Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Author: Viljami

Hogwarts Legacy

Posted on by Viljami

I spent about two weeks playing Hogwarts Legacy for Xbox Series X. This game has received several good, or maybe excellent, reviews. It is not the newest game since it was released in 2023. So, it is about two years old. This also means that you can get it with a cheap price. You definitely don’t have to pay 80 euros for it today.

Hogwarts Legacy is a role-playing-game with lots of action included. The basic gameplay operates on completing quests, finding new areas through map and also fighting against enemies with many spells. You also get some gear from time to time. You get to upgrade your gear and also your skills.

The open-world environment is fun to explore. You face some enemies while you are finding these new places. You can also sort of “unlock” waypoints so you can travel to these locations just by selecting them from a map and clicking the button.

The game gives you full statistics of how much of the game have you completed. There are different areas of these challenges like how much of you have explored, battled and how many quests you have completed.

It took for about 40 hours to finish the game. There are several difficulty levels to choose from. They actually make the battles harder. Hogwarts Legacy offers a lot to play even after you have finished the main quests. You can develop your character and explore even more.

The graphics, or visual, are very nice in Hogwarts Legacy and so is the music. The world is the world of Harry Potter. I have to say also that I am not so familiar, actually not at all, on Harry Potter. This might be the first game that is placed in the world of Harry Potter that I have finished. Nor do I have memories of any books or movies. Still while I was playing it didn’t really bother me so much.

It is nice to see a game where battles are structured to just swinging your wand instead of shooting with a gun or fighting with a melee weapon (like an axe or something. I did enjoy this game. It really isn’t still something that I would like to spend more time on. As I am writing this I have just begun playing the newest Dead Space. I am trying to really play these games and they have been in my game shelf already for a good amount of time.

I am also waiting to get my hands on the Nintendo Switch 2. So, I really don’t have many reasons to go and play some Xbox Series X titles. I am already waiting for some new Switch 2 titles to play. I bought the version of Switch 2 that has Mario Kart World bundled. I would have liked to buy some other game for the first game of the console but this is now the game I have to start my journey with Switch 2. The console seems already really promising.

I also read that there is a new handheld Xbox console coming. It is interesting to see how huge game console companies are moving towards handheld gaming. It hasn’t been a long time since we were first introduced to Steam Deck. There might be something new coming from Valve, also. And of course we have all our Windows 11 handheld PCs already in the markets and selling very nicely.

Do we see something new in a form of an operating system from Valve in the near future? We will have to wait and see. I am very interested in seeing how Linux can operate with some applications that are usually utilized with a Windows PC. We have already seen how PC games bought through Steam can already function on a Linux operating system. They seem to work fine.

The Highlights of Xbox Series X

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I am going to go through how I actually feel and think about some experiences of Xbox Series X. We are going to take a look at this console while its lifespan has lasted right now almost five years. There are new consoles going to get released, some this year, some later, and it is a good time to take a look back on what this console, Xbox Series X, had to offer. Soon it will not anymore be the newest console.

I remember back in 2020 that I was thinking about how my PS4 would not be the newest console anymore. In the fall of 2020 we saw PS5 and Xbox Series S/X released. Being the newest gaming console can be a sort of a responsibility. We are used to seeing new consoles getting released every about seven years or so. While PS4 hasn’t been the newest console in years I, and many other gamers, have been playing on their PS4s during these years. I am very glad, since I haven’t to this day bought a PS5, that the newest games for PlayStation were also available for PS4. Some of these games are Gran Turismo 7, Spider-Man (the first and Miles Morales) and God of War (the first game and Ragnarök).

Back in 2021 (I wasn’t the first one to absorb this time) I first bought Xbox Series S. We were well in the pandemia which begun already in 2020. There was a huge shortage concerning about PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles. There were lots of consumers that would had liked to buy a console but couldn’t. I would have bought an Xbox Series X at first but it just wasn’t available. I finally got my Xbox Series X maybe a year later or something like that. Nintendo, in the mean time, was selling lots of Switch consoles as the shortage didn’t affect it so much.

