original Archives - Intensive Gaming Diary

How Games Used to Be

Posted on August 15, 2022 by Viljami

I can remember it clearly. Games were different. I am talking about how games were at the time when original Xbox was released. Thinking about this brings me, again, some very nostalgic feelings and thoughts.

So what excactly has changed? We have today more powerful gaming consoles, screens and televisions. Even things like controllers and consumption of electricity have improved. It seems although that we are seeing very different kinds of games today compared to what we saw about twenty years ago.

Back in the day game publishers took more financial risks. There was also less money involved all in all. This has led to a situation in which we are seeing huge releases that try to appeal to as huge of an audience as possible. Just think about Elden Ring or Cyberpunk 2077.

Old or retro games can give you a different approach to how a game should feel like. Some games are not even trying to reach to the sky. They might use only 2D scenery or they might concentrate to bringing you something that can be classified very easily. Just think about racing games. Everyone knows how a typical racing game feels like.

Seems like games today try to be everything for everyone. We haven’t seen many new genres formed in last past ten years. We are seeing lots of remakes of old games that were very popular at the time they were originally released. We seem to see fewer definitely distinctive new games. Have game developers lost their creativity? How is this going to affect to new games we are already waiting to be released?

The times are changing and that change is constant. Because of delivery problems of electronical components we are seeing some other difficulties also. Has the gaming industry reached already its peak? Are we going to be still playing games and going to find more new games that attract us and bring us deeper and closer to the core of this hobby?

There is something very definitive in video games that attracts people. More and more people are starting this hobby. Age isn’t in any way anymore a limitation. And who tells you that you cannot play also some older games instead of these newer huge releases?

Xbox Documentary Series on YouTube

Posted on December 20, 2021January 11, 2022 by Viljami

It’s been 20 years from the release of the first Xbox or should we call it original Xbox. This was Microsofts successful attempt to get into game business. The path was rough. There were several obstacles on the way.

So the history of this gaming console has been collected to a form of a documentary series. It has six episodes in it that are about 40 minutes per episode. It is possible to view this series from YouTube for free. I can definitely recommend this for someone that has been interested in gaming for a while or to someone that just finds this content somehow interesting.

I have watched five episodes out of six. They have covered topics like the dominance of PlayStation as a gaming device in consumers living rooms and how Microsoft felt that their business was in danger. They just had to react and go from producing software to creating some hardware in the form of a new game console. It wasn’t always clear that there would be a product like Xbox now is in the markets.

So the first chapters describe how Microsoft started in the gaming business. I think everyone that has been involved in consuming games can say that they remember these problems that Xbox 360 had. There were so many consoles returned. It was said that the console was rushed. It wasn’t properly tested. So lots of products ended up returned. Microsoft handled this problem as well as they could and it cost it a lot of money.

I am going to watch the last episode of this series soon. The story is now in the beginning of the battle between Xbox One and PS4 and how Xbox declared that its console would fit perfectly in almost everyones living room. It is also clear that Nintendo had to play its cards in this game also. Did you know that Microsoft made an offer to buy Nintendo way back? If you are interested in this documentary series you can find “Power On: The Story of Xbox” from YouTube.

You Don’t Want to Use a Generic Controller

Posted on October 30, 2021January 11, 2022 by Viljami

So I encountered a slight issue with my generic controller for Xbox 360. I first bought this gaming console from a friend of mine. It was a good deal. I got the regular game pad with it. As I got to know the system a bit more I discovered that it would require a battery or a cable so that I wouldn’t have to change the alkaline batteries all the time. I am not a big fan, as I wrote earlier to this blog, of AA batteries.

My solution to this slight issue was to buy a generic controller. It was cheap. It was like twenty euros or so. It played nicely for some time. It wasn’t that awful when playing driving games like Project Gotham Racing 4 or Forza Motorsport. As I was thinking about to play a FPS called Crysis 2 I encountered and totally understood the problem I had. This generic game pad wouldn’t be a solution for me as I would need a better, a sharper, controller for my Xbox 360.

It was a pain to try to aim and move efficiently while playing Crysis 2. Where I think the controller performed the most poorly was at moving the sight. The left thumb stick of this controller just isn’t accurate and sharp enough. I was very lucky although. When I first bought the console it came with a controller. This game pad was the original that was delivered with the system in the first place when the console was bought as a new. I just had to buy a USB cable for the controller or else I would have to buy some AA batteries for it and keep changing them every time they would get consumed.

I bought a cable. I actually bought one nice game also so I wouldn’t make just an order of only twenty euros. I was happy. I had finally the cable that I needed. Then I figured that the cable was actually a charging cable. Well alright then. Its length was only about two meters. That’s not a good cable for powering a game pad. So what I actually had to do was to buy an extender cable. So it got a bit messy but I finally managed to plug the controller to my Xbox 360.

