Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Category: 2020s

Looks Like I’ll Be Playing Gran Turismo 6 For a Long Time

Posted on by Viljami

How I got to playing Gran Turismo 6 all over again? It started when I was going through PS1 games and I got to play Gran Turismo 2. It is a very good racing game but the graphics just seem too outdated. This happened many weeks ago. I was thinking about how I stopped playing Gran Turismo 6 for PS3 and I wanted to finish it. It was in my opinion  a better game than GT 2 would be. So, I started getting back into playing Gran Turismo 6.

If we consider that almost all Gran Turismo games are very good I can, in a positivite manner, say that Gran Turismo 6 is definitely in the top three of all GT games. I am not saying that it is better than Gran Turismo 4 which is by the way a game that has such a legendary status in gamers and racing fans minds. It might compete with GT 7 that was a very good game but was maybe a short one. I didn’t actually complete, that is to play the game and achieve everything that the game has to offer, Gran Turismo 7. I did finish it although.

How Long To Beat website tells you that it takes 44 and a half hours to finish Gran Turismo 6. When I look at the statistics that the game kindly offers I find that I have completed maybe 43 percentage of the game and I have driven maybe 19 hours. This is the actual point of this blog post. I think I still have a lot to play if I wish to finish or even complete Gran Turismo 6.

Gran Turismo 6 isn’t a perfect game. Graphics are nice. They are not as nice as with GT 7. This must not be a surprise because GT 7 was released for PS4 and PS5. We didn’t see a release for Xbox as we didn’t see Forza Motorsport on PS. That has been the way since the war between PS and Xbox first became. Noways we do have some conversation about some these exclusive titles getting released for both Xbox and PS. This makes sense since a game like FFXVI is getting a release for PC and it might even be released for Xbox also.

I don’t clearly know if my controller is working fully. I checked if there would be any professional level game pads for PS3 available. This made me a bit disappointed. I only saw some Spartan Oplon controllers, which I do have a  one piece that is presented in this image next to this blog post and also there were some basic Dual Shock 3 controllers also available. I do have a racing wheel but I have to confess that I am not so into racing wheels. I just never got the hang of it and I have played with a controller since the end part of 1990s when I was getting first into these Gran Turismo games which then has lead to me to this day which I seem to be spending playing Gran Turismo 6.

Is Gran Turismo 6 a good racing game? Definitely. Should you spend almost 45 hours playing it? Well, if you do enjoy it, then go ahead. But if it feels like you have seen the whole game after 20 or so hours I advise to you to think about this decision again. I do have games that I have played hundreds of hours but these games are kind of a special cases, like NBA 2K games for me (:D). I had an idea of a blog post in which I would have discussed with you about how long would be the preferable time to spend on a video game but this current topic seemed more interesting to me. Anyways…happy Saturday to you, my reader. We’ll see each other when you read my next blog post. Take care!

Organizing Your Game Collection

Posted on by Viljami

Right now in this blog post we are going through some simple ways that you can have to organize your game collection. The need for organizing depends on how large of a collection you do have and also do you collect and play also already a bit older games or even these legendary retro games.

I think if you only play the newest games you can save a lot of time and you don’t have to think about organizing your game collection so deeply. It is also easier to handle your game collection if you buy only digital copies for your gaming consoles and personal computer.

I do have a huge game collection. I like to keep those games that I can actually easily start playing in my gaming shelf. I also have several gaming consoles attached to my television. So, I have lots of games available and I can change from system to system quickly. I also have a storage to which I move some games that aren’t playable currently in my setup.

Some collectors like to keep their game collection in a very good and clean shape. If you want to be precise you can even sort your games alphabetically. I don’t have my games in any special order. But I do like to keep those games that are for a certain console in same place. So, I cand easily find a game that I like to play on a precise system.

As you can figure from the featured image my game collection might need some configuring. This picture that I took just moments ago shows you my GameCube collection, all my SNES and NES games, my Game Boy Color, some adapters, my Game Boy games and some other stuff also. This is my Nintendo part of my collection.

