Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: 2000s

A Whole Lot of Call of Duty

Posted on by Viljami

I got this idea for this blog post as I was playing Call of Duty 3 on PS2. I started to think about how many games there are actually in this series. Why is it that there are so many games in the series and what are the main reasons for its success? Why haven’t we seen other games or other types of games? What is the secret here?

The first game of Call of Duty was released back in 2003. The latest game in the series was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III that was released last year (2023). And of course I have to mention that this is a remake and the original Modern Warfare III was released already in 2011. We have seen a new game almost every year since the series started its journey.

I have enjoyed especially the first Call of Duty, Call of Duty – Modern Warfare III (the 2011 release on PS3) and the first Black Ops. There are several good quality games in the series. I don’t have a full collection of Call of Duty games but I do have many of them as you can see from this blog posts featured image.

What kind of games these are one might ask. This can be a mystery to someone that has never played a Call of Duty game. They are shooting games and in more detail first person shooting games or FPS games for short. The first three games took place in the second world war. Many Call of Duty games also describe some more modern scenes. You are typically fighting against terrorists.

While being first person shooters the Call of Duty games have this certain edge in them. They differ a whole lot of games like Crysis, Doom / Doom Eternal and maybe even some other FPS games. Definitely there is a some sort of strategy or style of play that can be clearly seen. Of course I have to also mention a tight competitor of Call of Duty. It is the Medal of Honor series of FPS games.

We can count how many games are there in this gaming series. There seems to be precisely twenty games that have been released from 2003 to 2023. The latest CoD game I have had a good time playing was Call of Duty – Vanguard that was released in 2021. I played it on my Xbox Series S. I currently do own the Xbox Series X but I played Vanguard already back when I only had the digital version of Xbox Series or Series S.

You can play the earlier Call of Duty games with a PC and with a mouse and a keyboard but I think that at least I personally enjoy very much playing them with a good quality game controller meaning a game pad. I found some information online that said that PS3 would be the first platform that a game in this series was released. I am not sure if that is correct information since I clearly remember playing Finest Hour, the first CoD game, on my original Xbox already back in 2006.

We haven’t got a clear answer to the questions I made in the beginning of this blog post. Why is the series so successful? Why are there about twenty games released and do they keep making more games of this kind? Of course the series has been successful. So why break the mode? There have been many developers for these games. Infinity Ward has made many of these games along with Sledgehammer Games. Also a developer named Treyarch has been very involved. I think that since there have been many developers there has been this clear possibility to keep making games through all these years.

I can definitely recommend some of this series’s games but I advise to have some carefulness as every title is not a pure diamond here. The games remind of each other. I recommend to start from the beginning and progress to some more recent games. I can definitely recommend also Black Ops games and I did enjoy some titles of Modern Warfare. If you are completely new to this series I recommend either playing Call of Duty Finest Hour (the first game) or the newest CoD – MWIII remake.

Utilising PCSX2 for PS2 Emulation on a PC

Posted on by Viljami

I have lately played some PS2 games with an emulator called PCSX2 on my desktop computer. I did try to play some Xbox 360 games on this Windows PC but it seems that my computer isn’t powerful enough to run this game consoles games. The emulator I tried was Xenia.

I do have a powerful enough GPU and also I have enough RAM memory on my PC. It seems that the processor lacks some power. So, I am not able to run Xbox 360 emulation using Xenia emulator. This lead me to once again try also PCSX2 and check if my computer can run some PS2 emulation instead.

I own now already two PS2 gaming consoles that don’t work. The first one I received as a gift and the second one I bought for 110 euros about a year ago. Playing PS2 games on an emulator seems to be a good option for buiyng a PS2 console. The price of a PS2 unit isn’t high but if you keep buiyng one every year it can get expensive.

PS2 was originally released back in 2000. It was the first console to include DVD player functionality which made it very popular. It was produced all the way to the beginning of 2013 and was then discontinued. It sold 155 units worldwide which makes it the best selling video game console of all time. There were over 4000 game titles released for PS2.

