Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: PC

Hades

Posted on by Viljami

Hades is an action role-playing-game that was published for Xbox Series X in 2021 after being released also already for Switch and Windows back in 2020. It isn’t currently one of the latest games but since it was priced very nicely (I paid only 19 euros for the physical copy) and there were news in this Finnish gaming magazine, Pelaaja, about the next Hades game, Hades II, to be released soon, I decided to pick this game and start to go through it.

Hades borrows elements from different role-playing-games. You don’t actually gather experience points. You buy upgrades that will help you to finally complete the game. You can have different strategies along your way. I have played Hades for almost thirty hours now and I have reached the final boss of the whole game only once. There is a certain need for luck in your guest. Also you play the game you get to understand how the different enemies take action and you learn how you can defeat them more easily. One of the key matters is your level of health. You have to try to dodge your enemies when they are trying to get you.

While the story is not so deep Hades does offer a lot to play. You do die often but when the game progresses you get longer runs eventually. Hades takes some time to learn to play. so you understand how the enemies take their action and when is the proper moment to try to hit them with your weapon. There are many different weapons to choose from. You first have to unlock them and then you will get to choose which one do you prefer. I ended up using the type that reminds me of a rail gun. It can shoot twelve times, quickly, and then you have to reload. You can also shoot a grenade that makes lots of damage. My main way to try to complete this game has been to try to get a weapon upgrade that triples the damage and also makes you vulnerable to the grenade. There are many other upgrades for weapons available and you can also unlock features that make you get a nice upgrade more likely.

Hades has very nice controls in overall. It is a very nice and fun game to play when you get the hang of it. The graphics are made to remind of some cartoons. Of course I have to say that all of the characters take deep influences from Greek mythology. Many characters that help the main character as the story progresses are actually sort of gods. I just had a conversation about this game with my friend and we talked about if this game is actually a three dimensional one or not. I don’t have a clear answer to this. The graphics look nice and they work very well.

You will also get a code with your physical copy of Hades so you can download the soundtrack of the game. The music in Hades feels nice while not having any deeper relation. I am saying that the music has an effect but it isn’t actually in the center where everything happens in this game. There are just so many other elements in this game that hold your attention. Music is nice but not so appealing. I have to say that for example in games like Burnout 3 Takedown or the first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater the music had a very important role and this is just not the case with Hades.

You get to move a lot while you try to dodge the attacks of the enemies. You have to time your attacks well so you can be victorious. You progress through the levels. There is an enemy boss that you have to defeat after every level until you finally get to battle with the main boss of the whole game. It is of course the Hades. So the whole game is about trying to escape from your father’s home. After you finally loose your life you will have to start from the first level, again. The game consists of these runs. I have now had almost one hundred runs that are also attempts to escape.

This is a very good game. If I would have to say something negative I would say that it seems in a way a bit repetitive as a game and it has only a few levels. It does give you a lot to play. After all I do have spent almost thirty hours playing it. The game mechanics and the way that you handle the main character are very good. This all makes Hades a very pleasant game to try to beat and also to play.

Doom Guy – John Romero

Posted on by Viljami

Doom Guy is a book by John Romero that has been published in 2023. In short words it describes the creator of such games as Doom, Quake and Daikatana, just to name a few. The book goes through his whole life starting from being a child of an alcoholic father and some other issues he had as a young child growing up.

The beginning of the book is kind of sad. But I can appreciate that Romero is so honest. Ultimately the story is a happy one all in all. Yes, it is a happy and amazing story of how a hobby that involves spending hundreds of dollars to play video games in arcades transforms to a career that molded the whole video game industry.

The story begins from about 1970s. In the 80s was when John Romero was already actively developing some kinds of computer games. There was going on a transition from games that took only one screen in use to some games, like Super Mario Bros 3, that were played as they scrolled along to the sidesof the screen. The screen was scrolling to the players movement. This was, back in the days, something that required the newest technology.

Apparently there were games like Commander Keen released by Apogee. Later, when the company started getting their actual form, they decided to call the company “id Software”. And the “id” in the name was pronounced like it was written (not like “ai dee” an more like “id”). This team also had a very talented and hard working member – John Carmack. Carmack focused mainly on the hardcore programming while Romero also programmed and made sure on his his part that the vision that they were moving to was the right one. Romero also made many tools the team used and had his fingers in designing new levels for their games.