I think playing FPS games with a cheap, generic, controller on Xbox 360 or maybe even on your PC is something that a real gaming enthusiast wouldn’t do. Some people like to play these shooting games with a mouse and a keyboard. And you have to say it has its advantages. I like to casually play first person shooters with a controller but when I do I prefer a good quality controller that doesn’t require me to change the batteries all the time and maybe even consume the natural resources with these kinds of actions. So save your money and buy these controllers as wisely as you can. That is all for now my dear readers. Til the next time!

Introduction to Halo

Posted on September 2, 2021January 11, 2022 by Viljami

Halo was first released for the original Xbox back in 2001. It was also some years later released for PC. First person shooter fans had already seen some games of this genre released for consoles. As you can easily figure FPS games were first designed to be played with a keyboard and a mouse. Nintendo 64 already had a game or two that can be categorized to be first person shooters. One of these games is Golden Eye 007.

So Halo brought a strong feel of FPS gaming to the Xbox. I think it worked really well and I have enjoyed this game for a long time. The game play is structured so that it is easier to play with a controller of that generation of gaming consoles. You had to move with left thumb stick while you had to aim with the right thumb stick. You could fire with the shoulder button on the right. This was, for me especially, a strong and a positive experience as I had played Half Life and Return to Castle Wolfenstein with a PC setup using keyboard and mouse.

I have to say that I didn’t play Halo until it was about 2006 or so. As I have told in some of my earlier posts on this blog I had some other things going on in 2001. So I got my original Xbox in 2006 and it was about four years ago, 2017, when I started moving towards original Xbox again as I got all my games back from my brother and bought the console again from flea market for a very low price. My Xbox broke just last year. After that I have utilized my Xbox 360’s backward compatibility and I gladly found out that Halo and Halo 2 also work with the 360.

This blog post is named “introduction” because I wanted to introduce the game because it has it’s own and original game play that is a bit different from the FPS’s of it’s time. Also I just some days ago started to play Halo 5. You can start from whatever Halo you have available. I know that there’s a package sold in online stores for Xbox and PC that contains Halo’s first four games. This four game compilation is called Master Chief Collection. There’s also the next Halo game soon to be released. I think it it’s release date is in December this year.

I have completed Halo 3. I am not sure if I have completed other Halo games totally but I do have tens or even hundreds of hours of experience from this great game series. It is possible to play Halo with your friends. The original Xbox enables up to four players to play with a shared screen and from the first game it was also possible to play online. This brought the hardware and design and features of the first Xbox to their maximum. That was basically how the game was designed.

Halo is a first person shooter. You have health level. If your health level drops to zero you die. After that you start from the last save point. The health increases back to maximum level when you stop receiving hits from shooting enemies for a long enough time. So there are no health packs at all. You have many different weapons. You have a limited amount of ammo. Some weapons are from enemies that are aliens so they also have a limitation that makes your can like burn in your hands if you fire too many rounds. When this happens you have to wait a while as your player regains the ability to shoot again. You have to change weapons often. Different weapons have different abilities. Some weapons have less ammo than others and some weapons shoot faster and some are more accurate to shoot with or have a way to zoom to the target that you are trying to shoot.

This is the basics. The weapons are very uniquely designed. I think you cannot find similar weapons in any other game released before the first Halo. Maybe the first Half Life is the most close to Halo if you want to think about games that are similar to it. I was very disappointed in the Half Life’s release for PS2. In my opinion the controls were horrible. This was corrected in Half Life 2 when it was released for Xbox later.

Halo has a certain science fiction feel to it. It has been for a long time one of the most popular games. It has been exclusive for Xbox for a number of game console generations. There is no end in sight. I am a big fan of Halo games. The controls made it easy and fun to play FPS games with Xbox. It helped to bring game pads to be used more and more in gaming in general. After Halo was released for consoles many other same kind of games followed it. I could name some titles that I liked but that list would maybe be too long for here. I know many PS3 and Xbox 360 games and also games for PS4 that have taken influence from Halo. The image you see as the featured image is a screenshot I took with my Xbox Series S from Halo 5.

Burnout 3: Takedown – An Action Packed Racing Game For PS2 (and original Xbox)

Posted on August 5, 2020January 11, 2022 by Viljami

I fell in love with this game. Well, maybe not in love but it had me spend hours playing. I have to tell you that I first bought this game for my original Xbox. Then I was many years away from Xbox and my gaming centered more around newer PC games and PS3. I got back to it some years ago as I found it from a local flee market. The price was maybe three or four euros.

