Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: 2020s

Hogwarts Legacy

Posted on by Viljami

I spent about two weeks playing Hogwarts Legacy for Xbox Series X. This game has received several good, or maybe excellent, reviews. It is not the newest game since it was released in 2023. So, it is about two years old. This also means that you can get it with a cheap price. You definitely don’t have to pay 80 euros for it today.

Hogwarts Legacy is a role-playing-game with lots of action included. The basic gameplay operates on completing quests, finding new areas through map and also fighting against enemies with many spells. You also get some gear from time to time. You get to upgrade your gear and also your skills.

The open-world environment is fun to explore. You face some enemies while you are finding these new places. You can also sort of “unlock” waypoints so you can travel to these locations just by selecting them from a map and clicking the button.

The game gives you full statistics of how much of the game have you completed. There are different areas of these challenges like how much of you have explored, battled and how many quests you have completed.

It took for about 40 hours to finish the game. There are several difficulty levels to choose from. They actually make the battles harder. Hogwarts Legacy offers a lot to play even after you have finished the main quests. You can develop your character and explore even more.

The graphics, or visual, are very nice in Hogwarts Legacy and so is the music. The world is the world of Harry Potter. I have to say also that I am not so familiar, actually not at all, on Harry Potter. This might be the first game that is placed in the world of Harry Potter that I have finished. Nor do I have memories of any books or movies. Still while I was playing it didn’t really bother me so much.

It is nice to see a game where battles are structured to just swinging your wand instead of shooting with a gun or fighting with a melee weapon (like an axe or something. I did enjoy this game. It really isn’t still something that I would like to spend more time on. As I am writing this I have just begun playing the newest Dead Space. I am trying to really play these games and they have been in my game shelf already for a good amount of time.

I am also waiting to get my hands on the Nintendo Switch 2. So, I really don’t have many reasons to go and play some Xbox Series X titles. I am already waiting for some new Switch 2 titles to play. I bought the version of Switch 2 that has Mario Kart World bundled. I would have liked to buy some other game for the first game of the console but this is now the game I have to start my journey with Switch 2. The console seems already really promising.

I also read that there is a new handheld Xbox console coming. It is interesting to see how huge game console companies are moving towards handheld gaming. It hasn’t been a long time since we were first introduced to Steam Deck. There might be something new coming from Valve, also. And of course we have all our Windows 11 handheld PCs already in the markets and selling very nicely.

Do we see something new in a form of an operating system from Valve in the near future? We will have to wait and see. I am very interested in seeing how Linux can operate with some applications that are usually utilized with a Windows PC. We have already seen how PC games bought through Steam can already function on a Linux operating system. They seem to work fine.

The Highlights of Xbox Series X

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I am going to go through how I actually feel and think about some experiences of Xbox Series X. We are going to take a look at this console while its lifespan has lasted right now almost five years. There are new consoles going to get released, some this year, some later, and it is a good time to take a look back on what this console, Xbox Series X, had to offer. Soon it will not anymore be the newest console.

I remember back in 2020 that I was thinking about how my PS4 would not be the newest console anymore. In the fall of 2020 we saw PS5 and Xbox Series S/X released. Being the newest gaming console can be a sort of a responsibility. We are used to seeing new consoles getting released every about seven years or so. While PS4 hasn’t been the newest console in years I, and many other gamers, have been playing on their PS4s during these years. I am very glad, since I haven’t to this day bought a PS5, that the newest games for PlayStation were also available for PS4. Some of these games are Gran Turismo 7, Spider-Man (the first and Miles Morales) and God of War (the first game and Ragnarök).

Back in 2021 (I wasn’t the first one to absorb this time) I first bought Xbox Series S. We were well in the pandemia which begun already in 2020. There was a huge shortage concerning about PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles. There were lots of consumers that would had liked to buy a console but couldn’t. I would have bought an Xbox Series X at first but it just wasn’t available. I finally got my Xbox Series X maybe a year later or something like that. Nintendo, in the mean time, was selling lots of Switch consoles as the shortage didn’t affect it so much.

I ended up buying also Xbox Series X because I already had a 4K capable television and I liked the thing that Series X had more space for installing games and it provided the means to watch actual 4K movies through optical 4K discs. I also ended up buying the official disk space upgrade. I always thought it was very expensive. I did buy the option that included 1 TB of extra space. Xbox Series X also provided a better screen resolution and was more powerful in running the games.

Besides playing games Xbox Series X provides the ability that actually lacks in PS4 of playing music CDs. It is also capable to watch DVDs, Blurays and 4K movies that are sold as optical discs. You can also enjoy games and movies in digital format. I have had a smart television so I haven’t actually used my Xbox Series X as a media center. I do watch video content on my TV and I don’t actually use my Xbox console in that way.

