Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: ps4

My Personal Relationship with PS4

Posted on by Viljami

I hadn’t thought about PlayStation 4 yet when a friend asked me a question – Do you know when is the new console actually getting released? That was probably back in 2013. Before that comment entered my mind I had been steadily working through titles available for PS3. I had played almost endless series of driving games like Need For Speed series and Dirt 1 and 3.

I had time and energy to play video games. Back then I wasn’t so interested, as you can figure, about retro games. They were only a slight curiosity I casually worked with using emulators on a PC. So I thought it would be nice to finally buy the latest PlayStation.

I actually made the purchase after I had just turned 30 years old in 2014. My budget was, back then, low, but I managed to save money to buy the device. I bought also my first PS4 game at the same time. It was Tomb Raider that was released back in 2013.

At first I had an ambitious idea of completing every game I got for PS4. It worked out only until I got like my fifth game or so. I managed to get through Tomb Raider and Call of Duty Ghosts. Games for PS4 were pricey at that time and there was only small selection. Many games were releases of old games released as HD remakes. So I had a new gaming console but there were only a handful of games.

Was it really worth it? I started to think about this. When I am writing this I think that this device had some really nice games. Some of my favorite games are NBA 2K14 and Dirt Rally. These two really stand out in the list of my favorite games for PS4. I just think there were many titles that I didn’t really get into so much. I guess it has also something to do about that I was back then already a bit over 30 years old.

It is said that when you are young you get more inspired by the music of that time. I think this goes also for video games. One year can be very significant for a nineteen-year-old but one year for a forty-year-old is not so big deal. So I was a bit older and had already got through experiences of the first PlayStation. I just think that PS4 never conquered my hearth like PS1 once did. This personal relationship made me think that it would be not a good idea to buy a new gaming console. So tot this day I haven’t found a reason to get a new console. I have a fresh PC that I can play also some new games.

After all there is an infinite amount of games that you can play. I think the games I am going to play don’t necessarily have to be the newest anymore and PS4 kind of ended my habit of playing the newest games released. PS4 is now not the newest gaming console anymore. It isn’t retro either. It is somewhere in between of retro and new. I think it’s time now for me to take some distance to this console and try to find some other games that I can enjoy. If you did enjoy PS4 or are still enjoying it that’s fine. I just think it lacked a personality and that’s why I have not played it or enjoyed playing it as much as I did PS3 and some older devices.

What’s Going On?

Posted on by Viljami

This blog is mainly about gaming. It’s also my dear hobby and it always tells something also about me. So I dedicate this blog post to describing what has been going on lately in my life. I still try to write here as frequently as possible. It just seems that I don’t right now have so much time for video games. But I do have played a bit of Skyrim. Well, I have played it for about six and a half hours. I also started working again. I was unemployed for just about three weeks. So I got my next job almost instantly. It’s been keeping me busy but at least I don’t have to work on weekends.

There are lots of games available today. I chose my next game to be Skyrim. If you haven’t played it or if you are considering whether to get your hands on it, I can describe it a bit here. It might first seem that this game is some kind of an action game. That’s not completely true. I would compare to the first Deus Ex. It combines action and roleplaying elements cleverly. It’s not turn based but the game play is strongly depending on things like developing your character. Your character develops as you do different things and gather the actual experience. In the beginning of the game you get to choose your characters class and of course you have to modify the look and feel of your character visually and of course you have to give the character a good name that you can relate to.

There are many skills in Skyrim that you can develop. There’s too many for me to start telling something about them. Let’s just say there are maybe hundreds of them. There is also some magic skills that you can learn and use. You have to choose do you want to battle with two handed weapons, one handed weapons using also a shield or maybe you want to use ranged weapons like a bow. You can carry a limited amount of equipment with you. If the limit is reached your characters get slow. You can save your game any time you want and you can even use one quick save slot.

To this day I find this game interesting. It isn’t the newest game around. And the version I am playing is for PS4 so it is a HD remake. I already had this game for PS3 and Xbox 360 but I bought this latest remake so I could enjoy a bit better graphics. It was, again, in sale so I decided to buy it. Well, I also ordered one very interesting game at same time. It was actually Tetris for NES. So I made again a small purchase that had, again, very interesting games in it.