I have a large collection of games. As I already said my game collection would need some more organizing. For example I have two rows in this shelf right now that are dedicated to DVDs. Their price has come to be low today. I wouldn’t want to display so much of them in this shelf. I also have some older but not yet retro PC games on one row that I probably should move to storage.

I have had some difficulties with storing SNES games in a reasonable way in my game collection. They seem to be just placed on top of each other and you cannot even tell from the back of these cartridges that which game  is which (I mean that the titles aren’t seeable). I don’t this problem with my NES game cartridges. I have also run out of space with my Mega Drive games.

I would like to collect even more games. I just need to think what gaming consoles I want to dedicate my shelf space to. I have seen some huge game collections online. I don’t think that I would like to display more games. I am somewhat a collector but I like to also play them. I guess you can say that I am a bit of both of these types of game collectors.

Finishing and Completing Games

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I write to you, dear IGD blog readers, about finishing and completing games. The thing is that for me back in the 1990s and in the era when PlayStation 1 was the most powerful gaming console it was a habit to finish a game that I had bought. There are some reasons why I am not today finishing all these games that I have.

First that comes to mind when thinking about finishing anf completing games is that we have seen hundreds, even thousands of new games becoming available fom older consoles, like PS1, and for consoles that have been released after that. Just think about thousands of games released for PS2. Add also games that were released to these systems: Xbox, GameCube, Xbox 360, PS3, and so on. There have been many games releaseda and so there are more games to be finished.

Finishing a game is a one thing. Some games can be completed. The difference between these two is that when you finish a game you have had enough from the game. It has provided you some entertainment. When you actually want to complete a game after you have already finished it the game seems to have still something to give to you. So, you play the game until there is nothing left to accomplish in it.

There were many PS1 games that I finished. There are a few games that I wanted to play even after I had finished them. These games are Gran Turismo 1, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Colin McRae Rally 1 and 2. I don’t know if I completed for example THPS 1. I did unlock every skating level and achieved a gold medal in every competition but I didn’t finish the game with every character. There was also some characters that could be unlocked and this was kind of a bonus for someone that was feeling  a deep motivation to totally complete the game.

I think in a way I have become busier. I don’t have as much time for video games than I had back in the 1990s. Also the society has become very different from what it used to be. The games often try to hold the play and games have become longer than they were. The capacity that a game takes from your disk has grown. It went from one CD, about 650 MB, to one DVD, to one Bluray to something like over 100 GB. There are more possibilities in a single game and there is more content. Also game manufacturers have become more ambitious with their games.

I used to complete every game I had. Back in 2014 I tried to complete every game that I bought for my then so shiny PlayStation 4. It started well. I was using PS4. I finished maybe five games and after that the backlog started growing and I started to skip a game that I got stuck with and buy another game and start playing it.

Even back in 2006 when I played mainly original Xbox I had some more ambition in trying to finish the games that I had bought. There has been a shift in this way. We are seeing more games that are very long. Publsihers are trying their best to get players hooked in that particular game and to play their game for a very long time. At the same time we are seeing fewer games.

So is the innovating started to become less of a thing when it comes to modern video games? We are seeing fewer games than back in the say era of PS2 and original Xbox and other consoles of that era. The stakes might have risen. And there is more money involved.

What Makes You a Good Video Game Player?

Posted on by Viljami

What it takes to be a good video game player? You can be a professional level player or a casually playing person. Anyways we are going to go through some matters that can make you a better video game player. There has been a lot of talk about the limits of aged people and how you cannot be an eSports star if you are over 27 years old. This does have an impact but the matter is more complicated than this at least in my opinion.

You can be a single player gamer or you can be playing multiplayer games. Many of these points that we are dealing in this blog post have an impact on both of these ways of playing video games. Lets start to go through these facts right now.

You can have a long history in video games. This makes you familiar with all the games you have played in your whole lifetime. You might not have such good reflexes but you might just have developed very deep skills in some game or genre of games. When you are good at say FPS games you can be successful just by concentrating well.

Sometimes games do require a proper controller. Yuo might need a racing wheel and pedals or maybe you need a mouse and a keyboard to play some video game. Having skills in using this special controller can give you an edge. I have noticed that some people can have difficulties using a game-pad if they are used to using keyboard and a mouse. I have actually the opposite problem – I am not so good as a video game player when I don’t use a game-pad.

