Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Download Half-Life 2 For Free (Until 18.11.2024)

Posted on by Viljami

It is now possible to get to download and play an old FPS game called Half-Life 2. You can get your copy now from Steam. It is available only until 18th of November 2024. It was released earlier today for free. Just search for it in Steam. Type “Half-Life 2” and you should see a link that gives you a permission to download and install the game. The game will stay in your library if you have activated it until 18th of November 2024.

I started to play this game as I decided that since it is now free I should at least give it a try. I have played this game earlier on original Xbox. It is very different to play it with a mouse and a keyboard. Half-Life 2 was released in 16th of November 2004. That means it was released exactly 20 years ago.

It is possible to play Half-Life 2 with a controller. I haven’t tried that yet but I think my Xbox Series S/X controller that I play my PC/Windows games with will function just fine. I had to fiddle a bit with the settings. I adjusted the movement level of the mouse and also checked for some controls. The graphics still look nice. I also had to find a way to take a screenshot from within Steam so that I could share you some more content from the game. You get to play also Episode One and Two with this free release.

My deeply rooted and deep relationship with Half-Life series’s games start right from the first game. I got to play it on a PC while it was also later ported to PS2. The first Half-Life was released in 1998. It had a true competitor that I got also into. The competitor was a game called Unreal. I remember buying a bundle of big box games that included at least the first game in Abe’s Oddysee series and Unreal. I actually right now don’t remember if it had any other games included. The box was partly yellow because it was a re-release, so, the box wouldn’t have been as valuable as the original one if I even had kept it even in a good condition.

A also bought Blue Shift and Gunman Chronicles. I still have the copy of Blue Shift in my gaming shelf. I am very sad to announce that I did sell my Gunman Chronicles big box game with manual included for about four euros a bit over ten years ago. Gunman Chronicles was a mod of the first Half-Life and Blue Shift was a sort of a spin off of Half-Life where you play as a regular security guard of Black Mesa facility. It was very popular to make a mod for Half-Life and there were many good ones available. I have to mention a mod called They Hunger.

I was in a bit of a hurry while writing this because the deal lasts for only about some days maybe two days or so. As you are in a hurry to get this game please don’t hurry while playing it. I think we have a very good game right here that can offer you a lot especially if you are into retro games for PC.

How to Rip Your PS1 Games

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post we are going to go through about how to rip your PS1, PlayStation 1, games to rom files so that you can play with an emulator or a piece of hardware like Raspberry Pi 4/5. This way of copying your games for your personal use is completely legal. What is currently illegal is copying rom files of games that you don’t own and/or if you share some games that you have ripped to someone who doesn’t own that particular game. We are dealing with a sensitive legal issue right here and things can change, for better or worse, in the future. I don’t want to encourage you to break law in any way.

So you have your PlayStation 1 game. What else do you need? Here’s a list:

  • External DVD drive
  • A PC running, preferably, Windows 10 (this guide has been written using this OS)
  • Magic ISO Maker (the software that actually rips the disc and converts it to the rom file)

External DVD drives today cost something from 40 euros to maybe 60 euros. You don’t need a special DVD drive. You just need something that works. The DVD drive should be connected to your PC through USB. Many PCs today don’t have a DVD drive so you might need an external one. If you have internal DVD drive or something like that you can also use that.

The discs that PS1 uses are colored in black on the side that gets read in the DVD drive. That doesn’t stop the disc from being read. Note, also, that you can rip your PS2 games in this similar way if you are into emulating PS2 also.

You do need a special software. I am using currently Magic ISO Maker (trial version). However there are also some other alternatives. You might want to check them out also. Ripping the disc is pretty straightforward. You select “Tools” from the upper main menu. Then you select “Make ISO from CDRom”. There is a new window that pops up. Select your DVD drive that has the disc in it and make sure that you have connected the USB cable of the DVD drive to your PC.

Then you select your DVD drive from the drop-down menu. Now click the folder icon on the right side of the part that says “Output File” and choose the destination where you want to save the rom files and also give these files names. This doesn’t have to necessarily be the name of the game that is being ripped but that could make things somewhat easier. Then change the file format (“File Format”) to “BIN image file”. That way your game will be in a form of two files that are .bin and .cue. You need to copy both of them to your game library or the location that you are running your emulated games from.

Now make sure that there is Make CD Image selected from the radio buttons that is titled “Option”. Then just click “OK” button. Now the disc of your PS1 game gets ripped to a BIN-file and a CUE-file. You can rip multiple games and place them in some folder where you can have one game in one folder. That way you will find your games easily.

A Casual Gamer Or A Serious One?

Posted on by Viljami

The last time I wrote a blog post I was in the middle of getting into Black Ops 6. It just so happened that I got stuck in the campaign and somewhat lost my interest to that game. I decided to first pick up Art of Rally that is a rally game for Nintendo Switch. I didn’t finish that. Instead I started playing some Doom. This is the version of Doom that was released in 2016 and ported in 2017 for Switch.

It didn’t stop there however. I did spend some hours with Doom. Yesterday I got stuck again and this time with Doom. So, when I first woke up this Saturday I decided not to play more of Doom. Instead I picked a new game. It was actually still sealed. I had bought it maybe six months ago. It was time for me to play some Aces of Luftewaffe. I played this shooting game for maybe one or two hours.

This idea I think isn’t such an unusual matter. I am talking about how we today consume these games. There are extremely many games available. As you can think there are new games and also old, retro, games that you can pick and play. Newest games we are seeing today as rarer ones. There are many games that we get remakes out of and that we do play. Many games seem to take something old and add nice graphics and some updated features and release them even with the same title. Just “remake” gets added to the games title.

I am not complaining after all. I might not finish every game but is actually every game a great one? Or should it even be like that? I think we need some smaller and maybe indie titles that we don’t take so seriously that can make a difference when it does come to them titles that we do play a lot and that seem to be taking video games to a next level. What I am actually saying is that every game cannot be as popular, good selling and interesting as a game such like for example Skyrim.

This seems to be the case with these ambitious game developers that seem to hope that their own game would achieve the sales and the popularity that only so few of these games can achieve. Am I, or are you, a casual gamer that just plays a game or two in a week and that spends only so little of his or her time in a video game? That is the question that I seem to be trying to think and resolve in my mind.

We can also think about collecting. I seem to be interested in many games. I buy a lot of games. Usually a low price gets me going. That is probably why I do have such a large library of games. Well, there is just so much to write about today. So, maybe we’ll leave it this way this time.