It feels like it was yesterday when I made my preview blog for the game when that awesome trailer came out. At first my initial concern was whether or not this game would deliver in its lofty goals, but then turned doubtful on even not getting this game or not after news that the last-gen port would have been downgraded, and also because I was afraid I wouldn't do the game justice by reviewing it in a inferior port. So my friend @scorpion2501 offered himself to review the game with me so he could share his perspective in PC. So lets see, is Shadow of Mordor a game worthy of your money or just another cash grab made on Tolkien's name?

Summary

Set between the events of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", you play as Talion (played by Troy Baker), a Ranger from Gondor stationed in the Black Gate of Mordor, who is murdered alongside his family by Sauron's servants, the Black Captains led by the mysterious Black Hand (played by Nolan North), who returned to reclaim the land for their master's homecoming. Fortunately for Talion, he is revived by a elven wraith that the Black Hand was attempting to summon with the ritual killing of Talion and his family. Now sharing the body with the wraith, revealed to be none other than Celebrimbor - the legendary forger of the 20 Rings of Power long murdered by the Dark Lord himself, the two embark on a quest of revenge, sharing a common enemy they need to stop before they can depart to the afterlife.

Plot & Characters

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While the plot may be one of it's weaker points, Shadow Of Mordor still doesn't fail to deliver us an engaging story. The theme that stands central in this game is mostly the desire for revenge, the player, Talion and his wraith friend Celebrimbor are both out for the same thing. Being free from the curse of living forever and murdering the people who turned their life into a living hell, or well, more like an undead hell. Because as I mentioned, both of them are in between a state of life and death, and neither can pass on to the afterlife. While I didn't think the story was as fleshed out as I wanted it to be, it was still an entertaining ride.

The characters are more engaging than the story in a lot of ways. The chemistry between Talion and Celebrimbor is one of the highlights of this game. They bicker a lot, and are always there to make me interested in the story again.

I loved every single piece of dialogue between them. At the start of the game we know little of Celebrimbor, and him suffering from amnesia doesn't help either. But as the story progresses you find his "Scattered memories", which give you a deeper insight in his past, which I very much enjoyed. While I can't say he didn't have that much of a backstory, it was still more than enough to understand his feeling and sympathise with his motives.

Most of the other characters are likeable as well, Torvin being my favorite. Torvin the dwarf is a hunter, and his personality is almost opposite that of our grumpy duo of main characters. His witty remarks and snarky jokes lighten up the mood, which is a great change of pace. And Torvin as well, gets enough background information to make him likeable, and make you want to aid him in his quests.

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This game offers a great expansion and fealty on the lore. The land of Mordor was largely uncharted and said to be home to creatures far more terrifying than orcs, and we get to see first hand how it was like before Sauron. They made so many homages to the background, the biggest one was probably making one of the protagonists Celebrimbor, who is an supporting character from the Sillmarillion largely unknown except to the most hardcore LotR characters. They went out their way to add in-game background details that you can visit in the pause menu anytime that contains character profiles for Talion, his family, the enemies, the monsters, the locations and etc. I really, really love when games add this level of detail.

Unfortunately, the narrative itself is rather weak and very cliched. I mean, c'mon guys you already seen this set up a thousand times as - bad guy kills the hero family now he goes on a roaring rampage of revenge - this time on Middle-Earth. Majority of the characters are one-note and it wouldn't have been much of a stretch to say that the Uruks you fight have more personality, though some manage to be entertaining like Ratbag (who provides some healthy comic-relief by serving as a punching bag in every single appearance during the first act) and Torvin (who is certainly a interesting character on his own but is absolutely peripheral to the plot). The characters that really get the short end of the stick are the actual main villains themselves, the Black Captains of Sauron, who are infinitaly less interesting their Orc henchmen - illustrated by their unspeakable bland names like the Hammer, the Tower and the Black Hand. The one thing that holds the story together is Talion/Celebrimbor's interactions. You think an undead wraith sharing the same body as yours would have been an evil influence trying to put dark temptations into your head, but as it turns out Celebrimbor and Talion get along pretty friendly, with the former offering advice to the latter while still bickering. Nice to see them subvert the enemy within trope for once.

And finally, I am disappointed that the ending is a massive letdown. Without wishing to spoil, but with the game building up to a massive confrontation between Talion and Sauron's forces falls flat as the final encounter is nothing but another set of enemies that you've been fighting all game long (only with some branded Warchiefs that will help you out) and a pathetically easy final boss (which on in context, doesn't make a lot of sense either) followed by a OBVIOUS SEQUEL BAIT ENDING. *Sigh* I guess if you are making a game based on Assassin's Creed you still need to make a sh*t ending to make up for it.

Even though I am more story-driven type of gamer, I am willing to give the any of the plot's fault a pass. You know why? Because when I checked in and saw I've played for 12 hours with completing only a handful of story missions, I realized I was having fun nonetheless without caring if the story was good or not, which I guess its okay. The story isn't horrible, just average at its really worse. Its more than I can say than some Purists who claim the game missed the entire point of the LotR mythos, or certain "professional" critics who can't tell reality from fiction and making a retarded big deal out of the prologue claiming the game is tone deaf over kissing/killing *cough* POLYGON *cough*.

Gameplay Aspects

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Gameplay consists of two main aspects. The "Nemesis System"

and the actual open world gameplay. I'll start of by talking about the Nemesis System, and how this saved this game from being mediocre. The Nemesis System is where you can see every named Orc character. These Orcs all have unique names, nicknames, faces, weaknesses, powers, and best of all, relations to you. If you ever run into on of these orcs, and let's say burn them, but they run away and live to tell the tale. That orc will now have burn marks on him next time you meet him, and get new dialogue, about how he wants to kill you for what you did to him, or about what he did to you last battle. This makes you really motivated to kill some of those orcs. Because, and I'll go to the next big point in this game, when you are killed, the game doesn't ask you to restart the mission. The game just continues. Your failure is recorded, the orcs who faced you and killed you will gain in rank, and will be harder to kill. They'll mock you when you see them next time, saying how they'll kill you again and again until you stay dead. And believe me, when you have an orc that killed you ten times, you won't be happy until his smug face is erased from this world.

There is also an ability that can let you brand orcs, which makes them your followers. This also influences the Nemesis System, because you will have a chess piece in this hierarchy of orcs. And you can try and take it down from the inside. You can let your orc assassinate other orcs, gain in rank and become the strongest of them all. This really comes in handy when you really want to get rid of that orc that you alone can't defeat...

The actual gameplay is really smooth. The fighting feels really Batman Arkham-esque. With a variety of different moves,the combat feels very fluent and never feels like a chore.

The chopping up of orcs feel satisfying, no matter how many times you do it. This game also features stealth gameplay. Which is needed, because some of the fights you can get into are so impossible to win, you really need to thin them out first. The stealth is pretty basic overall. Crouch and hope you don't get seen, stab victim from behind.

And there is a fun amount of environment interaction, which makes for some fun changes in scenario. You can set bees loose, shoot up walls, or set wargs free form their cages.

There isn't a huge variety of enemies. Your main enemy will be the Orcs and Orc bosses. But from time to time you'll also have to fight wildlife, like wargs, ghuls and graugs. And here the idiom "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" doesn't apply. All of the enemies summed up will also fight amongst themselves, so, have a hard time fighting a swarm of hundreds of ghuls? Bait them into a battalion of orcs, maybe add in a graug as well while you're at it. Then kick back and watch the fireworks happen. Honestly, I think the variety of enemies isn't as big as I liked it to be, it still makes for some hard fights. But that's just me nitpicking.

There is also a skill system and item system. And well, the skill system is what you think it is. Upgrade your health, upgrade the amount of arrows you can carry, learn a new skill. Like this one.

The item system isn't that impressive. You basically find runes to upgrade your weapons, though it always feels nice to find a legendary rune, it doesn't deliver the same punch as actually being able to find new gear.

The worldmap is huge, and filled with fun things to do. There are sidequests by the dozen, that guarantee a lot of hours of extra fun. I completed the main campaign in about 11 hours, while just rushing through the main missions. I had that same amount of time fun doind all the side missions and murdering the orcs that had killed me in the past.

Dragonborn_CT

As a action RPG open-world game, the gameplay is the perfect blend of Assassin's Creed style of parkour and exploration with Batman Arkham's style of combat and stealth with the addition of magical powers and completely unrestricted by a no-kill policy. I won't mince words here, this game is all about killing orcs. Everything you do in this game one way or the other is involved with sneaking up on orcs or fighting them in direct combat, there is very few room to do anything else (even the side activities that give weapon bonus are all about that). At first glance, it might look like this is going to turn repetitive as all Hell. But thanks to the Nemesis system, each orc is generated randomly each different from the next. Orc Captains are sub-bosses with their own strengths and weaknesses and Warchiefs are tougher bosses with very few weaknesses and a lot bonus that require an special approach to kill them.

Admittedly, this game can be really hard when you are first playing it and you are still getting use to the controls. Its a title that doesn't hold hands with you and expects you to use anything at your disposal to solve your problems. Sure you can try facing the Warchiefs head on while he is surrounded by bodyguards and get killed in the process. You can also dispose of their bodyguards before hand to make the fight easier or draw them out in the open away from other orcs to not have an angry mob after your ass. Its a game that rewards players who are creative and doesn't try to hamper by adding unnecessary extra objectives just so they could get 100% like in AC.

The progression skill tree is quite complex and deep to its benefit. Every upgrade you get makes the combat more satisfying and refreshing and the game keeps the pace up by withoulding some of the most powerful abilities by progressing through the storyline, such as the power to brand enemies you receive during the half-way point of the game. There are also Weapon Runes by killing Uruk captains that you can costumize to give your weapons specific qualities. Those can be a little of a hassle, as they are generated randomly or depending the nature which you killed this Uruk (by using his specific fear against him) its particularly hard to get the effect you desire. If you happen to stack up countless runes that are useless or outdated, you can convert them into experience points which is a extremely satisfying feature. Its really the small things that make you appreciate the effort devs put on designing the gameplay.

