Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: 2000s

The Huge Library of PS2 Games

Posted on by Viljami

This blog post is about PS2 games. Sony’s sequel to PlayStation was a huge success in many ways. There are almost 3500 games that have been ever released for this gaming console. In this post I am trying to create a picture of the whole meaning of this huge game library and how things are with games today.

PlayStation as a video game console affected the whole industry very strongly. Playing video games transformed from something you did for two or three hours sometimes to playing tens or even hundreds of hours of any game you chose to play. Before the first PlayStation we saw video games that weren’t so appealing especially for grown ups. Gaming was considered to be a thing only for young people and children.

This way of thinking changed when the first PlayStation was released. PS2 went even further and brought some advancements. PS2 is today the most popular gaming console ever. Even consoles like Switch, that’s still in production while I’m writing this, or Xbox 360 or the newer PS4, haven’t been able to sell as well.

PlayStation had many games that presented us gamers new kinds of worlds in a three-dimensional environment. PS2 games made these worlds even more deeper. As the console was released in the beginning of 2000s we saw many unforgettable and great games. These PS2 games were just some years ago very cheap but the prices have been rising recently as this seems to be the current trend for retro game titles.

As there are many games included in PS2 games I want to give some personal recommendations in case you are a complete PS2 games “beginner”. You can already find these PS2 games from the picture I took. These seem to be the latest PS2 games that I’ve have played or bought recently. I have to say that I have had some bad luck as my PS2s have broken. I have had two PS2 consoles already.

I was going to give you some recommendations of PS2 games. I liked Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven a lot. It can be a difficult game. Also I have to mention maybe the best driving game ever – Gran Turismo 4. It is a PS2 title definitely. We have also in this picture Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3. It is a very good skateboarding game. It might be the best in the series. Ratchet & Clank is a very nice three-dimensional platformer slash action adventure game. The content of this game is suitable for people of every age.

Some other popular and good PS2 games are Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Gods of War 1 and 2, Silent Hill 2 and 3, Resident Evil Code Veronica X, Ecco the Dolphin – Defender of Future, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, Colin McRae 3, 4 and 5, some very good Need For Speed games, Hitman games, The Sims 1 and 2 and some fighting games like Tekken and SoulCalibur and also some roleplaying games like Final Fantasy X. There are some FPS games, like Call of Duty and Black. I have to mention also a game called Bully.

If you are going to try to get into PS2 games these games are just something you can start with. Try to get familiar with a genre you find the most interesting. You might be into strategic games or adventure or action games or you might want to play some roleplaying games. Try and test and find your favorites. There are so many PS2 games out there.

While there are many PS2 games to get into the system has its limitations. These include awkward controllers and that there really isn’t a hard drive in the world of PS2. So, you have to use memory cards. Graphics could be better. You might face some nostalgia if you played PS2 games in the past.

The system has its limitations but all-in-all it is in my opinion something you just have to try. I have well over 50 games already in my personal PS2 games library. There seems to be many good games that PS2 has to offer.

The Last Issue of Pelaaja Magazine

Posted on by Viljami

So, it’s a bit over twenty one tonight and I just received Pelaaja magazine as delivered in mail. I don’t know why the deliver was so late. Well, anyways, there’s also a book that I am currently reading in this featured image of this blog post. The book is about Snapchat (“How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars”). I find it very interesting and I am about hundred pages through this book at the moment. The book is written by Billy Gallagher.

The fact that I just received mail brought me the idea that I’ve been thinking about already for some days. I did already know that this issue of Pelaaja would be the last one. I was just waiting for the mail to be delivered so I could start writing this blog post. I knew that I was going to receive the issue sooner or later. So, this is the real news. Pelaaja is going to stop getting printed and it is going to be merged to another Finnish gaming magazine called Pelit. So, I, and also all the other readers that have a subscription paid already are going to get their still remaining magazines in their subscriptions delivered as Pelit magazines. We are also getting one issue of this magazine as a some sort of a bonus. Then we can make a new subscription to Pelit or just quit our subscriptions. This is how it seems to be going.

Pelaaja has been around for quite a while. The magazine was founded back in 2002 in October. Pelit, the other still remaining Finnish gaming magazine has been around for some time longer. Actually I remember reading Pelit already back in the middle of 1990s. I think it was established in maybe 1980s (it was actually founded in 1992). Pelaaja has for a long time provided a solid competition. I have bought some Pelit magazine issues. I have never subscribed to it. I have been a subscriber of Pelaaja for several years.

