My 12 Gifts of Christmas - 2022

My twelve gifts of Christmas,

Received year 2022:

A model Minecraft piggy

Sonic the Hedgehog PJs

10 pack of Nano Bytes

Shitloads of Little Britain

Keyboard and a mouse set

Rolos and satsumas

Mario & Rabbids

Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee

Sonic Frontiers 

Scarlet & Violet

Amazon gift vouchers

And tested positive for Covid 19!

What Was Wrong With Brutal Legend?

For Christmas 2009, I received a shiny Xbox 360 and a stack of games - some pretty cool ones, some pretty average ones - and one I'd seen dancing about on the Internet a lot at the time, Brutal Legend.

I'm a massive fan of heavy metal - ever since I was a kid - I grew up listening to hard rock in my dad's car, 70s bands like Rainbow, ZZTop, Deep Purple and Whitesnake. When I discovered the joy of Limewire and Bearshare in my early teens, I discovered Slipknot, Cannibal Corpse and Rammstein - and then bought all of their albums - see, I rectified my piracy!

Heavy metal is still the soundtrack to my life - or any kind of metal, rock and punk to be fair - my wardrobe still consists of mainly band t-shirts and I still enjoy the odd headbanging session when I get the freedom to blast some music when I'm home alone.

Given this, it's no surprise that Brutal Legend appealed to me. Granted, I can't stand Jack Black - I like Tenacious D, but I cannot abide him as an “actor,” he grates on me something chronic.

From what I'd seen of Brutal Legend, it looked like a fun sandbox hack and slash based around heavy metal culture - with lots of cameos by awesome musicians, tons of references and homages and of course, a great soundtrack.

So imagine my disappointment as I gradually progressed through the game and all of the fun exploring at leisure and finding hidden collectables was buried under a mountain of God damn REAL TIME STRATEGY.

RTS is one of the genres that divides gamers - you either like them or they make you want to pull out your back molars with a pair of rusty pliers. Guess which side I'm on?

RTS bores me to tears - the only ones I can tolerate are tower defence style games, and even then I only really like the silly ones like Plants VS Zombies and South Park: Let's Go Tower Defence Play. And I'm not sure what it is that puts me off RTS games - I've given them a go multiple times throughout my life, starting early with the Asterix themed one on the PS1 - which at least had the deceny to break up the monotony with a handful of naff platforming sections. Jesus Christ; I still have flashbacks to the endless pouring of magic potions into Gaul and the constant deployment of cheaty scumbag Roman soldiers.

The main problem with Brutal Legend is that it hid it's RTS core from us. The trailers painted an image of explorative sandbox loveliness - it's like you went on a date with someone who claimed to hate One Direction but upon arriving to their place for “coffee,” it was served in mugs shaped like Harry Styles hair, then you were invited to a romp on their 1D bedsheets with a teeny bopper soundtrack.

The developers of Brutal Legend KNEW that if they blatantly told us it was an RTS, they'd immediately eliminate over half of their potential audience. So they tricked us, and we were starry eyed and stupid enough to fall for it. And I personally don't enjoy being tricked into doing things I'm uncomfortable with (see previous paragraph.)

If I ever figure out why RTS isn't for me, I'll let you know - but for the time being all you need to know is I don't like them and I DO like heavy metal inspired hack and slash sandboxes - or I would, if Brutal Legend had actually given me one...

Miiverse Code Of Conduct: The Strangest Guideline Ever?

So as I said in my last post, I've had a few posts on the Miiverse taken down because I wrote a link to my blog in them - thus I've become very bitter and twisted and started reporting any other posts I see with web links or YouTube profiles or whatever in them. 

So I decided to review the Miiverse Code Of Conduct to see exactly WHERE it said this - and I came across a very strange rule; one that I've never seen on Xbox Live guidelines, forum rules and general online gaming and social platforms. It was something along the lines of:

"PLAYERS MUST NOT POST ANYTHING RELATING TO EXCREMENT, VOMITING ETC. WHICH MAY MAKE OTHER USERS FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE."

Seriously, WTF?

Not that I would, but we're not allowed to mention puke or poop? Well I had a good long trawl through the Earthbound community - because when I think of vomit in video games, I think of this guy:

This is Master Belch (later known as Master Barf) from Earthbound - an animated, talking, evil pile of VOMIT. So Nintendo, are us members of the Earthbound community not allowed to discuss tactics or opinions of this guy because he's a pile of sick?

As for "excrement" - there's tons of stuff, namely things like Conker's Bad Fur Day, No More Heroes, Banjo-Kazooie... Or even someone proclaiming "this game is crap", or "this game is the shit!" - are THESE against the community guidlines, Nintendo?

Fair enough, I can disagree with someone writing a huge in-depth description of the dump they took on Boxing Day, complete with its texture, scent and taste, no doubt was filled with pieces of turkey stuffing, mixed nuts and Christmas Cake - and probably smelled of Brussels sprouts - but where do we draw the line?