Lord Napsack

I fear Hunger Games was worse than Harry Potter with its epilogue. At least the Harry Potter one made some kind of sense... kind of... ish.

I must have one of the strangest views on who she should have chosen. No one. Though, if Collins knew how to pace a novel she could, I dunno, maybe let us see how they became close again and got over those problems. But no, Collins never focuses on the right things and minces around big issues. I've really come to detest these novels in a way. It's weird...

Oh, when I mention The Office I mean the original series that was made over here. The American version is based off of it, but from what I can tell from the clips I've seen it's quite different.

If you are talking about the film/manga then yes. Some elements of the two series are similar, though I say that aside from the fact that it is children fighting to the death I don't think they are very much alike. Battle Royale is a lot more brutal, in my eyes.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have both done stuff for TV and film. They wrote The Office, Extras and Life's Too Short. They worked with Karl Pilkington on The Ricky Gervais Show (a podcast/TV show). Pretty sure Karl isn't playing a character. From what I hear he's actually like that. Most of this stuff can be found over on Wikipedia.

So, I finished Mockingjay. I'll be honest, I was kinda pumped for it. I was told a lot of the issues I had with the previous book, Catching Fire would be dealt with and the thought that maybe we'd finally get some good action as well as an in depth look at this dystopia kept me going. I'll be honest, for all I've said about the Hunger Games trilogy I think the setting is pretty good. I like me some dystopian future and I think the general vagueness helps the general setting. On top of that it's something I can honestly believe happening and taking place, with its elements of politics and science fiction. From the very start I've always imagined it to be kinda like the film Zardoz in some strange way. To some this would be a down side, but I really enjoyed Zardoz and imagining a giant floating head instead of the hoverplanes makes me chuckle. But this world is completely squandered. Collins has the framework of a brilliant future and uses it to tell a pretty crappy story. In Mockingjay we get have the rebellion against the Capitol finally happen. This is great. We should see the war, the battles, the effect it has on the people, the Districts, the toll it takes on the main characters, the Capitol showing fear as everything they have held for so long crumbles around them. Do we get this? No, we just get Katniss complaining and being a pawn in everyone's schemes. This being a pawn would be fine if she we coherent and consistent, but she doesn't seem to have any particular character. Her decisions often make little sense, and that's only when she is making decisions, which is still pretty rare. She's a chore to follow as a protagonist, caring more about silly things rather than things that actually matter (this should read as "All she cares about is the boys"). I could never tell you what the actual plot of the book is. There's a revolution going on, but the book has so little to do with the revolution. Most of the revolution is over by the time Katniss starts doing anything in particular and the final assault on the Capitol is dealt with so quickly it may as well not even be in there. We also have the character deaths. Why are they there if Collins is never going to focus on them? People die quickly, a sentence or two is focussed on them, and then the book continues from there. Even when really important characters die it's barely focussed upon. The one that irritated me the most was when died as basically no time was spent on that and you'd have thought that this would be a big thing that they really cared about. But it doesn't particularly matter, apparently, even though it should shake Katniss to her very core. Sure, you could interpret some of the later parts as her being distraught because of what happened, but it never really felt that way to me. Oh, and don't get me started on how rushed that ending was. It just... it just weees me off that much. But this is something I've been saving up from when I read this part of the book. I've bookmarked it. "But I don't know what to tell him about the aftermath of killing a person. About how they never leave you." At no point throughout the books has Katniss ever shown that she is haunted by killing that first person. She shot them without thinking and only mentioned later "Oh, my, I appear to have killed someone. How about that, eh? Oh well, anyway..." I mean, did Suzanne Collins even check to see if she even mentioned anything about this in previous books? This is why Katniss is such a confusing, convoluted mess of a character. She has no character and seems to be purely built out of what Collins was thinking of putting in at the time. I really had to force my way through this book. I pushed my way through, hoping for something good to happen but nothing happened. I was excited for the action near the end, but didn't get it. I wanted something from this book, but didn't get anything. I have left this trilogy feeling pretty damn annoyed. I don't understand why people love these books so much or think they are so great. There is so much wrong with them, from a story telling perspective, a characterisation perspective or even from the actual structure of the writing (which I've decided to not comment because I don't want to go into that level of pedantry). This is all such a shame. I was so hopeful when I started this series. I loved the start of the first book and thought the writing was excellent, but everything just fell apart from then onwards. I know people enjoy these books, but I find it hard to understand why, especially when there are so many better written books out there that haven't received the same amount of hype. Maybe it's my own loss, who knows, but I know for certain that I won't pick up anything else Suzanne Collins writes. Though I might watch those episodes of Clarissa Explains It All that she wrote on. That was a good show...

