What Have I Been Playing Recently

I realized yesterday that it has been already a bit over two weeks from my latest post to this blog. I have been busy with work, game designing and I have also met some friends. I have also played. Actually I have played a lot. I just haven’t had time to sit down and write about it.

Yesterday I also for the first time checked from Steam how many hours I have put in NBA 2K22. I am playing it with PC as you probably figured out from that last sentence where I mentioned Steam. I have played this game for 90 hours.  already described my progression in this game in the last post to this blog.

A while ago I stopped playing Gran Turismo 7. I played it maybe 40 hours. As you can figure I have played a lot this year already. After this I figured I should get into some driving games for PS4. I saw a nice discount so I bought Wreckfest and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered. I also got F1 2021.

Hot Pursuit is a remasterd version of the game that was released in 2010. There were also some NFS games published earlier and they were also called Hot Pursuit. The comncept here is clear. You decide which side of the law you are on. So you can choose to be a police or a racer.

I have already enjoyed playing this racing game for about 30 hours. At first I was a bit disappointed. I thought the game wasn’t realistic. Driving the same circuit for 50 times seemed very repetitive to me. And you didn’t progress much. I had played as a racer so I decided to try playing as a police.

Playing Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered as a police is very fun. You basically try to drive as fast as you can, bust some racers and utilize means like using a spike strip, helicopter or road block to capture some racers. This play mode saves my experience. As NFS Hot Pursuit Remastered is not a realistic or enjoyable as a racing game it can be a nice experience as a game.

As it figures there’s too few hours for me to play every good game, be it a racing one or not. So I haven’t even opened Wreckfest or F1 2021. I have just been too busy lately. These games aren’t even the newest ones. As my dreams of getting myself a Xbox Series X seem to fade I have started to think about expanding my Series S’s memory. I just don’t know if there’s anything good and new to play.

Picking up what to play next is very common issue for me as a gamer. Thank you for reading. I try to write some more. I have a holiday of two weeks coming soon so maybe I catch you then. Maybe a bit earlier. Let’s find out!

My Relationship to NBA 2K Series

I have played NBA 2K basketball games for a long time. The game I have played the most to this day is NBA 2K14. Since I have a background in playing real basketball I wanted to have a little fantasy on being a professional basketball player playing in NBA. I played in my youth six years in a competitive level and continued to play weekly for about a year after that. In NBA 2K14 I managed to max my abilities to a level of 99 and eventually won the championship with my team. I remember immediately stopping playing after I won the championship. I had played this game a lot. And that means also a lot in today’s standards. We are talking over 60 hours of playing here.

I have played NBA 2K with Switch Lite, PC, PS3 and PS4. When I first created a character from my fantasies I made it a point guard that was also able to shoot some three pointers. I definitely wanted the character to have good ball handling and passing skills and also to have some common cleverness on the court. I decided to make the player the same height as I am. That means he is six feet tall. So it’s just enough to play as a shooting guard or point guard.

As a sport game series NBA 2K has had a long run in releasing these games that have had a good quality. The game has evolved as the series has progressed. There has been a game released every year. I am a fan of this game series. That is definitely true. But I haven’t had the interest to buy this almost same game every year. So that’s why I don’t have every game that has been released in this series.

The latest NBA 2K game is a very good one. As I have read some reviews also I think other journalists or reviewers have had some issues with other content in this game besides the actual part of playing intensive basketball. Does the latest game try too much to be a game that has all kinds of features that aren’t actually needed? The players and teams are the current ones but that solely hardly is a good reason to buy the game. NBA has a solid and huge fan base even outside of North America. I mean that I’m from Finland and I still very much enjoy this game. And it’s good to see our own Lauri Markkanen in this game.

I have currently NBA 2K22 installed to my PC. My overall is now 92. I am playing the third season with Indiana Pacers. We have won 47 games this year already and we are strongly heading towards the playoffs. I think we have an opportunity to win the championship this season. I am currently at the top position inside the game when it comes to discussion about the Most Valuable Player or shortly MVP. I have enjoyed the game very much. I even ended up competing in the All-Stars slam dunk competition. This current character I am playing with is 6 feet and 5 inches tall. So I am playing as a small forward this time.

We are very likely going to see NBA 2K23 somewhere in the future. How long does this last? Will it be a good game also? Will you and I buy it? So many questions and so little time. We will find the answer some day. See you then!

Selling Your Games

I have some experience of selling my video games. I thought PlayStation 1 was getting old and decided to sell it and all games I had. As you can imagine I am not satisfied of this move I made. I sold the console and games back in 2000 or 2001. Many game stores accept used games so you get a discount and some stores also even buy games and can pay you some money even if you aren’t buying anything.

How can you get an offer from your games that you would like to sell? Many game shops have instructions of how to achieve this. The shop is trying to get profit. You don’t get as much money out of your games as you would if you sell them directly to a collector or another gamer. It however doesn’t hurt to make a list of your games and in what condition they are in and send that list through email to the game shop.

When should you sell your game or games? That depends a lot about what kind of a gamer you are. Do you play or collect retro games? Do your games have a value for you? If you have a an old collection you have kept in a closet or in storage and you don’t display them there might be no reason for you to keep your games or consoles laying there unused and collecting dust.

You have to keep in mind that you might regret it if you sell all your old retro games. That’s what happened to me back in the days as I sold my PlayStation just like I told in the first paragraph of this blog post. It might be easier for a gamer to sell a recently published new game that you maybe have just completed than selling a game that you played as a young teen. We have this thing called nostalgia, right.

There has been a lot of discussion going on about digital games. You have to remember that physical copies of games are limited with the time they are usable and playable. Moving to emulators might be a good thing. There is just all this discussion and thinking involved when we are talking about piracy and what’s legal and what’s not. So we have to be a bit careful when the talk turns to piracy.

I am not going to link directly any specific game shops. If I would they would be in Finland any way. I can say that I know maybe four different places that accept used games. You can just email your question to the local game shop and have a word or two with them.