Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: History of Gaming

What to Think About Diablo 1?

Posted on by Viljami

Diablo 1 was a real game changer when it was first released back in 1996. We saw a PC version and the game was also ported to Sony PlayStation 1. Diablo has been topical and we have seen lately games like Diablo II Resurrected and Diablo IV. After the first original game we saw a sequel, Diablo II, in 2000. This game was almost insanely good and it was the game that made me addicted to not only action-RPGs but to playing video games generally.

We saw also a third game back in 2012. After a long while Blizzard was able to bring fans a decent addition to Diablo games. As I already stated Diablo had these more recent games getting released lately. We have to add this one game to the list of Diablo games. That game is Diablo Immortal. I haven’t palyed that game at all but I heard it wasn’t actually up to these high standards that this series actually has.

I did play the first Diablo game with my PS1 back in the end of 1990s. You might think about that featured image I have attached to this blog post. This is the actual copy that I have bought several years ago from a flee market. I remember that it was ridiculously cheap. I think I bought it for one euro or something like that.

“How do you get this game installed?”, one might ask. If you don’t have, and few of us gamers actually do, an optical disc drive (CD/DVD/Bluray) in your PC setup you are going to need an external DVD drive. I have actually two of them. One is also compatible with Bluray media. I wasn’t able to rip PS3 games with this device but for installing Diablo 1 it is actually sufficient.

You can at first install the game as is usual. If you don’t want to use the disc every time you launch the game you can just apply a patch for the game to function without a disc. There are some procedures and you can find help online. I had to copy a huge part of the game to my hard drive and also apply some patches. After that the runs pretty well.

What is it like to play a game like Diablo 1 that has been released almost 30 years ago. The game feels pretty nice to me. Graphics are a bit outdated as you would suspect. The actual game play feels nice. I only played it with mouse and keyboard and found it very much functional. First you get to create your character. There are some character classes like “Warrior”, “Rogue” and “Sorcerer”. I went with the Warrior since I very much like the melee action that Diablo delivers.

It can take up to 14 hours to complete Diablo 1. I have to be honest and tell you that this time I only played this game for some hours. The point still is that Diablo 1 is still relevant as a game. The impact it had on the role playing genre of computer and video games is huge. Think something like Sega Mega Drive’s NHL 94 with some role playing elements added to the mix and you surely get the point here. I definitely recommend Diablo 1 if you are into retro games and/or gaming history. This game is very significant to wholeness of video games and it brought us many elements actually the first time for us gamers to enjoy.

You can actually buy Diablo 1 as a digital copy if you don’t have the physical one which can be hard to find. Just look from “GOG dot com” or “Battle dot net”. It does cost you (on Battle net) ten dollars. That’s a cheap price. If you are lucky you might find it somewhere as a CD ROM. I don’t think that you can buy it for as cheap price as I did as I mentioned earlier in this blog post. I was very lucky.

Remembering PS4

Posted on by Viljami

It has been eleven years already since I bought my PS4. I remember hooking it up back in the day and replacing my PS3 in my gaming setup. Back in 2014 I only used one gaming console. So, I had only PS4 connected to my television for several years. I have lots of games for PS4 in my game library. Today I am thinking about getting a PS5t that was released already five years ago. I am also waiting eagerly for PS6 to drop some day.

Lately I have not focused so much on playing video games on my PS4. It is still a very good console. Although it has its limitations. It doesn’t have a SSD and uses HDD hard drive instead. I remember clearly replacing the HDD that was only 500 GB to one that had 2 TB of space. This was an easy way to update the system and the hard disk I bought wasn’t actually pricey at all. I definitely think that extra hard disk space is expensive on newest Xbox consoles (Series S/X). I do have a 1 TB space unit installed on my Xbox Series X. Series X also has 1 TB of internal disk space unlike Series S that has only half of a 1 TB. There are also some newer models available that have different amounts of internal disk space.

I have been thinking, lately, about buying a PS5. It has some good exclusive games that I would like to play. I did buy a new PC two months ago. It was a bit of a disappointment for me. I paid over 1 500 euros for a new Windows 11 desktop computer. When I started playing Silent Hill f the computer was running the game at 30 FPS. I thought that a computer that has such a high price tag would perform way better. But this was the case after all. I think today a desktop PC can cost over 3000 euros and you are still not going to get a good performance. So, why not buy a PS5 for about 500 euros. I do know that it cannot be as powerful as a PC that cost several thousands of euros but it does save a lot of money.