This: Yes, the thumbnail looks rude, but that's about one moment in the entire thing and it's a lot weirder than it looks. The video is absolutely fantastic, especially as it's independently made. Pretty much all just that guy who's in the video. Enjoy. Seriously. Even if you don't like the song the video is an utter treat!

I definitely thought that, though I think that because Darren Shan has a large enough fanbase it doesn't matter too much as most people who have picked these books up will have read the others, and if they haven't then they will want to read the others to understand the first book a lot more. And I do agree that the pacing of the books are near perfect. It's like a photo album, almost, showing snapshots of his life. But they are always key parts and actually make sense in the long run as to why they were included, either in the original Saga or in the later books. It was all planned out rather well

I've been playing a lot of indie games recently. I have reviews for them all as well... May as well post them up here and see if anyone else has heard of them/played them: Grotto King Pilot Light Don't Look Back Octodad Narbacular Drop Those last two are student projects, so seem to mostly be a showcase of what they could do. Octodad is having a proper game coming from it (Octodad: Dadliest Catch), available on Steam in 2013, I think, whilst Narbacular Drop is pretty much a prototype for what became Portal.

I had that when I was re-reading the first couple before getting into the last two books. I was constantly smiling, but also felt really upset for what would happen. Also, I'm now having to force my way through Mockingjay. It's got to the point where I'm even having problems with the actual structure of the book itself, let alone the actual content. I have a lot to say to Suzanne Collins if I ever meet her

You say he can do no wrong and I used to think that... before The Thin Executioner. People seem to love it, but me and my friend (another Darren Shan fan) hated it a lot. Let's just say that I think he was having a go at a particular religion (even though he says he wasn't) and that his political allegories were far to transparent that it seemed ridiculous. I started reading Procession of the Dead but found his writing style isn't entirely suited for a more adult audience. I need to pick it up again, but it's at my university house at the moment, so no chance of me picking it up right now I have to disagree on the lack of original ideas. You can do original stuff, it's just everyone wants to be safe and not push the boat too much, at least at first.

Oh my, my views on The Hunger Games probably couldn't be any more different But most of my views can be found sleepily written in the thread for the books. Also, seeing as you are a Darren Shan fan I'm wondering if you've read The Thin Executioner and what your thoughts are on the book. Also, have you kept an eye on the upcoming terribly named series Zom-B? (Bill-E, anyone?) Zombies are done to death, so I'm apprehensive, but have also pre-ordered a copy

I saw that book at work (WH Smith) and all I could do was laugh. I don't know what the content of the book is like, but from the cover, the sticker on the front and the blurb it just looked like one of the most unashamed knock-offs since The Asylum started making mockbusters (e.g. Almighty Thor, The Da Vinci Treasure, Transmorphers, Paranormal Entity). It's all just so... 50 Shades of Grey. I'm very interested to find out if it reads exactly like 50 Shades or not. I can imagine it might not, as knock-offs just try to look like the product, rather than actually contain anything that seems to bare too much resemblance to the original (Sherlock Holmes, also an Asylum film, is nothing like the Guy Ritchie film released around the same time). Myself? I'm about halfway through Mockingjay and then will probably move on to reading The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. The title alone intrigued me and reading the blurb sucked me in more. I'll also probably try to read a book I downloaded called Alysa of the Fields. I had no interest in it, but it was free at the time (legally) and I thought I may as well give it a go.

How is it? I didn't enjoy what I played of Ico (the gameplay hasn't aged well, unlike SOTC) but the story was pretty good. I'm just about to try and start reading Mockingjay but Catching Fire left me feeling so negative towards the series I've just been staring at the book, willing myself to pick it up. People have told me a lot of my complaints are addressed in Mockingjay, and have told me it's worth it, but I'm apprehensive...

Did you mean the old ones set in WW2 or the new one set in modern times? Or both? But I'm more of a single player guy. When the CoD series started not caring about the campaign so much past Modern Warfare 2 I started getting annoyed. I still get the games, but I don't enjoy them as much

I've been following Yahtzee for the last few years and got to know his stuff pretty well. I even own a t-shirt with a bit from the episode for The Witcher. Can safely say I'm a fan I honestly like simulation games. I like The Sims and Sim City. I've been interested in the free version of Microsoft Flight Simulator but not too keen on how it looks, though I have been wanting to play a flight sim for a while. Far Cry 3, so far, has annoyed me. I was one of those people who stayed up until the wee hours of the morning watching E3 live. I wasn't keen on what I played of Far Cry 2, but thought it looked like something people could enjoy, but the gameplay they've shown of Far Cry 3 seems to display a lot that is wrong with gaming. These were my thoughts on the gameplay they showed at the Ubisoft conference at E3 (taken from my blog): "In an attempt to show how mature games have got we see gratuitous tits and swearing. EDGY! The game did look quite pretty and I can imagine it’s pretty similar to Far Cry 2 (it looked like it). Oh, apart from these hallucination sequences that were just a confusing mess. Not much was really shown about this game, but it does seem to have stealth elements and highly scripted sequences." Yeah... I still think that.

