Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Modern

Black Future 88

Posted on by Viljami

Black Future 88 is a 2D shoot-em-up game for Nintendo Switch. I picked it up as I bought eight more games to my game collection of Switch games. I bought these games as they were on sale. I paid about 22 or 23 euros per game. These games were on sale so I decided to get a bunch of them. Black Future 88 was the first game that I started to play from these games that I recently bought.

This shoot-em-up has nice looking graphics, animation and visual effects, although the graphics are two-dimensional, and also some nice background music. The content is styled to be sci-fi or cyberpunk. The game offers some nice action. Basically you try to avoid getting hit by enemies ammunition and try to kill them before they get you. As you go on shooting everything that moves you collect items from dead enemies. When you die you start the run over and also your weapons get reset.

You can handle two weapons at a time. So, there are some elements of strategy also. As you die and your run ends you get points which unlock new items to be available in the game. You can also unlock new characters this way.

While this is a fun 2D shoot-em-up the game does get a bit repetitive. Also the story is nonexistent. You get the items completely randomly. The game seems to be looping through as you try to collect more points and level-ups run by run. This is a small game and not your typical triple A game. The price of the game was somewhat low and I also got some discount. So I didn’t pay a whole lot for this one. I actually paid only fourteen euros for this one. I think that is a fair price as I have already spent many hours playing this one.

I am not even near to complete the game. I could find information that Black Future 88 takes about five and a half hours to complete. I think that is very accurate information. As the art in this game is very comfortable the game lacks a deeper insight that would make you more than just superficially addicted to playing it. It’s repetitiveness reminds me of an old MS-DOS game. You could compare it to a shooting game like Space Commanders that is a Space Invaders clone. The only interesting way to try to complete that game is to try to beat the high score which also gets deleted when you actually quit the game. This comparison can tell you how it actually feels to play Black Future 88.

I could recommend this peace of gaming if you like small indie games. If you like to go deep and explore and feel the game and want an interesting story this might not be a game for you. The cheap price feels comfortable. This game is a small one and doesn’t even try compete with games like Breath of the Wild or something like that. So, it is an enjoyable game that has its flaws. I think there are some reasons that make me like this game.

Alone in the Dark Series

Posted on by Viljami

I have played lots of games during my whole lifetime. I just thought that it might be interesting for readers of this blog if I would write about Alone In The Dark game series. They might not be the best of the best in survival horror at the moment but their influence to this genre is huge. There is also a new Alone in the Dark game getting released in 2024.

The first game in this series was published in 1992. If you were playing it back when it was released I think there is a chance that you played it on a PC. Some of the first three games of Alone in the Dark were also released for PlayStation during 1990s. There are a total of seven games in the series.

What makes the influence huge was how the camera angels were adjusted. It made the game a scary one. Also the game utilises 3D graphics in a way that was never ever seen back in 1992. The most popular game that took influences of Alone in the Dark was Resident Evil and it was released in 1996 at least for PC and PS1. I obtained a book about RE some time ago and I am hoping to get to read it soon. I just have to finish the book that I am currently reading so I can begin with the book. It is called “Itchy, Tasty” and it is written by Alex Aniel.

Games in the series that were released during the 90s were of good quality in the standards of the games of that era. I think it might be a waste of your time to get back to them seriously. Well, maybe if you want to experience something old. There might be a retro feel in them.

So, is there a game in this series that would be a nice game to play even today? If we take a look on two games that were released in 2001 and 2008 we can figure an opinion for this question. Let’s face it. These two games are poor games. They don’t live up to standards and they defnitely don’t match my expectations. Out of these two the one released for PS2, Alone in the Dark – The New Nightmare, is better but it isn’t in any way a great game. It has also received a score of 66 out of 100 in Metacritic.

While these two games weren’t so good there are of course excpectations gathered towards this new Alone in the Dark game that is set to be published this year (2024). The genre of survival horror might bem rising its head again since there are rumours about new Silent Hill and also Resident Evil games getting released soon. There was already a short Silent Hill game released recently. It was only for PS5 and its name was Silent Hill – The Short Message. The game was released for free and it takes maybe three hours to complete. So, it is a short game for the fans.

One of my favorite game shops is saying that the new Alone in the Dark will be released in 19th of April. It will be released for PS5, PC and Xbox Series S/X. You can buy the PC release for example from Steam. The game has received open and cheerful welcomes and many fans are expecting this game to be good. For now we must wait for some more information. There are some trailers and early previews of the game avaialble online. You can also order it in advance if you wish to play it as soon as is possible.

 

A Whole Lot of Call of Duty

Posted on by Viljami

I got this idea for this blog post as I was playing Call of Duty 3 on PS2. I started to think about how many games there are actually in this series. Why is it that there are so many games in the series and what are the main reasons for its success? Why haven’t we seen other games or other types of games? What is the secret here?

The first game of Call of Duty was released back in 2003. The latest game in the series was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III that was released last year (2023). And of course I have to mention that this is a remake and the original Modern Warfare III was released already in 2011. We have seen a new game almost every year since the series started its journey.

I have enjoyed especially the first Call of Duty, Call of Duty – Modern Warfare III (the 2011 release on PS3) and the first Black Ops. There are several good quality games in the series. I don’t have a full collection of Call of Duty games but I do have many of them as you can see from this blog posts featured image.

What kind of games these are one might ask. This can be a mystery to someone that has never played a Call of Duty game. They are shooting games and in more detail first person shooting games or FPS games for short. The first three games took place in the second world war. Many Call of Duty games also describe some more modern scenes. You are typically fighting against terrorists.

While being first person shooters the Call of Duty games have this certain edge in them. They differ a whole lot of games like Crysis, Doom / Doom Eternal and maybe even some other FPS games. Definitely there is a some sort of strategy or style of play that can be clearly seen. Of course I have to also mention a tight competitor of Call of Duty. It is the Medal of Honor series of FPS games.

We can count how many games are there in this gaming series. There seems to be precisely twenty games that have been released from 2003 to 2023. The latest CoD game I have had a good time playing was Call of Duty – Vanguard that was released in 2021. I played it on my Xbox Series S. I currently do own the Xbox Series X but I played Vanguard already back when I only had the digital version of Xbox Series or Series S.

You can play the earlier Call of Duty games with a PC and with a mouse and a keyboard but I think that at least I personally enjoy very much playing them with a good quality game controller meaning a game pad. I found some information online that said that PS3 would be the first platform that a game in this series was released. I am not sure if that is correct information since I clearly remember playing Finest Hour, the first CoD game, on my original Xbox already back in 2006.

We haven’t got a clear answer to the questions I made in the beginning of this blog post. Why is the series so successful? Why are there about twenty games released and do they keep making more games of this kind? Of course the series has been successful. So why break the mode? There have been many developers for these games. Infinity Ward has made many of these games along with Sledgehammer Games. Also a developer named Treyarch has been very involved. I think that since there have been many developers there has been this clear possibility to keep making games through all these years.

I can definitely recommend some of this series’s games but I advise to have some carefulness as every title is not a pure diamond here. The games remind of each other. I recommend to start from the beginning and progress to some more recent games. I can definitely recommend also Black Ops games and I did enjoy some titles of Modern Warfare. If you are completely new to this series I recommend either playing Call of Duty Finest Hour (the first game) or the newest CoD – MWIII remake.