Though orcs will be your primary foes and the Nemesis system revolves around them, there are other different types of enemies like Caragors (which are wild beasts that can be used to ride and cause distractions), Ghuls (Morlock-like monsters that only appear at night or when you explore caves) and Graugs , unfortunately those are all the game has to offer if you grow sick of seeing orcs everywhere. Its rather unfortunate that the game doesn't feature some of the coolest villains in LotR like the Nazgul or the Mumakil-riding Easterlings. It should be noted that while Captains and Warchiefs provide a satisfying challenge during free-roaming and side activities, the actual story campaign bosses are very disappointingly easy.

Despite reports that the Nemesis system would have been downgraded for the last-gen consoles as they would focus more on the current gen, as it turns out the main selling point is still intact. Orcs still remember encounters, level up if they survive, get promoted if they managed to kill you, their AI is pretty competent overall, instead as of what was originally said that only bosses could level up and the enemies would have been overall dumber. That on itself is a big win, but lets follow up in the next section with my biggest gripe with the game.

Visual & Sound Effects

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I played this game on PC and ran into a few problems at first. Nothing major, but I had to tweek my Nvidea options a bit to make it able to run, because before that, the game would just show a blank screen. After tweeking the game looked really great. It ran at a solid 60FPS, no frame drop at all, loading times were really short, almost none existent. I didn't encounter any bugs or glitches. And it was overal a pleasant experience. Most of the textures looked good, and the game looked really cinematic. Overal nothing bad to say about it.

The sound effects weren't bad at all, slicing of a head sounds any bit as gruesome as you expect it to be, and you can't ask more of that, can you now? The music however is one of the better video games soundtracks in the last year. Like "The Gravewalker" really makes you feel like you're in a desolate bleak place. And can really give you the chills. While "Ioreth" really makes you feel like you're in a fantasy world. Most of the soundtracks are really relaxing, and they are great to just listen to on your own. The action music gets your blood pumping, the sad music makes you feel melancholic and the creepy music will set the tone on how alone you really are in the vast world.

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If you read my game reviews for a long time you will notice these sections are really small because I rarely have any opinion on graphics and stuff like that, my preference usually boils down to art syle over graphical power. However on this instance, I need to go on about my port's performance which was terrible to put it out of the way. The graphics are extremely inferior, the textures look so much uglier than what they were supposed to be. Even someone like me who is pretty forgiving about graphics was put off, imagine others. That on itself is pretty bad, but what really annoyed me was the loading times. Every time you enter a cutscene or open the menu or the map or, there is a loading screen. While they usually last 10 seconds, they feel like absolute pain once you see them enough times. You thought the Bayonetta on PS3 was bad, this port. Sound clipping was horrible sometimes background music was stuck in loops indefinitely and framerate chugged a lot. If anything was holding back my enjoyment was definitely the disastrous issues. In spite of all that, the gameplay didn't suffer as much and the Nemesis system was still preserved.

The game's musical score is sadly really bland as they ditch the Howard Shore-esque soundtrack that made the movies so memorable. Thankfully they do introduce some better songs when you reach the second half of the game. The actual voice acting is pretty good in the other hand (although I bit hampered by the poor lip-synching during gameplay) - in my case in particular, I experienced the whole game translated and dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese, by the same studio which worked in the movies too. Their work is fantastic and leagues ahead of Assassins' Creed IV: Black Flag, whose Brazilian dub was laughably bad.

Final Rating

Scorpion2501

I feel like an 8 would be a bit to low, and a 9 a bit to high. An 8.5 feels like an honest score for one of the most fun games I've played in a long game.

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6/10 on PS3 - 8/10 elsewhere: This game is certainly running for GOTY in my book, I felt like I got my money's worth but I urge you that if you can avoid the PS3's port. While still functional and delivers on the same promise as the current-gen and PC, its clearly the inferior version (not surprising there). I recommend to any LotR fans, as well as fans of Batman's Arkham, even long time Assassin' Creed fans like myself who were burned and tired by the series will find some revitalizing energy in this series.

God of War is a curious franchise, its one of the most popular video game series of all time, at one point considered the best excuse to justify buy a Sony console and yet the same time, people resent it for setting up a cliched standard for many action adventure games that came afterwards that tried to mimic its success like Dante's Inferno (God of War + Divine Comedy), Darksiders (God of War + Legend of Zelda) and Lords of Shadow (God of War + Count Dracula). For someone like me who loves Greek mythology, I loved the series but for some reason I felt like it had aged up badly. So I decided to revisit this time around and in this particular review blog, I won't review just one game, but the second and the third too. And before anyone asks, I don't plan on reviewing the PSP games (Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta) nor God of War Ascencion as I don't own either of them at the time of right. So lets jump into the review...

Summary

Set in Ancient Greece, where mankind's destiny was controled by the Olympian Gods, the series chronicles the epic deeds of Kratos, a Spartan warrior with a cursed past forced into the Gods' servitude to repent for the heinous murder of his family under the influence of Ares, the God of War. After 10 years, he is given one last task by the Goddess Athena: stop Ares from destroying the city of Athens and in return, his terrible sins will be forgiven. Eventually, Kratos manages to slay Ares with the power of Pandora's Box, get his revenge on Ares by killing him, is forgiven of his past misdeeds, and finally made a god. But the nightmares still haunt him and his attempt to use death to escape them fails when he is made immortal. Now made the new God of War, Kratos leads a bloody conquest on Greece, heedless of the warnings of other gods who think he's out of control. Zeus takes matters into his own hands by stripping Kratos of his godhood and slaying him. With the help of the Titan Gaia, Kratos escapes from Hades and embarks on a quest against the Gods of Olympus who made his life miserable.

Plot & Characters

I realized I just summed up the whole trilogy's plot in the section above, so there is probably no point speaking more about it. Certain people just dismiss the story, saying to be nothing more than teenage male fantasy, which is *partially* correct, but I think it deserves a closer examination. The first game actually features a stronger narrative than people would like to give credit, even if its not precisely original or mind-blowing - showing a classical Greek tragedy. Kratos is one angry mofo, you better not doubt that - he could give the Hulk a run for his money, all he cares about is getting revenge against all those who wronged him and he doesn't care who gets hit in the crossfire. But in the first game it was where he was most human and vulnerable. Its somewhat hard to tell the difference, but let me explain: his backstory is told through a series of flashbacks that narrate the events that would lead to his downfall. Like so many Greek tragedies, one's hubris is soon followed by disgrace, in this game's case, his thirst for power and glory lead to making a deal with Ares, becoming enforcer to his will and ultimately murdering his wife and daughter during a fit of madness (just like the Heracles myth). By the end, he does the impossible and kills a God in single combat, but despite all his hard work, turns out the Gods only promised to forgive him from his past deeds, not make him forget.

By the second game however, all tragedy aspect that made the first game's story compelling gets thrown out of the window when Kratos proceeds to do the exact same thing Ares was going in GoW I, no wonder Zeus is forced to betray him so he could stop murdering things. From this point on, Kratos wants revenge against Zeus and you might be thinking "Huh, don't think this roaring rampage of revenge is a tad insincere?" then at the end of that game its revealed that Kratos is actually Zeus' son and the reason why he tried to kill him was to prevent the cycle of son dethroning the father just as Zeus did to his father, he feared Kratos would have done the same to him; and also, none of the Gods will allow Zeus to perish, as he is the base of their power on the world, and will take up arms against anyone who threaten it. He then decides that if no one will deny him his vengeance, releases the Titans from their imprisonment and lead the charge against Mount Olympus, ending the game on a stupid cliffhanger note. So basically yeah, they ended the sequel in a "to be continued" note and concluded this plotless saga in the third game, stretching out Zeus' demise in 2 games.

Needless to say, the story in the third game is a all-out war against the Ghost of Sparta and the Titans against the Olympic Gods, and it doesn't even take more than the intro level for the Titans themselves to turn against our jackass protagonist and the conflict to become a three-way. So we are stretch this sh*t out cause GoW II decided to not end, but hey we gotta a load of Gods to butcher along the way that would make things entertaining. Too bad that since they are closely connected to their dominion on the world, that killing them would cause immense destruction upon mankind - for example, destroying Poseidon causes a tidal wave that drowns all of Greece, Helios's death causes the sun to set forever and killing Hades unleashes the souls of dead upon the surface. And never once does Kratos stop to think "Man this is going too far", but its possible he may have thought instead "There is no stopping now, we might go ahead to see what happens"... Or maybe that is just me thinking. And in case you think this wasn't enough just you wait until you see the bullsh*t bomb they drop towards the end - its revealed that when Kratos opened Pandora's box, he unleashed all evils within it, which had corrupted the Gods, making them evil and therefore making it all of Kratos' fault. Yeah noooooooo... I don't buy it.

Its worth pointing out that the Gods in Greek Mythology were petty, abrasive, uncaring towards mortals, and that is putting it nicely. Its usually like that in most pantheons anyways since humans gotta have someone to blame when their life goes to sh*t, and they represent that very accurately in the game. And lets face it, Kratos ain't so different from classical heroes either - the Ancient Greek's definition of "hero" was someone who did epic things and did whatever the f*ck they wanted, it didn't necessarily mean it was someone willing to defend the weak or stand for a righteous ideal or sacrifice himself for others. Oh and the small little matter of "muh soggy knees" over the sex minigames; yes, you do get to have sex with plenty of voluptuous, semi or fully nude women at least once per game. Whenever I hear feminists shrews (as well as beta males trying to impress them) complain about sexuality in general, I just want to land my head against the nearest wall: how all women are sex objects in this sexist game, while ignoring Athena and Gaia - two prominent female characters that mentor Kratos and help progress his story. Also in case you don't know, women used to be sexualized back in the source material, just like men too. Consider the most baffling sexual spectacles like pederasty, bestiality, divine rape and most mind-bogging of all, sex through golden shower (yep, look up Perseus' birth) all happened in the myths. How skewed are your priorities when a game famous for its violence and deicidal themes, yet you only find issue with sexuality is the real problem? Gimme a break.

So to close off this, God of War is to Greek Mythology what Grand Theft Auto is for crime dramas: nobody is a saint, everybody is flawed and the world sucks. Except if you are the player character, then in this case, everyone else is your bitch.

