Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: 2000s

Red Dead Revolver

Posted on by Viljami

Red Dead Revolver was released in 2004 for PS2 and original Xbox. It tells you the story of a gun handler named “Red”. It is actually the first game in the series of Red Dead games that featured also, later, Red Dead Redemption and a sequel Red Dead Redemption 2. Red Dead Revolver was published by Rockstar Games.

The game is formed around 27 stages. The website, “How Long to Beat”, states that it takes seven hours to finish the game. I have played this game for a bit over nine hours already. I have almost finished it. I got stuck to the last stage that has a duel battle against the final boss “Griffon”. The duel, and also other duels in the game, are a bit hard to go through. “Griffon” is the final person that “Red” has to defeat in his journey of a revenge. There is a somewhat deep plot in the game but the action, at least for me, seems to be the driving force for trying to beat the game.

There is a lot of shooting and lots of weapons in this game. You basically select a rifle and a hand gun and also a melee or throwing weapon, like a knife, for you when you start a stage. You achieve some money from taking down the enemies that you can spend to buy better weapons. There exists also some other items that unlock some more content if you are interested in these special features of the game. Toughest parts are duels in which you try to pull your gun and aim it and also trigger the shooting to try to kill your enemy before the enemy kills you. There are some of these parts, maybe three or four, in this game. It can get tricky and you might have to spend a lot of time in trying to get through these parts.

You can buy Red Dead Revolver from Xbox store for fifteen euros. It is also possible to buy the physical copy of this game. It is backwards compatible with Xbox Series X. It isn’t the most expensive game but it can cost even as much as 70 or 80 euros since the prices seem to be rising. There are only a bit over 60 games from original Xbox that are actually backwards compatible with Series X. It might be interesting to try to collect all of them. I just recently got one more game that is backwards compatible in this way. It was “Star Wars – Jedi Knight – Jedi Academy” and it cost only ten euros. I got also some PS1 games with this same purchase. I am hoping to have some time with these games, also. One interesting game that I bought was “V-Rally 2”.

Red Dead Revolver is 22 years old game. It can be considered a retro game. What makes it remarkable is that it is actually the game that inspired the development of Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2. These were released in 2010 and 2018. I will always remember the launch of RDR2. Back then I was working in a game shop as a customer servant. I wrote a blog post of the shop about the release on this game shops own blog. We also sold a lot of RDR2 games and had a launch moment that started at midnight when RDR2 was actually released. I don’t know the actual sales figures of that happening but I can estimate that there were hundreds of games sold back at that moment that lasted maybe three hours.

Red Dead Revolver reminds a bit of Max Payne. It features very similar action in the gameplay. Both of them are shooting games with a slightly detailed plot that does make the game deeper as a video game experience. Plot can be very important in a video game but it never is the driving feature when it comes to how I like to play my video games. I actually even think that Max Payne was a bit more advanced and more realistic although it was released already three years earlier than Red Dead Revolver.

Some Games I Have Been Playing Lately

Posted on by Viljami

Here are, actually not two but even three different games, I have been playing a lot recently. These games are Gran Turismo 4, that I have now already spent on over 60 hours, for PS2 and Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 for Nintendo Switch. When it comes to Super Mario Galaxy bundle I managed to finish the first one in the series. I am currently on to finish also the second. But now actually I have been concentrating on trying hard to finish Gran Turismo 4. This racing game proves to be a very good game. It might be even the best game in the whole Gran Turismo series as it is tightly competing with the seventh and first game of the series in my own considerations. It is also the longest game in this racing series. It can take up to 76 hours to complete.

In Gran Turismo 4, in the career mode, you are going to have to get yourself some cars. I am saying some cars because it isn’t one or two. It is actually several cars. You have to figure which car you need and which one you could sell to buyt upgrades to the car you are using to try to complete races. You have to complete races to advance in this game and to eventually also finish it. You can check the completion percentage when you visit your Home that can be found from one of the menus that can be found inside the game.

There’s a lot to play. You can achieve yourself some driving licenses that enable you to compete in different kinds of races. There are many events available that are grouped to Beginner Events and Professional Events and then we have also Extreme Events. You have to complete all Beginner and Professional events to proceed to Extreme ones. There are also events in different countries that are for cars that are manufactured in the specific country. Also, you can find some events that are grouped by manufaturer.

You really much get to upgrade your vehicle. There are also many settings that can be enabled with buying an upgrade. Then you can make adjustments. You can for example edit your preferences for types of tires, some properties of transmission, your cars braking power and you can also adjust your suspension, driving height and many other settings. You can compete in the races without knowing every piece of the settings but this can give you a nice advantage. So, if you know about cars and can figure out these quite technical matters you will gain some well needed speed and winning races can become easier.