Concentration and tiredness have an impact on how you perform as a video game player. At least for your health you should make sure that you sleep enough and have some exercise at times. Also you can keep in mind that your concentration doesn’t last for unlmited time so you have to take breaks so you can have a better concentration level.

Being young has a positive impact on your performance as a video game player. You have better reflexes. You learn quicker. When you start playing young you are probably a master in many ways when you become a bit older. I also learned a lot of English when I was playing some PlayStation and PC games when I was a teenager. I am actually from Finland.

Being a quick learner gives your performance a boost. Also knowledge of technology can give you an advantage. You can know some programming or some other sort of computer science knowledge. I have noticed that even when the game is not totally an open source game I do notice some things here and there that can give me an advantage.

Cheating is of course something that you can use if nothing else works. This gives you same kind of an advantage like if some sport competitionist would use doping. It kind of takes the point out of competing. Creating cheats for a game can be also technically intereting as is also making any mods out of a video game that already exists.

You can also understand a lot about games and the platform, or the console, that you are playing with. Remember also that there is an element of luck also. Many things in video games are totally random. This makes you sometimes have to try to play your run in a game over again. This can be annoying and can make the experience just a bit repetetive.

What’s Going on with Xbox?

Posted on by Viljami

Just some days ago we heard some news about new Xbox consoles to be released. We have seen already three models of Xbox Series consoles. First two were Series S and Series X. Series S didn’t have an optical disk drive while Series X did have. Series S had 512 GB of sotrage while Series X had 1 TB. The prices were about 310 € for Series S and about 510 euros for Series X.

We saw earlier a new fully digital model that had 1 TB of storage. It was a bit more expensive than earlier released Series S. It was maybe 50 euros more expensive or so. This console had a black colour while Series S was white and Series X was black also.

Many gamers today use their modern Xbox with the Game Pass. This enables you to play any game included in the offer. Games are changing from time to time so you never excatly know when or what you can play in the future.

A total opposite for this is someone that wants to buy every game that he or she does play. This is actually how I myself view this matter. I like to collect physichal games or at least own a digital copy. Owning a game can be difficult and it might become more difficult in the following years.

These new consoles are getting released 15th October this year. There is going to be a 2 TB Xbox Series X that has an optical drive, fully digital Xbox Series X that has a 1 TB storage and lastly Xbox Seires S 1 TB.

These consoles do add a variety to this generation of Xbox consoles. They seem to be targeted to new Xbox console buyers since they don’t have any major perfromance upgades. I, personally, am not so confident in getting a new console of this type. I have already Series X and also Series S that currently is in my storage space and I am not using it.

Split Second – A Good Driving Game from 2010

Posted on by Viljami

I recently bought Split Second for my Xbox Series X as a digital copy. It was a cheap game (I bought it for about ten euros). I actually have played this game earlier but the platform was PC. I remembered having a great time with this game so I decided to grab it.

Split Second reminds me of Burnout 3 – Takedown. The gameplay has been adjusted. You don’t actually try to crash other vehicles. Instead you trigger some trap type of obstacles in your opponents way so that they will crash. You get power to trigger these traps by following close at your opponents tail or by drifting while you are driving in a corner.

I have to say that Split Second isn’t a perfect game. It has its flaws. Then again what game today wouldn’t have some disappointing features? The driving can’t be considered a simulation. It is actually very much like playing an arcade game. It is also already a bit outdated with its graphical presentation. This game was originally released for Xbox 360 and PC and surely also for PS3. So, I have played this video game for PC and Xbox 360.

This game reminds me of a somewhat better era for video gamers. Back in 2010 these games were easy to get into and also easier to complete finally. Every game released weren’t as ambitious commercially and in terms of how addicted gamers would become to the game that was in question. I kind of miss those days. We had way more games released. I think that every game can’t be a masterpiece. Every game cannot be a legendary one.

As there are fewer games being released and more money involved in the development process we are getting this clear picture of the state of this industry. Game developers might be aiming too high. At least thats how I feel. Well, maybe we will get some support in this matter from some indie developers.

