Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: History of Gaming

Halo – Campaign Evolved

Posted on by Viljami

I just recently finished Halo – Campaign Evolved. This game was released only a moment ago. It took me ten hours to beat this game. It would have been nice to get to play this from a physical release but since it isn’t yet available I decided for this time to go with a digital copy. The game is now on sale. I did pay the full price of 60 euros. I think it is available for a discount now and the price seems to be 48 euros for the Standard Edition. This game is also available for PS5.

The original and first Halo game, Halo – Combat Evolved, is a legendary game that was released for original Xbox back in 2001. The game offered something smooth in the form of a first person shooter that you could actually play with a game pad. This was something that we had already seen in games like N64s GoldenEye. The first Halo game was still something better and even bigger.

So Halo – Campaign Evolved is a remake of the old classic. I have to say that it is a decent game. It isn’t anything special. I still had lots of fun while playing it. Only time will tell what kind of a Halo game we are going to see next. The games or a game (we don’t yet know if there are going to be several Halo games released in the future) that are going to be released will be developed by Activision.

By the way I am sorry that I don’t have any screenshots for this blog post and also on my IG share. I have to admit that I just couldn’t figure out how to take a screenshot with my Elite 2 game pad. It is a good controller but it seems to lack the functionality to take a screenshot quickly. I also didn’t want to play with the regular game pad since the elite one is way more comfortable.

If you check the grades that Halo – Campaign Evolved has received you can tell that everyone wasn’t totally satisfied with the game. I can actually very clearly understand this. If a game is a remake of such a classic video game the expectations are of course high. What do I have to say to this? I think Campaign Evolved isn’t a total failure. I actually very much enjoyed playing it. Is it something that all the fans were waiting for? It probably isn’t a fulfillment of these demanding fantasies after all.

Lets discuss the gameplay a bit. All the familiar weapons are present in the game. You get to use grenades and a bazooka. You have to keep changing your weapon and there is a somewhat limited amount of ammo available. Sometimes you have to pick up an alien weapon since all of your other weapons are out of ammo. There is some melee fighting present but it is nothing like in some recent Doom games we have already seen.

The enemies are numerous. They usually drop some weapons but some enemies don’t. If you fire an alien weapon it actually heats if you keep firing it for a long period of time. Then you have to cool out for a while and after that you are able to shoot again as is normal. This functionality is present only in alien weapons. Sometimes you have to pick a weapon that isn’t as powerful as the weapon you did use earlier. There are many types of enemies around. There isn’t a lot of exploring involved in this game which is also in my opinion a good matter.

This autumn is a busy time for gamers. We have already seen the release of games like Silent Hill – Townfall and Control Resonant. We are going to see the release of games like GTA VI and Zelda – The Ocarina of Time remake. I personally am going to play next some Silent Hill f. Actually just before I started writing this blog post I actually started the installation process with my Xbox Series X. I think I am going to go to play the game now for a while. See you in the next post!

Some Thoughts About Nintendo

Posted on by Viljami

This blog post is dedicated to some thoughts about Nintendo. First of all I have to respect this company. Back in the 1980s when NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) was released it really brought video games back to life again. There was a huge depression on video games. This was mainly because many low quality titles were getting released and consumers were disappointed in the overall quality of games. Nintendo showed the way for Sega and many other companies while we started to head for the video game competition of the early 1990s.

In my mind Nintendo is a company that has deep roots in gaming historically and also even today. Now I am a Sega fan and my first console was Mega Drive. That doesn’t mean that I couldn’t like some stuff that Nintendo has released. I have had a keen interest in past consoles, like NES and SNES, with some GameCube and Wii stuff also and I do have Switch, Switch Lite and Switch 2. I also do like some Game Boy titles that have been released through the history of video games. For me it isn’t all about Nintendo. I am a huge fan of Sega, Xbox and PlayStation also.

Last year I did buy Switch 2 very soon after it was released. When I had my latest vacation I brought my Switch Lite with me while I was at our summer cottage. Switch Lite is a very nice handheld type of gaming device that has some very good games. During this trip I played some Disney Illusion Island. IT was a good game and I played it for maybe three hours. Somehow I didn’t continue playing when I was back at home. I really don’t know why. The game is a good platformer type of game.