It is also necessary to know, or at least try to learn, about different car models. Gran Turismo 4, as all Gran Turismo games do, features very real cars and there are many car manufacturers involved. While the game was released in 2004 we cannot see these electric cars. It would have been nice to have also electric cars in this driving game. Maybe we are going to see some of these car manufacturers models some day in racing games. Gran Turismo 4 is a huge recommendation if you like PS2 games and racing games.

Now, I haven’t discussed about Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, yet. So, I managed to get through first of these games. It was a very good remake. At first I was a bit overwhelmed with the controls, since it is originally a Nintendo Wii game meant to be played with the motion sensor, but I got around it quickly. It seems only logical that this controlling method wasn’t altered so much as it is actually a keen part of the gameplay.

I spent about 14 hours playing the first Super Mario Galaxy. Then I proceeded to the sequel. Unfortunately I decided to start to play Gran Turismo 4 and that took my attention. So, I think I don’t have so much to say, currently, about Super Mario Galaxy 2. I was content that I bought this bundle of these two games. They offer a lot especially if you are into Super Mario games.

I think this is all this time. I might get back to you, later, when I might have finished at least Gran Turismo 4. I think I will have something else to write about the next time. I try to come up with a new topic. Thanks for reading and see you in the next blog post!

Some Features of Optical Discs

Posted on by Viljami

Some time, not so long ago, we used to use optical discs way more and in a different way compared to how it is today. I have recently been playing lots of PS2 games using an emulator. I have these PS2 games in their original form. That is on these game discs. That copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 also has a documentary film also on another DVD. DVDs aren’t also so popular anymore. We are used to streaming our video content. If you prefer physical copies you can buy movies on Bluray or 4K.

Some things have changed. We do buy games, sometimes, as physical copies on optical discs. When we do we use the disc to install the game. Part of the installation process is handled through internet connection. Back in the days, in the early 2000s, we had game consoles like PS2 and GameCube. They utilized optical discs in a different way.

If we inspect our PS2 video game console we can see that it doesn’t have a hard drive at all. So games are basically on optical discs. It is the disc that holds almost all the data. There are memory cards used that can store the save files. These memory cards could hold only 8 MB of storage. GameCube is very much like PS2 in this way. It did handle smaller optical discs and it also had to use memory cards. Lets mention Dreamcast here, also.

What about the original Xbox? It actually had a hard drive. This makes playing a game like Max Payne a bit more of a pleasure since loading games from same save spot can make the game very repetitive. That’s why I find playing Max Payne on the original Xbox than on a PS2 console my preferred way to enjoy Remedy Entertainments masterpiece more enjoyable. I think it is best played on PC. But you probably get the point here.

So, the games were played from DVDs. This made the disc very valuable. If it had a scratch the game would stop playing. Sometimes the console you were playing on did break so that you couldn’t play it anymore since it couldn’t read optical discs anymore at all. There are ways to fix consoles, all right, but just let me say this. I have found it way more pleasurable to install an emulation system on a PC with a dedicaded operating system and just ripping my PS2 games to some .iso-files and playing them again and again, fully functioning, from a fast SSD hard drive. You basically have to rip your PS2s BIOS and also the games to enjoy gaming this way. After all it is very easy to rip a PS2 game. You just have to use an external DVD drive and some software application, like ImgBurn, that is also freely available.

We have went through lots of changes. The gaming has evolved a lot. If you think that we used to have games taking some space, like 4,7 GB. We are actually now in a place where a game can definitely take tens, or even several tens, of times the space we were used to back in the days. We went from large HDDs to SSDs. We went from slow internet connections to modern and very fast connections offered while using Steam or Xbox Store or some other web service. This makes me wonder where do we go next.

Today hard drives are faster and can hold even more space than they already used to. I have for example two 2 TB SSDs on my personal desktop computer. That is enough to hold some games. You don’t have to install every game you buy because you probably don’t play tens of games at the same time. There are more games available than ever. You probably play something from three to six games at a time. When you think that you don’t want to focus on a game you can uninstall it and keep your save files and continue playing after some time when you think that you want to install the game again.

We are actually doing something reasonal with buying games as digital copies. We are reducing the amount of carbage in this world. You can debate on that DVDs, these opticla discs, are something that you can hold on to for several tens, maybe even hundreds, of years. Buying a video game console or a PC without an optical disc drive is becoming also popular. You can save some money.

There are many facts here that you can debate on. In my opinion there are just facts against facts. There is no right or wrong answer. In this blog post I told you my perspective on optical discs and how and what they used to be compared to what is the situation right now. You can make your own opinions based on everything I have said here. I am going to enjoy some more time with Gran Turismo 4 since I started playing it again. I have played it for well over 18 hours. I think it takes over 70 hours to complete. I have lots of playing to do.