Viljami, Author at Intensive Gaming Diary

Tony Hawks Pro Skater is making a comeback

Posted on May 20, 2020January 11, 2022 by Viljami

I was first introduced to Tony Hawks Pro Skater as a young teenager back in 1999. It was the golden era of Sony PlayStation 1. I’m not much of a skater. I mean I had a skateboard but I think I started skateboarding too old. I didn’t learn the tricks. The toughest trick I managed to do was pop-shove-it. And some of my friends had fun at my expense because of that. But that’s enough about my skateboarding skills.

Skateboarding is fun to watch. At the end of 90s some game developers thought they could create a game based on this style of sport. This was also a good opportunity for Tony Hawk to gain some more recognizability. The game was an absolute hit. It made kids want to start learning real skateboarding. And it did bring this sport more fans and hobbyists. It made skateboarding very popular.

If you liked the game or why not the whole series or maybe just the three first ones or what ever – there is going to be released a new game with better graphics that maintains the playability of the original one. This release includes THPS one and two. The release date is currently set to September 4th. There might be delays coming to this releaase because of situation with Corona virus.

So the game brings THPS to some newer consoles. Activision hasn’t released a THPS game after 2015 when THPS 5 flopped badly and received bad reviews. If you have played this game you propably remember the sonudtrack. In this new release there will be almost all tracks that appeared on original games but some are going to be missing. This is happening because of licensing problems. This small HD collection will be first released on Xbox One and PS4 and might be available for newer consoles later.

So we are waiting to see if this collection brings us a game with good quality. It’s been a while. I think I am going, once again, have these nostalgic feelings I sometimes tend to have. Lets hope it will be a good THPS HD version of the first and the second game. And lets hope that the release isn’t going to be delayed, well, at least not badly.

Sierras early adventure games – Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards

Posted on May 14, 2020January 11, 2022 by Viljami

As I am born in the 80s this game was one of those first games I played as a small child. It was released by Sierra in 1987. It uses a game engine called Adventure Game Interpreter or for short AGI that was originally created for producing the first Kings Quest game back in 1984. Again this was something we gamers had never seen. Suddenly you had graphics instead of staring at a screen that had just some text on it.

Before Sierras innovative way to create graphics to adventure games fans of adventure game genre had to content themselves to bare text parser with no graphics at all. These games had graphics but the actions the player makes have to be written. You can move the character and sometimes when you perform some command you need to be in some place inside the games inner world. And you can move from screen to another screen. I wasn’t even born when first text adventures came to markets but I can see how this kind of an improvement would be like.

Leisure Suit Larry was based on a text based adventure game originally released in 1981. Al Lowe copied most of this games ideas. It was almost the same game with only graphics added. This is my view. You can propably find a copy of this game and play it yourself and you will understand better (I can’t publish this games name).

My experiences with this first Larry game are strongly represented in my memories of my childhood. I learned to write some words with computer keyboard playing this game. Back then I didn’t understand games details. I for example didn’t understand what is a prophylactic. And graphics of this item in this game were blurry enough to let my imagination handle it as some sort of a gem. The game has some controversial content but it is understandable that you maybe would let a child play this game. Of course there are many other games that might be more suitable for a young kid. But this is how I got started with Sierra.

Differences between serious and casual gaming

Posted on May 13, 2020January 11, 2022 by Viljami

What really is casual gaming? Does it refer to playing at easier difficulty level? Does it mean not playing so many hours daily or weekly? In this article I try to explain this matter. There are many things that are or seem to be more important than playing. But sometimes you can combine playing with writing an essay or getting to spend some free time. We can go even further – what if you could also create new games and use your knowledge to your advance?

In my thoughts casual gaming means passing some time that you just seem to have to something that you don’t fully want to do. You are just spending time or even wasting time because you might be bored or you are waiting for something to happen for example waiting for the oven to warm so you can bake some pizza in it. This means that you are not so passionate about the actual game and all the difficulties and experiences inside the game are not the thing that you are interested in.

Let’s for a moment think about serious gaming. You are obsessed with the game you are playing. You want to find every piece of equipment, turn over every rock you find and reveal all the secrets that the game has. You are willing to receive everything that specific game has to offer. You are deeply inside this games world. You want to focus on the main character and side characters also. You seem to understand the story.

Studying is a lot like learning a new game. Some people try to figure what things are the most essential and learn them and even memorize some phrases or images or something that they find important. But if you want to learn things more deeply you want to understand why things are the way they are. You want to fully understand the matter you are trying to learn. Not just some phrases that some expert thinks are important. You want to understand what the game is. You want to know everything about it. So this basically is the difference. Casual gaming is a way to pass some time. Serious gaming is when you want to understand what you are doing inside the game.

As I’ve learned some programming as I was studying I came to understand games more deeply also. It opened some doors for me. My role would not be an artist or 3D modeller or graphical or texture designer. I would be the creator of games logic. That’s what game programmers do. They design the logic. You need a key from that room that opens a door to that next room. And so on. You can build on it.

This text is just one post in my blog. It appears to me that I have touched something important here and we can propably think about these matters in some other posts also. Some things like how can you get so much valuable information from games and how can you even make gaming from your hobby to a profession. I’d like to write more about game designing and eSports. I think there are many valuable things here and that gaming can be more than a simple way to pass time and it can bring you valuable things.