Gameplay Aspects

Now lets talk about the gameplay, the main reason why I lumped all three games into a single review. as the remarkably simple and intuitive combat interface that makes fighting very easy to access is virtually unchanged throughtout the series. Kratos' primary weapons are the Blades of Chaos, which are swords attached to long chains that he swings like chucks. There is a combo system that lets you string a huge variety of balletical combinations using the two face buttons that represent "fast" and "strong" attacks, which are more difficult to pull off, but you can spend most of your time button mashing without penalty. Kratos is capable of grabbing his opponents and perform finishing moves when the "O" symbol is hovering above them. Many enemies and all the boss fights are finished through quick-time event sequences that require to press the button at a right moment. In addition, Kratos has access to magical powers and additional weapons that he receives along the way and he is capable of leveling up his weapons by spending XP from killing enemies.

Puzzles play a big part in the series in a series of manners like platforming, moving up objects at the right time, evading death traps and so and so, which required quick-thinking or knowledge of your abilities to solve them. Out of all three games, GoW 1 was specifically bad on this regard as there was a large abundance of instant fail conditions and (admitted on the developers part) terrible design. The Hades section in Pandora's Temple in that game were hair-pulling frustrating and the actual Hades level take the cake - you should beware whenever you see spinning blades in this game. Thankfully, GoW 2 and 3 had tone down the puzzle difficulty a lot, although many would like to point out that Hera's Maze was just as bad as the Hades levels.

One of the best parts about the gameplay are the boss fights. Although, GoW 1 had featured only three (the Hydra, Pandora's Minotaur and Ares), all of them were vastly different from each other with different methods to defeat them. GoW 2 added a number of them, while sacrificing a bit of variety with them, but they are still entertaining to fight with. For example:

To be perfectly honest, the boss fight above while visually impressive and monumentally absurd, it turns out to be preposterously easy, because its composed of Kratos climbing him at several points, quick time and its over. Though obviously GoW 2 and 3 had the same final boss (Zeus) which annoys me a little when they recycle final bosses from previous games into later sequels, they are still climatic and exciting enough to make up for it.

Sound and Visual Effects

To put it bluntly, God of War's musical score is one of my favorite video game soundtracks of all time. They all sound so epic and channel that warrior feeling. My personal choices are Duel with Ares, Vengeful Spartan, the Minotaur Boss Fight, Zeus Divine Wrath and many more I want to name, hell the majority of the albums is amazing. Many props to the crew of Gerard Marino, Mike Reagan, Winifred Phillips, Ron Fish and Cris Velasco. The voice acting is astounding with TC Carson voicing Kratos who is capable of channeling such anger and hate, while his character doesn't allow to show it much, he can convey sadness as well (though you will only note that in the first game). Many others like Rip Torn, aforementioned Kevin Sorbo, Paul Eiding, Malcolm MacDowell also lented their voices and did an amazing job.

While the visuals look great there is a distressingly large difference between graphics due to games belonging to different gens. GoW 1's graphics and models are actually pretty dated (the cinematic themselves are quite okay), while GoW 2 look like what a PS2 game should. Its only in GoW 3 where the cinematic sequences and gameplay blend together and it generally looks more pleasing and character animations look more fluid. The art style tends to veer too much into the "real is brown" territory, but sometimes we get to see more colorful and beautifully rendered scenarios.

Final Rating

8/10 - The score applies to the three games combined, because it was pretty hard to come up with individual scores for each game that made sense. GoW1 had a better narrative, but generally harder combat and puzzles, GoW 2 and 3 have better combat and graphics, but much of the story is sacrificed. Overall, God of War is a great trilogy that is worth checking out. If you are fan of Greek Mythology or just plain good ol' bloody violence, this game is a must buy.

Thank you guys for reading. What do you think about GoW? Have you ever played it. Let me know about your opinion in the comments section.

See ya next time =p

My father was a great man, a hero, so they say. But sometimes the world doesn't need another hero, sometimes what it needs is a monster.

- Ingeras about his father

It's really remarkable when you stop and think it has been almost a decade since we had a proper live-action Dracula movie from Hollywood, with Van Helsing being the last one. Even with Twilight glittering with sunlight all over media, for some odd reason nobody would want to touch Dracula while vampires were popular once again. But the wait is finally over, and Dracula Untold is at hand, with two of the top experts in the site @theacidskull and @dragonborn_ct teaming up to review it. Is Dracula Untold a worthy re-imagining of the myth and long waited return of the king of the vampires, or does it fall flat on its face? Lets find out.

As a child, the Transylvanian prince Vlad Dracula was enslaved by the Turks and forced to serve for them as Lord Impaler - a nickname he received due to impaling his victims in large spear. Now as his ruler and trying to move on from his dark and trouble past and live a normal life with his family, the Ottoman forces lead by the Sultan Mehmed return and request another tribute of one thousand boys to his army. Not wanting his son to go through what he did himself, Vlad strikes a deal with an ancient vampire (played by Charles Dance), who offers him power to defeat his enemies, but with a catch - Dracula has all three days to get rid of his enemies without drinking blood. Once the three days are over, he will go back to normal, but if he drinks blood before any of this then his transformation is complete and the ancient vampire will be set loose upon the world to wreck havok once more. So Dracula will use his powers to defend his people.

TheAcidSkull

The premise itself is very predictable and simple, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's not quite as good as it could have been. Nobody Including myself, despite my own intrigue, was actually really excited because nobody really expected it to be any good. I know it's a very negative thing to say as an introduction to my thoughts but these days movies like Dracula untold aren't really that exciting because right from the get go you really understand that the movie doesn't have high aspirations. That being said, it was much better than I could have hoped, when it, of course focused on what the audience wanted. What came to me as a major disappointment was the fact that I've seen this story before, only previously it was done way better. The story, I'm referring too, is Castlevania lords of shadow part I and II. However, despite the shockingly numerous similarities, it still took a different route and made the overall experience different. In fact, despite the pessimistic introduction, I did, aside from a few moments, indeed enjoy the story, simply because it knew what it was and what it wanted to show.

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To say this prequel takes a lot of liberties with the vampire mythos is quite the understatement. It manages to one up Bram Stoker's Dracula as unfaithful to the source material, Dracula is not a vicious tyrant that impaled people for fun, but actually a straight-up heroic with many sympathetic qualities and motivations and his actions are not only understandable but downright justifiable. His horrific deeds were still there, but they are kind of glossed over he wants nothing more to do with them, if it was not for the fact he is named Dracula, this character would have nothing to do with the classical villain. Still, one of the reasons I enjoy this movie is because its the first one in a long time which you see things from the vampire's point of view rather than the humans. You wouldn't think that wouldn't have been much of a big deal, but how many vampire movies you've seen featuring their perspective (Blade, Underworld and Interview with a Vampire) compared to the ones where they are the antagonists? It's certainly a lot different than the common lot.

TheAcidSkull

Moreover, the acting in this movie was pretty much what you expect it to be. Most of the supporting characters are really forgettable and dull, but hey they can fight, so it's all good. But damn, Luke Evans was really cool as Dracula. He does a very cool job of portraying a troubled noble warrior who was forced into becoming a monster. He also oddly fits the character well. His movements, facial impressions and general design(costumes and such) really fit into the evil but elegant presence that Vlad Dracula creates. In fact, if he wasn't playing the good guy, he'd make an awesome villain in my opinion. That's not to say that he couldn't portray the hero well, of course, in fact, I loved every scene he was in, especially the ones where we get small glimpses of what a good man can do if he is wronged. Speaking of which, i really enjoyed that aspect of Dracula. While the script doesn't do much to really showcase how conflicted Dracula really is, Luke does his best to make you sympathize with his cause and motives.

Dragonborn_CT

The acting is pretty serviceable - everyone does their job alright, but the supporting cast is forgettable at best. Luke Evans carries the whole movie by himself and while his interpretation of Dracula is vastly different, the dude oozes charisma and you can't help but like him. Charles Dance has only a handful of scenes as Master Vampire, but he makes enough of a presence despite what little he has to work with - don't expect him to play a big role in this movie nonetheless. Unfortunately, the weakest part in the whole cast is the main villain Mehmed, who is portrayed as someone that used to be close to Vlad when they were younger (likely drawing inspirations from Vlad's real life brother Radu the Handsome) which would have drawn some interesting tension. but his character as whole was completely unremarkable and pretty much amounted to some jerk trying to take over the land for no could other than he could.

TheAcidSkull

Where the movie excels, however, is the actions scenes. As someone who's an avid vampire fan, I think I've seen a lot of vampire action to be able to predict what their powers and fighting style would resemble. But even after watching the trailers I really didn't expect them to utilize the bat-control power in an awesome way like this. This is what I came to see in this movie, and on this front it didn't disappoint at all. There were a couple of scenes were I literally said out loud "wow, that's cool", simply because the setting was at perfectly sync with what was happening on the screen. And don't dare to think that the action scenes are mostly about Dracula flying around in the form of multiple bats; there are a handful of other amazing segments, which really show just how skilled and fast Vlad the impaler is.

Dragonborn_CT

The action scenes were good, but they could have been filmed a lot better. The scenes were Dracula takes on a entire army of a thousand men by himself were cool, but due to being shot at dark, they were hard to follow. It doesn't help that Dracula is so ridiculously overpowered that very few enemies, even in large groups barely register, yet it never crosses his mind to pay Mehmed a visit, wipe the f*cking floor with him and return home. Like this, the movie would have been over and much of the later tragedy would have been prevented.

TheAcidSkull

There was one thing that really bothered me throughout the movie. There was a single, yet huge glaring plot hole that I just couldn't get over. Since I can't really spoil this one, lets just say that the plot twist consists of nerfing Dracula in the most ridiculous ways possible.( During his first fight when he became a vampire, Vlad literally demolished a whole army, on his own, without the aid of bats, and you expect me to believe that after that he was worried on beating the turks? Yeah no. To go further, you need to know that Dracula mustn't drink blood for three days or he'll be cursed forever. After 3 days he goes back to normal, so he needs to win the war in 3 days. So, after discerning the turks position, Dracula, instead of just charging in and killing everyone on sight, complains on how he is running out of time. Dude...It's nighttime, you are in full power, and none of these guys can even think fast enough to keep up with you. Why not just finish the job? And there's also this moment where his wife is supposed to die from falling, and Dracula can't catch up to his falling wife because he's too slow. What? He appeared covered create distances in under minutes, and you wanna tell me that he couldn't catch his wife who was 2-3 feet away? Nope, not buying it. )

Dragonborn_CT

Also this is just a something minor complaint, borderline nitpicky if you will, but I feel like the movie was a little butchered? I mean, I look at the first trailer several scenes within it look so different from what happens the movie, while others were totally non-existent as if they were cut out. For example, there is a little glimpse in the trailer showing Dracula ready to bite some random lady on a bed, but she never appears in the movie. Others showcase that his reflection looks distorted, his vampire transformation being different in the final product, and even before the movie came out, there were some leaked information regarding the Master Vampire's true identity. This is possibly the result of the movie being re-edited in order to accommodate a future franchise as already stated by Universal Studios' plans.