You can also play PS4 games on a PS5. You cannot listen to music from audio CDs on a PS5. The backwards compatibility is a nice thing for me as a gamer because I do have lots of games for PS4. When PS4 was released back in 2013 (I bought it in 2014) it didn’t have a backwards compatibility at all. Also the release of PS4 was the point when a newest PlayStation didn’t support CDs as a format for games or music. PS4 still outsold Xbox One that had also many problems. As a console generation this was somewhat a dull one I think.

I think that the most interesting games that are available only for PS5 as exclusives are Silent Hill 2 Remake, Ratchet & Clank – Rift Apart, Astro Bot and Spider-Man 2. Some of these exclusive games are available for other consoles or for PC. Some titles I have already enjoyed very much on PS4. These games are Gran Turismo 7 and God of War – Ragnarök and also Spider-Man Miles Morales. I am hoping to get to play PS4 games God of War and Uncharted 4 and also The Last of Us Part II that I already own but haven’t yet played so much.

If we briefly gather here some thoughts about PS4 in this last paragraph of todays blog post we can conclude that PS4 was a remarkable system that sold very well. There were no delays in deliveries as was the thing with PS5 during pandemia. The first game that I played on PS4 was Tomb Raider. PS4 saw many games that were very good. It also had some exclusive games. There is information moving around and it is rumored that Sony would stop manufacturing PS4s in 2026. PS4 has sold to this day over 115 million units world wide.

Tenchu

Posted on by Viljami

I think many of us old school gamers and maybe some retro game enthusiasts do recognize Tenchu. It was released for PS1 back in 1998. I can clearly remember these moments back in the day when I saw some footage from actual television about Tenchu. What made it interesting as a PS1 video game was that you were mainly using a sword as a weapon. The fact that this game was a stealth game more than just a simple action melee game that we saw many times in the mainstream of video gaming during the 90s. So, Tenchu was something different.

I do have played this. Not recently but it hasn’t been many years since I last time played the first Tenchu game. There have been several sequels. In actually had to search for some information. There have been at least thirteen games with some relevance to Tenchu. Tenchu 2 was released for PS1 in 2000. There were games released for PS2 and also to PSP. The latest in this series that I have played is Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven that was for PS2. I think it isn’t a bad way to start getting into this ninja combat series by playing the first Tenchu game on  a PS1.

The game did impress back in 1998 and it is still a very nice game to play even today. Maybe you have to have a certain retro type of attitude to actually enjoy this game. If we make a comparison to modern era there could be some improvements on the controls and graphics. So there is some adjusting in this sense. If you do like PS1 games I recommend this game especially.

So, what is the game all about? You try to move around in this three-dimensional environment and avoid enemies. If you get caught the enemies will call help and you usually end up  fighting too many enemies and you eventually end up dead. So, avoiding contact seems to be a working strategy. Also, when you encounter an enemy that hasn’t yet noticed you you can take that person out with only one stealth attack. If the enemy detects you the enemy will call help and you end up in a difficult fight.

You can use a grappling hook to move to for example up to some roof of a house. You use a sword to defeat your enemies. You also use throwing weapons try to take out enemies. Ther weapon, the sword I mean, is a melee weapon. This gives you a different feel of combat than if there were some ranged fire weapons used. The concept hasn’t been used in my opinion so much. Instead there are tons of shooting games available as retro and also as modern games. I think the idea of Tenchu is very good and original. Being that it is a game from 1998 makes it even more inventive as a video game. It was somewhat a pioneer as a three dimensional sword and melee fighting game.

Financially Tenchu was very successful in Japan and also all around the world in Europe and USA. It sold over 1,4 million copies worldwide. It was also successful as well appreciated game and received good grades in different reviews of gaming media of the time. Actually this many times meant magazines that were printed on paper. That was the method that was used back in the day. The gaming media wasn’t yet so strong on the internet. This particular fact has changed since Tenchu was first released.

Tenchu isn’t a pricey game to pick up. If you do find it from game shop I think it can be bought with a price tag of maybe 20 euros. I haven’t seen a copy available in a long time but that price of twenty euros was the price that I bought it for. It was one of my favorite games back in the 90s. It was also among the first games I wanted to own as I started collecting and buying PS1 games to my collection again about seven or eight years ago.