Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: 2010s

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.

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.

Another Game Finished (Forza Horizon 3)

Posted on by Viljami

I have now finished another game, Forza Horizon 3, for this year (2026). I have already posted about this game earlier as I was telling you how I purchased it from a flea market for maybe three euros or something like that. I wanted to play this racing game for a reason or another. I think it’s nice to play a game that you were at least somewhat excited about when you bough it. I did notice that there is going to be another game released in this series this year. This game is Forza Horizon 6 and it will be available on May 19th this year.

“What was Forza Horizon 3 like to play?” one might ask. It is a racing game but it also has many other kinds of features that make it very diverse as a video game. It was released as an exclusive for Xbox. You basically get to explore huge amount of tasks that differ from a racing competition, finding and breaking different plagues that give you experience points and other rewards to strictly exploring the huge map and driving around discovering different places and roads. So, there is racing but with lots of other stuff to do also. The game basically doesn’t have an age limit. It is recommended for people older or as old as three years. There isn’t violence in this game. It might be a good choice for some younger audience also as a video game.

It did take me a bit over 16 hours to finish Forza Horizon 3. It was estimated, by “How Long To Beat” website, that it would take 17 hours to finish the game. There is still plenty of content to play in the game also after winning the final event against an airship. It is a bit tempting for me to keep playing this game but I think I’ll skip this and start getting ready for the next Forza Horizon game (Forza Horizon 6).

Thank you, again, my dear readers, for keeping reading this blog! I haven’t been writing too many blog posts this year but just hang in there because I think that I still have a lot to say and to write about. I have been busy playing and trying to finish some more games. I am also happy that the visitor counter tells me that there have been almost 200 000 visitors here on this website and on this blog.

There are also plenty of things waiting to get released soon. I am waiting for Resident Evil 9. We are going to see also Valve’s gaming console or computer or what ever it can be described as, to get a release soon. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade was already launched for Nintendo Switch 2. I still have loads of games in my backlog and I have made also some recent purchases. I just have to concentrate and try to finish the next game.

The next game that I am going to soon start to play is Clair Obscur – Expedition 33. I have already installed it on my Xbox Series X. I bought, this time, the physical copy of this game. I got it for a cheap price of just some euros under 40 euros. The game has received lots of good reviews and it has received some awards also. There was some debate on if there was some artificial intelligence used while developing this game. I don’t know if this matters at all when you think about the game and its overall feel as entertainment.

There are many games getting released this year. I think that we aren’t going to see the next PlayStation console, PS6, yet, this year. Still there is something to wait for. PS5 still has some very good games to get into. We are going to see, soon, how Xbox is playing it cards in this game this year. I think it’s going to be an exciting year as the year is, right now, 2026 already. Think that for a second or two!