Thank god for thestupidity and lazyness ofthe Portuguese minimum wage employees.I bought a bunch of DVD's with my FFXIII and apparently the dude at the cash register didn't register my game, saving me 70 euros(roughly 96 USD).

In my last blog I said I would write about Brutal Legend when I had finished it but the truth is I haven't had the desire to. You see, I bought Brutal Legend for the PS3in mid-January and played it roughly 3/4 of it. Then I bought Mass Effect 2 the day it came out which instantaneously sent Brutal Legend back into its case. Finished Mass Effect 2 as a Renegade and Paragon and I thought the time had finally come to finish Tim Schaefer's latest game but no, a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a while gave me Borderlands as late Christmas present for the PC. As a huge fan of virtually any game with loot systems, I gave in the insanely addictive joy that is Borderlands.

Now I look at the awesome Brutal Legend poster I have up on my wall and I realized that it'll be a while until I finish Brutal Legend. Why? It sucks.

Okay, maybe that's too harsh. The soundtrack is awesome to listen to, specially as youdriveyourhot rod acrossa really interestingopen world filled withspectacular metal landmarks andthe cutscenes are very well presented due, in part, to the excellent voice acting but mostly to the excellent writing and facial expressions of the characters.Now let's behonest, everyone expectedBrutal Legend to be a nice homage to metal and to carry thetrademark TimSchaefer humor. So in that aspect, my expectations were met. From the trailers and the advertising, it was also safe to say that I expected a 3rd person action game. Instead,the good folks at Double Fine presentus with an interesting hybrid:part 3rdperson action, partRTS.My expectations were no doubt product of a deceiving marketing campaign by EA which onlyaccentuates my dissapointmentin Brutal Legend. I understand that it's a lot more marketable to sell a 3rd person action game with Jack Black than to sell an RTS.... with Jack Black.

There is alessonI have learned overmy years as a videogamer: RTS's don't work on consoles.Any console controler lacks the amount of buttons of a keyboard and the precision of a mouse to successfully.

The gameplay in Brutal Legend basically works like this: the first mission starts out as a standard 3rd person action game but as you progress you develop several new skills and tricks that you will use in Stage Battles to create new troops and command them. Depending on the objective you will need to use different strategies involving different types of troops to fight the enemy. This isn't groundbreaking stuff, RTS's have been around for years but as I said they only work on the PC with a mouse and a controller in front of you. With a controller, the battles in Brutal Legend are, due to the imprecisionof the controls and incompetence of your AI, a huge pain in the neck, one that you have to endure for quite a while( some battles can take up to 20 minutes, not counting the times I had to try over again)to access the next cutscene.

Another complaint I have is the absence of mini map to help you guide around the open world since you do a lot of driving in this game. That's a minor complaint but it'sstill a nag. I could also complain about some pretty evident gaps in the soundtracklike Metallica, Iron Maiden but that's just a minor nag.

I guess that my true issue with Brutal Legend is that I have a hard time believing this was a game developed by the same team as Psychonauts and created by the same genius who created Grim Fandango. Due to the pedigree of the dev team and the deceiving marketing campaign of the publisher I expected a different kind of game, a better game. Even with different expectations, Brutal Legend just can't compare to games to the AAA games of 09 and the upcoming AAA games of 10.

I've kinda neglected gamespot, specially my page, for a while. The last entry's from December of '08. Damn, that's a long time ago :S A lot has changed in my life: I've changed schools, I've started smoking, drinking, reading comic books on a weekly basis, travelled to Japan, read 1984, listened to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen for the first timeand even had time to rock the casbah a bunch of times :D

Anyways, if anyone is interested I've been playing a lot of Mass Effect 2 recently(finished it as a Paragon and am now going back as a Renegade and trying to reach lvl. 30) and I think it's awesome.