I ended up buying also Xbox Series X because I already had a 4K capable television and I liked the thing that Series X had more space for installing games and it provided the means to watch actual 4K movies through optical 4K discs. I also ended up buying the official disk space upgrade. I always thought it was very expensive. I did buy the option that included 1 TB of extra space. Xbox Series X also provided a better screen resolution and was more powerful in running the games.

Besides playing games Xbox Series X provides the ability that actually lacks in PS4 of playing music CDs. It is also capable to watch DVDs, Blurays and 4K movies that are sold as optical discs. You can also enjoy games and movies in digital format. I have had a smart television so I haven’t actually used my Xbox Series X as a media center. I do watch video content on my TV and I don’t actually use my Xbox console in that way.

I would like to mention and give some thanks to the Xbox app that I installed on my Android smart phone soon after I had installed my Series X. It is very nice. The way you can share and save your actual screenshots is very nice. I have to say that PS4 performs poorly in this manner. Using PS4 you have to have a USB memory stick to move your screenshots to your PC where you can then transfer them to some social media whenever you have a need like this. Nintendo also doesn’t perform so swiftly in this field. The Xbox app is very functional and many of these Series X screenshots I have shared at Instagram or in this blog have been processed using the app. You can also see from the app how long have you been playing a game and also track your overall Xbox gaming score.

What about the games? Lets first talk about the backwards compatibility. Series X i compatible with 63 out of 989 original Xbox games, 632 out of 2155 Xbox 360 games and all of Xbox One games. This makes the game library very strong. The console already has almost 3000 games that you are able to play. There is an idea also that if you like to play more Xbox 360 and/or original Xbox games you would actually like to have a dedicated and original console also. There are options to emulate the hardware also. But when it comes to Xbox Series X is does provide a nice, although not complete, support for older Xbox games.

Some good older games that can be played on a Series X are old Call of Duty series’s games, original Alan Wake, first three Bio Shock titles, some Silent Hill games, Max Payne series (first three games), Quake I and II, Split Second, Skyrim, Halo series and the Master Chief Collection, just to share some of my favorites. Some best new games, in my own opinion, include titles like Forza Horizon 5, Forza Motorsport, Resident Evil 8, Alan Wake II, Diablo II Resurrected and Control.

All in all I have enjoyed Xbox Series X. Would I have done without it? In have to say maybe. I could have utilized an old Xbox 360. I could have bought only a new 4K movie player. There were only so few actual new games that got released. Right now my thoughts are into the soon to be released Nintendo Switch 2. It is getting its release 5th of June. It is very soon. Switch 2 then becomes the first game console in this new generation of consoles. I think Xbox Series X did well.

Today and also yesterday I have spent some time playing Hogwarts Legacy with my Series X. I finally found some time to do this. Also I am not going to  buy a new game for Series X for a while. I am going to wait for Switch 2 to get released. If I am a fortunate one I will buy Nintendo Switch 2. But that means that it is very much available soon after the launch. Happy Sunday to you my dear blog reader!

Is Sega Saturn Worth Your Time?

Posted on by Viljami

The story of Sega Saturn is, might I say, interesting. It was released in 1994 in Japan and in 1995 in Europe and North America. So, it was a competitor of the first PlayStation gaming console. To begin with Sony made its consoles price a bit lower. It had an edge because Saturn had already been released when the talks began about PlayStation and its pricing. If we look at sales numbers we can see that Sony sold a bit over 100 million PlayStations worldwide while Saturn sold somewhere around 15 million units also worldwide.

Why would you bother to take some time to get to know to a loser like this? Things aren’t always as clear as they might seem. There are some reasons why Saturn sold so badly. After all the sales figures can only tell so little about the variety of games, even some exclusives, that you just couldn’t experience elsewhere. Today Saturn is being recognized as an important part of history of video games. It sadly lost to its competitor or competitors as it couldn’t adapt as quickly to video games moving on to three-dimensional graphics. This was somewhat a start of an ending for Sega’s game console efforts. This wasn’t however its last misfortune but that’s another topic for another blog post.