Maybe that is all for now. I hope I don’t get too tired and get to spend also time playing more video games as I do have free time sometimes.

Assassin’s Creed Series

Posted on by Viljami

I have played Assassins Creed for only a bit but I chose to write my next blog post about this whole series. In this series of games games I am most familiar with are the first Assassins Creed and Origins. I lately started playing Origins. I bought it couple of months ago for PS4. It’s a bit sad to think that PS4 isn’t the newest PlayStation console anymore.

Assassins Creed has been around since the first game of the series was released back in 2008. The copy I have is for Xbox 360. I found the first Assassins Creed game to be a nice game. I am not a big fan of open world games. I played this game only for a while. This is a huge series if you think about how many games there have been released in it. Since the first game there has been almost yearly a release. I am also aware that there was also a movie released some time ago.

Assassins Creed Origins takes place in Egypt. This game had a good overall score in Metacritic and I liked the idea of getting more into the series. I find also this game to be nice. You can find that there are areas of gameplay that have been further developed. This game was released in 2017. You are moving in an open world. You can run or ride a camel. You can spot new missions or places as a bird that can fly in the sky. From there you can mark different spots you want to move to. You can also use the map for navigation.

I have played Origins only for about three hours. On “HowLongToBeat” it is said that the main story has about 30 hours of playing. So I’m only at the beginning of this game. As I keep writing these blog posts I am realizing how much time playing games actually takes. I haven’t had so much time for gaming lately as I have had more work and social life recently. Playing games is still one of my favorite ways to pass time and get away from stress. So I am going to keep posting these texts to this blog. And maybe next time I can come up with a good and clever idea for a text.

How Basketball Games Have Evolved – From Super Real Basketball to NBA2K18

Posted on by Viljami

The first basketball game I ever owned was Super Real Basketball. It was released for Sega Mega Drive. Later NBA Jam came and it was maybe the best basketball game, or maybe title, of all time in sport games history. Let’s take a deeper look into how Super Real Basketball was played and how it was compared to the latest basketball game I have right now in my collections.

Super Real Basketball was fast paced game. You could move one player that had or didn’t have the ball. You had your defensive play and your offensive play. You could steal the ball if opponent tried to pass it to a teammate. When you had a drive to the basket there suddenly appeared an animation that required you to hit the shoot button at right moment. If you were on defense and you were near the player that was trying to score you could block the shot, again, by pressing a button at correct time. If you wanted to shoot a three pointer that was also possible.

The limitations of one of the first Sega Mega Drive basketball games were that although it promised a sense of reality it actually wasn’t very realistic. One thing there is that could have been designed better and that was the statistics of the game. The game didn’t have strong statistics. There weren’t real names of players of NBA or any other league. Names were just some basic names. You really couldn’t make much of a difference between players. Some players were faster than others or had better shooting skills. You just couldn’t name a player that was good with for example ball handling.

When it comes to the latest basketball games there is lots of improvements that have been made over the time as sport games have generally developed more. The latest NBA game I have is NBA2K18. The 2K series of basketball games has had good reviews, I think, since the release of NBA2K14. I think you can already trust the quality. When there is another season beginning there will be a good basketball game made with the latest players and teams.

Statistics ar great in NBA2K18. You basically play maybe two or three seasons and develop your player. You first choose some qualities of the player that don’t change like the name, number of the players shirt and height and even weight. You have to think what kind of a player you want to create. Will it be a 3 point shooter, point guard or play maker or do you want to become a center that has amazing blocking and defensive skills. After that you play the regulat season, one season is 82 games long and if you win enough games, you go to playoffs. Your player gets skill points that give you options to buy more stats for your player.

The gameplay is very nicely developed especially compared to the first basketball game I was talking about earlier. You can make steals, although you can get a penalty, if you are too much into stealing the ball, block a shot of an opponent in real time. Shooting is based on how open you are, what kind of a release you have and also how good is the ability of shooting of your player. You have a strong feel that you are actually the player. The Mega Drive game was about team play – the newer game is about individual player, but you have some game modes that enable you to play as a team or as a coach. I’ve only played NBA 2Ks, 2K14 and 2K18, as a single, individual, player.

