Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Modern

Easy to Get Into, Hard to Master

Posted on by Viljami

My original idea was to start playing just something on GameCube. I had already played Need for Speed Underground for a while. However my GameCube started to malfunction. So I turned to my Xbox 360. It is always a reliable option that you can actually run NFS UG 2 on. So I started playing a new game again without finishing something I had started. That made me wonder about what I am going to write about here today in this blog post.

Gaming systems can be expensive. Actually manufacturers sell their consoles at a lower price than they even spend producing them. This amount of money is gathered back through games that are sold. Gaming consoles enable gaming. Games bring game companies their money which then brings salaries to game designers and all the other people that are involved in the process.

People are buying games because they are attracted to them. They might find a remake or a sequel satisfying because they have played the original game. There is lots of consumers considering gaming to be a great hobby. Back in the 90s video games were thought to be for children. Now those persons that were playing video games as a child are grown ups. This is how the world changes. Today gaming is the biggest business in the world! Even movie and music industry aren’t as popular.

There is this kind of a formula that keeps coming up. You buy a game because you are interested in it. You have maybe read a review or two. You have seen the trailer and maybe a bit of game play. You buy the game, finally. You have start somewhere. This is when the game is easy. You spend lots of time trying to figure out how to control the character or interact in some other way. You are trying to figure how to play the game.

Then you start to really get into the game. You start figuring out how to succeed and process in the game. There are harder parts. There are easier parts. You might have to check something from YouTube or some other source. You might have to read a chapter of walk through. If possible you try to figure out and solve the problem you are facing in the game by yourself.

After all you have played the game for several hours. Maybe three hours, maybe ten hours or maybe several tens of hours. Some games, like for me, NBA 2K22, you have to spend hundreds of hours. Today I have played over 100 hours of this notorious basketball game. And I feel that I haven’t yet mastered it. I haven’t completed it like 100 percentage. It takes a lot of time to master a game.

So this is the way games draw you into them. But what do you do when you get stuck or the game becomes only a source of frustration? Do you abandon the game you have only some weeks or days ago bought? Well, that is sometimes the case. You change the game that you are playing. Because you feel it hasn’t got anything to give to you anymore. Today there are more and more games that are like this.

Expectations for a game have risen. Maybe you could be satisfied even more if you would spend more time on more better game? How could you find out what game you end up palying for hundred hours instead of buying many games, like tens of games, that you only play for two hours? That’s a tough question. And the stakes are, as you can imagine, very high. I have in recent years bought only some, maybe five or even less, new games in a year.

What is a possible solution and also my humble tip for you gamers? Here it is. Buy new games just some weeks after releasing. Then you can find out if they are full of bugs. Also their price will come down quickly even if they are popular games. You can also buy good but old games. You dive deep into retro gaming and find games you never thought even existed. nd always compare the price of a new game.

Some Notes About Doom Eternal

Posted on by Viljami

Last Saturday I picked up Doom Eternal. Its price was 30 euros. I decided to buy it. I have been thinking to buy this game for a while already. It is a very good first person shooter. I bought it for PS4. The game shelf in this store I was in was not so convincing. I am glad that I found at least one good game. Doom Eternal is a sequel to Doom that was released in 2016. This sequel was released in 2020.

The logic of this shooter game differs a bit from another strong FPS named Call of Duty. In CoD you basically have lots of ammunition all the time. It is necessary to take cover and move as swiftly as you can from cover to the next one. You get ammo and health packs here and there. It is also important to hit your enemies to the head preferably.

In Doom Eternal you basically have to kill monsters to gain health, armor and ammunition. You have to constantly keep killing your enemies to not be killed and to gain health. Armor is also important. Your health bar will stay up longer if you do have armor.

There is also upgrades to your weapons, maximum health and armor. Sometimes you will come across a puzzle to be solved. This makes the game have a clear rhythm. Weapons that you get to use vary. You might use rocket launcher to shoot your enemies from a distance. For a close combat you can use shotgun or even the chainsaw. Killing an enemy with a chainsaw gives you a bonus in health, ammo and armor. However you cannot kill every enemy with a one chainsaw swing. Sometimes the monster has such a level that you must use three chainsaw moves. So you can collect up to three moves and then you can finish a strong enemy.

There are many monsters in this game that we have seen in previous Doom games. I must remind you that the first Doom was actually released in 1993. Many of these enemies have a weak spot. Some of them are easier to kill in close combat. One monster actually swallows a grenade if you throw it to it. Another monster uses flamethrower in close combat so you have to beware that move, always.

I am satisfied with this game. However I don’t like that you cannot actually see, from a phone app, how many hours you have spent playing. So I don’t accurately know how many hours I have put in to this game already. I had to choose the easiest difficulty level. I am not so skilled in this game. I guess if I keep playing more I keep developing my skills also. By the way…I absolutely love the Xbox phone application. It is perfect!

How Internet Changed Gaming?

Posted on by Viljami

I got this idea when I was walking just some moments ago. I started thinking about internet and how it has influenced in so many ways our lives worlwide. Of course it has also had an impact to gaming also. So this blog post deals with gaming and internet. I am trying to get together a text about how things were and how they are now.

Take a look at this posts featured image. You can propably see that there is a Nintendo GameCube. It has four inputs for a controller. It has also a memory card attached and room for another memory card (so you can copy information from one card to another). This gaming console was released in 2001. So this was before smart phones, huge hard disks and internet connections. In 2001 gaming consoles didn’t have things like that.

If we think for a moment how were all these improvements brought to the consumers. They appeared little by little. Sony and Microsoft were among first to use large hard disks and internet connectivity. For a moment there was a point to have a PC for gaming. Do you remember going to LAN parties? You propably don’t. Today these events are rare. If you must know – they were parties where we connected our computers, that had Ethernet card, to a local network and played games like Counter Strike against each other in teams and even solo.

Playing multiplayer games has evolved. There is something so special when you just gather around the television in someones home and play your favorite video games with your friends. That feeling is unique. But things are changing. Nowadays you don’t have to leave home or take any hardware with you. You can connect with your friends online. You can even have friends that you interact only through internet.

This topic is getting me a rush of inspiration. I am writing this and I am starting to think where we are going. Most of the devices that use electricity could be quite easily be connected to internet. However I see this as a problem. It would cause a serious cyber security threat. And I don’t want to do that.

You can play also against artificial intelligence. I used to play also some first person shooters locally, you know, against bots. I am, after all, not so much into these new multiplayer games. I definitely like more playing single player campaigns be it FPS or some other type of a game.

Internet has also changed in a way that you can very powerfully share tips and even walkthroughs of games. You can chat while you play. The saved games can be stored in the cloud…if you have a subscription to the service that is required. You can also today collect your achievements and track how long you have spent playing a game. You can take screenshots and share also them.

This is a hug topic. I could go on writing this post but it seems it is a time to move on to something else, again. Internet has had a huge impact in gaming. It has pushed the progression of software and social media and all of the technologies that are constantly developing and changin all the time. One interesting side is how artificial intelligence affect gaming. Let’s keep looking forward!