söndag 22 april 2012

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 .....

lördag 21 april 2012

Gears Of War - A personal look-back

                      Some of the gears in the third installment.

I'm a big fan of the Gears of war-games. They're lots of fun, deep in story, have awesome soundtracks, characters, gameplay, just everything! I recently bought the last one (of this saga anyway), the third, about a month ago. Played it some hours here and there for a couple of days until I was done. I have to say, after having played through all three of them, the one thing about this series that surprise me the most is that it got better with each game. I think that's kinda rare among games, that they only get better and better? Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not THAT much of a gaming nerd really, I just play now and then when I'm bored and so on. But anyway. When I bought and played through the first one (in 2009) I thought it was fun, epic and quite varying (I hate games where you do the same fucking thing over and over again. Examples: Assassins Creed (1, the others were much better), Crackdown, etc.).

Maybe a year later, my ex (miss you...) bought me the second GoW and while I have forgot much of it (only played it through once so far), I do remember that I liked it even better than the first one. I do think I even liked it quite a bit more, to be precise. The one thing I hated with the first one was that there were THREE fucking beserkers. Well, I was fucking happy that they were sleeping or doing homo-erotic lesbian shit or whatever during the second, because there were no beserkers in it. As I said, I've forgotten much from the second by now, so I can't really remember what / if there was anything in compensation for the beserkers.

Well, now 1,5 years later I got on with the third and last one. It's the last game, but I've heard rumors (or fact, don't remember, too fucking lazy to look it up again) that there will be new GoW-games, just another story, characters and so on. If this is the case, and I can well imagine that since GoW brings in a lotta cash, I'd think it'd be cool if they showed how it all started. Maybe be playing as Dizzy or someone in his squad when they were young, I don't know. It would be cool, but that's one of my opinions and potential requests. Anyway back to the third game now. I think there were more gears in this that were close to you during missions compared to the other installments. As you see in the top picture, that are nine gears, and that's excluding Dizzy and that general or whatever he is and his name was (don't remember...). The third is also best story-wise among the games if you ask me. I really liked it, it was good action and the environments were also nicer, I think. Well, it's a destroyed world in decay, but still it's an environment and the third one's got the nicest. I also think there are more weapons which, of course, is always cool like hellfire. Liked the ending too, yap yap yap.

In conclusion: one of the best game-series I've ever seen and certainly one of the best I've personally played. I'm very happy that each game got better and better and I hope too see a new Gears-saga take form in the future. I sure as hell will play them all.

Gears of War:       8.5/10
Gears of War 2:    9/10
Gears of War 3:    9.5/10

            Clayton Carmine (GoW 3), one of my fave characters. Bad-ass dude.


måndag 2 april 2012

Some new kick-ass stuff!

Have you guys heard anything cool lately? I came over some of my old fave bands, who still are on top if ya ask me.

First one is from the new Overkill album "The Electric Age"


Next one is from Accept and the title track off their upcoming album "Stalingrad"


The last one for now is a new song from Meshuggah which I really liked


I hope you all will enjoy these just as much as I do!

A cool and funny vid I found

A little while ago I was looking around on YouTube for something funny to watch, when I found this....


It's like a few short-films made with mainly the Left 4 Dead games - the maps, characters, voice recordings, you name it, but it also has characters from other games such as a cameo by Duke Nukem and the girl from Bulletstorm whose name I've forgot, and so on. These vids were made by seibmoz. Enjoy!!

tisdag 20 mars 2012

A fairytale, yeey!

A giraffe crossed Wall street
but he got run over by a toad
whose name was Bernie.
Bernie was pink and had fur
just like a grandma's cat.
He smelled like pumpkin juice
and shaved his balls with his teeth.
One day Bernie saw this girl Jenny
who was dancing in a manhattan
dance club late at night
and he hid in her purse
'till she got home later that night.
When she went to bed
little Bernie crawled inside
Jenny's foggy pussycat ding-dong-yo.
She woke up but just let it be
'till she eventually got an orgasm.
She screamed out loud
and shat herself two times.
Bernie crawled back out again
and turned into a tomato
which Jenny threw out the window.
Tomato-Bernie survived the fall
but unfortunately got run over by a truck.
Next day a hobo found the squashed Bernie
and took the remains of him as ketchup
for his fried sewer-rat he had caught.
He ate it all but later died
due to food poisoning.

The End.

Iggy the clementine-thieving hamster!


This is my hamster Iggy, named after the legendary - Iggy Pop - of course. He loves clementines and heavy metal.

Love / Hate

LOVE:

  • Henry Rollins
 HATE:

  • Dave Mustaine

Figure it out yourselves! ;)