a continue option really that hard? Also, and I don't know whether it is because I forgot some of the details since I last played this game but some of the puzzles are really tough. I had to FAQ it up a number of times. There's also a really old school annoying boss in chapter 9(?). That requires some lucky timing rather than any element of skill. Which I love and hate in equal proportion. Lastly, backtracking. Lots of it. The gripes don't quite do enough to make me dislike this game though although I doubt I'll ever play it through another two times to unlock the extra modes. I'm kinda hoping that they don't make a sequel because as it is, the game is a nice little. A sequel would ruin it somewhat.

Tits? Check. Big gun? Check. Progress is so over rated. This is a screensht from Koei's Samurai Warriors 3. Not Samurai Warriors 3 but the Capcom one that looks just like it. In other news. This is an image of the new pokemon called Scrapebotto. Scrapebotto is a scraping the bottom of the barrel type Pokemon. Other new Pokemon announced are household appliances(did that), letters of the alphabet (also done before) and a new Pokemon which takes the shape of other Pokemon. All the ideas have been used. All of them. Just go for a squirrel thing, a walking ball thing and a Dr Robotnik Pokemon. Oh FFS.

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!

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!

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

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?

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 [email protected] 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.