*SPOILERS*

I really appreciate the improvements on the combat, I don't view the action sections as simply a way to get to the next cutscene or plot development, I really enjoy it. The graphics are a lot better now there aren't any glitches, bugs and load-in issues to detract from the excelent futuristic art design, and the characters's faces seem more expressive and meaty, making for more realistic interactions between Shepard and the crew. Which brings to me to my next point, the colourful cast of old and new faces. Mordin and Thane were the characters I found most interesting, theformer for his humor, the manner of his speech and the discussion you have with him on the ship as well as on his loyalty mission regarding the necessity of the krogan genophage, the latter for the interesting back story and fascinating species history. His eyes are also pretty badass :P For my squad, I usually rolled with Garrus and Grunt, being an Infiltrator and then a Vanguard. The way the side-missions are handled are a lot more user-friendly and less repetitive than in the original Mass Effect although scanning planets for minerals can get a bit annoying. The loyalty missions are the best side-quests without a doubt and some of them are more interesting than the story missions per se.I particularly enjoyed Tali's loyalty mission as well asGrunt's, mainly for seeing Wrex again :) These missions serve to develop bonds with some of the characts, to sympathize with them and they goals and make them seem and feel real.

*SPOILERS*

Well, I guess I've wrote enough for now. I'm close to finishing Assassin's Creed II and Brutal Legend, I'll write some more when I get through those.

I'd like to wish all my fellow gamespotters a merry Christmas :) I know mine will be nice, I'm spending it with my family and I'm getting all the games I wanted: FIFA 09(360), Red Alert 3(360) and Prince of Persia(PS3). These 3 games along with Fable 2, Gears 2 and COD 5 should keep me busy until February or so when Killzone 2 comes out!!!

Anyways, hope everyone got the games and presents they wanted this Christmas and that you're happy. :) Merry Christmas, everybody!

-HardcoreBunni

Ah, Jehovah's Witnesses- those leech-like ladies who nag and nag with the hopes to converting you to their religion. Well, I'm telling you now that I'm an atheist, always have been(sorry JC) and it's not by drowning me in pamphlets and booklets and whatnot that I'm gonna convert. If I ever convert to a religion, it'll be one of them cults where poligamy is encouraged and we get to wear white suits,etc.

Anyways, after wasting 10 minutes ( :O ) of my time telling them that I'm not interested in what they had to say and answering their questions politely while at the same time poking fun at them(Example: "Young boy, where do you think you came from? From monkeys?" "No, I believe I popped out of my mom's vagina I thought to myself," Gui, because you chose to be nice you wasted 10 minutes of your life."So I imagined 3 things I could've done to get them out of my doorstep in less than 10 seconds.

1) Ignore them.(okay this might take longer than 10 seconds but you don't have to do anything)

2) Open the door in my underwear, wielding a knife in my right hand and say "Pineapple monkey arugola?"while smiling ear to ear and then laugh hysterically as they ran away.

3) Open the door in my underwear and ask," You the hookers I ordered?"

-HardcoreBunni

One of the best years for the videogame industries is almost coming to an end. As we reach Christmas, malls and stores worldwide fill up with stellar games just waiting to be bought and enjoyed throughout the holidays. Whether you own a Wii, a 360 or a PS3(or a combination of the three like myself), you're bound to have played some great games on your console/s. So like many videogame enthusiasts, it's now the time for me to tell the world(in my case the flies that occasionaly drop in on my blog...*sigh*) what my favorite games of 2008 were:

Best Shooters: Gears 2(3rd Person) and Battlefield: Bad Company (1st person)

Best RPG: Fable 2

Best Sports Game: FIFA 09

Best Fighter: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Best Racer: Mario Kart Wii

Best Platformer: LittleBigPlanet

Best 360 game: Gears of War 2

Best PS3 game: LittleBigPlanet

Best Wii game: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

and finally the most special award of the evening....

Game of the Year is: *drumroll* LITTLBIGPLANET!!!!

Why? Well in a time where games are headed towards "realism" one game stepped up and brought us fun. In a time where games gave us satisfaction, this game brought happiness. It's not about the graphics, it's not about the gameplay it's about the fun; the "feelgood" sensation you get from playing this amazing game. It's a game whose experience only ends when people's imagination ends and hopefully that day will never come. Alone or with friends, LittleBigPlanet is my game of the year!

