Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

My Latest Game Purchase

Posted on by Viljami

My latest game purchase, that I collected from the mail locker just yesterday, includes two PS2 games and four PS3 games. I bought Midnight Club 3 – DUB Edition (PS2), Sonic Heroes (PS2), Bayonetta (PS3), Spiderman 3 (PS3), Aliens vs. Predator (PS3) and Need for Speed – Most Wanted (PS3). They did cost me 109 euros with shipping included. I am waiting to have a chance to get into these new purchases. I am going to have to knock on wood while I’m saying that I am glad that my PS3 still works. It has served already over 16 years in my video game setup. I have faced some issues with hardware earlier. I have two broken PS2 consoles, a broken original Xbox and also an Xbox 360 console that doesn’t work.

Somehow these consoles don’t seem to last forever. I am also not so good at maintaining or repairing stuff like these consoles. I think they actually aren’t even meant to last for tens of years. That is the main reason why I am trusting more and more on emulation. So, I am going to rip these two PS2 games that I just bought and play them with an emulator. I have two different devices that I am running emulation on. One is a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB of RAM. It is running Recalbox. I use it to emulate mainly Sega Mega Drive, SNES, NES, PS1 and also some more exciting consoles while I use another device (a desktop PC) that runs Batocera to play PS2 and some other consoles that require a bit more power.

So, there are two racing games included with my latest game purchase. Midnight Club 3 is a classic racing game. There is really no words necessary for the introduction of a game that belongs to Need for Speed series of video games. This title is labled with “Most Wanted”. It think it will be eventually a good game that might take some hours to get into. Usually I have somewhat liked almost every Need for Speed game that I’ve played.

Why did I pick up Bayonetta? I heard a word or two about it as I was reading a book that desrcibes different video game characters. Bayonetta is a strong female character and it seemed an interesting game and I wanted to purhcase it. I am going to try to find some time to get into this game. I also bought Sonic Heroes because Sonic games just rock. I also bought Spiderman 3. I think there are very few bad games that feature Spiderman. So, why not give it a try. The last game in my latest game purhcase that I haven’t yet mention in this paragraph of this blog post is Aliens vs. Predator. It must be a decent first person shooter.

I made this purchase because I found these games interesting. The price was also cheap. I mean I got these six games for a price lower than what it would have been for two new games. Actually I think you couldn’t buy two new games with 110 euros. It might be possible if the games wouldn’t be brand new releases. I am content with yhis game purchase. I am waiting to get to enjoy also these new games.

I have been lately still playing Gran Turismo 3. It takes some time to finish it. I have spent already over 15 hours on playing GT3. The game might take a bit over 40 hours to finish. Also I have a confession to make. I haven’t, yet dived into plaiyng the new Resident Evil game Resident Evil Requiem. I have read that it is a very good game. I am waiting to get into playing it also soon.

Playing Gran Turismo 3

Posted on by Viljami

Gran Turismo 3 is a game that I hadn’t played a lot. Now just recently, I think it was yesterday, I figured that I would like to get into this game. Gran Turismo series has always been one of my favorite game series and also in my opinion a very good racing game. I first started playing the first game in this series back when I first bought my PlayStation 1 console. That was back in the end of the 1990s. It was among the first games that I played that were for PS1. I also got to play, back then, a demo version of Resident Evil 2. I liked it so much that I soon had to purchase it.

I am a fan of Resident Evil series also. Just yesterday I got my new copy of Resident Evil 9 (or Requiem). I haven’t played it yet. It might just be a very good game. Somehow playing some Gran Turismo 3 was more important than getting into RE9. That does not make sense in any way. I just think that you must sometimes go with your first initial thoughts and instincts when it comes to matters like what game do you want to play next. That’s just how I feel and think.

Gran Turismo 3 was released originally for PlayStation 2 back in 2001. The first two games in Gran Turismo series were released for PS1. It is very much have been a PlayStation only game. So, it is an exclusive game that you can play only on PlayStation consoles. It has been that way for a long time. It’s like Forza Horizon or Forza Motorsport. They are exclusives of Xbox consoles. While there have been many games ported from console to another, lately, you can say that there are these certain limitations that are still in effect when it comes to Xbox, Nintendo and/or PlayStation games. Also PC can be mentioned when having a debate or conversation like this. I think the limitations are beginning to be small and we are going more and more towards games that are released and can be played on almost any system that does exist or is available. That might be a good thing. It might be a bad thing. Or, it might be something in between.