Final Rating

TAS

6/10 - In conclusion, despite it's flaws, it's still a fun movie to watch with friends. It's action-packed, cool, fun and overall awesome if you like vampires and Dracula in general.

Caio

7/10 - Dracula was a entertaining movie for what it was, probably won't be the best movie I've seen all year (GotG, Cap 2 and X-Men DoFP still hold that place), but its the best vampire movie I've seen in a long time. I don't regret spending my money on it, if you like vampire movies or a alternate view of Dracula, this is a good watch. If you would prefer to see Dracula's start of darkness and descent into villany, then you might be disappointed.

Thank you guys for reading it ;) Glad to work with TAS, I appreciate all the comments and your opinion in the movie.

Welcome to another segment of...

Its a interesting age we live in: 20 years ago nobody would believe that there would have been superhero movies being popular outside of "nerdy" circles, much less there would have been 2 movies per year, and all of them a financial successes. Because that is pretty much what is going on these days with Marvel Studios. Trying to emulate their success, DC finally put out their tampons and work on their own cinematic universe, having recently announced their complete list of movies in 5 years from now, including a Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, Shazam, a Green Lantern reboot and most surprisingly of all, a Suicide Squad and a Justice League in two parts.

Its not just comic publishers that want a piece of that cake, Sony currently holds the rights to Amazing Spider-Man and plans on making a Black Cat spin off as well as a Sinister Six movie that may or may not be Amazing Spider-Man 3. Not just superheroes getting milked of all its worth: Universal Pictures wants to make a horror cinematic universe with Dracula Untold being the starting piece which will be followed by a Mummy reboot (considering how the movie is doing at the box office, its doubtful that will happen but who knows?), and Sony ALSO has plans to create a Robin Hood Cinematic Universe, of all things. And that is not even counting the next Star Wars trilogy with countless rumors of spin-off movies in the near future.

Wow, this seems like its too good to be true, right? No geek or nerd from 10 or 20 years ago would dream there would have been such cultural relevance would have been possible. It looks as if movie studios realize how big crossover events are a reliable source of income ever since the Avengers made billions in the box office. At some point a question needs to be asked: How does it benefit us, the audience, for every property to be turned into into a sprawling franchise? Does there really have to be the promise of multiple sequels and spin-offs to make a movie worth seeing? Have fans reached a point where they can’t even enjoy a good, solid, standalone adventure ? Or even worse, have they reached the point where they don’t even demand stories that stand on their ownwhen they are supposed to be all little puzzle parts of one big epic saga?

Sure, Marvel has been making a good job with their movies - despite all the build up for Avengers: Age of Ultron, most of the movies released so far managed to retain their own self-contained story (regardless of their quality). Other studios though, not so much. My main beef with Sony's Amazing Spider-Man movies is that they are too ambitious for their own good - they want to tell this over-arching storyline that just one movie can't contain and they have to leave setpieces to build up. The end result? Their movies leave with so many plotlines still hanging and so many questions unanswered and hopes to answer these in the next installment. A similar problem I have with the Hobbit movies being stretched out into a trilogy when it really didn't need to be. All these movies are already 3-hours long, and you just going to make a trilogy out of a book (that while not necessarily tiny) is much smaller than the Lord of the Rings was.

Sequel baiting is nothing new in media and isn't entirely bad either, but we are living in a time were companies just can't help but shove into movies anyways. There were even reports that Dracula Untold was originally meant to be a standalone story too (in spite of being a origin story) by the time the movie was finished and the time the first trailer was released. Then, the studio execs had some several scenes added, some reshot and other scenes cut out entirely after production was done, solely to hop into the shared universe wagon.

Companies are setting up some unrealistic expectations about their products these days, they are certain that everyone is going to love these movies and they can go toe-to-toe with Marvel. If that was the case, Amazing Spider-Man wouldn't have been struggling with the financial results and the mixed reception over the second movie. That is the thing though, in the past, very rarely studios would try out again in case of underperformances or overwhelmingly negative reviews, as that was more or less what prevented Superman Returns from getting another sequel, as DC Comics/Warner lacked the necessary faith in their project. Had Man of Steel being released a decade or two before and the same fallout ensued, you can bet your ass that DC would never have touched Superman again in years. Nowadays, they are just too desperate to be left in the dust and are rushing out their possible plans to rival Marvel Studios, which is worrying fans about the overall quality.

While Marvel Studios is on the top at the moment and has yet to face any serious adversity, I need to remind you that what is good for a company isn't necessarily good for the audience. They already released their financially successful stinkers in the past and their TV spin-off Marvel's Agents of SHIELD hasn't been quite the stuff of legends. But at one moment, creators will get probably lazy to even provide stories with proper beginning, middle and end and fans will get "franchise fatigue" having to wait for long cycles of 1 or 2 years to even see the cliffhanger's resolution. With all that said, its just a hypothetical case and I am not denouncing the excess of shared universes as a bad thing, but its something that we should be on watch out for.

Thank you guys for reading it, I appreciated your comments. What are your views on the recent news?

See ya all next time =P

No matter how far you go, man cannot escape his fate. Who are you? Are you a murderer? Are you a mercenary who turns his back on the innocent? We believe in you! We have faith in you! Remember the deeds you have performed, the labors you have overcome! Are you only the legend, or are you truth behind the legend? Now, tell me, WHO ARE YOU?

Hercules: I AM HERCULES!

There is something tragic (yet unintentionally comic in a very dark way) about two contestants trying to best each other at what they do and somehow both of them fail spectacularly. There were two Hercules movies released this year and both of them were box office disasters for different circumstances. First, there was Legend of Hercules starring Kevin Lutz (from Twilight fame), which was lambasted by both critics and viewers as well as released on January - the official dumping ground for movies. And more recently Hercules starred by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson that was launched on August coincidently around the same time as an movie featuring an talking raccoon and a walking-tree and... I don't think I need to elaborate why this movie failed anyways. So much so it only got here Brazil an month after its initial release, so I decided to review it. Still, its sad since I was genuinely looking up for this movie, that is up until the trailers came along, and my reaction was pretty much a "Ehhhhhh..."

If you've seen only the trailers and ignored pretty much all plot summary of the movie, you would be forgiven for thinking this is an movie based on Hercules' epic labors, as the the videos depict him fighting against mythical creatures like the Nemean Lion, the Erymanthean Boar and the Lernean Hydra. Actually, this is not what the movie is about; the movie takes place after Hercules completed his tasks, but he still hasn't found peace after his family's murder and has nothing else to live for, until he is summoned to the assist the Kingdom of Thrace, which is being assaulted by a rogue warlord and his invading forces and tasked with leading a band of mercenaries and misfits to defend their land.

See, the biggest drawback this movie has is the downplay of its supernatural elements. The most epic scenes with the monsters featured in the trailer are only flashback sequences and depicted as fanciful exaggerations to build up Hercules' legend. Gods are mentioned often but they never appear in the story and the movie glosses over whether Hercules is truly a demigod or a really, really strong but otherwise normal human. At its core, Hercules is a realistic sword and sandal movie like 300 or the Spartacus TV show with human warriors fighting against a big motherf*cker in a lion skin with a club.

Curiously, while it hasn't been made clear by anyone but this movie is really based on a comic series named Hercules: the Thracian Wars, which follows the same realistic formula as described above. One could argue that they can't fault the movie for following the source material, but in the other hand, the filmmakers made no effort to associate itself with it either. Not that there is a problem with a mythical tale being told in a realistic fashion; I was reminded of 2004's King Arthur with Clive Owen, Keira Knighthley and Ioan Gruffud, and I MOSTLY like that movie, as I am not too keen on attempted historical accurate depictions of the Arthurian legend, but that movie possessed some surprisingly good acting and a charismatic cast of characters. Something which unfortunately this movie lacks.

You wouldn't think someone like the Rock wouldn't have an problem playing an character like Hercules, but somehow he feels awfully miscast. He is trying his best to channel the mighty son of Zeus, but he comes across as a wrestler doing a Hercules cosplay than anything else (its most noticeable when he intentionally acts over-the-top during battle scenes). The rest of the cast is passable I guess, you have the Amazon-lady who doesn't take shit, the lovable rogue, the quiet brute who doesn't say much... Oh sh*t I think I just described half the protagonists of Guardians of the Galaxy here, except with none of their charisma. The only character from Hercules' coterie that stands out is Ian McShane's character, a seer who believes he is fated to die through a burning spear. John Hurt holds the position of "big name actor embarrassing himself", albeit not only as much as other actors in previous movies I reviewed. Then we have Princess Megara, played by Irina Shayk, who doesn't appear in the movie outside of flashbacks/dream sequences or any many lines of dialogue. At least she gets a brief "HELLOOO NURSE" moment that makes up for it. Kinda.

As far as action scenes go, they are pretty brutal for a PG-13 movie, but still very much family friendly, not enough to warrant R-Rating. Personally I don't hold the belief that a adult rating automatically makes every movie better *cough* A Good Day to Die Hard *cough*, but if this movie had to appeal to a certain crowd like Spartacus fans, then it would have gone full-blown sex and gruesome violence to make it acceptable. Otherwise. it's very cheesy in the same way as the Scorpion King (which was also starred by Dwayne Johnson). Finally, the movie offers a plot twist, which I won't spoil it for you, but I will say it doesn't necessarily make the story any better or memorable.