Back in the wild 2000s there used to be several printed gaming magazines. There are too many to mention or to even remember. I think we had a magazine called Peliasema that was focusing on PlayStation. Actually the word “peliasema” is somewhat translated as “play station”. Well, I had to make one more search through a search engine right here just to find that this was actually true and not just my imagination. It was founded in 1998. It was sort of a spin-off of Pelit and it featured some gaming journalists that were also writing articles to Pelit. So, there was some competition already in the field when Pelaaja was founded.

It is somewhat hard to trying to realize that Pelaaja has been actually discontinued. I thought that this magazine would have been up and running for a long long time. There are many trips, for example to our summer cottage, that I picked up the latest Pelaaja from gas station to have something fresh to read while enjoying summer, or winter, here in Finland. Pelaaja has been there for a long time and now it seems like there is a part of gaming journalism missing at least here and right now.

The direction for printed media is that we are getting less and less actual, physical, printed content and the news can be read online from your closest display that can be a smart phone, a tablet or a computer screen. More and more content is published digitally. More and more content is getting released for free online. And this has been the direction for already some time. I do enjoy very much reading content that has been printed to a paper as you can probably see from this blog posts featured image. I don’t have a e-reader device and my tablet is very poor and I almost never use it. Almost every book I read is a physical copy instead of a digital one.

In the last issue ever of Pelaaja we are going to deal with the new Doom game that is getting released next month. I am going to get that game. I know this already for sure. The last two Doom games were great ones. We are going to read more about Wreckfest 2, Housemarque, a Finninsh game company, turning 30 years and also some other very interesting content. I hope this is a good read. If its anything like every earlier issue of Pelaaja I am going to like it. So, thank you, Pelaaja, for everything and farewell!

Playing Some Gran Turismo 4 (Again)

Posted on by Viljami

I am playing Gran Turismo 4 once again. This game is in my opinion the best one in the series. Not to say that there would be any really bad games in this racing game series. I was thinking about writing a ranking about how I think Gran Turismo series’s games are compared to each other. While I think Gran Turismo 4 is the best I think the first game and also GT 7 were also very good games. It has to be mentioned that the first game deserves some credit about its innovative approach to racing. That game was the one that sparked the series into its way to success.

I have played, since I recently started playing it from the beginning, for about 14 hours. I am always complaining about retro hardware breaking down so now I am going with PCSX2, the PS2 emulator for PC Linux/Mac/Windows. I do have also the original game that can be ripped from DVD with a computer and an optical DVD disc drive. Actually, I recently bought myself also an external Bluray drive and I am hoping to get to rip some PS3 games also. I might write about that also later in a new blog post. Lets just see how my plans are going to be developing.

I am playing this game with a game pad. I am using an Xbox controller because it is so cleverly compatible with my current PC setup. I am running a Windows 10 with 16 GB of RAM and a neat GPU that has 8 GB of video memory. I do have also a SSD that can hold 2 TB of data. I think for modern gaming 1 TB would be enough. The weakest link in my setup might be my personal computers processor/CPU. So, its quite clear that I am also going to have to upgrade my computer later this year. I also have some news about my screen/monitor. I finally upgraded to a screen that has a 4K resolution and is also a bit bigger. The size is 28 inches. Compared to my old Full HD 22 inch display this one is clearly better.

I am hoping to get to play some more new games with a new Windows 11 PC. I have already bought Final Fantasy XVI and Starfield from Steam but my hardware is too poor in performance for me to play them currently. So, I have bought these two games but never even installed them. I am also very interested in getting into the new Silent Hill 2 remake that has received a lot of good reviews. I hope I will get to update my PC in about 2 months. The move to Windows 11 from Windows 10 is going to be scheduled to October. So, for me, this is the final deadline for the upgrade.

This week we also finally got some news from Nintendo concerning the release of Switch 2. The price is going to be 470 euros and 510 euros when you buy one game bundled. This game is going to be Mario Kart World. It is already possible to make an order at least here in Finland. The actual release will be 5th of June this year. I am waiting to get my hands on the new console. I am probably going to get at least Hades 2 and maybe the new Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 when it gets released in July.

What more do I have to say about Gran Turismo 4? It was originally released for PS2 in 2005. The graphics are just amazing and I think that they even hold up against today’s racing games. It is very nice to play Gran Turismo 4 with a 4K display and some graphics settings tweak and the screen just screams as the beautiful graphics are getting displayed. There hundreds of real cars that need some updating and tweaking of settings. You can start with buying a transmission that can be set up to get a better acceleration for your vehicle while your top speed does drop. You can have yourself a strategy about different tracks that different types of corners and parts where you are just driving full speed ahead. You have to play some tracks several times to gain some credits so you can advance and buy a new car. You also have some missions to complete to get a proper driving license. Winning series’s of races is being rewarded with a car also.