Game & Book reviews etc..

New Moon

mickestenberg — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:16:50 +0000

So I just got home from watching New Moon and I must say it was pretty darn good it was they way I had hoped it to be, the pacing was good in the movie and the soundtrack is really good. It’s a shame they f*cked up Twilight since it should have been the better movie of these two if you consider the content and pacing of the books.. Twilight is more apt to be a good movie compared to New Moon which progresses much slower but they managed to keep me at least entertained all the time there wasnt any dull moments and all the good scenes from the book was in the movie and that was another point where Twilight failed. One of the better points tho was this ~16 year old girl sitting next to me and she was chewing her nails of like crazy through the movie and you could see how excited she was, it was all good. The actors were great I really liked em in the first movie to but it seemed that they had grown more into their roles and I must say that Ashley Greene performs excellent as Alice Cullen it’s exactly as I pictured her and it’s nice seeing more of her. The major thing that bugs me tho is Staphanie Mayers fault the whole Jaspers smells/sees Bellas blood and goes all homicidal is just bad I mean consider it they go to school and all the time that they have spent there no one has never been an incident where a teacher/student etc has gotten hurt where he/she bleeds comon.. Ofc it is possible that such a situation never has occurred but is it likely? All and all the movie was worth it it’s a shame tho if you havent watched Twilight cuz I wouldnt recommend it to my greatest enemy (if I had one) so your missing out of an entertaining movie.

The Vampire Diaries (01-05)

mickestenberg — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:30:05 +0000

Another rainy day… The Vampire Diaries is about two brothers who fall in love with the same woman, she dies they hate each other and now we are 500 years later( present time), yeah *shocker* they are both vampires. Stefan the younger of the brothers returns to the town where it all happened and decides to go to school there… yeah.. well anyway at school he meets this girl called Elena who looks more or less like his 500-year-old dead love Katherine. They fall in love on first sight and when things seems to be perfect Stefans darker and more dangerous older brother Damon returns and starts to stir up trouble between Elena and Stefan, and all the books pretty much follows this pattern. Ofc there happens supernatural stuff which makes the books mildly amusing and entertaining but the thing that I find boring about them is that I had hoped for some kind of threesome love drama between Elena, Damon and Stefan but there really isnt any sure she finds Damon attractive but thats about it. If you want to compare the tv-show with the books there arent really much similarities except for the name of the Books and the characters names, in the books Elena is blond and the most popular girl at school, in the tv-show shes brunette and I guess somewhat popular since she was a cheerleader there which she wasnt in the books (I think?). In the book she has two good girlfriends Bonnie and Meredith in the tv-show she has Bonnie and Caroline, Meredith isnt in it and in the books Caroline is Elenas rival at school for the Queen B title and she only gets mentioned like a couple of pages through the first five books. In the books Elena has a little sister that’s like for year old not a druggie brother. Vickie hardly gets mentioned in the books at all and she’s not Matts sister, on the tv-show she has a bigger role for the first few eps. Matt is pretty much the same in both the books and tv-show. So what can you conclude from this?… I actually think the tv-show has been better than the books so far (I never thought that I would say something like that), there is ofc some things that are better planed out in the books, but they do still lack a lot so I can just hope they dont do the same mistakes in the tv-show. Read them/watch the show if you want or dont I dont care.

Update

mickestenberg — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:02:03 +0000

So… hmmm yeah i’ve been sleeping like 14h a day the past week.. and why you might ask? well it was the frirst time since august that I got some good news about my sister, she had an epileptic episode late august which turned out to be a brain tumor which she apparently had for like three years without it causing any symptoms so well it turned out it was like 4*6 cm big anyway about 3 weeks after she had the surgery where they successfully removed like 70% of it and about 3 weeks after that she started her radiation treatment which seems to work well, shes supposed to do it every day for 60 days and it’s about 3 weeks left now I guess so yeah I have been sleeping like shit the last 2 months but anyway less whine since the weather here in Stockholm was shit today dark all day and rainy I got to do some reading (it should have been schoolwork since ive been putting that off) so I decided to read the first 5 books of The Vampire Diaries and I guess ill put up a short review tomorrow and compare it to the tv-show, but now back to playing Dragonage – Origins.

Me,Myself and I

mickestenberg — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:38:51 +0000

So yeah thats me crappy cellphone pic since I noticed my camera is broken or whatever so now I have to whine on my father to get me a new one.. guess hell be happy to call me a slacker etc again tho but I mean he does pay almost all my stuff so I cant blame him.