HardcoreBunni

P.S. I just realized that I didn't include any strategy games but that's because so far I haven't played any. Feel free to tell me what your GOTY's were, fellow gamespotters!

The game I have been secretly watching for a long time. At first I thought, "meh" but as I heard more I got more intrigued.A couple of months ago, I started watching the vids and I fell in love with sackboy :oops:

I plan to spend as much time with LBP as I did with Viva Pinata.

So I just finished watching the Halo 3 teaser and I'm very curious. Especially about a frase after the 30th second when frases like "yellow means yield" and "expect delays" are popping on and off the screen really fast. It says "Maddie, where are you?". Now for the Americans who are unaware, Maddie was a girl who was supposedly kidnapped. She was English, 3 years old, and was on holidays with her family in the Algarve. The parents claimed that she was taken while she and her brothers were in the hotel room while the parents went out for dinner.

Now, here is where the story starts sounding strange. Maddie was in her room with her 2 younger twin brothers but only her was sleeping, no forensic evidence could show that anyone except Maddie's family had been in the room, Maddie's blood was found on the walls using ultra-violet rays, her blood was also found in the trunk of her parents' rental car, and the list of strange (circumstancial) evidence that point Maddie's parents to her dissapearence.

Going back to the Halo 3 Teaser, it seems strange ( and a tad distasteful), that they should have included that frase in the teaser.

Anyways, what are your opinions on the teaser?(which can be seen at bungie.net)

Games:

Well, long time no blog! I've been busy with the start of my new school(which rocks by the way) and my PS3. Haha, yeah I've kinda neglected my 360 but I'll get back to it when gears 2 comes out. I bought Uncharted for 30 bucks and I really enjoyed it. Yesterday, I bought Force Unleashed and I finished it a while ago. I was very pleased. The combat was fun and varied, the story was excellent(I ended with the evil ending), the characters were cool.

The only problem I had with it was the inconsistenies of the difficulty. Sometimes Sith Lord was easy, other times, Apprentice was really hard, then Sith Warrior felt just right most of the time so I went with that.

School: I left the American School of Lisbon and went to a public Portuguese high school. I'm having a blast so far. The people are nice, the teachers arent boring, and my schedule is much shorter. Even better, there's no strict dress code. I can listen to music in the halls and play my DS during breaks. Oh and heres an interesting story about my first English class.

The class is for 10th grade but it's not 10th grade by American standards. By USA standards it would be in between 3rd and 4rth grade. Proof? To introduce ourselves we played the "name game". We said our name and then we described ourselves using an adjective that started with the same letter our name did. *sigh* I went along with it. "Hi, my name is Guilherme. I am great." Then its my friend Miguel's turn and he can't think of one. I tell him to use mesmerizing which was the first adjective beginning with an "m" that I could remember. Then I explained what it meant and he said it. Then the teacher was like "Mesmerized? What is that?" And then I had to explain it to her. And then she didn't believe it was real. Then we searched it on a website and found the definition. She was like "oh well...ah....mmm...okay sit down, young man". And then the whole class started laughing. I kinda felt bad for the teacher but she has a college degree so I thought she knew what mesmerized meant.

I'm leaving the Phillipines tommorow morning and I'm sad. :( It's such a nice place. It has Starbucks, nice people who say hello instead of "get outta my way", you can get massaged for 15 dollars, and you can grab 4 dollars and spend a great afternoon at an arcade. *sigh* I know all good things must come to an end, but 3 weeks felt like a short time. Still I'll take with me some great memories like

• the first Playstation 3 game I played(and finished:Ratchet and Clank),
• my first time at Hooters(although the Hooters concept in Asia feels a bit weird because the girls are pretty shy and don't have *surprise* "hooters")
• and finally- beating my dad at pool

Yes it's been a fun time, but now I have a 14 flight to Amsterdam followed by a 3 hour flight to Lisbon. I guess I'll be spending a lot of time with my DS.

P.S. Is it me or is Wall-E the most beautiful animated movie ever? It's amazing how the guys at Pixar show so well that when love is true, words become unnecessary and actions become the most important thing in the world.