One thing we can also have a debate about is how Nintendo has managed to get its console, Nintendo Switch, to be such a success. Switch is currently the most sold gaming console ever. It is soon passing PS2. I think its pricing and these good quality games that this platform seems to have have given this gaming device the success that it does currenlty have. Are you waiting for Switch 2? It is rumored that it will have a backwards compatibility with current Switch and also that it might not be such a powerful system when comes to pure technical performance.

As you can imagine I did play Split Second a bit over ten years ago with my PC. I have the game also as a physical copy. I have the frigging DVD disc! It is almost frightening to see these DVD boxes in my video game shelf. They are something that collectors do not wish to have. Do you have a DVD drive still in your PC? I do have, but actually I have disconnected the power supply from it. I did this partly accidentally as I had to change some parts to my desktop PC a while ago. I just haven’t had the time to try to connect the power again to the DVD drive. Actually I have also an external DVD drive that I can connect to my PC through USB. The main point of this paragraph must be that PC has been a digital platform for several years alreaady. What I mean is that if you buy a PC game you propably buy a digital copy of it.

There are plenty of good Xbox 360 and even some original Xbox games available in the digital store of Xbox. I actually bought three games just the other day for 21 euros. If you are into Xbox 360 gaming I highly recommend getting your hands on these games. It is a very good option for buying the physical game from a game store. And of course you might just have an only digital gaming console. Digital gaming seems to be more and more popular as the provess does progress.

Latest New Games That I Added to My Collection

Posted on by Viljami

So, this is a blog post about latest new games that I added to my collection of video games. I got these for cheap prices. I bought Lords of the Fallen and Dying Light 2 for Xbox Series X and Batman – Arkham Knight for PS4. I am not going to go so close to how much these games did cost. I am such a person that values a cheap price. I often find myself thinkinh about a game if its in a very good sale.

As you might see I haven’t yet opened the seal of Dying Light 2 and Batman – Arkham Knight. Sometimes unopened games can have a better selling price if you are selling them to someone after many years. However I am not planning to sell these. I am going to play these two games when I have time.

The game that I have played for about four hours is Lords of the Fallen. It is an action role-playing-game with smooth looking 3D environment. The camera is positioned as a 3rd person view. Gameplay is versatile and I think after playing already four hours I still haven’t managed to get a full grip of all of the controls and features that it offers. This is a very nice game and I hope to be able to play it some more later.

I have recently bought many retro games. It is also nice to buy new games for alternation. I am lucky as my PS4 seems to be working. I wonder if it’s going to break and I think some day it actually will. I hope it would last for many years. I’ve had a bad luck with my original Xbox and PS2 consoles and I found that they are not so durable after all these years. It has to be mentioned that these devices are over twenty years old. I wonder also if they have such a good quality after all. Maybe newer consoles last better in frequent use. At least I hope they do.

Dying Light 2 has had some reviews that have been positive. Everyone just doesn’t consider it to be a good game at all. I have played the first Dying Light game and I didn’t enjoy it so much. I stumbled on this copy of the sequel and since it was sold at half price I thought I could buy it after all.

Batman – Arkham Knight for PS4 was sold at a price of twenty euros. It is a re-release as PlayStation Hits. If a game gets re-released it propably tells you something about how it has managed to get an audience and how well it has sold. I think this one can be also a very good game to play. It is a bit older game (but not a retro game, at least yet).

All-in-all I am content in these new games that I have bought. I like to buy games that I like and am able to play. My collection keeps slowly growing. I like to keep games that I have bought in my collection even if I have already completed them. Some games I store in my gaming shelf and some games I have to put in to separate storage that I have. So I have some consoles and games positioned nicely for the collection to be visible also to some friends that come to visit our home.

I Read a Lot

Posted on by Viljami

I have to make it clear – I like reading and I read a lot. This hobby that I have might not be so popular at this moment in our history and in our society right now. I have read tens of books during the last years. I actually don’t have any statistics to back this up. I only have this pile of books that is showed in the featured image of this blog post. I have read all of them.