So, what is this game about? Racing is the first thing that comes to mind. But that isn’t all. There is this “boost” feature that forces you to gather sort of fuel. You get more fuel for boost from taking risks when driving. For example you can drive almost hitting another vehicles. You can also sort of drift with your car. The most fuel you get from slamming your opponents to the wall, another car or a train. It also makes your opponents to lose important time and you can have a huge advantage by taking out your opponent or opponents. That’s what “Takedown” stands for in this games title.

“Why do you love this game?”, you might ask. It’s like having a break from these very realistic racing games. It is more approachable than some more realistic driving games like Richard Burns Rally for example. There is a nice mixture of skill and randomness needed to play Burnout 3: Takedown successfully. So it’s good entertainment. But like with almost all video or computer games you have to understand that this content is purely fictional. One day I was thinking about this as I was playing this game. You really have to take down your opponents. I mean you have to make a push to eliminate your competition. Driving like this in real life would be disastrous. Would someone be so influenced by this game that he or she would actually try these tricks while actually driving? I mean you have to have a reason to understand that this not real. You have to separate this game from reality.

How Did I Get Started With Call Of Duty

Posted on July 21, 2020January 11, 2022 by Viljami

I first got into playing Call Of Duty games back in 2006 when I first bought then already a bit old gaming console – the original Xbox. So it was fourteen years ago. I started to look for games, mainly used ones, that were of good quality. I ended up buying maybe three games that I thought were interesting and CoD was one of them.

So there have been many games released inside this game series. I might not have played all of them but I can tell you that some good ones are the first Black Ops and also Modern Warfare Three. I liked the first CoD but I don’t think it’s the best. We had already seen games like Halo on Xbox. It wasn’t anymore so special to have a first person shooter on a console. I am talking about the situtation that we had in the end of 90s when players were thinking that you couldn’t really play FPS’s on gaming consoles and they would have to be played solely on PCs. So the first CoD wasn’t the first FPS on a console.

I have really enjoyed playing CoD series’s games. After getting into the first two of these games on Xbox I went on to buy some CoDs for my PS3. I even have played some CoD games on my PC. I think the newest game in this series is Ghosts for PS4. I recently grabbed CoD Black Ops 1 for PS3. I really enjoyed it. I also bought WWII for PS4 but haven’t yet played it.

I just liked very much how you move inside the game and how you can aim and move. This playing style combines realism and play ability and I think that was finally the thing that got me hooked. Action inside the game is supported with many different options of weapons and historical facts that are at least somewhat correct.

Still this series of games isn’t perfect. I was disappointed in one game of this series that I bought for PS4. It was Advanced Warfare. I just couldn’t enjoy it. The weapons that were used brought to my mind some clips I had then just watched that described how soldiers shot civilians in the Middle East. So I really couldn’t enjoy the game. I’ve heard some bad criticism on Infinite Warfare also and I do have witnessed as it was sold for 10 euros in many gaming stores.

So I hope this post gave you something. Whether it was a new point of view, a nice recommendation or review of a game you was thinking to buy or any other type of reason that you liked this article. It’s nice if you liked it. Keep playing them games!

How Doom changed gaming?

Posted on April 9, 2020January 11, 2022 by Viljami

Back in 1993 I was a young kid and I heard some of my class mates talk about this new game that was said to be totally awesome. They kept talking about it. Our crappy PC that our family had wasn’t able to run it. So I played it with my friends computer. And it definitely was something we players hadn’t seen before.

Creators of this game, mainly John Romero and John Carmack, brought to us a game that had never-before-seen graphics and which was also very violent. I remember a long conversation that I had as a kid about does Doom have some kind of a plot in it. You basically walk around and shoot monsters. But there is some kind of a story included though. You are a soldier that is ordered to go to work at Phobos, a moon of Mars, but someone has accidentally opened a teleport to hell. Everyone else is dead. You are figthing monsters from hell all by yourself.

Back in the day graphics were blurry. Just compare the original game to newer Doom released in 2016 and you clearly see the difference. Violence does exist but now graphics tell you more accurately what happens if you for example cut a zombies head off with a chain saw. Some people claimed already in 1993 that games were too violent. This kind of discussion is of course necessary but I think you can not blame solely games for real life violence. My opinion in this issue is that a healthy person can draw a line to what happens in game and how you act in real life. Of course everyone has an opinion but lets not, again, go there.

So how exactly Doom impacted gaming? Well, it certainly brought a 3D experience to larger audience. Makers of Doom had already released Wolfenstein 3D some years earlier. There was this new genre starting to rise its head. It was the birth of a genre called First Person Shooters. And I think Doom is the father of all FPS games that came later. If Doom wouldn’t have been released there wouldn’t be games like Quake, Half-Life, Unreal, Soldier Of Fortune and so on. Doom started it all. This might also be the reason why gaming industry started to grow towards games that included textures and 3D models. Doom was definitely a real pioneer in this formation of gaming that was yet to come even more popular.

