Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Modern

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.

Super Mario Bros Wonder

Posted on by Viljami

Today I have spent maybe three to four hours into continuing to play Super Mario Bros Wonder for Nintendo Switch. This game deserves its spot as one of the best games available for this console. I proceeded to world number four. This game has eight worlds in it.

I just love the game play. Nintendo has put together a definite classic once again. There are many elements from earlier games but there is also something new for those of us that have witnessed the whole legacy of Super Mario Bros. I can picture gamer’s of all ages playing this video game.

It is said that Super Mario Bros Wonder takes ten hours to complete. That being that you manage to pass through slightly demanding puzzles that this game offers. There is a lot to explore. Mario or which one of the characters you happen to play the game with has many new abilities. You can add a special tag that can give you a skill like floating in the air or jumping a bit higher.

These certain elements are present here that are always relating my thoughts to this game series. We have seen earlier games like New Super Mario that have tried to bring back that feel of a nice platform game. This game reminds me a lot of the first game that was released in 1985. I also see many similarities to Super Mario Bros 3.

A big plus also in commercial sense is that kids and adults can all play this game. As you can see that the game is recommended for ages three above. Getting into the game isn’t difficult. I only got a bit stuck in these certain puzzles and made it to the end of the world 4. I had slight problems with tasks in the game that concerned invisibility. It was hard to jump to a certain spot while the character wasn’t almost at all visible. I think I will try to get through this point some day but it isn’t just today.

I don’t think you can complete the game in one sitting. Otherwise the game is very playable and progresses very fluently. The levels information that is provided to the player before entering the stage includes a rating of difficulty starting from 1 star and ending to I think 4 stars or maybe 5 stars. At least that was the way as I played these levels.

You can explore the whole surroundings quite freely. To progress you have to collect these some sort of rewards. You don’t always have to have everything completed to advance. So you can also skip some parts that might seem difficult. There are lots of item to collect. Coins are of course present as are cash points that enable you to buy many other items including extra lives. One hundred coins collected gives you of course one extra life as is usual in Mario games.

I definitely think this is the best Nintendo Switch game that I own currently. It is targeted to all ages but I wouldn’t call it childish in any way. More so it reminds of a deep technical fantasy type of product. Something that engineers and computer enthusiast have brought to all video game fans. And I have to mention one thing. I never got into Tears of the Kingdom so I cannot compare these two games directly. And how would you compare them? That’s like comparing an apple to a pear.

I am going to write one more paragraph to finish this post. I love Super Mario Bros Wonder. It being directed to whole family just makes it a better game and a better product. Congratulations Nintendo! You managed to bring Super Mario to us gamer’s once again with this game: Super Mario Bros Wonder.

How Did Skyrim Impact The Whole Gaming Industry?

Posted on by Viljami

Skyrim had a huge impact on gaming industry. It has been released and remade for several generations of gaming consoles. Skyrim has also been released for PC. It was first released in 2011 which was the time for consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3 to dominate the console markets.

What kind of a game is Skyrim? Have ytou ever played it? Skyrim is a game that gives you an open world for you to explore. You have main quests and also side quests to complete. Your character keeps progressing when you play the game. So, there is almost unlimited amount of things to do inside this game called Skyrim.

This isn’t the first Elder Scrolls game that has been released. I think some earlier games that remind a lot of it are Morrowind and Oblivion. There are also some other games in this series of games. This is the latest and all in all fifth game in the series. There have been rumours about a sequel already.

The game was a huge effort. Bethesda certainly knew what kind of a game they had in their hands. What I am concerned about is that these kinds of large games make it even harder for new games to be developed. I mean that we saw back in the 2000s many good quality games getting released very quickly compared to how long it takes today for new games to get to the markets. The demands are very high for a new game.

Gaming industry has grown. There are these huge projects that ever larger companies get their focus on. There is a lot of money involved. I am not sure if this is how I and propably many of you gamers out there wish things to be. We were content with our retro games earlier. Why wouldn’t we be content right now?

Games seem to go right now to a direction that focuses on making money. This is somewhat understandable. Money makes world go round or so they say. What this however means might be that we are going to see fewer independent developers. Maybe there are some small developers alive after thje next ten years but I mean – where would the rising new companies be that would take gaming to the next level. Currently we see huge releases that try to lure us to buy them over and over again on a new console. Just the old game with better graphics and so on.

Where is the innovation? I have been frustrated also in a fact that some things are just not available. I mean I am living in Finland. There are many great projects going on around the world and just so many of them are unreachable for me. I wish it wasn’t so. Take for example Analogue Pocket. I was very interested in this product but never bought one. We have seen Steam Deck and many of its competitors being released here.

Are huge companies going to release these huge games in the future also? They take at least 40 hours to finish. Thy might take several hundreds of hours of your precious time. Where does this lead? We would need some fresh ideas from programmers, designers and form the people that make graphics and 3d models and even soundtracks to games. And the question here is also how are the currently young people going to get into the industry and start shaping our world of games again to a more bearable form.