Final Rating

4/10 - 2014's Hercules is the definition of meh - not very good, but also not bad enough to rage. It could have been more entertaining if it was all about his 12 Labours, so at the very least, loads of people wouldn't feel like they were lied to by the impressive trailers. As it stands, its a very forgettable flick to sit through and very hard to recommend even to the most hardcore fans of fantasy shlock. Outside of Irina Shayk's ass, I'd be hard pressed to name anything remarkable about it.

Thank you guys for reading it. I hope you enjoyed it and don't forget to comment and share your opinion. I'd like to inform that my Dracula Untold review won't come out immediately for a couple of reasons; first off, the movie will only be released in Brazil at the end of October (to coincide with an Halloween release) and second, I agreed to review the movie along with @TheAcidSkull, but he is taking a leave from the site, so I will wait his return. Until then, I have a special vampire review planned in to make up for it.

I appreciate your understanding, see ya next time :P

After five years on the East Coast, it was time to go home...

Hey guys, it has been a long time since I reviewed an video game (or anything not related to vampires for that matter), so I think I should probably talk about one of my favorite classic ones of all time. If you are familiar with Grand Theft Auto, two things comes to mind: open world crime game and controversy. True to that, GTA has never been an stranger to the latter category and has been received with hell of love by gamers and just like any other game, this was pretty much San Andreas' reception. Due to combining all the best elements from previous games like huge sandbox, gang respect, plethora of vehicles and improve on several other aspects, it was considered the best one in the series hands down and setting up the standard for which every open world game that would come afterwards should be measured. With so many open world games of quality released nowadays, I decided to dig up this old gem and reviewed by current standards to see how well it holds up.

Summary

Note: this game takes place before any of the previous installments (notice how there is no number in the title) with some of their main characters featuring in an cameo and making it more or less an prequel, except the story and characters stand in its own right.

Set in 1991, former gang member Carl "CJ" Johnson returns to his home in Los Santos (a fictional version of Los Angeles) to bury his recently murdered mother Beverly. Having spent 5 years in the east coast, cleaning up his acts and hoping to leave his past behind, he is thrust back into it when he witness his hood - the Grove Street - an shadow of its former glory and absolutely estranged from his own family members. He aims to restore it back to power, being opposed by their rival gangs like the Ballas and the Vagos, that have grown more powerful due to drugs trade, some corrupt Grove member who also wants an slice of that cake and the C.R.A.S.H. Police Division, who blackmails CJ by placing some implicating evidence. He will do anything to overcome these obstacles to rise above his station and more importantly, find an place for himself.

Plot and Characters

At first glance, the story is nothing too deep or overly satirical like works that Rockstar would develop later, but its well presented in a way that keeps you engaged and you may find yourself already familiar the characters. The central theme belying the focus of gang warfare is that how much you want to move up in life and abandon your roots or even your principles for that. Loyalty, betrayal and revenge drive up the theme. It's all these little things that the game don't bash your head with it, that you can notice if you are willing to look up beyond for what it is.

CJ is the first attempt at an more likable protagonist, at least compared to his predecessors, depicted as an affable, generally nice individual with an sympathetic past, even if his motives are less than heroic. Unfortunately, his personality didn't go well with most audiences, since many criticized the complete contrast between cutscenes and gameplay, since no matter how likable the story tries to present him, there is nothing stopping the player from going on a murdering rampage. You see, previous protagonists in GTA didn't have this problem; Tommy Vercetti was established to be an psychopath that would kill you for looking at him the wrong way and Claude was an blank slate with no personality at all.

The supporting characters are really great and the dialogue has some great lines. Ryder, Big Smoke and Mike Toreno are among the most hilarious ones. The game's main villain Officer Tenpenny is an delightful corrupt piece-of-sh*t that you just love to hate and can't wait to gun down. Some characters don't fare better than others unfortunately, like Sweet, CJ's older brother, who still keeps giving him a lot of sh*t over abandoning his roots and never moves past this scthick, not even when CJ makes an name for himself and becomes more or less famous.

Gameplay

What there is to say about an third-person open world crime sandbox that you probably don't already know at this point? Oh well, I might as well describe how the gameplay aspects feel. Shooting is nice, even if the cover doesn't really do much and alto-targeting can be an pain, since you can't move from enemy to enemy very easily. Driving feels solid, although vehicles are a lot more fragile than you think they are - it takes surprisingly small effort to damage them to the point they will explode and even have them flip upside down and this includes vehicles like bicycles too because f*ck you. Police officers can be relentless at first glance as they will not stop pursuing with an 3-star rating from up, and if you are on foot, they can spawn from virtually everywhere, but this could have been easily solved by driving to an Sprain & Paint shop which changes your car's painting or just visiting your safehouse to save the game, advancing the time in 6 hours.

San Andreas offers an good mission variety with some chasing, drive-bys and some stealth sequences, although one must be warned that at that point in the series, it was considered an GTA tradition to not have checkpoints under absolute any circumstances. If you failed an mission, you had to start it all over again - that is it. If you die or get arrested in or out of missions, you have your weapons removed along with some of your money. And make no mistake this game is actually quite hard, but for the wrong reasons. Flying missions for example are awful due to the stiff controls, but thankfully they don't appear until much later in the game. An particularly infamous mission called "The Wrong Side of the Tracks" has you driving an motocycle alongside an moving train while your friend Big Smoke shoots at some rival gang members on top of the train. You have to ride at an the perfect position just so that Smoke can fire at them, since he is an terrible shot and can only hit one at the time. Be ready to hear "All you had to do is follow the goddamn train, CJ".

For an hard game as this, it was surprisingly quite easy to make money . You see, the first few missions rewards you with respect and a not too substantial amounts of cash, but if you decide to jack an firefighter truck and press a button to start an side mission where you have to put out fires under an time limit, you can earn lots amounts of money as with each fire put down, your rewards increases. And before the first act ends, an gang territory mechanic is introduced requiring CJ to take over some enemy territory by attacking some enemies and then taking it over for the grove, earning some money and revenue. Trust me you are going to need every money you make, since you have to re-stash all ammo and body armor you have or replace what you lost if you were wasted/busted.

The map is certainly colossal as it includes three major land sections including urban areas and country sides, with plenty of collectibles to find as well as some small activities that can be done for their own sake like visiting the bar, casinos, basketball fiels and so on. Actually it can be considered too big since in order to see anything you want to, you have to do a lot of tedious driving, as fast travel wasn't created at this point yet. However, its not like the whole map is open to you from the beginning, since there are road blocks preventing you from going to other regions until the plots call for it. Try to bypass them and you will have an 4-wanted level rating with some angry as f*ck cops breathing down your neck. Its the game's nice way of saying "You are straying too far from where we want to. Get back before we end you!"Oh yeah, this might be disingenuous to bring up, but this was the first game to allow the character to swim. Before San Andreas, you would drown if you happen to touch an neck-deep body of water.

Also RPG elements are introduced including stuff like Driving, Fat, Fitness, Stamina, Gang Leadership, but most of these stats offer little change in gameplay and they require a lot of grinding to see any visible results. You want to get really buff? You better bust yourself in the gym as much as your body can take. You can even get fat by eating like a pig, even if eating too much will make you puke. Melee combat get some nice evolutions, as you can learn different schools and even take martial arts. Unfortunately these things are ultimately useless, since you seldom find enemies willing to engage in melee and even if some moves can kill in one hit if pulled off correctly, why would you ever need to use them if you have several weapons that can do just that? Because its cool, that is why.

An final word of advice. Cheat codes are insanely fun and definitely make the combat much easier after so many frustration attempts, however be warned that they cause some serious glitchs and bugs on the save file they are used as they can prevent from certain missions of being completed along with countless negative effects. At really best, trying to use some cheats like health and armor won't have effect during missions or you will fail instantly if you type them. If you want to apply the more outlandish type of cheat code or the ones that can't be turned off, better use it on a another safe file than what you are currently using just in case and then you can go wild.

Visual and Sound Effects

Even for the time they were released, graphics are just average - they aren't necessarily bad, but nothing groundbreaking. Stones and trees textures look really grainy and almost if made from paper. The character models looked very plastic, animations were stiff outside of cutscenes, faces were unable to convey emotion and there was always something about characters' hands, their finger seemed to be glued all together. Thankfully the voice acting and the good writing makes up for the limited graphics, and damn do they have some good ones here. Samuel L. Jackson and JAMES WOODS certainly do not get wasted here and make some hilarious deliveries. The radio stations are quite alright to listen, even if I just listen to Radio Los Santos the most, as they are the ones with music that fitted the setting the better, and the rest are just meh.

Final Rating

7/10 - It was quite interesting to see how this game fares today once you remove the nostalgia filter. Sure, many of the flaws are due to limitations given the time it was made rather than downright laziness, but this game still retains some of its charm and fun aspects which makes it an classic. Its worth checking out for any open-world fan, but beware of all the warnings made here.

Thank you guys for reading it. I will see if I can get my reviews back on track and do a lot more of these more frequently. I hope you guys enjoy it and don't forget to share your opinion in the comments. See ya next time =P

WARNING: THIS RANT BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS

Welcome to another segment of...

So, last Sunday HBO's TV series TRUE BLOOD aired it series finale, bringing to an end to ITS 7 seasons-long run. Reactions had being consistently negative, as it was with the general opinion of the last season, being criticized for being weak and dull; so much so that in the actual thread discussion on ComicVine was more about Penny Dreadful (a much better show) than True Blood and it has never been bumped again after the first episode. I've actually sat through this entire season out of morbid fascination and just to see how this trainwreck is supposed to end. At this point, I wonder if anyone still cares about the show anymore, but now looking back, it became more apparent than ever that True Blood was not always that good. Often hyped up as Twilight for adults, with sex, nudity and violence. An rather hilariously clueless claim I might say, since dark and edgy stuff don't necessarily mean its mature, nor its better. Doesn't matter your story has sex, nudity and violence, an adult-directed Twilight is still as bad so long as it has Twilight-level of writing and characters.

Back when it was starting out, vampires had once again become popular thanks to Twilight, which leaded the adaptation of many vampire novels to the TV and the big screen. One of these novels was "The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries" by Charlotte Harris, which was an supernatural romance/detective series that predated Twilight by 4 years and was set on an alternate universe which vampires are not only real, but they had revealed their existence to humans with the creation of a synthetic blood that allows them to coexist with humans since they don't have to drink human's blood anymore.