I have this habit of putting a book that I have read to a pile. I have many piles like this. I also have a pile of books in my home that I haven’t yet started to read. I read one book at a time. Sometimes I abandon the book I am reading but this is not so usual as I can find many topics interesting  to me. These kind of rules help me to grasp on this hobby. At times I feel a bit amazed of how large these piles are.

“Why do I enjoy reading?”, one might ask. I have always been an introvert. This was apparent all the way through my childhood. I liked drawing. I stayed home for hours drawing. When I was seven years old I learned to read. I was nine years old when I started learning English in school. At first I read books written in Finnish. Lately I have picked up some books that were written in English. I have thought about also reading a book written in French or Swedish since I have studied both of them.

I haven’t really counted how many books I have read. I can make some conclusions. During my four week vacation I read four books. That makes one book per week. I don’t normally read at a pace this fast. The time I do spend reading is depending very much on what else I have to do. This includes working, cleaning the house and things like that. Also, my other freetime hobbies take up some time.

Some topics I am interested in when it comes to books are technology, future, science, physics, space, video games (of course), programming, computers, philosophy and phychology. I do read also fictive books (like that book written by Dan Brown that you can find form the image featured on this blog post).

I just wanted to impress this side of my life also. I read a lot. Currently I am reading a book about Linux and its creator Linus Torvalds. The book is titled “Kapinakoodi” that means “Rebel Code”. The book is a bit old but the topic is fascinating.

Raspberry Pi 5 and Recalbox

Posted on by Viljami

I made a decision and went and bought the latest Raspberry Pi computer. It is officially called Raspberry Pi 5. It is a very powerful computer and it costs only about 100 euros. You also have to buy some accessories with it so you can make it usable. You have to buy a cable or two and maybe a cover and also memory card and a controller. All pieces included the total price was, I think, maybe 250 euros.

This is still very cheap when you consider that this thing has 8 GB of RAM. The performance is very good. I decided to pair this with an operating system called Recalbox that enables you to turn your Raspberry Pi 5 into a retro gaming machine. I have installed the OS and found some emulators to be working while others seem to have some issues. But if you consider that this is very much something that you have to really spend time and inspect carefully I think the functionality of this thing is very good.

I decided to include in this small setup an Xbox Series controller. I picked a nice lime colored model. The controller alone cost only 50 euros. I connected it with a 3 meters long USB-C to USB-A cable. So, I am not using Bluetooth to connect the controller but that can also be done if you need that functionality. I think setting up Bluetooth controller seems to be an easy task since Raspberry Pi 5 has Bluetooth integrated in its circuitry.

I connected my Raspberry Pi 5 to my LAN network with an Ethernet cable. Moving BIOS and ROM files from your main computer to the Raspberry Pi computer is fairly easy. I think there is some kind of a limitation that makes moving large files, over 5 GB of size, impossible when using Windows network. Or at least it wasn’t possible when I tried it out. Of course you can pick out the memory card and move the file directly to it. That might be the solution.

I picked a memory card that has a size of 128 GB. The type of the memory card that Raspberry Pi 5 uses is microSD. There is a connection for HDMI output so you do need a special cable for that too. The HDMI cable I used is a HDMI to Micro HDMI. As there are several different pieces of hardware it can take some time to plan what parts you really need and should buy.

Installing Recalbox is not so complicated if you have some experience of installing operating systems to PCs or to Raspberry Pis. I am leaving this part also for you to search for through internet. I think you can find these instructions very easily. I used a program on my Windows 10 called Raspberry Pi Imager. I think you should use this program also.

There are some competitors available for Recalbox. You can try also Lakka OS or RetroPie. I actually first tried Lakka OS but after all I was more convinced with how Recalbox worked. RetroPie even didn’t have yet an image file for Raspberry Pi 5 so the installing of it would have been an exercise of some extra thinking. Recalbox was the best as it was easiest to install and I have noticed very few issues with it.

