Old memories

A friend of mine just sent me a message on the phone, telling me of a time maybe 1,5 years ago when we were at school and tried to print a picture of something. He couldn't get it to work, so he said that I had said "let me try.." and when I succeeded, I said "I want purr." (purr = the sound cats make, but I said purr as a word, I didn't try to make the sound myself). I WANT PURR?? That cracked me up. I used to say "purr" in lots of different and weird sentences, at completely random timings. This made me in a good mood.

My Name Is Earl

Just wanted to share a quick recommendation. There was this TV-series a few years back called My Name Is Earl. I think it was aired on Fox, but I'm not sure since I don't live in the US and we don't have Fox in Sweden so. Anyway, it's a comedy lasting four seasons about a guy called Earl, of course. Earl is an around-30 guy who's a low-time criminal, mainly stealing stuff. His life sucks and bad things happens to him, so one day he gets hit by a car and discovers karma. This makes him turn his life over completely. He makes a list of everything bad he's ever done and starts to make-up for all his mistakes.

It's often very hilarious when he meets the different people who he's harmed in some way, often kinda silly too. He's got a brother called Randy which is really stupid, but funny as hell. That guy just cracks you up totally. If you don't laugh at him, you sure are a sad motherfucker born without any humour. I've watched it since it aired back in '05, I think? I've had a lot of fun moments watching it and this series lies close to my heart. It's so warming in some way and I think Earl is a really cool dude. He's a rocker, I guess. At least he listens to AC/DC, Lynyrd and that stuff, and he looks like a stoner. That's good enough for me. It's a look I could go with.

Try it out if you already haven't! My Name Is Earl is awesome!

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 .....

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.

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!!