Yeah, you pretty much have summed up everything I've heard about Other M. I think, as with most of his reviews, Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation gets the problems with the game down pretty well: http://www.escapistm...Metroid-Other-M I saw recently that there was that new X-Com game that sounded like it might be true to the old ones. People at E3 definitely thought so. I feel it came about after people got so annoyed at the reboot that was announced before that. It even made this happen to an internet reviewer, Spoony:

I didn't feel Skyrim as much as Oblivion. It lacked its charm, I think... You actually mention a lot of games I haven't played, but really want to, especially the Monkey Island games. I've got into adventure games recently, but they are mostly independent ones, though Telltale make some good ones. The most recent Walking Dead game, for example, or the Back to the Future game. I also want to try X-Com, but strategy games aren't my forte. I like them, I just really suck at them. Also, being such a fan of Metroid, did you play Other M? I've heard some really bad things about that game and what I've read about it completely ruins the character of Samus.

People tried to make me feel guilty of having a Jeremy Clarkson book, but I find him funny even if he is unbelievably opinionated. Plus it was cheap and it seemed fun enough. And it was. I think that's probably the closest it's ever come... Actually, people also seem to try to make me feel ashamed for having the manga Azumanga Daioh as it's essentially about Japanese high school girls, but it's funny, witty and sometimes touching. You can't make me feel embarrassed, people, no matter how hard you try!

Double post time! So, I just finished Catching Fire and do you know what I did when I finished it? I threw the book away. Not in a bin, but I literally threw the book away. I tossed it aside because that book was not at all to my liking. Seriously, I was bored throughout the majority of the book, but forced myself through it because I have already got the third book and I have got this far, so I may as well continue. So, what were my issues with the book? Well, there’s a few things. Content-wise I found the book bland and dull. I spent the first two thirds of the book guessing most of the twists the books tried to set up, but they were all so obvious, and when the twist at the end of the second third came along I had already guessed it nearly 100 pages ago. Things did pick up by the last third, but that didn’t help too much. The dynamic of having all of the characters did make things a lot more interesting, but it didn’t help too well as I definitely think Collins has a big issue with the book’s pacing. I noticed the book was rapidly coming to a close and nothing had exactly happened. The semi-love triangle business near the start irritated me to no end and made me think Katniss was now more concerned with what the boys will be thinking. The boys are both so bland that it’s hard to care about any of them. Oh, and I have absolutely no idea why the Capitol would How the Capitol became this powerful I will never know as they make some of the worst decisions to control their populous. But what irked me the most about this book has to be what happened to Katniss. Oh, Katniss, you were, for the most part, a strong female lead. What happened to you? Throughout the entire book Katniss doesn’t do anything for herself. As I said, she constantly seemed to be concerned with what the guy’s thought of her. On top of that, she doesn’t actually make any decisions, just has everyone do everything for her. I feel this may have been thematic, that she is a pawn in everyone else’s fight, but it came across as a sight-seeing tour. We weren’t following what the character is doing, just being shown what they see. I really feel that Collins messed up big time with this book. It was dull and made me lament for the death of characterisation. Things happened, but there was no emotional weight to it. In my previous post you will notice I asked a lot of questions. Well this time I haven’t asked any non-rhetorical questions because there’s nothing to ask. It all felt like it was going through motions rather than telling the deep, insightful story it thinks it is telling. I really hope Mockingjay does something different, because the familiarity of the last third of the book left me irritated. Give me something to care about and I might enjoy the last book, because, as you can probably tell, I didn’t enjoy Catching Fire at all.

Ah, I need to read this series. The complaint about names is one I've heard, but most people I know haven't found it to be too much of a problem. I'm exactly the same. I just love maps in general. Got quite a few Ordnance Survey maps that get no use other than me looking at them. Ooh, and altases... But yeah, I like being able to track where people are going throughout a book. Engrosses me more in the book, really, especially when it's an all new world that I need to get my head around. Also, some of the art for maps is amazing.

Board games can be pretty pricey now, depending on what you are after. I've got some for about £10, but they aren't the most in-depth or complex ones, whilst I've seen ones such as Arkham Horror or Battlestar Galactica going for up to £50 in places. You basic Monopoly, Cluedo, etc. will probably be about £15-£30. Not sure how any of this translated into other currencies, though...

Just thought: if you like graphic novels then The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames is brilliant. Not YA, but it's still great. I'll definitely get round to them at some point.

Definitely. I've only read the first one and it's so... pleasant. I will second this recommendation!

Oh man, I really want to read these books. I came across them recently and they sounded just up my alley