Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: role playing games

Character Progression in Video Games

Posted on by Viljami

Character progression in video games was back in the 90s when games like Golden Axe II were released very much nonexistent. I played the first Golden Axe just a while ago. I almost suddenly started to realize how this game would feel like if there would be some sort of character progression in it. It is very sad that a game like Golden Axe that has very nice visual look and very fantastic character design along with a fun game play to not have something we have seen in so many modern games – a character progression.

Take Donkey Kong Bananza for example. The game isn’t overly obsessed with the development of the character but you get to update your skills with “bananas” that you collect while progressing in the main story. You get to update your hitting force and health level along with many other skills that you can update with the bananas that you collect. You get to choose very much how you will spend your hard earned skill points. This molds the experience and gives you some strategical point of view to the game.

We are today seeing this also in many sports games. In modern NBA games you have to keep developing your player to perform better. There really isn’t a such a solid goal in these basketball games but you can have achievements like winning a championship or getting awarded as the “most valuable player” and things like this. Basically you can play these NBA games almost forever or as long as you will. You kind of get hooked in developing your character and some people are also willing to buy stat upgrades with real money. You can of course have multiple and different types of main characters.

The origins of character progression are in my thinking something adopted from today so popular role playing games. The origins of RPGs then are from something called Dungeon & Dragons. Of course we cannot forget also how fantasy literature has shaped the scenery of today’s role playing games. The components of modern video games have everything to do with the creative power of those people that keep on creating and telling stories and describing different characters, missions and stories. We owe a lot to these foundations and there has been a long time that modern video games have been getting developed.

First we had some games that were organized as turn based games. In the middle of the 90s we saw something new as a very popular game called Diablo was released. The year was accurately 1996. Blizzard was the game house that finally brought us a video game that had along with role playing elements also elements of pure action. I have to bring up once again a spectacular game that inspired the creators of Diablo. This game was NHL 94 for Sega Mega Drive. Also it was a game that inspire many other game developers like the makers of Doom. NHL 94 was a very good game and it inspired also me at that time.

The question that still remains unanswered and might not be answered even after we go through these thoughts a bit more is that how come no one has ever utilized the characters of Golden Axe in such a long time? Maybe they don’t have the copyrights? Then what about Sega? Why haven’t they come up with a new Golden Axe game or spinoff?

The short answer to my question is that we have seen some Golden Axe games after the third game was released for Mega Drive back in 1990s. It just happens to be that they weren’t successful games either financially or content wise. And once again we have a question that needs to be answered and all I can say is that time will probably give us an answer of some kind. We will have to wait and see. There have been many games that have a character progression but I think we would need a new and decent Golden Axe game for modern gaming platforms.

Getting Into Final Fantasy Origins

Posted on by Viljami

There have been many Final Fantasy games released throughout history. Some of them are spin-offs. If we consider the main line of Final Fantasy games and think about its definitive roots you simply cannot forget the first two games that were originally released for NES and/or SNES.

So, you want to play these two games? You have several options. I, myself, went with the Final Fantasy Origins that was released for PS1 in 2003. That seems pretty late for a PlayStation 1 game don’t you think?

What are the other options? Well, you can go with the “pixel remaster” collection that I have been considering also buying. This collection includes all first six Final Fantasy games from I to VI. So these are remakes of these games that graphically seem like some SNES games. Or, at least they come near to that. They are remasters after all.

One option for a hardcore Final Fantasy fan is to go with the original NES version of the first game in this RPG series. Graphically it isn’t as nice as the SNES version of the game. The first game of this RPG series wasn’t published originally in Europe at all and also North America got to see Final Fantasy with a delay of several years.

Final Fantasy as a video game series didn’t get a justified beginning in the PAL region firstly at all but this all changed when in 1997 we got to see also in Europe the seventh FF game to be released for PS1. After FFVII conquered almost every gamers hearth it was acceptable for the gamers in Europe also to see some earlier releases of this famous game series. After all we saw every game that were already a pretty big thing in other parts of the world to get released for PS1 and after that we saw even more games for newer gaming consoles.

