Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

A Neat Find from a Local Flea Market

Posted on by Viljami

You don’t have to necessarily guess what I found from a local flea market. While looking to the image right above this blog post you can see that it is an original CD-ROM of the legendary FPS game Quake. What you can guess is how much did I pay for it? It cost me two euros. Yes. That is right. Two euros. I am a bit tempted to sell this forward for maybe ten or fifteen euros but I decided that I would like to keep it.

I already figured when I decided to buy this that this game isn’t going to work on my modern Windows 10 PC. Fortunately I have a dedicated PC that runs Windows XP. I am going to play it on this old PC. I also understand that there are versions of this game available for Switch, PS4 and Xbox Series X. I think I made the right choice when I decided to buy this game. While re-use centers don’t necessarily always have the right ways to analyze the stuff they are selling I am willing to support them with buying a game for two euros.

There is one cool feature with this CD. It does play the games official sound track if you insert it to a CD player. I think this was why they had it in the audio CD section of this re-use center that I bought it from. I was actually a bit surprised that this disc didn’t have even more value. I have seen some CD-ROM PC games that were for sale for maybe 30 euros. This is of course a price of a game shop and those prices are always a bit high. This is due to some expenses that these special stores have like rent for example. I am very content in this latest purchase that I made. It is definitely a good purchase. Two euros. Wow!

I actually have a holiday at the moment. I have spent it sleeping, reading and playing. I have been just relaxing. I did spend some time in a hotel. And we are going to our family’s summer cottage next week. My wife has her holidays at the same time. We have spent some time together, of course. So, I have had a lot time for these activities I described a bit earlier. Today I had time to go to three different flea markets at Myyrmäki, Vantaa.

Quake has gained lots of attention lately. So I guess that here’s some more hype for the game. I am also waiting to get to listen once again the soundtrack of this game. The soundtrack was produced by Nine Inch Nails. If you like old school first person shooters then why not give Quake a try. Back in 1996 it was something different. It is a good game and a legendary game also.

A Great Movie for a Total Fan of Resident Evil Series

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I am taking a view to the movie Resident Evil – Welcome to Raccoon City. This movie was released in 2021. I am seeing this movie for the first time. I really don’t know if it was here in Finland in film theaters at all. At least every theater would have been closed anyway. So, I watched this movie as a 4K Ultra HD copy on my 55 inch telly with my Xbox Series X. In many ways this is related to playing video games. I am likely justified to write this here.

I am watching a movie on my Xbox Series X and it is about the strange incidents that happened in 1998 in Raccoon City. There is a company called Umbrella Corporation that has something fishy going on in this small city in USA. The movie is based on at least the first two games. You will have a benefit in a way for seeing this content if you have played Resident Evil 1 and 2 or maybe even the recent remake of RE2.

This movie is rated 5,2 out of 10 in imdb. It has received some criticism. Of course hopes have been very high. We have had movies based on this survival horror video game series which isn’t such a surprise, but these movies have been of low quality. Even Milla Jovovich wasn’t able to save them. I don’t like these movies at all. I hate to even having to mention anything about them.

How did I like the movie? Were there anything I would have liked to work a bit  differently? Well, it’s a nice package. It is causing me anxiety in a similar way that the games used to when I picked them up back in the 90s and even recently I have this gloomy feeling if I start to play them. My only possession remaining from these games is a copy of the original RE2 which I think is the best out of the first three games. Now we must remember that there have been remakes and also some more recent RE games made, like for example Resident Evil Village.

This movie centers around happenings in Raccoon City when the zombie apocalypse starts. There are characters like Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield. There aren’t any superstar actors which can be also a good thing. The movie opens these strange incidents a lot and it has more going on than what can be achieved what it comes to the main plot of the whole story that is being told through first three games. At least that’s how I felt. Even my wife enjoyed the film although she said that it was scary and caused a bit of anxiety for her. The movie is actually forbidden for age under 16.