Twilight Saga

mickestenberg — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:14:47 +0000

I finished my third re-read of the Twilight Saga the other day and you know I guess most ppl know it but the target audience is obviously teenage girls with low self-esteem who dream about some beautiful guy coming and sweeping them away, the classic knight saves dame story. Add the popular vampire theme to that love story and you got a bestseller, ofc theres more than that like the author have to know how to pull it all together etc etc which Stephanie Mayer succeeded with in the first two books. The last two books was just plain boring the third one is easily the worst in the series and only the first part in the last book was really worth reading the rest in the book just seemed rushed and ill planned, having Jacob as focus for like 1/3 of the book was a bad move to. Otherwise its a good read if your into cheesy love stories with non relevant vampire theme. I thought about commenting the Twilight movie also but it must be one of the worst movies ever made everything that was good with the first book was either not in it or it was changed to something worse.. the casting was descent enough tho the part of Rosalie should have been given to someone who actually looked good. New Moon on the other hand actually seems good from all the trailers but it’s rarely that the trailers portray the movie they are only there to make the movie look better than it actually is or show a false focus in the movie a good example for that is Inglorious Basterds where you are deceived to believe that the movie is all about Brad Pitt killing nazis but that’s only like 1/10th of the movie, but ah well guess we’ll see on nov 20th if the movie is good or not.

Amanda Jenssen – Happyland

mickestenberg — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:56:56 +0000

So I thought id recommend a music album ive been listening to the last two days it’s called Happyland, the artist is Amanda Jenssen and if you dont know who she is ill give you a quick rundown. She got known in Sweden when she participated in swedish idol like two years ago where she finished second, this is her second album, her first was called Killing My Darlings. I must say I really like this album its good and if you want to check out some of her song you can probably find some old idol outtakes on youtube or some music videos. My current favourite song from the album is called “Sing me to sleep” since it really fits my current mood.

White Knight Chronicles EX (jap)

mickestenberg — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:28:39 +0000

Hmz well I finished this game like 2 weeks ago I guess and I still dont really know what to think about it… its one of those games that I really wanted to like since its created by the same studio (Level5) as Rogue Galaxy for the ps2 which is one of my all time fav. games. Its another of those rpgs that mimic Final Fantasy 12 which was prolly the best RPG game for the ps2, I know alot of people disliked it since it’s not the classic FF battle system and the story is kinda crappy but it had tons of optional stuff that you can do such as rare monsters, quests and crafting weapons etc and some time later came the release of Final Fantasy 12 Internation Zodiac Job System. FF12IZJS offered job classes and a kind of arena and alof of the other stuff was improved from the original FF12, it never got released in the US tho so you had to import it (or dl it) to play it. WKC has all the features that FF12 offered basically with the addition of an Avatar that you have to create before you start the game its a sort of extra character thats outside the story but you have it in battles etc and you use this solely for the Quest in the game. An addition to the quests it that you can play them online with up to 4 friends on the ps3 network which is nice but the problem with this also is that you cant complete like Guild Rank 10+ quest solo so you have to know people to get those trophies if your into that. One promising thing tho is that this game is the first in a trilogy similar to Xenosaga for the ps2 I just hope they dont screw up the second game as bad as they did with Xenosaga II, so well in conclusion its a descent game and since its ps3 exclusive it still makes the top5 of all time ps3 exclusive games =).

The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson Updated

mickestenberg — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:12:07 +0000

I just finished reading The Gathering Storm.. it took me roughly 10hours and I must say im pretty damn impressed it was really good. Brandon has really succeeded in putting this book together and he did a great job.. Brandons style of writing and Jordans are in this book and it mixes together well Brandon always said he wouldnt try to imitate Jordans style of writing and its easy to see what he’s written and Jordan. So what can you say about the charactes in this book? Ever since my 2nd readthrough of WoT I have really liked Mat he just puts a smile on my lips when I read about him and you know reading some of the dialogue in this book really made me laugh I loved it, on to Perrin… you know I have never liked him as a character hes hardly contributed with anything in the books I dont know he’ just dull and boring and the people he travels with are the same but you can hardly like everyone. Rand gets alot of chapters in this book and his situation just gets worse and worse with his descent into madness and trying to harden himself more and more he’s really becoming the tragic hero and I love it there is nothing like a hero going mad,bad,evil etc there are way to few stories that touch this but you know I dont like to spoil stuff from books but I found the last chapter that features Rand kinda disappointing you’ll know when you read it I can see why it ended like that but Brandon/Jordan could have draged it out a bit longer. What else is there to say there was no povs from Elayne and I can’t say I blame Brandon for leaving her out since her storyline seems kinda finished since the last book. You do get some povs with Aviendah again it’s been ages since last time and I had hoped for more povs from the forsaken.. but my guess it’s gonna be a bit “Star Warsy” (original trilogy) where the “light” side does really well in the first then in the middle book the “dark” side striks back and in the last book the light prevails, so well in conclusion I loved this book and I think im gonna re-read it this weekend and a job well done from Brandon Sanderson and Harriet for compiling and finishing this book.