How can you play Sega Saturn today? The legit way is to buy the hardware needed. You are then going to buy a Sega Saturn. It might cost around 200 euros. Maybe a bit less if you don’t buy it from a game shop. Maybe a bit more if the condition of the device is very good. You are going to also need some actual and physical games to play. Saturn games are somewhat rare to find. We haven’t seen and I doubt that we will ever see some sort of a mini console made out of Saturn. This might be a bit sad.

While always taking account on what is legal and what is not. Let me remind you that if you are going to play Saturn games on an emulator you would have to dumb your consoles BIOS to a file. Also you would have to rip every game from a Saturn type of a game disc that you actually own. Otherwise in terms we are going to an illegal zone.

If you consider game preservation it is definitely nice to have these places online like “Vimm’s Lair” (check from your DuckDuckGo search engine if you wish) that provide you with every single Saturn game ever released. If there aren’t any places that you can buy your Saturn games how are you going to manage to acquire a collection of Saturn games and maintain also a working Saturn console? Now that’s a question. What might the current copyright holders think about that? I think that if you don’t release remakes, or even even collections, of these classic titles the option seem to be very clear.

If you go for the emulation option it is nice to have a Rapberry Pi 5 with 8 GB of RAM and install a Recalbox operating system to it. After that you are going to have to move your game roms and BIOS file to a proper location. You can then enjoy the game play using Xbox Series controller or some other USB connectable controller. I myself prefer the Xbox Series controller. If you choose you can also install, like Mednafen, on your Windows PC. The games run very well also there but it might be clumsy if you want your screen to be presented through a true television instead of your PCs screen.

After discussing about some philosophy about old retro-type games we can now finally present you which games to choose to play. The first one that I can recommend is Radiant Silvergun. It is a smooth space shooter where you control a space ship and move from bottom to up shooting these enemies that appear on the screen. A true space shooter is this game. This game was also recently remade for Nintendo Switch. So, you might want to check it out also.

Next game I am going to introduce to you has been also remade recently. The game is House of the Dead. This is something that you would probably play preferably with a optical gun but you can also play it with a controller. The game is very nice. You just shoot things that appear to the screen. You also need to reload your weapon almost constantly and try to not to shoot friendlies.

Two other games I like mention here are Panzer Dragoon and Nights Into Dreams. These are very good games. Panzer Dragoon is currently available for Switch. I don’t know why so many of these remakes appear for Switch. While making a list of best games on Saturn you cannot forget Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing which come directly from Sega. You probably can dig on and on and find more games that you like. If you need more games try Sonic games and Sega Rally.

The Pure Joy of Rally Driving

Posted on by Viljami

We have seen many rally games that you can play on Xbox Series X. Out of three first games in this series of Dirt rally games Dirt 3 is compatible and fully playable on the latest Xbox console. It was released in 2010. So, its been a while.

I have now driven in Dirt 3 for a bit over ten hours. You can see the number of hours from this rally game’s stats that can be accessed directly through the menus of the game. As you might already know you cannot track your time that you have spent while playing an Xbox 360 game title on the Series X. Luckily we still can have stats provided by the game itself.

These aren’t my first touches to this rally game. Actually it’s quite far from it. I first got into Dirt 3 back when the only video game console that I had hooked up to my television back in the day was PlayStation 3. I was eager to play this game. I bought it as soon as it was released. I remember buying it for something like 60 euros. Games really used to cost much less in that moment.

This was also the first game that I played with a wheel and pedals. The game can also be operated with a game pad. The latest sessions I’ve had with this game I have utilized solely the controller. The difficulty level can be adjusted. You can aim for a more realistic and harder style of driving. The options are broad.

I have played Colin McRae Dirt and Colin McRae Dirt 2 also. It is a bit sad that out of these very fine rally games Dirt 3 seems to be the only one that is compatible with Xbox Series X. As I checked if this game would be available digitally from Xbox Store I found that it is not available. The only option, if you want to play it on your Series X, is to get yourself a physical copy. The game doesn’t really take so much space on your hard drive.

It is also today very easy to run also this game in an emulator. So, you don’t have to check every Xbox 360 title to see if they are actually compatible with your Xbox Series X. There is actually a list available online that presents this information. You can find it easily utilizing your favorite search engine (DuckDuckGo?).