The plot followed Sookie Stackhouse, an waitress from small Louisiana town of Bon Temps, that possess the strange ability to hear other people's thoughts which makes life a little problematic at times. However, her life changes drastically when she meets for a vampire for the first time. His name is Bill Compton and he used to live in Bon Temps a hundred years ago. She finds out that unlike humans, she can't hear his thoughts, which makes her instantly attracted to him. The two of them fall in love and through Bill, she finds herself entering the world of supernatural creatures as well discovering more about her true nature, that she is in truth, an fairy princess, descended from the King of Fae himself, capable of also emitting light from her hands and her blood can make vampires walk under daylight. The world building goes beyond Bon Temps and we learn an much bigger picture that makes that small town an pimple on a paper sheet. There are not only vampires, but werewolves, shapeshifters, fairies and demigods of immense power sharing the same universe.

Unlike its sister HBO series Game of Thrones, True Blood is based very, very loosely in its source material, with plot straying drastically from what happens in the novels with characters altered as well as some new storylines added that were not originally present. Granted I never read the original books, so I can't say how they hold up in quality, but this gives can give flexibility to write more without being bound by the source material, unfortunately True Blood has an very serious problem with wasting potential all the time, building up characters that will play some important later on or introducing interesting storylines that don't meet an pay off because they are resolved quickly or dropped off without ceremony. I could be here listing off examples, but I am afraid I don't have time and nor the people who haven't seen the show would understand, so I will just give an specific instance. Season 5 has Bill going evil and joining up with Vampire Authority, the seasonal big bads. By the end, when every Authority member is either dead or defected, he is the last one standing and he consumes an vial containing the essence of the vampire goddess Lilith. The last we see of him is him turning into said deity avatar in front of Sookie, this is literally the way the season ended. We are all expecting that sh*t to turn epic in the next season, right? I mean, it would have been just like the ending to the first Blade movie, if La Magra ran amok over the world.

One year later, comes Season 6, and Bill sits on his ass, doing absolutely nothing villain-worthy. The season's big bad position is instead split between an an human politician proposing to exterminate vampires completely and an vampire that was also set up as an great threat on previous seasons, but as it turns out he is just ANOTHER dude who wants to f**k Sookie's magical vagina. And just to put the cherry on the cake, Bill returns to normal and Lilith is gone as if it never happened. Quite an epic fail, don't you think? This can be just an thing that comes down from personal taste and it can understood since many writers had abandoned and picked up the series so many times which can obviously lead to an mess. Interestingly, it was around that period where fans believed the series jumped the shark for them, The show managed to get Christopher Meloni from the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, dude got an high billing and the fanbase were excited to see him. And what do the screenwriters do? Kill him off in the most abrupt way, possibly because they couldn't figure out what to do with him.

More often than not, Sookie has been criticized for being the most uniniteresting character in the whole series, and in all fairness she is not as bad as Bella Swan, as the series progressed, she often felt more and more detached to whatever else was happening in the plot that was progressed by characters like fan-favorite Eric Northman, the 1000-year old vampire viking that also gets an piece of her at some point later on. Even after she gets her superpowers, she still is liable to get into danger and having one of her boyfriends to bail her out of it.

I won't lie and say that the lore is a freaking mess. Quite the contrary, I quite dig that there are more supernatural things than vampires in this world since I am a fan of the Fantasy Kitchen Sink trope myself, and the set up is rather brilliant. At first glance, these vampires look pretty alright, but they are sadly ruined due to show's inability to keep an consistent mythos. The process of siring an new vampire is most basic stuff that any expert would know: draining an victim almost completely and then replaces their blood with a bit of sire's own to turn them. Yet I lost count of the times where humans were almost killed and had to be revived with vampire blood to survive without becoming vampires in the process. In this setting, vampire blood is also an powerful substance that can heal injuries and grant visions to any person, instead of turning people into an ghoul, if not another vampire like in any other setting. Like, I don't care if they require being buried just so that the transformation is completed, Interview with a Vampire didn't need such formalities.

Just like with the X-Men comics, one of the general themes is that vampirism is used as an metaphor for oppressed minorities, specially LGBT people with related terms such as "coming out of the coffin" and "GOD HATES FANGS" being about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. The message that "Vampires are People Too" falls flat on its face for a number of reasons.

• Almost all of them are cold-blooded killers. Before TruBlood was made, at some point they had to murder people to survive. Not even the most noble of them such as Bill, Jessica or Godric were above deliberate killing. And that is not counting the ones that actually take delight in maiming, torturing and raping their victims like Franklin, or Russell Edginton who (I swear I am not making this up) "gets his dick hard with gorging on human blood".
• They view humans as property. Sookie is kept relatively "safe" because Bill says she belongs to him and she agrees to go along with him. F*ck, I don't even want to think about how others would fare on abusive relationships.
• Despite claiming they want to be integrated to society, the laws of men mean nothing to them and they still maintain their own parallels system of government with Kings and Queens empowered to enforce their own rules. In addition to this, many of them secretly dine on human blood, instead of TrueBlood since they find the taste revolting.
• Vampires can mind-control and convert others, either voluntarily or against their will. Obviously, minorities can't do that in real life, but the show is playing up on that fear-mongering unpleasant implication about "catching up the gay".

In short, the many fears that people have against vampires is legitimate, not just the result of ignorant prejudice like in real life. It's not also helped by the human villains having sympathetic backstories (Steve Newlie and Governor Truman both lost loved ones to vampires, while Antonia Logrado was raped and burned on a stake) despite the show trying its hardest to paint them as genocidal assholes for wanting revenge. I dare even say that if deposited in any setting, specifically one like the Blade movies, they would have counted as one of the good guys. You know you are watching an bad story when the bigoted, fundamentalists strawmen with strong Nazi-overtones make more sense than the "heroes".

I think one thing that others will probably agree is the outstanding over-the-top acting and sometimes OUTRAGEOUSLY CRINGE WORTHY dialogue. In fact, I've been asking the opinion of friends who never seem the show themselves to see what they think of it, and their reactions couldn't have been more expected. The screenwriters seem to cram as many 2edgy4u lines, coupled with loads of profanity wether if its forced or not. I am not exactly an prude when it comes to swearing, (hell this show has pently of sex and violence, why would I EVER complain about swear words?!?!), but the way its delivered and written in this show seems so forced and unnatural, instead of trying to sound mature they come accross as juvenile, which incidentaly its also an problem I have with Garth Ennis' popular writing style. Just to illustrate this, there is an actual villain gang in the show called the F*ck You Crew. I wish I was making that up. Behold the acting that will go down to history...

Though not necessarily an black hole that combined all the issues from the show and were amped up the 11th degree, Season 7 was deemed as an absolute let-down by fans and critics alike, which is ironic since screenwriters were trying to get the series "back from its roots" i.e. focusing on BEEHL and SOOKEH once more, believing it has strayed since their jump the shark moment. The thing is, despite supposing to be the final season, it didn't felt like things were coming to an close up, instead everything was just going through the motions with people doing stuff. You could say the finale had no big bad, and without an overarching villain, there is no conflict.

Season 1: Drew Marshall, an serial killer that targeted women who slept with vampires.

Season 2: the Fellowship of the Sun and Maryann the Maenad.

Season 3: Russell Edginton, the Vampire King of Louisiana.

Season 4: Marnie Stonebrooke, an witch possessed with an evil spirit out to destroy all vampires.

Season 5: The Vampire Authority headed by Salome Agrippa, who believes they should have ruled over the humans.

Season 6: Governor Burrell and Warlow.

And how about Season 7? The closest thing we had to an climatic villain they was some Yakuza guy that was merely tangentially related to the plot only showed up halfway through and is (surprise!!) dispatched within the first 10 minutes of the finale no less. We had an disgruntled dentist who formed an mob to kill off any supernaturals, but he doesn't come nowhere near close to counting as an threat. There was also some psycho-jealous vampire chick that tried taking revenge against her boyfriend for cheating on her, but she was barely any important to the story. Really, the main story arc only took 4 episodes with them drawing out its conclusion as long as possible.

So there you have it, folks. I don't know if you will still hear it how True Blood's series finale will still be an disappointment. I find hard to believe that people will still be talking about the series at all by the end of the year. If anything else, True Blood was following an trend that got started with Twilight and has since wrapped up once that franchise was done. I mean taken on its own merit, this is an very silly series that can probably be enjoyed on a "so bad its good" level, which explains why it has been so popular. It's definitely guilty-pleasure material right here, it has hammy acting, unintentionally hilarity and camp all around for you snarkers to enjoy. And I will say there has been plenty of moments I genuinely enjoyed at some point or another, but still nothing can really justify wha an massive letdown this wrap up was specially to the fans who had suffered through after it had jumped the shark.

I hope you guys enjoyed my completely rambling, biased-fueled blog rant. Ever seen True Blood yourselfes. What did you think of it? Man, I've been writing about vampires lately, haven't I?

Welcome my friends and fellow Viners to another segment of...

Today we shall tackle another video game related controversy in larger detail which I covered up in my Assassin's Creed Unity preview blog and I promised I would do an separate one in time.

If you may recall my Assassin's Creed Unity preview blog, I addressed about the lack of female characters in Co-Op in which I criticized Ubisoft's reasoning in technical details. Likewise, another Ubisoft upcoming title Far Cry 4 caught some flak as well for the lack of female characters in multiplayer (although not compared to the alleged "racism" in that game). Both games were to feature playable females at some point but they were scrapped in the last minute in order to not exceed their own costs, which just screams "We don't want to do any work".

