In a recent interview, Tim Schafer discussed the upcoming game from Sierra Entertainment: Brutal Legend. He discusses various gameplay mechanics and story details. In case you missed out on the trailer, Brutal Legend is the story of Eddie Riggs who is given the power of the axe (musical or otherwise) of the heavy metal gods. Find out more about Brutal Legend and Eddie Riggs in the full article.

We'd like to stay one step ahead of you folks and say, no, this is not news. We're just posting this because we feel that some of you might find the video embed slightly entertaining.

One of the many cliches involved with Japanese adaptations of western franchises (Witchblade for example) is that often times the franchise/series gets adapted into something that's very anime-ish. You know, big-eyes, small mouths, and a lot of "emo"-drama gets injected and for some unknown reason there's always an unreasonably, androgynous, white-haired, villain carrying around an impractically long sword.

Anyway, we're very thankful that the Japanese Gears of War is essentially just a translation, and not an adaptation. We were a bit worried that Gears might end up looking like Ghost in the Shell or some other sci-fi anime.

If you're curious about how Mr. Fenix sounds when he speaks a foreign language, feel free to click play on the video embed below.

What can we say? The game's got global appeal.

 

Here's a story that deserves a place in the 2007 Edition of "Strange Things Covered by QJ." Angered by some bad service from Microsoft customer service, Conor decided that the best way to retaliate was to use one of their customer service loopholes against them.

Here's the backstory. His first experience with Microsoft customer service came the first time his Xbox 360 broke. When he sent it in for repair, Microsoft basically paid for the shipping, sending him a box which he could return his broken console in. Unfortunately, it broke once again, but between the first and second problems with the machine, Microsoft apparently changed the terms of shipping so that the consumer would have to pay for the shipping to Microsoft, but Microsoft would pay for shipping it back and repairing the console.

They won't give him a box, and now, he's really pissed. Since the customer service reps mentioned that little tidbit about paying for the return shipping, his response was to basically ship his broken Xbox 360 in the largest container he could find. As his site explains, "The mission is simple; to raise enough money through donations to send the largest box possible... a shipping container."

While we can understand the frustration with bad customer service, this is way out of proportion for the cost of shipping and a box. There are so many other ways to get your frustration across, such as a well-worded letter or an emo-gamer blog, but this is really taking it a bit too far. Currently, he's gotten around US$ 140 from donations, but we're really hoping he doesn't push through with this altogether ludicrous plan.

For more info, you'll definitely want to read his story, but otherwise, you may want to just sigh and shake your head in disapproval.