Running Xbox 360 games on an emulator requires a heavy PC setup. I for example couldn’t get the Xenia emulator to run on my current PC. I am going to buy a new PC soon. This is because of the forced Windows update from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It can also be an option for you to install Linux. It depends very much of the software you need to run on your PC. Games, today, can be played with a Linux operating system. Even the newest ones. I actually think that most Steam games do run on Linux.

I have lots of music production software that I am not so sure if it can run on Linux. Mac really isn’t an option for me. I need a Windows 11 PC. There is some music software available for Linux and lots of this software is free or “open source”. It is just a hell of a job to set things up in Linux. I am not confident with this. A part of me would like to enjoy the freedom of Linux but something tells me that I need Windows 11. This means that I have to spend lots of money for a new computer since my current PC isn’t compatible with Windows 11.

Anyways, thank you, if you are actually reading this. I hope you enjoy this blog. Dirt 3 is one heck of a rally game. I hope you find it satisfying if you end up acquiring it in any way. You can play Dirt 3 on an emulator, like Xenia, with your own Xbox 360 console or the way I played it (on Xbox Series X).

Super Punch-Out!!

Posted on by Viljami

Super Punch-Out!! is a nice boxing game for Super Nintendo. It is kind of a remake made out of the NES title Punch-Out!!. It includes updated and better graphics and also very unique opponents that have special ways to box. For example the last opponent of The Minor Circuit, Bald Bull, has a punch that knocks you down to the floor no matter how much health your boxer has. Piston Hurricane has a long combo that you must dodge if you wish to win this boxer.

I really like how the game progresses. It is a bit repetitive as any 16-bit eras game can often be. In Super Punch-Out!! you have to box against the same opponents in the same tournament some times to achieve the progressing. I like how the opponents are designed. They look nice. I managed to get through Minor Circuit. There are also two other tournaments that you can compete in after you finish Minor Circuit. There is also one more tournament that is called Special Circuit. So, there are four tournaments in total in Super Punch-Out!!.

It took me some hours just to complete Minor Circuit. The way you actually play the game is simple but can take some time to adjust to. Super Punch-Out!! utilizes the SNES controller that already had several buttons along with directional buttons. This makes playing the game more easier and I think it makes the game also more enjoyable. You could think about some of the limitations of Sega Mega Drive controller that only has three buttons along the directional buttons.

You actually play Super Punch-Out!! with two buttons that you can land a punch with. If you press also forward button your boxer tries to land a punch to the head of the opponent. If you don’t press forward the punch gets directed to stomach area. You can also block and try to dodge your opponents punch. You can dodge to back or to left or right. You can also block a punch directed to your head or stomach area.

Every punch you attempt doesn’t necessarily hit. I think there is some randomness about when your punch actually hits. You cannot actually see clearly when to attempt to punch. And every opponents punch also doesn’t land also. This makes the game a bit more entertaining and more funnier to play. Some people might say that this makes the game a bit less realistic. I think this just improves the overall game-play after all.

There is another boxing game for this era of 16-bit gaming that I also like. This game is Greatest Heavyweights and it was released for Sega Mega Drive in 1993. If you like boxing games I think you will like Greatest Heavyweights also. If we compare this game to Super Punch-Out!! we can definitely see how Nintendo has invested in designing the details of the game. The characters are all very unique compared to Greatest Heavyweights and it tries to be more realistic and this might even seem to be a bit ordinary. In any way both of these games are very good products and very solid as video games.

All-in-all there are several good video games released originally for Super Nintendo. I think Nintendo dominated the field after it was released. I think the progression can be seen clearly from NES to Mega Drive and then to SNES and on to Sony PlayStation 1 and onward from there all the way to today’s devices. The technology seems to be developing even further. Sometimes it is definitely nice to play these retro games and try to enjoy these devices and the ways that they utilize the technology of their time.

Too Many Games

Posted on by Viljami

Playing games, being a gamer, can take a lot of time. This comes clear to me as I have just some weeks ago installed two huge and space-taking games to my Xbox Series X. I took me almost two hours just to install these two games. The games are Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts Legacy. Some very good titles that have just been sitting on my game shelf for a long time. I would even go and say too long.

