Thoughts and opinions on: OVERWATCH

I recently started playing Blizzard's recent FPS shooter Overwatch. I'm not previously too familiar with Blizzard and their games. My girlfriend plays World of Warcraft a lot so I know that much about them. I also know they've made at least one Diablo game, but I don't play those games. I'm not really the biggest fan of shooter a.k.a. deathmatch-type games. I do play shooting games but it's more like sandbox games and story-based FPS games. Think of the GTA franchise and Fallout 4, that's my kinda deal.

Now, some of you might think I'm being contradictious here right now, playing GTA but not liking shooter games. I love GTA (except for the awful GTA V story mode) but I don't really like the PvP aspects of it. When playing GTA I mostly drive around on motorcycles doing my own random shit, or hangin' out with friends doing missions and whatnot. I never play deathmatches or adversary modes though. I just don't enjoy it that much, despite being a rather good player if I may say so myself. Bored psychotic 10-y-o kids just ain't my definition of fun, you know?

So a while back my dudebro Dee got this Overwatch game and wasn't really impressed by it. In fact, I didn't even know he'd gotten it. Maybe he told me about it but then it must've been in the wind somewhere. A while later, however, he slowly got more into it and started to like it a lot. He started talking about it frequently and encouraged me to get it as well. I was skeptical judging by the fact that it's a pure deathmatch-type game. My old CoD (1+2) reflexes are pretty much long gone.

After much nag about the game, I finally got it and made my buddy a jolly little fellow. For starters I wasn't really that impressed by it either, nor very interested in playing it to be honest. I did like the art style a lot, however, which made me invest some time into the game. After a day or two I was rather enjoying it. In fact, my buddy seemed to have a lot more fun with it now as well, and we've just been goin' at it for a few weeks now.

This is Reaper, my favorite character. I have thing for big guns and he wields dual shotguns. He looks rather "metal" as well, don't you think?

You know, at first look Overwatch might seem like a kids game and I'm sure a lot of its players are kids as well. Looks can be deceiving though. "Never judge a book by its cover" is a quote which really comes to mind regarding Overwatch. Going from highly skeptical and overall uninterested in the game, I am now somewhat addicted to it. I get these urges to play it a lot.

So how did my playing urge come to pass? The characters! You know, there isn't a lot of details or general information about the characters within the game. None at all, really. You're just left with a bunch of characters all of which have special powers and abilities. Now that's an aspect I like a lot! Instead of the old CoD/Battlefield kind of gameplay you are now a unique team each round you play. That creates a lot of diversity not to mention longevity to this kind of game. Overall I think this is very well executed.

One of the several short animated movies you can watch to get some more depth to the characters.

The art style is fantastic! It reminds me a lot of WoW and I think the reason is rather obvious. The characters do have some informative videos on YouTube which you can look up, and there's also the regular kind of Wiki pages around for it as well. That way you can (and will) get to know the characters as well.

Overall I am glad I decided to get the game. I'm enjoying it a lot and I think there is great potential for it in the future as well. A simple formula which creates something greatly effective. Although I'm not at all good with all the characters, their diversity creates a lot of fun. You win some, you lose some. What matters is you're having a good time, and I know I certainly am.

This is Torbjörn, a Swedish viking-like character. This is one of his several outfits you can get and equip. Possibly my favorite character outfit in Overwatch. A Swedish viking biker? Hell yeah!

Watch Dogs: Thoughts and opinions

Watch Dogs - the most hyped game of 2014? I would say so, at least from what I've seen and heard around the globe. I have been very keen to try it out as well, as I was completely blown away when I saw it presented at E3 back in 2012 (who weren't?). So now the game is finally out, after quite a delay and yada yada. I was not a first-day-buyer this time around since I was short on cash and there was some other stuff I wanted more at the time. Now I have tried it out, however, since the local library is awesome and has got lots of games for a very cheap rent price, so I booked it about a month back.

Yesterday it was finally my turn to get my hands on it, and I sure did. I went home straight away to try it out, installed it and launched it. My personal anticipation had pretty much died during the month I had to wait, and the lukewarm reception from fans I've heard and seen during that time didn't help me either. But finally, I was playing Watch Dogs for the first time ever.

The intro is immediately very 50/50. It's kind of interesting, but mostly I wasn't very impressed ... at all. To be honest, what was I going to expect from it? I don't know, I just love free-roam and open-world games. I pretty much try everything that is one, and I'm horny as hell about the GTA-series, have always been. With that said, I didn't even know what I expected, but it sure was something more unique (the hype has been big, especially from Ubisoft themselves) than this.