So there is a lot of progress. I can tell you about NBA Jam also a bit. I first started playing it in an arcade. We had a great arcade that had games like NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat. So that was the first touch. I later played with a friend that had College Slam on his PC. That was cool. Lately I bought NBA Jam for Mega Drive. It’s still a great and fast paced basketball game that is played two versus two. There have been many versions and I like the PS3 version the most. It’s funniest when played with an opponent that is a human person. It’s not so much fun if played against a computer.

So these two basketball games are ones that I truly have myself played and I’ve played them a lot. It’s really nice to see how the sports games have been developing since late 1980s. And you can see how licensing, and I mean here that the players and teams have real names, affects the experience of the game. You can name a player that is good at shootiing three pointers for example. Like, to mention someone, Stephen Curry. It gives that certain touch to the games build aaround playing basketball. There are also games in which you can play on the streets. Maybe I have space and time to write about them some other time.

First touches of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 on PS4

Posted on by Viljami

I’m a big fan of THPS. I have been that way since the very first game that was released on PlayStation 1. So it’s not a big surprise I have been waiting for this remake to drop. I bought this remake two days ago. In this blog post I’m going through my feelings on this release. I have played only completed 50% of the first THPS so I have a lot to play. It’s been nice to find out that the game is basically a lot like it used to be. Oh the nostalgia!

When first THPS was released on PS1 you couldn’t do manuals. This feature has been added to the game. It’s not a bad thing. This game, or collection, if you want to say so, is a good remake. It doesn’t stand up as a full new game. It is, to me anyways, a very good remake. There are some limitations that were probably there when the original game was released. Those slight flaws are also ones that make the game what it is and what it always was. There could be another very good skateboarding game to be made. This is a very good remake of a very good original game. And I’m happy I got this for about 45 euros instead of, say, 65 euros.

I can recommend this collection even if you haven’t played original THPS one or two. It would be a nice introduction to this genre and maybe even an introduction to how gaming used to be in the days when THPS 1 and 2 were the newest games ever released. Three dimensional modelling has advanced greatly since the release of these original games. Back then it was easier to spot an object just because there were so few of them. I particularly noticed this one as I was trying to trash all the “no skating signs”. It was much more difficult to spot these signs.

All in all I am very pleased in this gaming product that was brought to us by Activision. I haven’t found anything that would disappoint me or make me unable to enjoy this experience. It’s nice to have a good PlayStation gamepad to play this game. I think DualShock 4 is way better to play this game than some earlier PlayStation controllers. I hope I find some time to play this game a lot more.

Connecting gamepad of PS4 to your PC

Posted on by Viljami

I have for a long time used Xbox Ones Elite gamepad for playing games on my PC. This is fine when dealing with PC games but when it comes to PCSX2, the emulator for PS2 games, I would like to play with a good gamepad that has buttons layed out correctly. What I mean is I would like to play with a PlayStation controller. It is kind of stupid for me to play PS2 with Xbox gamepad.

This is where a program called DS4Windows comes in to play. It is very simple to use. You just run the application and connect your DualShock 4 gamepad to your computer. You can use USB or Bluetooth connection. That’s right – you don’t need to connect your controller necessarily with Bluetooth since a USB cable works just fine. You can download this application from http://ds4windows.com/ .

I am planning on buying another DualShock 4 gamepad to use for this particular purpose. I currently only have one of these controllers. They are in my opinion a great way to somewhat make PS2 games more playble and modern. So the player can concentrate to the game instead of loosing interest as the gamepad is too bad. This can be a great improvement considering FPS games like Call Of Duty series’s games that were hardly as nice to play with older gmaepad like DualShock 2.

As PS5 will be released, I think it’s going to be sometime in November this year, there is a new controller introduced to large audience. It is called DualSense. I don’t have any experience, which in this case is understandable, of this new gamepad. I am a bit excited about it and I am curious of what kind of quality and playability it will have inside. There are some great differences between Xbox and PlayStation gamepads. One of the biggest is the layout of thumb sticks on these gamepads. I hope the new PS5 pad gives us many new improvements in technology of gaming controllers.

