Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

The Last of Us

Posted on by Viljami

I have been watching, and also enjoying, the movie series The Last of Us on HBO. If you check IMDb for a rating you will see that it is 9,2 out of 10. Sometimes the movie that I like doesn’t receive such a rating. This time it does. There have been already six episodes of this TV series. I have enjoyed this series so far very much.

If you aren’t familiar with this game or the series I can explain the main plot. There is a certain kind of fungus that actually turns people into zombies. There are only few survivors that haven’t, at least yet, been infected. There are some main characters in this tv series. I think the series does a great job in describing these characters. That is also the strongest feature in this series.

The series is based on the game. Just in 2020 we got the latest The Last of Us game. It was called Part II. The first game after all was released already some time ago. It was released in 2013 for PS3 and it was developed by Naughty Dog. You might remember this game development company from a classic game called Crash Bandicoot. They have also released a game seiries called Uncharted.

The Last of Us was released to PS4 as a remaster in 2014. This is the moment that I first got into The Last of Us. As there are many similarities in the situation that the game presents it is understandable that it maybe wasn’t so popular during the pandemic. Or maybe the hype is all because of this? Who knows.

The game is as good as you can figure. I can recommend it, defnitely. So the TV series has been popular. It brings together some very detailed personalities that live their lives after this tragic disaster that ended the human populations accomplishments.

I can definitely recommend The Last of Us for anybody. You might have played Last of Us games or not but you have to see this. I am not aware of any release outside of HBO. This might make you to consider getting HBO if you don’t already have it. What finally made me order HBO was a series called “Winning Time”. Since I am and always will be a basketball fan I enjoyed that series also.

Most Anticipated Games of 2023

Posted on by Viljami

We can begin this blog post with some information. This is the 200th blog post that I have published in this blog. I have been writing this blog for three years now. And, yeah, I am not going to stop since I have still lot to say and lot to achieve with Intensive Gaming Diary. Let’s dive into todays topic.

The gaming industry has been struggling a bit with the global situation. There have been delays in hardware shipments and a lack of electronic components. Game developers have been forced to adapt to the situation. Gaming isn’t going away. In fact this year we have the priviledge to witness some great games that are going to be relesed.

There are many new games to be released. Games I am personally waiting the most are Diablo IV and the new Forza Motorsport. Diablo IV will be released 6.6. and Forza Motorsport will be released 26.5. One game that I have already pre-ordered is Metroid Prime Remastered. It has already received some very good feedback. I am waiting to get to play it. It will be released soon (3.3.).

Some other interesting titles include Baldur’s Gate 3, Final Fantasy XVI, Starfield, Alan Wake II and Resident Evil 4. There are many more which I am not going to mention. It seems like we have a great selection of games this year and I think there is going to be lots of games to play.

I am still playing Gran Turismo 4 on my PS2. The status of the game states that I have completed a bit over eight percentage of the game so there’s lot to play also in this way. It seems to be a great racing game and I am very glad that I decided to pick it up. I seem to be constantly comparing it to the first game in which I fell in love with back in the 90s.

How did you like Alan Wake? It was first published in 2010. It was developed by Remedy. As a game it is a mixture of lightweight survival horror and action in 3rd person view. I personally found it entertaining. I completed it with my Xbox 360 already some years ago. It was released for PC also. And we are getting a sequel, Alan Wake II, this year.

One product I am waiting for is Nintendos new gaming console. As I am writing this we have not heard anything of this new gaming console. If you think that Switch was released in 2017 there is a chance that there is a new console coming to gaming stores sometime soon. After all PS4 was released in 2013 and after seven years we got PS5. So maybe the console will be available next year? Let’s hope for the best and keep waiting.

 

Is Gran Turismo 4 The Greatest Racing Game of All Time?

Posted on by Viljami

Although I have still not finished Resident Evil Village I picked up Gran Turismo 4. I have thought about playing GT4 for a while now. It is said to be maybe the best game in the series and it is definitely a very good racing game. It is definitely the best racing game for PlayStation 2.

Another very good racing and actually a rally game of this era is Richard Burns Rally. It was for propably a decade the most realistic racing simulation to be found. It was released also for PC and original Xbox while Gran Turismo 4 was released for PlayStation 2 with exclusive righs. Richard Burns Rally lost its spot as the best rally simulator since there were newer games released in this genre. I can mention titles like Dirt Rally and its sequel Dirt Rally 2.0 just to name some games.

I am playing GT4 with a game pad. The game supports also many tpyes of driving wheels. It would be nice to play it this way. I do have a driving wheel  but I am too lazy to try to learn using it. I would also like to have a decent driving chair. I currently don’t have one. But the game supports driving wheels and why not pedals also.

In Gran Turismo 4 you start with no license and also no car. You have only 10 000 credits. I started with getting a driving license. The first license and also the easiest to get is B license. There are several other driving licenses that give you access to competititons.

You have to upgrade your car if you wish to get some credits. Then you can upgrade your car more and maybe after a while you get a new more powerful car. Sometimes the game gets a bit repetitive because you have to compete in same chllenge for many times to get enough credits so you can make some progress. This can be dull at times.

Gran Turismo 4 has hundreds of cars. Getting a good car can be hard at times. You have to buy some upgrades to get to fiddle with your cars settings. The first thing I got to adjust was the transmission. You can set your car to have a high maximum speed with a lower acceleration level or the other way around. So, you can also make your car accelerate fast which then lowers the maximum speed. This can be handy in tracks that have lots of slow corners and not so much straights.

Graphics are a bit dated. Controls defnitely aren’t. There could be more decent music tracks in the soundtrack. I am talking about these nice tracks that we had in the first Gran Turismo. If you are thinking if you should return to the first game we can consider that if you haven’t played Gran Turismo 1 or 4 at all I think the fourth game would be a good way to start getting into Gran Turismo. I also liked very much the latest game of this series, Gran Turismo 7, that was released last year for PS4 and PS5.