I actually did pay a bit lower price for both of these titles. I paid about 20 euros for Cyberpunk 2077 and about 40 euros for Hogwarts Legacy. As you might know the price for a new, just release game, seems to be around 70 euros or something like that. Of course publishers are now aiming to rise prices a bit. We might see games that were just released priced as something near 100 euros in the future. Where does the money go one might ask.

It seems like the industry is making a lot of money by releasing new games. Do we as gamers have the ability to play every single decent game that’s out there and available. I doubt that. Today we are seeing a new Doom game and in the July we are going to see remake collection of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4. And, last but not least, we are going to see the release of Nintendo Switch 2.

In the last maybe four years I have been buying lots of games. I like to buy games that are in sale. I also buy lots of older games. They are also cheap. I am talking about games for PS3 and Xbox 360 or anything that is from that era. You know – games that are old but not yet considered widely retro games.

I think, actually, that there are just too many titles out there. I’d like to play every decent game but it seems that you just have to decide and pick what to play. This is sometimes difficult. You have to spend some hours playing the game to see if it fits your idea of a good gaming entertainment. For example I did play almost seven hours of Cyberpunk 2077 but decided to play something else after that.

Games are long. Some games take 30 hours just to play them through. I know that I have spend hundreds of hours playing NBA 2K games. I think this videogame series got me and many others hooked. Somehow they seem to capture players and they keep releasing the game every year with so little improvements or changes in the basic gameplay.

People are spending more money on videogames than ever. There has been discussion and some predictions of how will Nintendo Switch 2 sell in the first year that it is available. We are talking about tens of millions of devices. That something to think about. Gaming seems to be more popular than ever.

Why don’t I have so much time? Well, it seems like my adulthood has already begun several years ago. I am not a student anymore. I have an eight-hour workday from Monday to Friday. So, I have to work. I want to work. I want to be a part of the society. I would like to play more. It just isn’t my top priority anymore. I have less free time now. I do have some more money. It just seems that buying a game seems to be something I have to really consider and think about.

For someone that is playing lots of videogames this seems to be a perfect time. There are lots of games to choose from and you have to choose which ones to buy and play. There are reviews in the gaming media online and even in the printed media. They can give you an idea of what to expect from a game even before you buy it. You can also gather knowledge about games and discuss about them to find new games to actually play.

What I would like to say about all this? Think for a while what you are buying. Sometimes it is good to wait some time after a game is released. The price might go lower. Please think about what companies and what kind of companies you are supporting. Don’t forget independent developers and give them some support. We do have a beautiful moment in time and history. Lets embrace it and keep playing good games!

My Latest Purchase

Posted on by Viljami

This the beginning of my new blog post. As the title says it is dealing around my latest purchase. I ordered three games for my Xbox Series X. I bought these three games for a little under 100 euros with the shipping included. What games did I get? I bought Endless Dungeon, a game released by Sega, Lies of P and also Tekken 8 that is the latest game in the well-known series of three-dimensional fighting games.

I am very happy fellow now. I just got to my home and away from some bad weather. It is raining right now but just a moment ago it wasn’t. It is also, again,  Friday and the week-end is here. I am probably going to play some video games. I do have time for that and this weeks work is done.

I almost wrote a blog post some days ago about two Xbox Series X games that I managed to install. I didn’t that time write about it but I went and installed Hogwarts Legacy and Cyberpunk 2077. Now I have played about four hours of Cyberpunk 2077 while Hogwarts Legacy is still not played at all though I have it now installed. I do have lots of space still left on my Series X since I don’t keep so many games installed. This hasn’t been a problem for me. I have almost always space for the games that I am currently playing. I just uninstall a game or two that take too much space and that I am not so into at this moment. That is my strategy and it seems to be working.

What did I expect from these games that were included in my latest purchase? Tekken is very familiar. Te latest Tekken game was so cheap that I just had to buy it. It cost me only sixteen euros and it was the cheapest game from this latest purchase. I think it is a good fighting game and a decent game when it comes to the Tekken series. It does take some space. I am not sure if I am able to install all these three games and try to play them immediately. I probably have to pick which one I am going to concentrate on.