When thinking about the whole history of Nintendo you definitely have a huge library of games on several gaming consoles. Nintendo has been a bit strict against its old titles. It is a known fact that Nintendo doesn’t like its retro titles to be shared freely. This is a difficult issue to think about. Nintendo has tried to solve this with its online service that offers many retro games if you pay for the service. The price of this service is 20 euros for a single user. This service offers also some other features that I am not going to go so deeply into. There has been some serious debate about some GameCube emulators. The most popular of them seems to be Dolphin emulator.

I have really enjoyed Switch 2. When it was released last year (2025) it was thought to be an expensive product. If you think about the price today it seems to be a low price for such an advanced console. We have seen the prices of PS5 and Xbox Series consoles rising recently. We shall see how high the price of PS6 is going to be when it gets released. It is considered that the release will happen maybe at late 2027 or early 2028 or something like that. We are not going to get PS6 or a new Xbox this year. That can certainly be said at this stage.

I have really liked the Switch 2 Pro Controller that I bought with my Switch 2 back in the last year. It is of a very good quality. We have seen many awesome games already getting released for Nintendo Switch 2. I have really liked titles such as Donkey Kong Bananza, Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata. There are many Switch exclusive titles. Someone might say that Nintendo’s exclusive games are a bit childish. I don’t really have an opinion about that.

What more can I say? I very much enjoy playing every game that I own for Switch 1 and 2. I do have maybe one hundred (I really haven’t counted them) games for Switch 1 and some tens of games for Switch 2. I also like very much of the fact that Nintendo is keen on releasing some games from smaller or independent developers. The library of games is convincing. This is all from me this time. See you soon!

Video Games Transition from Toys to Entertainment

Posted on by Viljami

Video games might have been considered to be somewhat childish back in the days. We gamers of course know a lot about this matter and might have a better point of view on the topic. What I am going to write you about in this blog post is how the large audience was thinking about video games.

With playing video games we basically went from games being considered to be some kinds of toys for small children. This was the popular way to think back in the early 1980s to maybe the middle of 1990s. The gaming console that actually made video games to be a seriously taken entertainment that was suitable also for adults was PlayStation 1. It was released in 1994. One the games that defined the new role video games was that game on this blog posts featured image. The game is Metal Gear Solid.

There were also many other good quality games that were released for PS1 when it was the most newest and most powerful gaming console on the markets. You can find a list using your favorite search engine but let me make a brief list of some of them right here. Games I want to include here are the first three Resident Evil games, first two Gran Turismo games, Final Fantasy series, Crash Bandicoot and Colin McRae Rally games. There are many others also that I haven’t included here.

The hardware was developing quickly. Suddenly it was possible to save your game. The optical CD-ROM discs could offer more space for a video game. It was possible to offer some tens of hours of playing time. This wasn’t the case with some earlier gaming consoles like Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Mega Drive. However PS1 didn’t have a hard disk. It relied on memory cards that could be purchased for your PlayStation console. This was how PlayStation 2 also handled saving games. The capacity of a PS1 memory card was 1 MB while PS2 had 8 MB memory cards.

The graphics of video games were moving strongly towards three-dimensional environments. The graphical content was improving in quality while professionals tried to do their job while the technology was improving in a fast pace. This was also for me personally a period of time that I started to think about some day being able to make a video game by myself. This can tell you just how strongly I was beginning to have a this sort of feeling towards gaming. I wanted to be involved in some way.

For me a dream like making your own video game has been in my mind since those days. I was 14 years old when I bought my PS1 console. Exploring these games three-dimensional environments was a very fun thing to do. I was amazed how now also some persons that were over ten years older than me had an interest towards gaming. The shift from being considered as toys to being a seriously taken form of entertainment had begun.

For me playing video games has been a hobby. Programming a full game is a project that takes a lot of work. There are many easy to use tools available today. Today I am working in the field of information technology but making video games is not my current job. I have actually found some other ways to be involved. I know a bit about programming but I am not so confident in being a professional programmer today.

It can be a subject of debate if SNES or PS1 was the first console to have games that could be considered as serious entertainment also for adults. One console that is usually mentioned in this discussion is Sega’s last console Dreamcast. Dreamcast was more powerful than PS1. It was on the markets only for some years and then it was discontinued by Sega. It is a common matter to say that playing PS1 was like listening to rock while playing Dreamcast was like listening to jazz.