So, Doom was a revolutionary game. Before that game id Software released a game called Wolfenstein – 3D. Doom was released in 1993. Their next big game would have the name Quake. It was originally ment to be more of a phantasy type of a role-playing-game. Quake was actually a game that can be described more like a FPS game with very nice graphics. So, the team had to make some adjustments and start in a way to move towards a different goal with this game. Eventually this lead to Romero leaving id Software and go on to work at Ion Storm that was a new game company.

I have to mention that role-playing palyed a strong role in the team of id Software being about the most innovative game development team in the whole world in the 1990s. They especially enjoyed session of Dungeons and Dragons. Romero brought the vision and Carmack workd long hours programming these amazing games. They also had people working as level designers and as producers of music. They had also people working with the business side of the company.

John Romero has been successful in his career. We have, throughout the whole history, witnessed also some of his games being somewhat flops. This was the fact with a game called Daikatana. It was a disappointment for many of Romeros fans. The writer, John Romero, still adds a thought that you kind of have to fail some times to learn and to succeed. This seems very sensible to me.

All in all Romeros book offers some very satisfying details about these games that he has been working with. There is also some very nice insight to how games were designed at this time around 1990s. I can definitely recommend this book for any fans of id Softwares games or to somenone who wants to learn how the gaming industry was back in the 90s.

NES Games That Are Still Relevant in 2024

Posted on by Viljami

You might not spend so much time with NES games as you do with modern games that directly aim to keep you focused for tens or even hundreds of hours. This has everything to do with quickly advancing technology. Designing games goes forward also when the developers learn more and more and more hobbyists are starting to get into the world or playing video games. In this blog post I go through some NES games that are, in my opinion, still relevant today.

There are practically hundreds of games in the whole gaming library of NES. If you don’t have a clue what gaming console I am referring to I can tell you that NES comes from words Nintendo Entertainment System. It is a retro console that was introduced to us, gamers, in 1983. I have picked up these five games that I own. These all are very good games and I can definitely recommend them.

I have a Retro Trio console that plays NES, SNES and Mega Drive games. I can also use an adapter to play Master System or even Game Boy games. These adapters I have bought for a cheap price. I think I paid just under 40 euros for the Master System adapter and maybe 35 euros for the game boy adapter. It is very nice to play Game Boy games this way. The screen is very clear and bright compared to the screen of Game Boy or Game Boy color. There are some other ways also that you can play Game Boy games but lets not get carried away too much.

You can of course take your chance and use any NES emulator to play NES games on your PC. If you are going with this option I definitely recommend to get a replica of the original NES controller that you can attach with a USB cable. This brings the certain sense of authenticity to your NES games. These physical copies can be a bit pricey. They can cost anything from I think 15 euros to even 100 euros. Some rare games are even more expensive. So, I totally understand if you go the emulator way at least when you are just starting to get into NES games. The USB controller I mentioned earlier has a price tag of maybe 20 euros. I have never got into troubles with the compatibility and you can probably get it to work easily even if you use Linux.

You can sense that for example Super Mario Bros, that was released in 1988, has this certain lightness in the whole gaming experience. I mean the fact that it uses only so little memory. You can talk about randomly accessed memory or even hard disk. As I think you have witnessed NES doesn’t have a hard disk at all. You can use saved games in some games since they have an extra battery that enables long term memory usage. With emulators you can of course go around this and use saved states that come with your favorite NES emulator. So, this is one more reason to use software emulators instead of old retro hardware.

Graphics are two dimensional in these games. Sound is of course pretty terrible. If you are deeply into “chip tune” musical genre you might even like it that way. I personally think it is some kind of miracle how they could program the music for these games with all these limitations. Same goes to the overall design of these games. There are over 600 NES games that were released. These five are the ones that I have managed to grab. I have a total of maybe ten or twelve NES games in my collection. I did buy these all already some years ago. I can definitely say that I enjoy these games even if they are old and even if the time keeps moving forward. I think Nintendo did  agret job!