Gran Turismo 3 offers a bit over 40 hours of playing time. That is way less than the time it tooks to finish Gran Turismo 4. If you are thinking about which one of these two games you are going to try to play first I really don’t have a good advice, at least yet, for you. I started my journey with this franchise with the first Gran Turismo. I wouldn’t advice you to play it today as your first Gran Turismo game since the graphics are somewhat disgusting to look at. Nostalgia cannot save everything. This same advice goes with the second Gran Turismo. I think Gran Turismo 6 or maybe Gran Turismo 7 would be good starting points. If you don’t mind about outdated graphics you should go with Gran Turismo 3 or 4. You with yourself get to decide if you choose 3 or 4. I think they are both great games.

Since I have broke already two PS2 consoles I today play my PS2 games, that I still like very much to play, with Batocera emulation. Last autumn I installed Batocera to my old desktop PC and setup the whole environment for playing PS2 games with that PC. I have it hooked to my television through HDMI connection. I use Xbox Series S/X controller with this retro gaming PC. This seems to be a good way to experience PS2 in 2026. PS2 games are also very easy to rip as they act like your regular DVDs. I use a program called “ImgBurn” to create an image out of the game DVD. Then I just transfer the file to the right directory on my Batocera PC.

All-in-all Gran Turismo 3 is a nice game. The first and yet the only car I have acquired in this game is Mazda MX-5. It is a good first car in the game. I have purchased many updates already to this vehicle. I have unlocked B and A driving licenses. My car has now almost 340 horsepower (or HP). I have played the game, since yesterday, six and a half hours. There is a lot more to play in Gran Turismo 3. I hope to also get to play some Resident Evil Requiem soon.

A Book About Rovio and Angry Birds

Posted on by Viljami

The blog post right here is about a book about Angry Birds. The name of the book is The Slingshot Formula and it has been written by Pascal Clarysse. One reason for me to start reading this book was the matter that Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds, is a Finnish gaming company which is very much my dear home country. Read along as I briefly describe how the story of Angry Birds was told in this book that I finished reading just a while ago,

The book tells us readers a story of three young men, later formed to Rovio Entertainment, that take part in a mobile game development contest back in 2003. They all study then in Helsinki University of Technology (that later in 2010 became Aalto University as many big universities were combined). They actually come up with several games. Angry Birds is actually their 52nd game when it gets released back in December of the year 2009.

Angry Birds is a game that anyone can play. It might be a casual game. The developers wanted to make the game as easy to get into as possible. Then they achieved something with the game-play that had the players hooked. Angry Birds is a very popular game. It made into a worldwide pop culture icon. This was seen when there were huge collaborations with NASA and Lucasfilms Star Wars. There was eventually a movie and many other products that featured Angry Birds bird character. One popular product was a red pillow that featured the bird character of the game. Finally, in 2023, Sega acquired Rovio with a deal of 1 billion dollars.

I read the book. I liked it. With all this about a great Finnish game I have to be honest and tell you that I have never played any of Angry Birds games. I am not a huge fan. That goes to all mobile games for me. But if considered that there is a book written about a Finnish mobile game development company I might pick a book like that and just read it. I did like the book. I can recommend it to you if you are into startup companies and if you maybe want to try something like this by yourself also.

I found this book from this huge book store in Helsinki. I don’t want to advertise the place but it is my favorite book store since it has such a large selection of books to choose from. As I bought this book I also picked a book about this food delivery company Wolt and another book that was about artificial intelligence. The Slingshot Formula does cost 25 euros. It is written in English and that is the language that my copy also has been written in. It’s nice to have some language skills, isn’t it? You could probably seek it from a library if you are into borrowing books. There might also be a possibility to read this book as an electric copy.

The book is somewhat lengthy. It has a bit over 300 pages. Pascal Clarysse describes the main characters in the book with a nice detail and shares soem knowledge about different roles that these people had with Rovio and Angry Birds. There were many professionals involved from graphics design and programming all the way to musicians and also some financial specialists that made this phenomenon of the icon of Angry Birds as successful as could have been possible. Angry Birds are today known in all corners of the planet Earth and even beyond it. They actually did send an Angry Birds themed pillow into a NASA space station. Today Angry Birds is a very well-known brand and an icon.