Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: History of Gaming

Still Waiting for Diablo IV

Posted on by Viljami

I am eager to get my hands on the newest game in Diablo series. I got information on Friday that the game shop has delivered the package and it’s on the way. I know that some people have already got to play this game. I am jealous. As I am still waiting it might be a good time to go through what my relationship with Diablo series currently is.

I wasn’t a big fan of the first game of this action role playing game series. It was the second game, Diablo 2, that got me excited. I also played Diablo 1 with my PlayStation back in the late 90s. Diablo 2 I played with a PC. I think it wasn’t even released to other platforms. And of course there is this one game that I like also. It is, of course, Diablo 3. I enjoyed it also very much.

A friend of mine sold me these Diablo 2 PC big boxes. There is the original Diablo 2 and there is also the expansion, Lord of The Destruction. I am very lucky to have this items. I think they are valuable also when it comes to money. I am not going to sell them. Not any day soon, after all. As you might have figured I have lots of love for PC big box games. I have currently 16 boxes in my collection. I just love the way they look on the self. It makes me feel like a real gaming professional.

I also have played Diablo 1. I have completed it several times. There is this thing that makes Diablo games re-playable. This is the way that you can choose your character class and have a different experience and play the game through with a different character.

What makes Diablo games so spectacular? I think it is the way it combines action, strategy and role playing elements. I have read that Diablo was very much influenced by a Sega Mega Drive hockey game (would you believe it). This game was NHL 94. The first Diablo was released in 1996. The company that first released it was Blizzard. You might find a book called “Stay Awhile and Listen” interesting. It tells you the story of how Diablo came to be. It is written by David L. Craddock.

Diablo has always offered its players a great overall gaming experience. For me it has also brought me a step closer to role playing. While Diablo has many roguelike elements, it isn’t fully a roguelike game. In 100 percentage roguelike, or the oringinal game, Rogue, there are some features that aren’t as rough for the player.  One difference is that when you die you don’t have to restart the whole game with a completely new character. Instead you leave a body to the spot where you died and when re-spawning you have to collect the body to keep all your gear and potions and so on.

I like this series of games very much. I hope to see one great game. I might write another blog post about the game. By the way – I finished Forza Horizon 5 after playing it for almost 20 hours. There could be some other achievements to unlock but I am not that interested in continuing to play that game anymore. After all, the latest and maybe the greatest Diablo game is just around the corner.

Some More Hype for The GameCube Gaming Console

Posted on by Viljami

The game I have been playing lately is Medal of Honor – Frontline for GameCube. I managed to get a copy of this game and it’s a cheap purchase. If you consider the hype that surrounds GameCube nowadays the price for this game was low. I have seen many GC games sold for hundreds of euros. I am not going that way…at least not yet.

What do I think about the game? It’s a nice and kind of early first person shooter. There was a  Medal of Honor released also at the same time for PC. They somehow wanted to separate the console version from PC version. This happened in 2002.

GameCube controller brings this games input a bit more sensitive. It is although far from perfect. If you compare this FPS game to what we see and feel today it is not even decent experience. But I am not a person that purely rates games and especially when they are retro games. You got to just give props to the makers. It has been over twenty years and a game that you can play today is valuable in this way in my opinion.

We can take Halo and compare it to Medal of Honor – Frontline. Where Halo wins is the smoothness of controlment. Just the way that your crosshair moves over the screen feels magical. I think Halo was the first FPS that actually worked very nicely in this matter.

I somehow still like the feel of this game because it just brings so many memories to my mind. If the controlling is a bit clumsy there are still elements in this game that I like.

I have many other games for GameCube. It’s a nice gaming console. The controller is unbeliavable especially when you consider that it’s over 20 years old. If you like retro gaming I can definitely recommend for you to get yourself a GameCube.

Playing Some Dirt 4

Posted on by Viljami

I have been playing Dirt 4 a lot lately. I got to admit that I do like it as a rally game. It was released back in 2017. I have it for PS4, as a physical copy and also for PC. I have been playing it on my PC. The featured image is this time a screenshot of the rally of Sweden. I think the game feels better on PC. I am quite satisfied with my PDP controller. I have had some thoughts about buying this new controller that is actually Elite Pad 2. It would cost me something like 130 euros. I am considering still if I am going to buy it or not.

Codemasters is one heck of a rally game maker. There is some worries about what is going to happen now that Electronic Arts bought this game studio. This happened in 2021. Dirt 4 was released before that. There have been many good quality rally games released as games of Codemasters in 2010s. Back in the days when our retro games were newest games that existed Codemasters was delivering a heck of a quality. I got my introduction to rally video games as I played Colin McRae Rallly 2.0. I was actually first playing this and after some time I also just had to get my hands on the first game that was titled Colin McRae Rally.

Back in the 90s there were no serious competition for Codemasters. More recently there has been some competition in the form of a game series WRC. They have actually held the official game badge since they have had the rights to the license so they have been able to claim that they are the official rally game. I like also these new WRC games. I really got into them as late as 2020 when I bought WRC 9 for PC. Lately there have been games like WRC 8 for PS4 and WRC 10 and WRC Generations. I like these titles also.

Codemasters is responsible also of Dirt series. It started witb a game called Colin McRae Dirt and advanced into titles called Colin McRae: Dirt 2 and Dirt 3 and then again Dirt 4 and even Dirt 5, which in my opinion, slightly flopped as a video game. There is also Dirt Rally seiries that currently consists of two games. Dirt Rally games brings us gamers some simulation type of rally racing.

Dirt 4 is still a game you definitely would like to play. It has flashy graphics and even the soundtrack is bouncy. Driving feels somewhat challenging. Maybe not so realistic as in Dirt Rally. I like Dirt 4 a lot. One game that wasn’t mentioned, yet, is Richard Burns Rally. That is also a very good rally game. It is a bit old one but I can still recommend it to you if you don’t mind or if you are a retro fan.