The Wheel of Time

mickestenberg — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:21:21 +0000

Three days of insomnia later… I read The Eye of the World for the first time about 11 yers ago, back then I was still a child in alot of ways and didnt get the complexity in the World that Jordan had created, I instantly took a liking in Rand since he could channel where the other male characters couldnt. But that has changes since I grew older I guess Rand is a character that alot of teenagers I dont know if connect with is the correct term to use it wasnt like that in my case atleast I just found him to be the “coolest” character back then.

Like alot of writers there is always a problem to keep each book as exciting or more exciting then the previous one but I think Jordan is one of the few writers that has actually succeeded in this. On to the story the series is about the people that live in the world and there are tons of characters believe me and this is one of the reasons it has alienated alot of people, I have alot of friends that read fantasy but they tend to read shorter series around 3-4 books long, and you know when you take on The Wheel of Time you have to be prepared to get confused and re-read alot parts just to remember all the characters and what they are doing and for alot of people this is to much. I love it tho there is nothing like a complex series to keep you up at night. The story in the books is pretty classic, good versus evil, light against darkness and in a world where the darkness is slowly gaining a foothold a boy is born accordning the prophecy and he shall save mankind.
It’s been over 2 years now since Jordan passed away and I hate to regret that my first though when I heard that he had passed was “oh fuck what will happen to the last books now?”, so I basically ignored all posts and news related to if the series was going to get finished or not. But a few months ago a friend of mine spoiled that someone was going to finish them so I looked it up on dragonmount.com and found out a man named Brandon Sanderson was going to finish it. So who is Brandon Sanderson? I noticed he had gotten some good praise from various writers on one of his stand-alone books called Elantris. I cant say I care about other peopels thoughs concerning books or movies etc. you have to create an oppinion for yourself or else your just a slave to other peoples thoughts. Anyway I bought all the books from the Mistborn series and Elantris and I just finished Mistborn which is the first book in the series the other day and you know I cant say that im impressed dont get me wrong I really like his way of writing but the story wasnt for me. I dont think he’ll screw up the remaining Wheel of Time books tho since he is an good writer and a big fan of the series and he doesnt have to come up with the story by himself (yeah I know im mean but I really didnt like Mistborn).

As of today I have read the series four times (so far) and I still love it, only 2 days to go before the Gathering Storm!!!.

Oh well time to sleep…….I think….. Next update will be White Knight Chronicles EX for the ps3 and after that The Twilight Saga.

Books…

mickestenberg — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:07:17 +0000

These are some of the books I have and plan on reviewing.

Books
~~~~~
Keri Arthur – Riley Jenson Series (only have book 1 and havnt read it yet).
Max Barry – Jennifer Government (read)
Anne Bishop – The Black Jewel Trilogy (read)
Patricia Briggs – Mercedes Thompson (only read book 1 and I don’t have any plans on reading more of the series)
Jacqueline Carey – Kushiel Series (got all three books but havn’t read them)
Orson Scoot Card – Ender’s Game (read)
Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quijote (read)
Karen Chance – Cassie Palmer Series (got first 2 but only read first)
Steven Eriksson – The Malazian Empire (read 1-9 of 10)
Colleen Gleason – The Gardella Vampire Chronicles (got first but havn’t read them)
Laurell K Hamilton – Anita Blake Vampire Hunter (got all, read up to Cerulean Sins)
Kim Harrison – Rachel Morgan Series (only read first)
Frank Herbert – Dune (read)
Homeros – The Illiad & The Odyssey (read)
J.V Jones – Sword of Darkness Series (got all but havn’t read)
Robert Jordan – Wheel of Time (got all so far and read all)
Herman Melville – Moby Dick (read)
John Milton – Paradise Lost & Regained (read)
Vicki Pettersson – Zodiac Series (got 1-4 read first)
Anne Rice – The Vampire Chronicles (got 1-5 read all)
Brandon Sandersson – Mistborn Series & Elantris (currently reading book 1 of the Mistborn series)
Peter F Hamilton – The Night’s Dawn Series (got all read first)
Stephanie Mayers – The Twilight Saga (got and read all)
P C Cast & Kristin Cast – The House of Night Series (got 1-5, currently reading book 2)

These are some of the books I have and my first review will probably be Jordans Wheel of Time Series (so far) since the new book is due in a few days, and the one after that will be of the Twilight series considering the release of New Moon at the cinemas in november.