Doom started its journey to minds of gamers as a PC game. There was one particularly smart way to release a game that was used by Romero and Carmack. It was called shareware. It worked like this – You could copy the first episode free and if you, or when you, liked the first part, you could purchase the whole game. This was first time that this kind of releasing of a game was used. And it was genious. Doom was also ported to many gaming consoles including Sony PlayStation and Super Nintendo. One of the best versions of Doom could be the one released on Nintendo 64.

Doom made a comeback in 2016 as the game was released to modern gaming systems. There have been numerous Doom games and listing them all would be pointless. You must not forget Doom Eternal that was released just weeks ago. It’s the latest Doom game right now. I think nobody seriously has doubts about how great game this really is. If you still think this game didn’t have impact on the whole gaming industry I will answer that it sure did shape me and some people I know as players of computer and video games.

My gaming consoles

Posted on March 5, 2020January 11, 2022 by Viljami

PlayStation Classic

I bought my PS Classic for 40 €. The price was so low that I figured I should buy it. This device flopped very sadly. It had only 20 games. Gamepad included has too short cable and it doesn’t have analog sticks. Games included were not so special though it had FFVII and Metal Gear Solid. If you consider buying this think seriously about modding it and don’t pay too much. The price was originally 120 euros.

Retro Trio HD+

This is cool gaming console. It combines NES, SNES and Mega Drive. What that means is that you can play all cartridges that you buy from gaming stores or you might have kept them for a long time. Retro Trios price was 110 € so I think it’s cheap. It also gives HDMI output so the graphics aren’t too messy. If you want play with older retro type television I don’t recommend this. In this case you should get original systems.

PS3

I didn’t really buy this one. It was a gift to my then-girl-friend-now-my-wife. It was expensive as new but now you can pick one, I think, for under 100 euros depending on games or controllers that are included. It has a hard drive. Depended on model the size of hard drive varies. There was also some kind of backward compatibility with PS2 and PS1 games which depends a lot about the spesific model of PS3. So yep, there were multiple models, for example Slim Model and so on.

PSOne

My first true console that brought us the experience of 3D graphics. I bought this one from flea market for as low as 15 euros. It didn’t have controller with it so that effects to the price of course. PS2 controllers are compatible with it so I just played with my PS2 gamepads. It requires memory card so I had to buy one for about 10 euros. Memory cards work with PS2 but PS2 memory cards don’t work with PS1. This is a smaller version of PS1. Very cool product I would say and definitely retro.

Xbox 360

I bought this one from a friend who sold it to me as she didn’t play so much and also her gaming console was becoming old. She hasn’t bought a new console. Not yet at least. I have maybe 30 games for this and I have mainly picked them up from flea markets and gaming shops. I invested 70 euros in this one. I first thought I would play and get all Xbox 360 only games so first games I played and also completed were Alan Wake and Halo 3. I also have Gears Of War, Mass Effect, Fable, Halo, Halo wars and so on. This system has backwards compatibility on some original Xbox games but not all. The list can be found Googling.

PS4

I bought my PS4 as my birthday present in 2014. That was also a moment I turned 30 years old. It cost me about 500 euros and I had Tomb Raider with it. So the game and console summed to this amount of euros. I didn’t really like this one so much. It had no backwards compatibiltity, I didn’t like so many of games that were released to it. It was a bit of a disapponitment. It had some good games. Games I played most were NBA2K14, Dirt Rally and Diablo 3. When companies like Sony keep coming up with new devices every six years or so I am currently thinking not buying fifth PlayStation but don’t you just follow me. Make that decision yourself.

Personal computer was my first gaming device. It will always be there. I might play old retro games or the most new one. Provides large collection of controllers so you can pick your favourite USB gamepad. Easiest one to modify also if you want to upgrade your hardware or software. Much love to PC.

broken

– original Xbox

Yeah, so I broke my Xbox. I’m not going to buy a new used one to replace it. I now just have a large collection of games that aren’t supported on Xbox 360. So they lay now inside my dungeon and in my closet buried there. I’m not planing to sell them. Maybe some day we see Xbox Classic?

– PS2

This is sad one. It started to malfuction so I opened it up carefully. I tried to clean it. Finally I decided to try to fix it by replacing its optical drive. That didn’t go well as I had a wrong replacement part. So I just screwed back some screws and now it’s in condition that it starts up but you cannot boot a disc. So it’s useless. Maybe I buy a new used one or wait for PS2 Classsics release if there is one coming to us ever.