This one blog post is too short for us to properly discuss about Final Fantasy as a game series. Instead I am going to write tot you about how I felt getting into the first game of the series. I bought the copy of this game already some months ago. It might be already a year ago or so. I just haven’t had the time to play it, yet.

I was familiar already with FF1 as a NES game. I have tried my hand playing it. This PS1 release includes two games FF I and FF II. It isn’t the most priciest retro game but it isn’t also the cheapest. The way I started to play it was to actually rip these two discs as rom files. After that I transferred these files through Ethernet to the Raspberry Pi 5 based Recalbox. I like to play nowadays my PS1 games this way as it is easier. I do have the hardware, of course, also. It is just easier because you don’t have to mess so much with memory cards or minding of the disc getting scuffed.

The game itself is an adventure type of game meaning you can have conversations and you are trying to obtain some objects that will guide you in your quest. The actual battles are turn-based and they occur at random moments. You have to be in a zone that gives you these occurrences. There are some areas where you don’t have the battles. They are kind of turned off.

The game is also about character development. In the beginning you get to choose four characters with some different character classes. I for example created a group of two Fighters, a White Mage and a Black Mage. I decided to go with a team like this. As you might know I think that there must be someone in the team that can also heal other members and itself also. Fighters are good for fighting and they get powerful combat weapons and armor while Mages can have very powerful attack spells also. It is one point to spot a weakness in monster that are trying to attack you.

Final Fantasy games usually take a long time to finish. I think FF I takes about 16 hours to complete while the second one takes about 22 hours. I think playing Final Fantasy Origins is a good way to deepen your knowledge even more about this RPG that might just be the series that brought these kinds of video games to Europe in the first place.

How Did Skyrim Impact The Whole Gaming Industry?

Posted on by Viljami

Skyrim had a huge impact on gaming industry. It has been released and remade for several generations of gaming consoles. Skyrim has also been released for PC. It was first released in 2011 which was the time for consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3 to dominate the console markets.

What kind of a game is Skyrim? Have ytou ever played it? Skyrim is a game that gives you an open world for you to explore. You have main quests and also side quests to complete. Your character keeps progressing when you play the game. So, there is almost unlimited amount of things to do inside this game called Skyrim.

This isn’t the first Elder Scrolls game that has been released. I think some earlier games that remind a lot of it are Morrowind and Oblivion. There are also some other games in this series of games. This is the latest and all in all fifth game in the series. There have been rumours about a sequel already.

The game was a huge effort. Bethesda certainly knew what kind of a game they had in their hands. What I am concerned about is that these kinds of large games make it even harder for new games to be developed. I mean that we saw back in the 2000s many good quality games getting released very quickly compared to how long it takes today for new games to get to the markets. The demands are very high for a new game.

Gaming industry has grown. There are these huge projects that ever larger companies get their focus on. There is a lot of money involved. I am not sure if this is how I and propably many of you gamers out there wish things to be. We were content with our retro games earlier. Why wouldn’t we be content right now?

Games seem to go right now to a direction that focuses on making money. This is somewhat understandable. Money makes world go round or so they say. What this however means might be that we are going to see fewer independent developers. Maybe there are some small developers alive after thje next ten years but I mean – where would the rising new companies be that would take gaming to the next level. Currently we see huge releases that try to lure us to buy them over and over again on a new console. Just the old game with better graphics and so on.

Where is the innovation? I have been frustrated also in a fact that some things are just not available. I mean I am living in Finland. There are many great projects going on around the world and just so many of them are unreachable for me. I wish it wasn’t so. Take for example Analogue Pocket. I was very interested in this product but never bought one. We have seen Steam Deck and many of its competitors being released here.

Are huge companies going to release these huge games in the future also? They take at least 40 hours to finish. Thy might take several hundreds of hours of your precious time. Where does this lead? We would need some fresh ideas from programmers, designers and form the people that make graphics and 3d models and even soundtracks to games. And the question here is also how are the currently young people going to get into the industry and start shaping our world of games again to a more bearable form.