After the very mediocre introduction, I'm launched into some action gameplay. Now this is looking more promising, thank Satan, and I play on. Since I'm a constant GTA-player I'm used to these kind of controls, so I pretty much get a hold of it quickly. That's probably the first thing I notice - the controls - and I don't like them. Overall they do feel clumpsy, yet still somewhat dynamic. It's so 50/50. Later on I also notice, probably the biggest question, the graphics and their overall feel and looks. What can I say? This is so goddamn totally disappointing! When we saw this game being presented at E3 back in 2012, everyone was blown away! But now, this just looks like and old and ugly piece of shit game made in like 2007.

Now I'm pretty disappointed. Sure, even I get that an Xbox 360 would never be able to recreate those graphics we were presented with at E3, but this is silly, really. There are so many more games, which are several years old now, that look so much better than Watch Dogs. I wasn't expecting those E3 graphics, but I did fucking expect more than this. Now it's up to everything else to surprise me, but that pretty much doesn't happen either.

I play on and I'm not really getting curious about the story. It feels unoriginal and is just told in a boring way that it has been told too many times before. I also heard quite many people state that while the graphics were not up to expectations, the combat should be good, as some people called it, "a good shooter". Well, I cannot really agree there neither. This was like the last drop for me - the shooting and combat system just fucking sucks, and it's boring. The hacking was also highly spoken of by Ubisoft as something "fresh and unique". Yeah, right. You press and hold the X-button everytime. Once in a while you get like a small mini-game where you must hack. But I have seen and done this all before. Particularly in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which is a very good game by the way, you get to do a lot of hacking, which is much more developed and fun than in Watch Dogs.

Really, what can I say? I'm so goddamn disappointed with this game. I was very hyped about it before it's release, and while it calmed down after its release, I still was looking forward to play it. Now the only consolation I've got after two years wait is that I did not buy it. I rented it for 15 Swedish kronor (about 2 bucks). I'm happy that I did not buy it for like 70-80 bucks. That is a consolation that I'm very happy out, and sadly enough, it's the only thing I am happy about with this game.

I give Watch Dogs a greatly disappointing 3/10.

Some personal thoughts on: Skyrim

I recently was lucky and got a copy of Skyrim exactly a week ago. As most people most likely know, Skyrim's a hit game that very many players have been discussing. Though I never was too anticipated about it when it was announced, maybe because I had only heard about Morrowind and Oblivion but not actually played 'em, I recently felt it was about time that I got this game myself.

So now a week has passed, I've had some time to play it and feel what it's all about. I'm going to do a review of it right now, I believe there's still way too much to do in it before a review, but I'm gonna share some thoughts I have about it so far. I'm close to 40 hours of gameplay now, I'm at level 20 as of this moment, and my obsession of playing it has decreased more and more during the last few days. I guess that is a first step in seeing what I think about the game - it's ultimately not as fun for a long time as it's in the beginning, not for me anyways. It's not like the GTA-series. I played Vice City from when it came to when San Andras came, probably almost every day, then it was pretty much the same with San Andreas. I kinda "lived" in those game-worlds back then. I believe GTA IV has the record now, though. Having been out since early 2008, I myself got an Xbox 360 in January '09 and GTA IV was my first game. I still play it today, it's the game I play the most and keep going back to over and over again. Now the point by all this GTA-talk is that I don't believe Skyrim will by like those in the long run.

Though I'm at almost 40 hours now, I guess I already around 15-20 hours felt the game was getting somewhat annoyingly repetitive. In my opinion it's just way too much of the same "speak to him and get a quest, go to that cave and get that item, return it to the quest giver". I would've liked more different tasks and environment than just caves for most of the quests. While this tends to be somewhat bad with the game, it still has tons of other great things to weigh it all up. Just pointing out a few other bad things quickly, which would be the stiff facial expressions during conversation, some bugs, and many annoying loading screens.

Now I'm going to focus on the things I really like about this game and what makes it unique. First off - character creation. Rather than having different human races, this games has different races all-in-all. Now I do not remember the race names, but you can be a human-like cat and lizzard, orc, elves, and of course some human-looking races. Being half Swedish, half Finnish myself, I play as a Nord because I'm fascinated by the old, nordic vikings and that stuff. You also join different factions which I really like. I instantly joined the Stormcloaks and fought against the Imperial. That's what I would've done in real life too, I guess - being revolutionary. After that I joined the Companions, whom I really as well. The third and so far last faction I've joined are the Thieves Guild. Them I do not like. I do not like their attitude at all and only does it all for the quest. Other than these three factions, I don't think there is any other I'm really too interested in, but I will probably do them anyway.

This game also has a great system of weapons and magic. I really like the possibility of having magic and (one-handed) weapons at the same time. There are also plenty of spells and weapons to use, as well as expand the weapons with magic and such, though I'm not good at this yet. I also like to go and wander around the world. It has its charm and places. I really like the college of Winterhold, I think it's a beautiful place when it snows a lot, and I can find myself just standing there and looking around. It's also very beautiful when it's raining. The "cities" are also great in this game, majestic and beautiful. My favorites are Whiterun and Riften I think, but Solitude is great too, especially when seen from the outside.