I would like to mention and give some thanks to the Xbox app that I installed on my Android smart phone soon after I had installed my Series X. It is very nice. The way you can share and save your actual screenshots is very nice. I have to say that PS4 performs poorly in this manner. Using PS4 you have to have a USB memory stick to move your screenshots to your PC where you can then transfer them to some social media whenever you have a need like this. Nintendo also doesn’t perform so swiftly in this field. The Xbox app is very functional and many of these Series X screenshots I have shared at Instagram or in this blog have been processed using the app. You can also see from the app how long have you been playing a game and also track your overall Xbox gaming score.

What about the games? Lets first talk about the backwards compatibility. Series X i compatible with 63 out of 989 original Xbox games, 632 out of 2155 Xbox 360 games and all of Xbox One games. This makes the game library very strong. The console already has almost 3000 games that you are able to play. There is an idea also that if you like to play more Xbox 360 and/or original Xbox games you would actually like to have a dedicated and original console also. There are options to emulate the hardware also. But when it comes to Xbox Series X is does provide a nice, although not complete, support for older Xbox games.

Some good older games that can be played on a Series X are old Call of Duty series’s games, original Alan Wake, first three Bio Shock titles, some Silent Hill games, Max Payne series (first three games), Quake I and II, Split Second, Skyrim, Halo series and the Master Chief Collection, just to share some of my favorites. Some best new games, in my own opinion, include titles like Forza Horizon 5, Forza Motorsport, Resident Evil 8, Alan Wake II, Diablo II Resurrected and Control.

All in all I have enjoyed Xbox Series X. Would I have done without it? In have to say maybe. I could have utilized an old Xbox 360. I could have bought only a new 4K movie player. There were only so few actual new games that got released. Right now my thoughts are into the soon to be released Nintendo Switch 2. It is getting its release 5th of June. It is very soon. Switch 2 then becomes the first game console in this new generation of consoles. I think Xbox Series X did well.

Today and also yesterday I have spent some time playing Hogwarts Legacy with my Series X. I finally found some time to do this. Also I am not going to  buy a new game for Series X for a while. I am going to wait for Switch 2 to get released. If I am a fortunate one I will buy Nintendo Switch 2. But that means that it is very much available soon after the launch. Happy Sunday to you my dear blog reader!

Too Many Games

Posted on by Viljami

Playing games, being a gamer, can take a lot of time. This comes clear to me as I have just some weeks ago installed two huge and space-taking games to my Xbox Series X. I took me almost two hours just to install these two games. The games are Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts Legacy. Some very good titles that have just been sitting on my game shelf for a long time. I would even go and say too long.

I actually did pay a bit lower price for both of these titles. I paid about 20 euros for Cyberpunk 2077 and about 40 euros for Hogwarts Legacy. As you might know the price for a new, just release game, seems to be around 70 euros or something like that. Of course publishers are now aiming to rise prices a bit. We might see games that were just released priced as something near 100 euros in the future. Where does the money go one might ask.

It seems like the industry is making a lot of money by releasing new games. Do we as gamers have the ability to play every single decent game that’s out there and available. I doubt that. Today we are seeing a new Doom game and in the July we are going to see remake collection of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4. And, last but not least, we are going to see the release of Nintendo Switch 2.

In the last maybe four years I have been buying lots of games. I like to buy games that are in sale. I also buy lots of older games. They are also cheap. I am talking about games for PS3 and Xbox 360 or anything that is from that era. You know – games that are old but not yet considered widely retro games.

I think, actually, that there are just too many titles out there. I’d like to play every decent game but it seems that you just have to decide and pick what to play. This is sometimes difficult. You have to spend some hours playing the game to see if it fits your idea of a good gaming entertainment. For example I did play almost seven hours of Cyberpunk 2077 but decided to play something else after that.

Games are long. Some games take 30 hours just to play them through. I know that I have spend hundreds of hours playing NBA 2K games. I think this videogame series got me and many others hooked. Somehow they seem to capture players and they keep releasing the game every year with so little improvements or changes in the basic gameplay.

People are spending more money on videogames than ever. There has been discussion and some predictions of how will Nintendo Switch 2 sell in the first year that it is available. We are talking about tens of millions of devices. That something to think about. Gaming seems to be more popular than ever.

Why don’t I have so much time? Well, it seems like my adulthood has already begun several years ago. I am not a student anymore. I have an eight-hour workday from Monday to Friday. So, I have to work. I want to work. I want to be a part of the society. I would like to play more. It just isn’t my top priority anymore. I have less free time now. I do have some more money. It just seems that buying a game seems to be something I have to really consider and think about.

For someone that is playing lots of videogames this seems to be a perfect time. There are lots of games to choose from and you have to choose which ones to buy and play. There are reviews in the gaming media online and even in the printed media. They can give you an idea of what to expect from a game even before you buy it. You can also gather knowledge about games and discuss about them to find new games to actually play.

What I would like to say about all this? Think for a while what you are buying. Sometimes it is good to wait some time after a game is released. The price might go lower. Please think about what companies and what kind of companies you are supporting. Don’t forget independent developers and give them some support. We do have a beautiful moment in time and history. Lets embrace it and keep playing good games!