Installing PCSX2 is pretty straight forward. During installation you have to specify where on your computer you have your BIOS file or files. So you need to have a BIOS from your PS2 system that you actually own to play PS2 games totally legit. You can install PCSX2 for Windows, Linux or macOS.

I use my Xbox Series controller that I have especially bought to play some PC games. It is manfactured by PDP and it is a wired controller so you have to plug in a cable. You don’t have to have a long cable after all. If you prefer a PlayStation style of a button layout you can also use a PS4 controller which is also called DualShock 4. I have no experience about the latest PS controller or DualSense.

The games seem to run smoothly on this emulator. The games I have played include Call of Duty 3, Rayman Revolution and Gran Turismo 4 just to name a few. With over 4000 games PS2 manages to bring something for every gamer. I suggest searching for more good games to play from internet as there are many lists about recommended games for this system.

It seems that todays PCs are powerful enough to run an emulator like PCSX2. While we might not be yet ready to have some more newer gaming consoles emulated on our computers the future of emulation seems to be going to a strong direction. I hope we get to see also emulators for systems like PS4 and Xbox One in the near future. I also hope that we can get those emulators to run on our PCs.

Some Problems with Retro Hardware

Posted on by Viljami

As you have probably noticed I have been lately playing lots of PlayStation 2 games. My console is fairly new. What I mean is that I have only owned it for under a year or so. It is now malfunctioning. I am having problems with audio and video being cut off in the middle of playing a game like Need for Speed Prostreet or Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven. They come back after some seconds but what it comes to playing this is very disturbing.

Well what can you expect? This device is old. PS2 was released over 20 years ago. Would you expect some similar device, like computer, to function after this long of a time? Probably not.

This isn’t the first time that I am coming across issues with old hardware. I have had Xbox, Xbox 360 and earlier I had one other PS2 that started to malfunction. It couldn’t read the disc anymore. Dust can be one issue. One issue is that these old parts just aren’t reliable anymore after all this time that has passed.

You can, of course, try to fix the console yourself. This can be tricky. Not everyone is capable of doing this on their own. You can contact your closest electronic repair shop and ask them how much would they charge for the repairment of your console. There is also one more option and it seems to be an interesting one.

I am talking about emulation. You have retro games but you aren’t able to play them since your gaming console is broken. Why not make copies of them for your own use? I think it is reasonable since the console is broken, right? And with games that are on DVD this shouldn’t be an issue. What we know is that PS1 and PS2 games can be ripped to ISO files (files that end in .iso) with proper tools (software).

There are many options available. Some years ago I came across NVIDIA Shield TV. It is a device that makes your regular television a smart device that is basically operating on Android. You can install RetroArch to it. It is this kind of a forntend that you can run retro games on. It combines several emulator together. I found this to be handy with for example PS1 games. You could even hook your PS4 controller to the Shield TV with Bluetooth. You can install RetroArch on several devices. Windows and Linux are also supported along with Raspberry Pi.

You can also use a full Linux operating system on any PC that you can also hook up to any television that has the connectivity required. That is means to transfer video and audio from your dedicated computer to your television. One popular opertating system of this kind is Lakka OS.

Lakka OS boots up to its own user interface. You only need to go through some menus with your controller. This can be any USB controller that you might have. Lakka OS supports several retro gaming platforms including NES, SNES, Mega Drive and so on. The full list can be found from your favorite search engine. I can tell you that this list is long.

What I am most interested about concerning emulation, like using Lakka OS or RetroArch, is playing games of PS1, PS2 and GameCube. I can currently play my NES, SNES, Game Boy, Mega Drive and Master System games with my Retro Trio console and with the assistance of some adapters (Master System->Mega Drive adapter and SNES->Game Boy adapter). I also have a Mega Drive Mini also for playing Mega Drive games. I also play PC games. I also play games on newer systems like Xbox Series X, PS3, PS4 and Nintendo Switch. As you can imagine my setup is huge.

I hope this blog post gave you some ideas concerning playing retro games. The hardware isn’t perfect. It does wear out with time. Software emulation might provide a more stable way for a gamer to enjoy his/her retro games for a long time.