Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: 2020s

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!

My Latest Purchase

Posted on by Viljami

This the beginning of my new blog post. As the title says it is dealing around my latest purchase. I ordered three games for my Xbox Series X. I bought these three games for a little under 100 euros with the shipping included. What games did I get? I bought Endless Dungeon, a game released by Sega, Lies of P and also Tekken 8 that is the latest game in the well-known series of three-dimensional fighting games.

I am very happy fellow now. I just got to my home and away from some bad weather. It is raining right now but just a moment ago it wasn’t. It is also, again,  Friday and the week-end is here. I am probably going to play some video games. I do have time for that and this weeks work is done.

I almost wrote a blog post some days ago about two Xbox Series X games that I managed to install. I didn’t that time write about it but I went and installed Hogwarts Legacy and Cyberpunk 2077. Now I have played about four hours of Cyberpunk 2077 while Hogwarts Legacy is still not played at all though I have it now installed. I do have lots of space still left on my Series X since I don’t keep so many games installed. This hasn’t been a problem for me. I have almost always space for the games that I am currently playing. I just uninstall a game or two that take too much space and that I am not so into at this moment. That is my strategy and it seems to be working.

What did I expect from these games that were included in my latest purchase? Tekken is very familiar. Te latest Tekken game was so cheap that I just had to buy it. It cost me only sixteen euros and it was the cheapest game from this latest purchase. I think it is a good fighting game and a decent game when it comes to the Tekken series. It does take some space. I am not sure if I am able to install all these three games and try to play them immediately. I probably have to pick which one I am going to concentrate on.

I read just some few words about Lies of P. This game cost me 45 euros. It is not the newest game. It was released already some time ago. I have read that it is a decent game. It can be finished in 29 hours. I got this information from How Long To Beat that is a website that has a database of almost every popular game out there including every abandon-ware game as well. It is actually a very good site and I use it regularly (as you may have seen).

Endless Dungeon was 31 euros. I just felt somewhat interested in it. I actually have been looking for it in case it would be available in a cheap price. I think 31 euros is a good and nice price for a game like this. It is actually developed by Sega. It also came in a huge box. It is not a big box, like PC big box, but it is comfortable. Right now all these three games are sealed. I am not very keen on keeping games sealed so that they would be valuable later but sometimes I leave them sealed while I am not going directly into them and starting to play them. We’ll just have to see how long they are going to keep being sealed copies. I think that the time would be too long for me to get a proper profit for something like this. But there a sense in handling your games like this (keeping them sealed) if you have the patience required. After all a sealed NES game, be it a Super Mario Bros 3 or some other decently valuable game, would actually be very valauble in deed.

But what am I still talking about here? It is Friday after all. I should open these sealed games and give them a good run. I might play some Cyberpunk 2077 first or try to get into some Hogwarts Legacy type of action. Whatever my game of choice will be I am going to have some fun, right? After all that’s what these weekends are perfect for.

The Last Issue of Pelaaja Magazine

Posted on by Viljami

So, it’s a bit over twenty one tonight and I just received Pelaaja magazine as delivered in mail. I don’t know why the deliver was so late. Well, anyways, there’s also a book that I am currently reading in this featured image of this blog post. The book is about Snapchat (“How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars”). I find it very interesting and I am about hundred pages through this book at the moment. The book is written by Billy Gallagher.

The fact that I just received mail brought me the idea that I’ve been thinking about already for some days. I did already know that this issue of Pelaaja would be the last one. I was just waiting for the mail to be delivered so I could start writing this blog post. I knew that I was going to receive the issue sooner or later. So, this is the real news. Pelaaja is going to stop getting printed and it is going to be merged to another Finnish gaming magazine called Pelit. So, I, and also all the other readers that have a subscription paid already are going to get their still remaining magazines in their subscriptions delivered as Pelit magazines. We are also getting one issue of this magazine as a some sort of a bonus. Then we can make a new subscription to Pelit or just quit our subscriptions. This is how it seems to be going.

Pelaaja has been around for quite a while. The magazine was founded back in 2002 in October. Pelit, the other still remaining Finnish gaming magazine has been around for some time longer. Actually I remember reading Pelit already back in the middle of 1990s. I think it was established in maybe 1980s (it was actually founded in 1992). Pelaaja has for a long time provided a solid competition. I have bought some Pelit magazine issues. I have never subscribed to it. I have been a subscriber of Pelaaja for several years.

Back in the wild 2000s there used to be several printed gaming magazines. There are too many to mention or to even remember. I think we had a magazine called Peliasema that was focusing on PlayStation. Actually the word “peliasema” is somewhat translated as “play station”. Well, I had to make one more search through a search engine right here just to find that this was actually true and not just my imagination. It was founded in 1998. It was sort of a spin-off of Pelit and it featured some gaming journalists that were also writing articles to Pelit. So, there was some competition already in the field when Pelaaja was founded.

It is somewhat hard to trying to realize that Pelaaja has been actually discontinued. I thought that this magazine would have been up and running for a long long time. There are many trips, for example to our summer cottage, that I picked up the latest Pelaaja from gas station to have something fresh to read while enjoying summer, or winter, here in Finland. Pelaaja has been there for a long time and now it seems like there is a part of gaming journalism missing at least here and right now.

The direction for printed media is that we are getting less and less actual, physical, printed content and the news can be read online from your closest display that can be a smart phone, a tablet or a computer screen. More and more content is published digitally. More and more content is getting released for free online. And this has been the direction for already some time. I do enjoy very much reading content that has been printed to a paper as you can probably see from this blog posts featured image. I don’t have a e-reader device and my tablet is very poor and I almost never use it. Almost every book I read is a physical copy instead of a digital one.

In the last issue ever of Pelaaja we are going to deal with the new Doom game that is getting released next month. I am going to get that game. I know this already for sure. The last two Doom games were great ones. We are going to read more about Wreckfest 2, Housemarque, a Finninsh game company, turning 30 years and also some other very interesting content. I hope this is a good read. If its anything like every earlier issue of Pelaaja I am going to like it. So, thank you, Pelaaja, for everything and farewell!