I think this was a good movie. Although it was nothing compared to the Last of Us story that was brought to us also some time ago. I watched that thing on HBO. This RE movie was one of my first films that I got as a 4K disc. These things are expensive, you know? I paid 30 euros for this movie. It has also the Bluray version and it came in a steel book. I can definitely recommend this movie to you especially if you like RE.

 

Some Characteristics of a Realistic Rally Game

Posted on by Viljami

Here’s two difficult and also very realistic or so to say simulation type of rally games. The first one I have right here is Richard Burns Rally for PC. It is already a bit old game but it’s also still very popular and liked game. The next one we have right here is a newer, it’s actually from 2019, rally game called Dirt Rally 2.0. The end of the name, two point o, comes from an early rally game called Colin McRae Rally 2.0. I don’t know why they actually decided to add that “point o” to the end originally but I think it sounds and looks nice. CMR 2.0 is one of my all time favorite games and it was released for PlayStation back in the 1990s.

How is it to play a realistic rally game one might ask. They are preferably played with a racing wheel and pedals. I however played these games with a gamepad. Richard Burns Rally is older game so I played it mainly with my Logitech RumblePad 2. I have Dirt Rally 2.0 for PC as a digital edition and I also have this game right in this featured image for PlayStation 4. While it is possible to play these both with a gamepad you have to think about lowering the difficulty. You have to consider turning some driving assists on and adjust the driving skills of your opponents. Both of these games can also be played against real human players through internet or maybe even local area network.

As these games are difficult to play you have to concentrate well to handle the car and to succeed in the progress. These games are not very forgiving ones. There are many differences if you compare a realistic rally game to a fun game like the one I already mentioned – Colin McRae Rally 2.0. The controls are more precise. There is a constant feel of danger. You can easily destroy your good stage time and even, if things go really bad, total your car so you get disqualified from the whole event.

Playing Colin McRae 2.0 is a lot of fun. You drive your car, make mistakes, even bad ones, but you still progress. Playing a game like Dirt Rally 2.0 makes you feel that any mistake you make, even a small one, can be disastrous. There is an appeal to both of these games. They aren’t necessarily a good game and a bad game. I just think they are very different kind of games.

As you may have already found out I am a seasoned racing gamer. My roots as a rally gamer go as deep as the roots of Colin McRae Rally series’s go. I was a fourteen year old kid as I stumbled on CMR. I think this was the moment when my deep interest towards rally gaming started. This game was actually so good that I remember that my good friends older brother that was already almost 30 years old became interested in playing PlayStation and eventually bought one for himself. Don’t ask how is it possible that my friends brother is over ten years older than me and my friend. I don’t have an answer to that question.

There are many racing games that I like and have gotten the opportunity to get into. It might be interesting to go through that list here. First on PlayStation 1 I played Colin McRae Rally 1 and 2, Driver and Gran Turismo. On original Xbox I got into Colin McRae 2005 and Burnout 3: Takedown. Later I played Dirt 3, Need for Speed Shift 1 and 2, F1 2010 and Gran Turismo 5 on PS3 and then I proceeded to PS4 with Dirt 4, Dirt Rally 1 and 2 and Gran Turismo 7. I have played also some titles on Xbox 360 and PC. There are many good racing game titles for PS2 also.

Playing racing games with a gamepad has been the most comfortable format of playing racing games for me. I have later used Xbox One and Xbox Series X gamepads for playing these games on a Windows PC. Windows has a nice support for Xbox gamepads. You can also hook up a PS4 controller very easily using a free app called DS4Windows. You can find it from your favorite search engine very easily. I have also earlier written about DS4Windows on this blog.

If you want to experience a realistic rally game you can spend some money and get yourself a racing wheel and pedals and I also recommend that you get a racing chair also. This can however take up a lot of space from your game room and it also costs you a lot of money. I think you can play racing games with a gamepad and at least get started in this way your journey to the world of racing games.

One good thing about racing games is that you very rarely get to experience a real accident where someone really also gets hurt. This is of course a point on any game. We can take a war game for an example, right?