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All in all it's a great game so far, but in the long run I think I will let go of it, unfortunately. I do not see why there is so much fuzz about this game. While it certainly is a solid play, there are many games that I would easily prefer over this. But then again, I don't play games like Call of Duty any more. I do not see what's so special about some of those biggest names, with CoD as a primary example now. I really thought Black Ops (the last CoD I played) was nothing special at all. There are too many overrated games out there, Skyrim unfortunately being one of them. While I love many, many things with it, there are too many things to not make it "crush the competition". While I can probably say it's better than its closest rivals, like the Fable-series, I would rather pick up and play games like GTA, Gears of War, Deus Ex: Huma Revolution, Sleeping Dogs, Saints Row 2, and so on. But then again it's all just opinions.

My current rating for Skyrim: 8.2 / 10

GTA IV: The Lost and Damned

                  Johnny K. taking The Lost brotherhood into action.

A game with a great story!

A dark mood. A raining Liberty City. Roaring motorcycles in the night. Blazing gunfire in the middle of the streets. An insane gang. This is the Lost motorcycle club.

*Warning! Spoilers!!*

Grand Theft Auto (IV): The Lost and Damned - that is the first episode Rockstar Games put out after the original IV story / game. Its story is based around The Lost motorcycle club in which Johnny Klebitz, the mysterious biker dude from the original story who Playboy X was afraid of, is the vice president as well as the protagonist. Johnny has been in charge while the club's ordinary president, Billy Grey, has been in rehab. When Billy gets out of rehab at the beginning of this story, there's immediate tension within The Lost, especially between Johnny and Billy. Johnny who believes in certain order argues a lot with Billy, who runs the club in anarchy much for his own good and will.

                Billy breaking up the truce between the Lost and the Angels of Death.
                     Left to right: Jason, Johnny, Jim, Billy and two Angels of Death-members.

We get to follow the Lost as they once again fall back into biker-gang warfare after Billy breaks a truce, which was set by Johnny, between the Lost and their rivals Angels of Death. As things progress the tension between Johnny and Billy increases and the gang wars get worse. Johnny starts to find himself kinda lost within his own club but apparently ain't alone. After a while when things are starting to collapse, Billy can't stand Johnny any more and makes a set-up with the triads, to kill Johnny and his friend Jim Fitgerald during a heroin deal. They however manage to escape and fight through lots of triad goons, only to find Billy, who has crashed with his motorcycle, getting caught by the cops. Billy goes into jail and Johnny becomes president once more, but the Lost is split into two factions due to Brian Jeremy, a close friend and supporter of Billy's beliefs, claiming that it was Johnny who set up Billy in order to become chapter president again.

                        Johnny witnesses the arresting of Billy Grey.

Now the Lost are having internal war as well as the gang wars still raging on. Johnny and co. eventually finds Brian and his faction after a tip from the Italian mobster Ray Boccino (from the original IV) and take them down. The Lost, now in bad condition and a lot of members short, start to face the big problem - Billy. Billy is taken into protected custody and is gonna rat on Johnny and Angus, another close friend and fellow member to Johnny. A politician, Thomas Stubbs, who Johnny worked for gives out this information to warn Johnny. Johnny and the remaining members of the Lost then proceed to break into the Alderny State Correctional Facility, where Johnny finds and kills Billy.

                       Johnny proves to be a real dangerous man, blowing the prison gates, going in and 
                       killing Billy Grey inside the prison.

Johnny and the others then go back to the Lost clubhouse, which has been trashed by Ray Boccino's goons for being ripped off by Johnny. He and another hitman of Ray's, Niko Bellic from the original IV, had met up with the Jewish mob to exchange some diamonds for two million dollars. The deal was however ambushed by Luis Lopez (later the protagonist of The Ballad of Gay Tony) who shot and killed two members of the Jewish mob. Niko fled and Johnny managed to take the briefcase full of money before he fled. He never gave them to Ray however, instead keeping them for the Lost and giving them to Jim Fitzgerald, who was later killed by Niko Bellic on orders from Ray Boccino (which originally was to kill Johnny, but he wasn't there when Niko showed).

                        Johnny was put through some bad actions by Billy and didn't get any respect for it.

The Lost brotherhood now mostly destroyed with only a few members left, the loss of several important members such as Billy, Brian, Jason Michaels (killed by Niko Bellic on orders from Mikhail Faustin for Jason dating his daughter) and their friend Jim, and the destroyed clubhouse. Johnny orders the others to burn down the place to "put it out of its misery". The story ends with Johnny and fellow members Terry, Clay and Angus, watching their clubhouse burn down.

                        In the end I think Johnny felt sad and lost. The Lost and Damned = not a happy ending.

