Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: 2020s

Looks Like I’ll Be Playing Gran Turismo 6 For a Long Time

Posted on by Viljami

How I got to playing Gran Turismo 6 all over again? It started when I was going through PS1 games and I got to play Gran Turismo 2. It is a very good racing game but the graphics just seem too outdated. This happened many weeks ago. I was thinking about how I stopped playing Gran Turismo 6 for PS3 and I wanted to finish it. It was in my opinion  a better game than GT 2 would be. So, I started getting back into playing Gran Turismo 6.

If we consider that almost all Gran Turismo games are very good I can, in a positivite manner, say that Gran Turismo 6 is definitely in the top three of all GT games. I am not saying that it is better than Gran Turismo 4 which is by the way a game that has such a legendary status in gamers and racing fans minds. It might compete with GT 7 that was a very good game but was maybe a short one. I didn’t actually complete, that is to play the game and achieve everything that the game has to offer, Gran Turismo 7. I did finish it although.

How Long To Beat website tells you that it takes 44 and a half hours to finish Gran Turismo 6. When I look at the statistics that the game kindly offers I find that I have completed maybe 43 percentage of the game and I have driven maybe 19 hours. This is the actual point of this blog post. I think I still have a lot to play if I wish to finish or even complete Gran Turismo 6.

Gran Turismo 6 isn’t a perfect game. Graphics are nice. They are not as nice as with GT 7. This must not be a surprise because GT 7 was released for PS4 and PS5. We didn’t see a release for Xbox as we didn’t see Forza Motorsport on PS. That has been the way since the war between PS and Xbox first became. Noways we do have some conversation about some these exclusive titles getting released for both Xbox and PS. This makes sense since a game like FFXVI is getting a release for PC and it might even be released for Xbox also.

I don’t clearly know if my controller is working fully. I checked if there would be any professional level game pads for PS3 available. This made me a bit disappointed. I only saw some Spartan Oplon controllers, which I do have a  one piece that is presented in this image next to this blog post and also there were some basic Dual Shock 3 controllers also available. I do have a racing wheel but I have to confess that I am not so into racing wheels. I just never got the hang of it and I have played with a controller since the end part of 1990s when I was getting first into these Gran Turismo games which then has lead to me to this day which I seem to be spending playing Gran Turismo 6.

Is Gran Turismo 6 a good racing game? Definitely. Should you spend almost 45 hours playing it? Well, if you do enjoy it, then go ahead. But if it feels like you have seen the whole game after 20 or so hours I advise to you to think about this decision again. I do have games that I have played hundreds of hours but these games are kind of a special cases, like NBA 2K games for me (:D). I had an idea of a blog post in which I would have discussed with you about how long would be the preferable time to spend on a video game but this current topic seemed more interesting to me. Anyways…happy Saturday to you, my reader. We’ll see each other when you read my next blog post. Take care!

Organizing Your Game Collection

Posted on by Viljami

Right now in this blog post we are going through some simple ways that you can have to organize your game collection. The need for organizing depends on how large of a collection you do have and also do you collect and play also already a bit older games or even these legendary retro games.

I think if you only play the newest games you can save a lot of time and you don’t have to think about organizing your game collection so deeply. It is also easier to handle your game collection if you buy only digital copies for your gaming consoles and personal computer.

I do have a huge game collection. I like to keep those games that I can actually easily start playing in my gaming shelf. I also have several gaming consoles attached to my television. So, I have lots of games available and I can change from system to system quickly. I also have a storage to which I move some games that aren’t playable currently in my setup.

Some collectors like to keep their game collection in a very good and clean shape. If you want to be precise you can even sort your games alphabetically. I don’t have my games in any special order. But I do like to keep those games that are for a certain console in same place. So, I cand easily find a game that I like to play on a precise system.

As you can figure from the featured image my game collection might need some configuring. This picture that I took just moments ago shows you my GameCube collection, all my SNES and NES games, my Game Boy Color, some adapters, my Game Boy games and some other stuff also. This is my Nintendo part of my collection.

I have a large collection of games. As I already said my game collection would need some more organizing. For example I have two rows in this shelf right now that are dedicated to DVDs. Their price has come to be low today. I wouldn’t want to display so much of them in this shelf. I also have some older but not yet retro PC games on one row that I probably should move to storage.

I have had some difficulties with storing SNES games in a reasonable way in my game collection. They seem to be just placed on top of each other and you cannot even tell from the back of these cartridges that which game  is which (I mean that the titles aren’t seeable). I don’t this problem with my NES game cartridges. I have also run out of space with my Mega Drive games.

I would like to collect even more games. I just need to think what gaming consoles I want to dedicate my shelf space to. I have seen some huge game collections online. I don’t think that I would like to display more games. I am somewhat a collector but I like to also play them. I guess you can say that I am a bit of both of these types of game collectors.

Finishing and Completing Games

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I write to you, dear IGD blog readers, about finishing and completing games. The thing is that for me back in the 1990s and in the era when PlayStation 1 was the most powerful gaming console it was a habit to finish a game that I had bought. There are some reasons why I am not today finishing all these games that I have.

First that comes to mind when thinking about finishing anf completing games is that we have seen hundreds, even thousands of new games becoming available fom older consoles, like PS1, and for consoles that have been released after that. Just think about thousands of games released for PS2. Add also games that were released to these systems: Xbox, GameCube, Xbox 360, PS3, and so on. There have been many games releaseda and so there are more games to be finished.

Finishing a game is a one thing. Some games can be completed. The difference between these two is that when you finish a game you have had enough from the game. It has provided you some entertainment. When you actually want to complete a game after you have already finished it the game seems to have still something to give to you. So, you play the game until there is nothing left to accomplish in it.

There were many PS1 games that I finished. There are a few games that I wanted to play even after I had finished them. These games are Gran Turismo 1, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Colin McRae Rally 1 and 2. I don’t know if I completed for example THPS 1. I did unlock every skating level and achieved a gold medal in every competition but I didn’t finish the game with every character. There was also some characters that could be unlocked and this was kind of a bonus for someone that was feeling  a deep motivation to totally complete the game.

I think in a way I have become busier. I don’t have as much time for video games than I had back in the 1990s. Also the society has become very different from what it used to be. The games often try to hold the play and games have become longer than they were. The capacity that a game takes from your disk has grown. It went from one CD, about 650 MB, to one DVD, to one Bluray to something like over 100 GB. There are more possibilities in a single game and there is more content. Also game manufacturers have become more ambitious with their games.

I used to complete every game I had. Back in 2014 I tried to complete every game that I bought for my then so shiny PlayStation 4. It started well. I was using PS4. I finished maybe five games and after that the backlog started growing and I started to skip a game that I got stuck with and buy another game and start playing it.

Even back in 2006 when I played mainly original Xbox I had some more ambition in trying to finish the games that I had bought. There has been a shift in this way. We are seeing more games that are very long. Publsihers are trying their best to get players hooked in that particular game and to play their game for a very long time. At the same time we are seeing fewer games.

So is the innovating started to become less of a thing when it comes to modern video games? We are seeing fewer games than back in the say era of PS2 and original Xbox and other consoles of that era. The stakes might have risen. And there is more money involved.