Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Modern

Returning to Halo In The Form of Master Chief Collection

Posted on by Viljami

It’s been some years that I played the first Halo game. It was probably on Xbox 360 but I can clearly remember when I got my first touches to this game on original Xbox. The year must have been 2006. The first Halo was released for PC also. I have it as a physical copy that I managed to buy from re-use center only a few years back. I also have Master Chief Collection on PC. I bought it through Steam and it was clearly on some kind of sale when I bought it.

What it comes to Master Chief Collection for Xbox Series X I can tell you that I only recently bought it. Yes, it was the time of this years Black Friday. So, I did buy something on this years Black Friday. I am not so big fan of this event or season or whatever you call it. I think this has become too important for everyone of us. Well, maybe I have to just adjust to the situation. Let me just tell you that it is ridiculous how much people buy stuff during this time of year. And you know that the amount of stuff you have in your  apartment has been increasing. This has happened, I think, in overall in almost every apartment.

Halo was released in 2001. It was a remarkable game. It wasn’t the first first person shooter that we got for a game console. What it was was surely one of the first games that successfully and finally brought FPS games steadily to also consoles. Before this we really couldn’t play games like this with a game pad. The first FPS of this kind must have been Golden Eye for Nintendo 64 and it was released in 1997. This was the beginning of the era when you wouldn’t necessarily need a mouse and a keyboard to play these types of games that were strongly categorized as games for only PC.

The first Halo offered tight shooting action. The controls were smooth. The crosshair was a bit larger than it had been on some earlier games of this genre. The game was set in some kind of a futuristic and fantasy type of environment. The world of this game looks and feels beautiful. Since this is a remaster of the original game the graphics have been improved. The latest Xbox controller also improves the average gameplay a lot.

I have completed 70 percentage of the game. By this I mean only of the first game – Halo: Combat Evolved. The collection comes with every Halo game that was released before and including Halo 4. I bought the collection when I realized that the only Halo I have completed was Halo 3. I paid only about 25 euros for this collection. It gives you a good value. Since I got my Xbox Series X and removed Series S from my current setup I have bought many games as physical copies.

I have to tell you that I had a slight issue with installing the game. The menus appeared in Korean. I had to make a search for some guidance and finally found some video that showed me how to change the language to English. The game didn’t seem to offer an option for selecting the language to Finnish. But that’s OK for me. I don’t like to hear or read Finnish from a game and since I read and write also very good English it doesn’t matter to me at least so much.

Are We Lacking Excitement?

Posted on by Viljami

I barely remember the beginning of the 90s. No, I wasn’t partying hard back then. I mean that I was only a young child that didn’t have this ability to understand some things. I got the idea for this blog post as I was once again playing some Golden Axe 2 for Sega Mega Drive. It was first released in 1991.

I remember that this was one of the most popular games we had that time for Mega Drive. I definitely connect this game as a defnite Sega game. There are some games that just make me feel this way. We can mention games like Sonic and Outrun. This can tell you only how skillful these engineers and game designers were. They were not playing with their technical skills.

If we think about technology we can think about 1980s and how Commodore 64 influenced several young people to commit a huge amount of time to programming and getting into this technical field as a hobby. Some might have even made it to the industry as a professional. I can think of people like Linus Torvalds right here. Did you know that he is also from Finland? Well, he is.

While users of Mega Drive gaming system weren’t able to program or design their own games with this device there definitely was some sense of excitement towards technology, computers, games and everything else related to video games.

If you play Golden Axe 2 for a while you can notice how thoroughly the makers of this game have thought about many aspects about this game. First of all we have here some very carefully designed characters. We also have these surroundings that can make your imagination take a dive in to the wolrd this game presents. There is also a light story among with some enemy characters. All this just explains the quality of this work. This is defnitely a good game of this era.

The gameplay is very nice also. Graphics could be better. It’s a shame that we haven’t seen a new Golden Axe game for a while now. There was a game released for PS3 and/or Xbox 360 some time ago. But I think that this game looks good if you think about it being released back in 1991.

What would I add to this game if I had a change to modernize it? It lacks some character development in my opinion. I could see this game being a very nice action RPG if it would be brought to this day. If there would be experience points and some way just to develop your character. The story and surroundings are just so detailed. This game has taken some influences about some phantasy literacy and maybe even movies. So it would be a good fit for a role playing game.

Mega Drive had a deep impact to game development. Did you know that Diablo was inspired by NHL 94? Well, it was. Turn based role playing games were dominating the markets before Diablo was released. The developers at Blizzard thought that they should bring these action features to the world of role playing games. At the same time real time strategy games were beginning to become more popular.

But we should return to the main question that I set in the beginning of this blog post. Were things different back in 1991? And if so how? The biggest change there has happened is that video games are a way bigger business today. Do we have enough room here to create something unforgetable? Are we still excited about new technology and with the same time about building new phantasy stories, worlds and characters?

I think we haven’t lost all of our excitement. But if we wish to progress in this world of gaming we have to keep this matter in our minds. Money is important, I know that. But it shouldn’t take away these opportunities and all this excitement. So let me say, once again, don’t loose your dreams! Don’t loose the excitement…

Spending Some Time With Forza Motorsport

Posted on by Viljami

Forza Motorsport was released almost two weeks ago. I was a bit sceptic towards it but decided finally to purchase it. As I have spent some hours already playing it I think it isn’t a total disappointment as a racing game. I think it is actually a very nice game.

This is the first Forza Motorsport for this console generation. We have of course seen games of this series been released and playable with Series S/X consoles through backwards compatibility. I am talking about games that were released originally for Xbox One.

I am a huge racing game fan. What I am not so inspired of are Forza Motorsport games. I get the point that Microsoft wanted to create this series of racing games to compete with Sony and their Gran Turismo series. I think GT is a bit better when it somes to a comparison. I especially have enjoyed the first GT, the fourth and, latest, seventh.

I am also waiting for the new WRC game. It sohuld be in our faovrite game shops 3th of November this year. I am not going to get this game in advance since there is always some problems with the delivery. This doesn’t mean that the game shop has done something wrong. I just can not believe that the game would be delivered in time of its release. Maybe I’ll get a digital copy, who knows?

EA Sports WRC has currently a price tag of 50 euros and it will be released for PS5 and Xbox Series S/X. We are not getting a release for Switch this time. I am not surprised. Switch does lack some power that it would need for hnadling this kind of a game. So far the reviews have been mainly positive.

So, lets make a conclusion right here. We have a new Forza Motorsport game currently in our hands. It is a decent racing game and provides some fun racing gaming times. The price tag was 70 euros. I think the price is a bit high. It doesn’t make it sound any better that the price of the digital version is same. If you are into racing game you might want to pick this up. If you are tight on your budget you might want to save some money for the upcoming WRC game and maybe you want to buy this game after its price is getting lowered a bit sometime in the near future.

This game isn’t percfect but it stands as a decent new sequel to this very legendary racing game series. I think that’s it for this blog post. Thank you once again for reading. You are the ones that I am making this content for. Do, please, remember that. And keep reading the blog!