Of course you need also the games and game systems BIOS files. So you need to move the ROMs from your PC to your Raspberry Pi 5. You can find games easily from internet. They might be sometimes fractured somehow and there can be bugs. To eliminate this you should rip your games from actual CDs or DVDs. This is especially easy if you are emulating PlayStation 1 or 2. Also, I have to mention that downloading games is actually against the law. Also, if we are strict, you would have to rip also systems BIOSes from a system that you actually own. I actually had an issue with a downloaded game and I came to senses that it had a bug that freezed my game and made it impossible to carry on forward playing it.

So I have had time to experiment with my Recalbox OS. I now have a system that supports mainly and most importantly PS1 and Dreamcast along with many other gaming systems with a bit lower specs. I haven’t been able to get GameCube games running. Also the PS2 emulation is under work right now for me. I also found out that N64 games work but they somehow don’t respond to game pad input at all. So, this is also under work.

If you aren’t afraid of some fiddling with the hardware and software, like moving some ROM and BIOS files to their proper paths and maybe renaming the files correctly. a Raspberry Pi 5 with Recalbox OS can be a fun project for you. It is very easy to check if correct BIOSes have been setup properly. There is a text file generated after the BIOS check has been run from the user interface of Recalbox that clearly states what BIOS files are needed and also which ones are optionally needed.

Hades

Posted on by Viljami

Hades is an action role-playing-game that was published for Xbox Series X in 2021 after being released also already for Switch and Windows back in 2020. It isn’t currently one of the latest games but since it was priced very nicely (I paid only 19 euros for the physical copy) and there were news in this Finnish gaming magazine, Pelaaja, about the next Hades game, Hades II, to be released soon, I decided to pick this game and start to go through it.

Hades borrows elements from different role-playing-games. You don’t actually gather experience points. You buy upgrades that will help you to finally complete the game. You can have different strategies along your way. I have played Hades for almost thirty hours now and I have reached the final boss of the whole game only once. There is a certain need for luck in your guest. Also you play the game you get to understand how the different enemies take action and you learn how you can defeat them more easily. One of the key matters is your level of health. You have to try to dodge your enemies when they are trying to get you.

While the story is not so deep Hades does offer a lot to play. You do die often but when the game progresses you get longer runs eventually. Hades takes some time to learn to play. so you understand how the enemies take their action and when is the proper moment to try to hit them with your weapon. There are many different weapons to choose from. You first have to unlock them and then you will get to choose which one do you prefer. I ended up using the type that reminds me of a rail gun. It can shoot twelve times, quickly, and then you have to reload. You can also shoot a grenade that makes lots of damage. My main way to try to complete this game has been to try to get a weapon upgrade that triples the damage and also makes you vulnerable to the grenade. There are many other upgrades for weapons available and you can also unlock features that make you get a nice upgrade more likely.

Hades has very nice controls in overall. It is a very nice and fun game to play when you get the hang of it. The graphics are made to remind of some cartoons. Of course I have to say that all of the characters take deep influences from Greek mythology. Many characters that help the main character as the story progresses are actually sort of gods. I just had a conversation about this game with my friend and we talked about if this game is actually a three dimensional one or not. I don’t have a clear answer to this. The graphics look nice and they work very well.

You will also get a code with your physical copy of Hades so you can download the soundtrack of the game. The music in Hades feels nice while not having any deeper relation. I am saying that the music has an effect but it isn’t actually in the center where everything happens in this game. There are just so many other elements in this game that hold your attention. Music is nice but not so appealing. I have to say that for example in games like Burnout 3 Takedown or the first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater the music had a very important role and this is just not the case with Hades.

You get to move a lot while you try to dodge the attacks of the enemies. You have to time your attacks well so you can be victorious. You progress through the levels. There is an enemy boss that you have to defeat after every level until you finally get to battle with the main boss of the whole game. It is of course the Hades. So the whole game is about trying to escape from your father’s home. After you finally loose your life you will have to start from the first level, again. The game consists of these runs. I have now had almost one hundred runs that are also attempts to escape.

This is a very good game. If I would have to say something negative I would say that it seems in a way a bit repetitive as a game and it has only a few levels. It does give you a lot to play. After all I do have spent almost thirty hours playing it. The game mechanics and the way that you handle the main character are very good. This all makes Hades a very pleasant game to try to beat and also to play.

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