I read just some few words about Lies of P. This game cost me 45 euros. It is not the newest game. It was released already some time ago. I have read that it is a decent game. It can be finished in 29 hours. I got this information from How Long To Beat that is a website that has a database of almost every popular game out there including every abandon-ware game as well. It is actually a very good site and I use it regularly (as you may have seen).

Endless Dungeon was 31 euros. I just felt somewhat interested in it. I actually have been looking for it in case it would be available in a cheap price. I think 31 euros is a good and nice price for a game like this. It is actually developed by Sega. It also came in a huge box. It is not a big box, like PC big box, but it is comfortable. Right now all these three games are sealed. I am not very keen on keeping games sealed so that they would be valuable later but sometimes I leave them sealed while I am not going directly into them and starting to play them. We’ll just have to see how long they are going to keep being sealed copies. I think that the time would be too long for me to get a proper profit for something like this. But there a sense in handling your games like this (keeping them sealed) if you have the patience required. After all a sealed NES game, be it a Super Mario Bros 3 or some other decently valuable game, would actually be very valauble in deed.

But what am I still talking about here? It is Friday after all. I should open these sealed games and give them a good run. I might play some Cyberpunk 2077 first or try to get into some Hogwarts Legacy type of action. Whatever my game of choice will be I am going to have some fun, right? After all that’s what these weekends are perfect for.

When Games Had No Graphics at All

Posted on by Viljami

We’re you playing video games when there were no graphics at all? This screenshot is the featured image of today’s new blog post. As you can see there is only text content for the player and no graphics. You can see the title, “West of House”, and the score. You can also see how many commands you have given in the game. That value is displayed as “Moves”. There is also an opportunity to save a game. You progress in the game with writing commands like where to move and what items to pick up and how to use them. The player also has an inventory system that can be displayed with a proper command.

This game is a text adventure game called Zork 1 – The Great Underground Empire. It was released originally in the beginning of 1980s. As you can probably already figure the first computer and video games were many times very moderate when it comes to graphical performance. They had no graphics. Some of the best text adventure games that I have come across include the first version of the adventure game Leisure Suit Larry. There was also an interesting game called Colossal Cave Adventure. It was one of the first games ever released on computer. It was released already in the 1970s.

It is interesting for me to look back in the video game history as I am such a young person that games for me have always included graphics of some type. When I was a small boy I played many DOS games on our family’s PC. Even some of the adventure type games, many of them were released by Sierra, had some sort of graphics. Later we saw games from Lucas Arts that even had an user interface that utilized some mouse interactivity. So, these games had already a real user interface.

Playing a text adventure game that has no graphics can be very charming. Early in the game you become used to the limitations. While there are many functions in the game they are a bit harder to figure and image. So, this leaves a lot to your imagination. You have to figure out what are the main commands that can make you progress in the game. It helps if you have some experience in playing adventure games be it that they would have had some kind of graphics. You can get into text adventure games more easily if you know concepts like items, maps and/or inventory systems. In some games your character even has some kind of development that can be based on for example experience points. Your characters abilities can sometimes open new opportunities like some new function that is enabled as your character has a more advanced ability. Sometimes there can be a new option inside some conversation dialogue. This all is based on charaters abilities like intelligence, luck or strength that can have a value like a number from 1 to 10. So, this number increases when your character goes up a level. Sometimes you may have options on how to develop your character. Character progression is however considered to be more of a character of a role playing game. Most text adventure games aren’t considered role playing games.

I encourage you to try for example Zork 1 or its sequels. You can get an idea of the surroundings of the space or room you are in with a command like “look around”. Then you are beginning to find some points and items that you can interact with. The score tells you about your progression in the game. Text adventure games are a bit limited but they can be a fun way to experience something new. They sure tell us a lot about the history and origins of video and computer games. The first Zork game is considered abandonware and you can download it from internet and install it through Dosbox. You can maybe use a frontend like D-Fend Reloaded that I am personally using for this purpose.

 

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!

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