In conclusion all I can say about this game / episode is: I LOVE IT! I'm quite a fan of motorcycles and motorcycle gangs. I watch and love the TV-series Sons of Anarchy, which in many ways is similar to The Lost and Damned, or vice versa. I would love to see a movie made based on this story since it's very solid, deep, dark and filled with action. I love the character of Johnny Klebitz who I can relate to in some ways. That's one of the things with the GTA games. Until GTA IV, I couldn't really relate myself to any of the protagonists, which is somewhat boring, but Niko and Johnny are both great characters who I see some of myself in.

Rockstar Games also did something special for this one. They put this noise filter over the picture in this one, making it looking dirty / gritty. Now, I've seen many fans complaining about this, but in my opinion it just adds more feeling to the mood and it's perfect for this game! You can of course turn it off, but some morons don't seem to understand that, or they are too goddamn fucking lazy to get their asses into the options-display menu.

Some of the music is also new in this game. For instance, what kind of music fits the biker culture? Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, yeah? The L.C.H.C. (Liberty City Hard-Core) channel is much better than in IV (I never was a big fan of hardcore(-punk) apart from the N.Y.C. band Cro-Mags), now featuring mostly death metal, but also some black metal. LCR (Liberty City Rock) is also completely new and made me discover old classic acts like Nazareth and Styx, while introducing me to some songs I've missed by bands I've loved for ages, like "Touch Too Much" by AC/DC. It's my new favorite AC/DC song! Also cool that they put some good, old Saxon in it. Kinda wish there was something with Motörhead though, but you can't have everything and I'm glad for that. What joy in life would that give?

It's not exactly a new game anymore, but it's a classic to me, a game I love and have played over and over, and will continue to do. I totally recommend it! The Lost and Damned ROCKS!!

Saints Row - "2" is better than "The Third"

I love sandbox-games. I LOVE the Grand Theft Auto-series. I remember back in the day when I played GTA II, then III when it came out and had that amazing TPS-view instead. Vice City was the first game I ever truly loved, San Andreas the second and IV no less than the others. Then we also have the Saints Row-series. A GTA-ripoff to some, a different kind of a "GTA clone" to some, and so on. Personally, I'm just happy that there are more games "like" GTA, since that's my favorite kind of games.



I bought Saints Row 2 back in 2009 when I found it in a store. I think I read the back and thought it seemed to be like GTA and therefore bought it. I do not regret it! I've had SO much fun with that game, it's unbelievable. It was like a weird, crazy, comedy cousin to GTA: San Andreas with some better graphics and mechanics. I totally loved the free options of choosing your clothes and even making your very own character. Then I played the first Saints Row, which was good but quite bad in some way(s) compared to the second game.

In time I started waiting for the third installment in the series, with great anticipation. When it finally came out in late 2011 I bought it. Well, what can I say about it? While it's a great, funny and pretty good looking game, it misses kinda a lotta things. I've played it over and over and always find things here and there that makes me compare it to the second. Here are some of the things I like and dislike, comparing the second game with the third:

Saints Row 2

Good:

• Lots of different clothes and haircuts
• Quite many, different from each other, safe-houses
• Quite many enterable buildings
• Activities like fight club, demolition derby and fuzz
• Many different-looking areas in the map
• The urban street gangs fight each other

Bad:

• Quite stellar and bad driving mechanics
• The same with the shooting mechanics

Saints Row The Third

Good:

• Nicer-looking city in many ways
• Sexier girls (both pedestrians and player character)
• Upgradeable weapons
• Better driving and shooting mechanics
• Funnier vehicles
• Buildable Saints headquarters (though only three)
• More Saints-characters (like Oleg, Angel, Viola, Kenzie and Zimos)
• Funnier missions

Bad:

• The whole middle-section of the story is made up of side-missions (boring!)
• They took away my fave activities fight club, fuzz and demolition derby
• But they KEPT the boring and annoying snatch, escort and trafficking
• Less enterable buildings 
• All the buildable safe-houses look the same inside (boring...)
• Shaundi is fucking annoying
• Many parts of the city look the same
• Less secrets (secret rooms etc. that were in 2)

I'm sure there are other things as well, both possitiva and negative, for both games that I just didn't come up with now. Overall, I think Saints Row 2 had more, was more solid and fun in the long run than The Third. While Saints Row The Third has many improvements, it certainly feels kinda thin and rushed in many ways. WHY not KEEP all the good and fun from 2 and ADD the new stuff? In Saints Row 4 I'd like to see 2 combined with 3, with new stuff. Don't rush it, make it awesome! 

In the end, I am not satisfied with SR3 since I bought it full-price when it came out. I bought SR2 for 200 Swedish kronor (about 25-30 bucks maybe, SR3 was like 65-75 dollars) and I've had more fun with it.

                Concept art for SR the third. It did / does NOT look like this .....