Making games is big business

Posted on by Viljami

Right now video games are more popular than ever. PlayStation 4 has now sold more than 110 million copies. Nintendo Switch has sold more copies than Nintendo Entertainment System. Switch and PS4 haven’t been around so long. Switch was released in 2017 and PS4 in 2013. Let’s think about this. NES was released in 1983 and the most popular and the most sold gaming console ever PS2 was released in 2000. So PS4 has been around only 7 years and Switch only 3 years. What will these figures be after 15 years? You don’t have to be any genius to figure out what’s going on. Games are popular. Making games, and selling them, is big business.

I sincerely hope that big game companies keep bringing more quality in form of good games to growing group of gamers. Making a HD remake is sometimes okay but where are the new innovations? I don’t meen big changes, such as virtual reality, but those small things that made video games of late 90s and early 2000s so great. Game developers would have to take time to experiment with a gaming console and find its limitations and opportunities. That would be a way to win my hearth back.

I have already said this. I don’t care how excited you are about PS5. I am not going to be one of the first ones to buy it. I bought PS4 back in 2014 and I was a bit disappointed in it. That just tells about me as a person a lot. It tells us about my history in gaming. I started messing around with video games well before I even bought my first console. That’s just where I’m form and that also tells a lot about in which direction I’m headed.

I am a bit worried. At the same time I am hoping the best. I keep buying PS4 titles for twenty euros and I have now about five or so games that I haven’t even opened up. I haven’t played them. I haven’t even installed them. Why did I buy them? I don’t know the right answer. I just hope we get some very good games in the future. I have to also get to my retro games at times to get the idea of what a perfect, or at least good, game is and why. And what gaming means to me…Well, there’s a lot to think about there…

The picture is a screenshot that I took from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles

Playing NBA 2K14 on PS4

Posted on by Viljami

How I got in to playing basketball games? First I started to get interested about these kinds of sport games as I was already playing basketball. It was my hobby for 7 years. Then I stopped playing as I wanted to concentrate to studying more. The first basketball game I ever had was Super Real Basketball. It was a game for Sega Mega Drive. It wasn’t the greatest game or the most realistic. But that’s how I started to get into basketball games.

The game that really caught my attention was NBA Jam. I played it in arcade in the 90s. It became my favourite game at that time. I liked also very much Mortal Kombat. These were the best games for us to play in arcades. I usually played with my friends in arcades. Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam are so great titles that I still play these original games on my Sega console even today. There have been many games released later that had better graphics and controls and so on. I still like these original games also.

NBA Jam was a hit in arcades all over the world. Sure, it was appealing and attractive. It wasn’t so realistic. There was NBA Live series that was trying to create games that were more detailed. I didn’t like this series so much or get into it. I remember playing some basketball games on PS1. But the best games that were dealing this sport were yet to be released. I have also played many basketball games on Xbox and PS3. I just didn’t so much get into them. I have to mention, in this context, a very good basketball game for PS2. That game is NBA Street vol 2 on PS2.

NBA 2K14 isn’t the latest basketball game but it surely is the one I have played the most. This game was also among the first games I bought for my then fresh and shiny PS4. I started creating a character. My imagination started flowing. I created a player that was 6 feet tall. He played as shooting guard. I added some base skills to ball handling, passing and 3-point shooting. When the game, and new season starts, you don’t first get to play. You might get 5 minutes at court to prove your skills. Then you start to get more playing time as your character progresses.

NBA 2K14 has many dimensions in it. I found it appealing as I have some history inside basketball. I have learned new ways to look at this sport. I have tried to make some kind of a game myself. This has not been easy for me. I would like to create some kind of strategy game. I went on to play 2K14 for maybe 100 hours as I developed my characters skills to overall of 99 and managed finally to win the MVP and the championship. This is a very good game. I think it brings some role playing games’s elements to sport gaming. As I had achieved almost everything the game had to offer I moved to NBA 2K18. I didn’t like it so much. This time I created taller character that played the position of power forward.