I won't dwell too much on Ubisoft 's bullsh&t I already did that in my other blog and I won't further beat that horse like everyone did, besides it certainly was not the first company to being accused of sexism when last year, Rockstar had three male POVs on Grand Theft Auto V and no female one (although you could be an female in Multiplayer at least that). And when you get down to it, it's more of product of laziness than actual misogyny, since the Co-Op characters are pretty much the same one, instead of their own independent entities (which bothers me to no end). At the same time, the side-effect is something that come across as sexism, as they didn't bother to explore different POVs, including that of women. There is an unspoken and disturbing tendency for several publishers to avoid having playable female characters under any cost. 2013's Remember Me was such game, whose developer Jean-Max Morris, lamented the fact he had fight with tooth and nail to have Nilin as the main protagonist with her own life and a relationship with an male character. As he recounts what people had told him:

“We had some [prospective publishers] that said, ‘Well, we don’t want to publish it because that’s not going to succeed. You can’t have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that.’ …We wanted to be able to tease on Nilin’s private life, and that means for instance, at one point, we wanted a scene where she was kissing a guy,” Morris said. “We had people tell us, ‘You can’t make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game, that’s going to feel awkward.’ I’m like, ‘If you think like that, there’s no way the medium’s going to mature.’ There’s a level of immersion that you need to be at, but it’s not like your sexual orientation is being questioned by playing a game. I don’t know, that’s extremely weird to me.”

Sadly, despite Morris' best efforts, the game didn't sold very well and was slammed by the Metacritic reviewers. Regardless of the games' success or not, these people' sexist and homophobic remarks shows how much this industry is still backwards. Executives seem to think that nobody really wants to see females outside of supporting roles, because their target audiences "can't see themselves" in character that is not like them. Which is always there has being a prevalence of monochromatic gun-bros, white generic American males with one-dimensional personalities so that their players can easily put themselves as them.

There is absolutely no denying that there are great and memorable video game heroines such as Lara Croft, Samus Aran, Jill Valentine, Bayonetta, Amateratsu and so forth. Unfortunately, its also an sad truth that games with leading ladies don't make much profit for whatever reason, even ones that already become popular. Look no further than the already mentioned Bayonetta, an much loved beat 'em up/hack 'n slash game that had its own following, and if it had only managed to live up to its financial expectations, theny maybe today, its sequel wouldn't have to become an WiiU exclusive and be available for everybody. Believe it or not, the 2013's Tomb Raider reboot was this close to being an financial bomb, despite being a success among critics and fans, Square Enix reported that the game still failed to met their expectations (though, non e was the story or Lara Croft's fault, but rather the bloated budget into making a new engine and unnecessary features such as multiplayer). Thankfully, the reboot's popularity manage to secure an future with an upcoming sequel in the makings.

Even so if the most popular female icons are having trouble keeping up, then I weep for the newcomers. You'd think that in this male-dominated industry which the most prevalent belief that sex sells, they would cash in on the third-person seductresses, you know the impossibly curvy and busty heroines, implausibly and impractically dressed, trying to cash in the sex appeal as much as possible (as an old saying goes "If I might stare to an ass all day, it might be an sexy one"). Yet not even those seem to work either. I mean, does anyone remember BloodRayne, Red Ninja: End of Honor, X-Blades/Blades of Time, Bullet Witch being that much of a success? It seems like doesn't matter if they are realistic, objectified and idealized, the AAA industry simply doesn't care about females. PERIOD.

One possible reasoning behind this mentality is that majority of these games in recent years that happened to have playable females, such as Metroid: Other M, Amy and Final Fantasy XIII, were panned by both critics and audience. Somehow, companies perceived this as "players don't like playing with girls" rather than the actual games' questionable quality. Those games didn't suck because there were female protagonists in it, they sucked because they really f*cking sucked. Though the prevalence of males has always being a thing, even with the recent rising of female gamers and despite their claims to appeal to an wider audience, we all know they just want the same audience they always had, only in bigger number. Why you think that focus groups of 12-year old boys are still used to this day? Who the f*ck cares for what guys like Morris had to say about we maturing as an form of art? (The last bit was sarcasm...)

It's an very serious issue and one too complex to come up with an answer how to solve it. This is certainly not an exclusive problem to video games, as superhero movie aren't so different and has a long story of failures and mess ups to their history. I find really amusing that while several companies had being struggling or outright neglected having heroines in their games, over the course of two years Nintendo, which every armchair analyst has being saying to be with one feet in the grave, managed to have playable women in every single one of the games they released. Not to mention the upcoming release of Bayonetta 2 and Hyrule Warriors, the former bringing back the eponymous popular lady from the previous generation and the latter having a huge female cast - Sure, Link is still the hero like he always is but, hell, look at how many girls, ladies and babes the roster has (Zelda, Impa and Midna being among the playable characters just to name a few) they even managed to have an female villain in the story (something unusual for Legend of Zelda games). And they all managed to do that with much less money and resources than Ubisoft. Ooh I guess somebody' ass got schooled.

Thank you guys for reading it. I hope you enjoyed this blog and I'd like to hear how you feel about this effect in gaming. Did you notice that before or is it the first time you hear about it. I'd like to share your own opinions in the comment section. See ya next time =P

For those interested into the further subject, I recommend watching Jim Sterling's opinion, from the Escapist fame, on it.

Welcome my friends and fellow Viners to another segment of...

Today we shall tackle another video game related controversy in larger detail which I covered up in my Assassin's Creed Unity preview blog and I promised I would do an separate one in time.

If you may recall my Assassin's Creed Unity preview blog, I addressed about the lack of female characters in Co-Op in which I criticized Ubisoft's reasoning in technical details. Likewise, another Ubisoft upcoming title Far Cry 4 caught some flak as well for the lack of female characters in multiplayer (although not compared to the alleged "racism" in that game). Both games were to feature playable females at some point but they were scrapped in the last minute in order to not exceed their own costs, which just screams "We don't want to do any work".

I won't dwell too much on Ubisoft 's bullsh&t I already did that in my other blog and I won't further beat that horse like everyone did, besides it certainly was not the first company to being accused of sexism when last year, Rockstar had three male POVs on Grand Theft Auto V and no female one (although you could be an female in Multiplayer at least that). And when you get down to it, it's more of product of laziness than actual misogyny, since the Co-Op characters are pretty much the same one, instead of their own independent entities (which bothers me to no end). At the same time, the side-effect is something that come across as sexism, as they didn't bother to explore different POVs, including that of women. There is an unspoken and disturbing tendency for several publishers to avoid having playable female characters under any cost. 2013's Remember Me was such game, whose developer Jean-Max Morris, lamented the fact he had fight with tooth and nail to have Nilin as the main protagonist with her own life and a relationship with an male character. As he recounts what people had told him:

“We had some [prospective publishers] that said, ‘Well, we don’t want to publish it because that’s not going to succeed. You can’t have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that.’ …We wanted to be able to tease on Nilin’s private life, and that means for instance, at one point, we wanted a scene where she was kissing a guy,” Morris said. “We had people tell us, ‘You can’t make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game, that’s going to feel awkward.’ I’m like, ‘If you think like that, there’s no way the medium’s going to mature.’ There’s a level of immersion that you need to be at, but it’s not like your sexual orientation is being questioned by playing a game. I don’t know, that’s extremely weird to me.”

Sadly, despite Morris' best efforts, the game didn't sold very well and was slammed by the Metacritic reviewers. Regardless of the games' success or not, these people' sexist and homophobic remarks shows how much this industry is still backwards. Executives seem to think that nobody really wants to see females outside of supporting roles, because their target audiences "can't see themselves" in character that is not like them. Which is always there has being a prevalence of monochromatic gun-bros, white generic American males with one-dimensional personalities so that their players can easily put themselves as them.

There is absolutely no denying that there are great and memorable video game heroines such as Lara Croft, Samus Aran, Jill Valentine, Bayonetta, Amateratsu and so forth. Unfortunately, its also an sad truth that games with leading ladies don't make much profit for whatever reason, even ones that become popular. Look no further than the already mentioned Bayonetta, an much loved beat 'em up/hack 'n slash game that had its own following, and if it had only managed to live up to its financial expectations, they maybe today, its sequel wouldn't have to become an WiiU exclusive and be available for everybody. Believe it or not, the 2013's Tomb Raider reboot was this close to being an financial bomb, despite being a success among critics and fans, Square Enix reported that the game still failed to met their expectations (though, non e was the story or Lara Croft's fault, but rather the bloated budget into making a new engine and unnecessary features such as multiplayer). Thankfully, the reboot's popularity manage to secure an future with an upcoming sequel in the makings.

Even so if the most popular female icons are having trouble keeping up, then I weep for the newcomers. You'd think that in this male-dominated industry which the most prevalent belief that sex sells, they would cash in on the third-person seductresses, you know the impossibly curvy and busty heroines, implausibly and impractically dressed, trying to cash in the sex appeal as much as possible (as an old saying goes "If I might stare to an ass all day, it might be an sexy one"). Yet not even those seem to work either. I mean, does anyone remember BloodRayne, Red Ninja: End of Honor, X-Blades/Blades of Time, Bullet Witch being that much of a success? It seems like doesn't matter if they are realistic, objectified and idealized, the AAA industry simply doesn't care about females. PERIOD.

One possible reasoning behind this mentality is that majority of these games in recent years that happened to have playable females, such as Metroid: Other M, Amy and Final Fantasy XIII, were panned by both critics and audience. Somehow, companies perceived this as "players don't like playing with girls" rather than the actual games' questionable quality. Those games didn't suck because there were female protagonists in it, they sucked because they really f*cking sucked. Though the prevalence of males has always being a thing, even with the recent rising of female gamers and despite their claims to appeal to an wider audience, we all know they just want the same audience they always had, only in bigger number. Why you think that focus groups of 12-year old boys are still used to this day? Who the f*ck cares for what guys like Morris had to say about we maturing as an form of art? (The last bit was sarcasm...)

It's an very serious issue and one too complex to come up with an answer how to solve it. This is certainly not an exclusive problem to video games, as superhero movie aren't so different and has a long story of failures and mess ups to their history. I find really amusing that while several companies had being struggling or outright neglected having heroines in their games, over the course of two years Nintendo, which every armchair analyst has being saying to be with one feet in the grave, managed to have playable women in every single one of the games they released. Not to mention the upcoming release of Bayonetta 2 and Hyrule Warriors, the former bringing back the eponymous popular lady from the previous generation and the latter having a huge female cast - Sure, Link is still the hero like he always is but, hell, look at how many girls, ladies and babes the roster has (Zelda, Impa and Midna being among the playable characters) they even managed to have an female villain in the story (something unusual for Legend of Zelda games). And they all managed to do that with much less money and resources than Ubisoft. Ooh I guess somebody' ass got schooled.