Saying goodbye to PS4

Posted on by Viljami

So there’s PS5 to be released at the end of the year. You may have been thinking that PS4 is totally over. Should you just remove it from your setup? You may change your mind because there’s going to be released some very big titles. One of them has already been mentioned in this blog. It is the remake collection of two games – Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 and 2. The other one is Dirt 5. It’s going to be released on October of 2020. We have already seen some big game releases like The Last Of Us 2 and Final Fantasy VII Remake.

How long exactly is PS4 going to be around? That is a good question. If you think about PS3, the predecessor of PS4, you can find out that the newest games haven’t been released to it. But still some hardcore players are playing it. At the beginning of this year I found out that there was PS3 emulator for PC released. It made possible to play a copy of your favorite PS3 game on PC. Though one game could take a lot of space. Some games require 50 GBs of space. Considering this and the issue of high system requirements it would be awkward to actually use this emulator as we have seen PS3 prices dropping from the price tag of brand new gaming console.

PS3 is still around and that’s not going to change for a long time. PS4 is going to lose its title as the most powerful PlayStation gaming console very soon. You can also consider some of the last games that were made for example for PS1 in early 2000s. Game companies could actually make some never before seen games because they had so much experience about developing games for exactly that system. We saw then games like Final Fantasy IX and Vagrant Story. And remember how good Silent Hill was compared to for example the first Resident Evil. There are some mistakes that can be corrected and there definitely is advantage in being some of the last games on any gaming console.

What will be the first game you buy for your new gaming system? PS5 already has some games to choose from that will be released at he release or shortly after. I am waiting to see Gran Turismo 7 for example. There is always going to be some time until new good games are starting to be released on a new gaming system. In the case of PS4 the consumers had to wait for a long time waiting for good quality games. And this also started the trend of HDs and remakes. This makes sense as you think for example how many games were released on PS1 and PS2. Why would you have to reinvent the wheel every time? There is going to be some advancements in technology. This will eventually bring some new kinds of games to us players.

I will have to say this. I am not going to buy PS5. Even if there actually is going to be a new Diablo game released on it. I am aiming for a gaming PC as my next platform for latest games. I am also going to wait two or three years to buy it. This decision is not written in stone. My mind can change. I was a bit disappointed to PS4. This is only my decision and you should definitely make yours after you have given this idea some thought. It has been some years since PS4 was released.

Tony Hawks Pro Skater is making a comeback

Posted on by Viljami

I was first introduced to Tony Hawks Pro Skater as a young teenager back in 1999. It was the golden era of Sony PlayStation 1. I’m not much of a skater. I mean I had a skateboard but I think I started skateboarding too old. I didn’t learn the tricks. The toughest trick I managed to do was pop-shove-it. And some of my friends had fun at my expense because of that. But that’s enough about my skateboarding skills.

Skateboarding is fun to watch. At the end of 90s some game developers thought they could create a game based on this style of sport. This was also a good opportunity for Tony Hawk to gain some more recognizability. The game was an absolute hit. It made kids want to start learning real skateboarding. And it did bring this sport more fans and hobbyists. It made skateboarding very popular.

If you liked the game or why not the whole series or maybe just the three first ones or what ever – there is going to be released a new game with better graphics that maintains the playability of the original one. This release includes THPS one and two. The release date is currently set to September 4th. There might be delays coming to this releaase because of situation with Corona virus.

So the game brings THPS to some newer consoles. Activision hasn’t released a THPS game after 2015 when THPS 5 flopped badly and received bad reviews. If you have played this game you propably remember the sonudtrack. In this new release there will be almost all tracks that appeared on original games but some are going to be missing. This is happening because of licensing problems. This small HD collection will be first released on Xbox One and PS4 and might be available for newer consoles later.

So we are waiting to see if this collection brings us a game with good quality. It’s been a while. I think I am going, once again, have these nostalgic feelings I sometimes tend to have. Lets hope it will be a good THPS HD version of the first and the second game. And lets hope that the release isn’t going to be delayed, well, at least not badly.

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