Thank you guys for reading it. I hope you enjoyed this blog and I'd like to hear how you feel about this effect in gaming. Did you notice that before or is it the first time you hear about it. I'd like to share your own opinions in the comment section. See ya next time =P

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMNAAAAAAAAAATIOOOOOON

- Catchphrase of every vampire ever.

It's not every time an Viner reachs 20.000 posts, so just like I did with my 10K Post Review, I'd like to celebrate this special occasion with a more... unusual subject (for a lack of a better term). But before we dig into our subject, let's talk about Brazilian television for a moment.

Outside of exported movies, shows and animated cartoons that are aired in Brazil, a few years back, native television was pretty dull in my humble opinion; between their sh**ty reality shows, soccer matches, sappy soap-operas among other stuff, compared to other program I grew up with that were foreign in nature, those seem pretty stale. Thankfully in recent years Brazilian TV has being getting a lot more varied, but no matter what I may feel, soap-operas in particular (or as they are called telenovelas) play an important part of not just television networks, but of our culture as well, rivaling the likes of Mexican soap operas. Though they offered different settings and themes for each soap-opera, they are noted had cliched plots and characters to the point they were interchangeable between other series. With that said, some of these were absolute smash hitters, in particular the ones from the 9PM time slot, and audience points go through the roof.

Back in 2002, I was 10 years old, Brazil won the World Cup against Germany (something which would haunt us many years later .___.), Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was elected President and the show Big Brother was at its peak. Despite all that, Globo's telenovelas weren't doing so well for whatever reason. Their most successful ones were starting to lose fuel, while many of their didn't live up to network's expectations. Unfortunately one of them was Beijo do Vampiro, which is Portuguese for "Vampire's Kiss" written by Antonia Calmon which aired in the 7PM time slot and ran from August 2002 to May 2003 - an rather unusual type of soap opera that delved into the supernatural, instead of exploring more common themes like everyday lives or hammy, over-the-top family dramas.

We begin our story in the XII Century, where the beautiful Princess Cecilia is meant to marry Count Rogerio, her one true love. Unfortunately, their union is ruined with the coming of Boris Vladescu, the Supreme Vampire that covets the princess for himself and intends to make her his bride. He desires to generate a son and heir - the most powerful vampire in existence that will carrying on his legacy. After having her family and beloved slaughtered by Boris and refusing to accept her terrible fate of carrying his spawn, Cecilia decides she'd prefer be dead than damned and throws herself from an high tower before his eyes.

Turns out this is was an horror tale narrated by our hero Zeca, an vampire-obsessed teenager that is telling to his little brother and sister during modern times. After scaring the crap out of his sibilings he is scolded by his parents Livia and Roberto who assures their kids that vampires are not real. They are unaware that Boris is actually quite real and has being secretly watching over them for two reasons: 1. Livia is actually Cecilia's reincarnation from the past (as well as Roberto being Rogerio's) and after 800 years, he still desires her 2. And Zeca is not really their son... He is actually Boris'. You see in the past, he married an female vampire called Mina de Montmatre, but she was unable to give any birth to the child he wanted. So he had a fling with an human woman gave birth to their son Atilla (Zeca's original name) but she died during childbirth. To protect his son from Mina's ire, Boris discovered Livia and Roberto had a son of their own, which he switched with his, leaving him to be raised as their child and left their true son in an orphanage.

Boris arranges for Roberto to die during an airplane crash and get rid of the competition for Livia's affection. This very act puts the family in deep sh*t since as they are now severely indebted and forced to move on from their house and live with Livia's mother Zoroastra in the fictional town of Maramores with Boris not too far away, trying to ensure Zeca will embrace his role as his heir, with his vampire nature awakening when he comes of age. Other vampires are also gathering to the town, among them Mina and Boris' lieutenant Victor Vitorio, who have their own secret agendas which will shake Maramores down a lot and change forever Zeca and his family's lives.

If anything else, the colorful cast is what made the show. Let's start with our protagonists; Zeca is an hero in a more traditional sense, he is kind, devoted to his family, willing to protect his loved ones and unlike so many vampire protagonists, he wasn't whiny about his undead condition nor considered himself cursed for most of the time. Quite the contrary, he once used his powers to drive off some bullies that were harassing his younger brother, the only thing he loathed was his father but over the course of the series, he learns to respect and eventually forgive him. On the other hand, he can come across as an Marty Stu in the eyes of some viewers - he is more powerful than vampires older than he is (including his dad, who is pretty much king of all vampires) he can pull some inexplicable powers, such as making Mina grow old, suffers almost none of the typical weaknesses such as sunlight and after getting into Heaven's good graces, is allowed to stay within holy ground.

Boris in the other hand is more a more complex character, serving as both the villain protagonist (he gets a huge amount of POV) and the main antagonist (75% of the terrible things happening in the plot were result of his actions, directly or not). He still displayed some redeeming qualities such as genuine love for his son and wants to ensure he will embrace his legacy because the vampire race is dwindling and he wants to prevent that from happening by any cost.

There were plenty of other fun characters like the clumsy vampire hunter Galileo Van Burger, who belongs to a family who tried to kill Boris in the past, but his ancestor died due to an heart attack, while confronting the Supreme Vampire. He is driven to destroy Boris and Mina, specially the latter after she turned his own son into a vampire (albeit he is still living with his dad and seems fine with his condition). Despite his own incompetence, he is pretty likable and manages to do some outstanding feats by sheer accident such as killing off Count facking Dracula.

Oh yeah, I forgot Dracula makes an very brief appearence being held as king of all vampires, which is confusing since I believed Boris was (consistency was never this show's strength). He is staked by accident by Galileo, who is actually targetting another vampire and his death actually kicks off a major development in the plot, since Boris' vampire enemies seek Dracula's magical ring to use it against him. Ironically, Galileo's original target was an pretty much a grunt in the vampire hierarchy.

And how could I not mention about the ladies. Hot, cute and beautiful ladies everywhere!!! Livia (played by Flavia Alessandra) is pretty smoking hot, no wonder she has so many men flocking . Among the vampires, we have Mina, Lara and even Marta Morta, as well as Pandora, Mina's dhampyr daughter. And those are just the ones that come to mind, there is absolutely no shortage of beautiful ladies in this story.

Probably the most divisive thing in the show was an character introduced near the end, Nosferatu the Terrible, Boris' vampire rival that aimed to take his place as Supreme Vampire and take Dracula's ring for himself. While the performance displayed by his actor Ney Latorraca was hilarious, he was only meant to be an guest appearance/comic relief until the writers decided, he would become an regular character and eventually the main villain through the final weeks. (possibly because Boris was going to soft to be anymore villainous). His new role seemed a bit shoehorned in, since he has no back story, no genuine motivation and he only appears to hijack Boris's position, not helped that he felt more like an buffoon with an overblown sense of himself that never gets to show how much of an legit threat he is.

Oh yeah, we also learn what happened to Livia's true son Renato, is introduced much later as an street urchin and is reunited with his family. Yeah, whatever...

These vampires are classical as you can possibly get: they have sharp fangs, red/green/golden eyes (t varies from vampire to vampire), can turn into bats, hypnotize people, are vulnerable to crosses, garlic, stakes, holy artifacts, sleep in coffins and etc. As a plus, they were also able to perform magic powers such as teleportation, telekinisis, pyrokinisis and among others. But make no mistake, these are family-friendly vampires so don't expect too much blood from their feedings or anything like that. In fact, they don't need blood to survive, they can drink if they feel like it and can eat normal food. These vampires are also capable of having children themselves (though its noted that their birth rates are extremely low and they will soon die out). Curiously, if you manage to kill an vampire sire, all of the vampires they turned (as well as their subsequent progeny) will go back to normal... This raises so many questions about incosistency, but I am afraid won't go too deep into them out to not derail my own review.

Vampires were not the only supernatural creatures to be featured; Zoroastra was an witch, Princess Cecilia appears as some sort of ghost advisor to Livia and saving her at some points, Angels and God's presence feature heavily and Archangel Ezequiel serves more or less the same role as Castiel in Supernatural. He is the overall leader of the good guys and looking after the heroes' safety, helping them out in their moment of need and unlike most angels in fiction portrayed as self-righteous douches, he is actually nice and protective of Zeca despite his nature as an vampire, going as far as to allow him to pass through holy places. Puzzlingly, despite posed as Boris' opposite and being, you know a f*cking angel, Ezequiel gets his ass kicked by Boris whenever he tries to confront him in combat.

As far as acting goes... What did you expect about an soap-opera, specially one about vampires? Though to its credit, there were some really great actors like Tarcisio Meira (who is pretty much legendary) and Claudia Raia as Boris and Mina de Montmartre and whenever the situation needed, they could play characters seriously. Yet, they know what kind of show this is and they will ham it up to the hundreth degree, shouting "MALDIÇÃO" (DAMNATION in English) and chewing the scenery as much as they drink blood. Special effects are, well, they look really sh*t just like PS1 graphics, but I am willing to cut it some slack since for an Brazilian telenovela, the production value looked great. The soundtrack was pretty great with some expertly selected songs such as the opening theme and Vater User from E Nomine.

Though the series turned out to be pretty popular among the younger crowd, it didn't do so well with adult audiences and was absolutely blasted by professional critics. Still, it won some awards, made some actors themselves stars and it has an cult following to this day. I may had loved the hell out of it as a kid and nowadays I do find it so silly and campy to be enjoyed on a serious level... On the other hand, I do appreciate they were trying to do things differently, instead of the same things over and over, and lament that it didn't do quite well enough for them to further innovate and do more supernatural-based stuff which would definitely pleased me. I would probably recommend, it just to see what its like, but I afraid this telenovela was never released outside of Brazil and to this day, it was never reprised as far as I am concerned. There are some episodes uploaded to YT as well as many clips, but unless if speak Portuguese, you probably won't be more invested than just seeing a few videos.

I'd like to thank all of you reading it. I appreciate all types of feedback and hope to have incited your attention about the show. It has being a great time being part of this site and meeting so many amazing people. Its due to you I keep writing these reviews in hopes to entertain your day a bit more.

An toast to your awesomeness from your vampire prince ;)