Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: PC

The Future of Physical Content

Posted on by Viljami

Best Buy has announced that it is not going to sell physical copies of DVDs, Blu-Rays and 4K discs anymore in the near future. This is the way things are going right now. Consumers are moving on to digital media when it comes to games and movies. It doesn’t help that there are consoles that enable you to play older retro games and also new games on discs.

Is the physical media going to disappear? We don’t know the exact answer. I think there is always going to exist some gamers that need to have their game as a physical copy. These copies might be some kind of collectors editions that have a little more higher price than the regular standard version of the game. We have already witnessed an increase in in prices of games be that they are digital or physical. So, the amount of games sold as physical copies has been decreasing but I think we are not ready to move on to a world without these discs that we have our games on even today.

This is very interesting and I have recently been reading a lot about this matter. If you think about upcoming game releases and purchasing a copy of your favorite upcoming game beforehand I think digital is way easier and more trustworthy to be handled when it comes to delivering the game. Just last summer when Diablo IV was released I wanted to order it beforehand. You can probably guess how it went, right? Game developers don’t want their games to be released before their actual release day so they won’t let game shops deliver these games too early. This problem doesn’t exist in a digital world.

I have to admit that I like to own a physical copy of my game. Well, maybe not every game, right? Big box games still look good on a gamer’s bookshelf. There are many ways to view this matter. Having loads of games can be a challenge if you are considering to collect these games. I have loads of games on my bookshelf and I had to move some of them away from this bookshelf because they take so much space.

We have already seen how things are today with PC games. Steam and many other online game stores have taken over the markets. You hardly ever see a DVD drive on a PC. If you like you can of course get a drive that you can use by connecting it to your PC with a USB cable. It is although easier to just buy the game from Steam or some other web shop. I myself have a special retro laptop for playing older PC games. It runs Windows XP. It works very nicely.

If we are talking about PC games you have this constant feel that you have to buy newer operating system and/or newer computer that has a good GPU, CPU and SSD hard drive. This is a reason to keep consumers to pay for their ability to use a computer be it for playing games or for some other use. Everybody needs a PC today, right?

What about older games? I think there is something a bit wrong in this way of thinking. We should make sure that old games are available for us in the future also. These retro consoles aren’t going to last for 20 years. We have to come up with solutions to these questions so we won’t loose our precious history in video gaming. This is at least how I am thinking right now here and today.

Playing Some Tony Hawks Pro Skater On Nintendo Switch

Posted on by Viljami

I have now played THPS 1+2 for a bit over seven hours. It really makes me to go back, with an amount of nostalgia, to this game series that so many of us still do love. I am playing this on Nintendo Switch. I have also this very neat controller that is actually Pro Controller. I think it is the best way to play sports games and many action games and also driving games. I do not have a driving game currently for Switch but it might be a fun to have one some day.

I first started playing the first THPS game on PS1 back in the 90s. It made a huge impact on me as a player of video games. Skateboarding has been popular but that hasn’t always been the case. Some other famous skateboarding games are Skate or Die for NES and Skate series. I also have to mention a game called OlliOlli right here. But if you think about THPS back in the end of 90s you have to consider that it made skateboarding a very popular field of extreme sports.

How it feels to play it once again remastered one might ask. I think that these developers have made a great job. The music is  a big part of the game. In the original game it at times felt like the music stopped too soon since the runs were only one or two minutes long. In this remake they have kind of corrected this issue and the music track continues to play more constantly.

All these tricks are present in this remake. You can grind and manual to get some points in your run. You can also do air tricks like grabs and also flip tricks. You get more points by combining tricks as creatively as possible. This guarantees a good score of points for you. You have different attributes that you can add points to also. So your skater is also developing all the time as is also the case of your actual skills in playing the game. There are many famous skaters for you to choose from. Of course Tony Hawk is included as well.

THPS has been released in many forms for many different consoles. One of my favorite games in this series is THPS 4 for GameCube. Switch offers you a decent an similar way of control that was utilized in the original game for the first PlayStation. I am talking mainly about the layout of buttons. Pro Controller doesn’t differ so mmuch from Dual Shock controller that is actually the game pad of PS1.

It is nice to play this skateboarding game once again. I feel so much of this nostalgia. At the same time I am glad that this remake turned out to be a good game in overall. While it does require good reflexes I can compensate a bit on my skills in playing this game. Who knows how many hours I did spend on this one. I mean especially the first game. I picked up also THPS 3 for PC back in the early 2000s. Today I have also a copy of that game for my PS2. I am also glad that my PS2 is currently working and that I can utilize it perfectly. Although I haven’t recently played any particularly excellent games on it. I am hoping to get some time to play Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven and also continue my campaign in Gran Turismo 4. I would like to complete it but it seems to take a long time and also a deep dedication if I wish to finish it.

I think this is all for now. Hope you are feeling nice. This game I think is available nicely and it doesn’t cost so much if you are buying it for Switch like I recently did. It is also available for any other modern gaming consoles including Series S/X and PS5 and PS4. It is available also now on Steam for PC so if you are more into some personal computer gaming I guess you can check that out.

Playing Some Spyro The Dragon (Spyro Reignited Trilogy)

Posted on by Viljami

During this weekend I had an opportunity to play Spyro The Dragon with my PS4. In this blog post I am going to introduce to you this awesome 3D platform game that made a serious impact on how we play video games today. It was first released for PS1 in 1998.

There is a great difference between a 2D platform game, like Super Mario Bros 3 or Sonic The Hedgehog, and a 3D platform game like Spyro The Dragon. The first thing that comes to my mind is how do you position the camera inside the game. In Spyro The Dragon you move your character and rotate the camera at the same time. In 2D games you don’t have to worry about moving your camera all the time. In Spyro the jumping feels also a bit like floating which emphasizes the sensitive and complex three dimensional positioning used in the game.

There are many things that Spyro can do. You can jump, float or fall after jumping, blow some flame out of your throat and run and rush against enemies. There are various enemies that our main character encounters. Some can be defeated by rushing on them while some are defeated by blowing out a flame. Some enemies need also something extra if you want to defeat them.

The main goal in Spyro The Dragon is to progress. You achieve this by freeing dragons and collecting gems, or as they are called in this game, treasures. Some gems are more valuable than others. They can have a value of one, two, five or even greater than that. Defeating enemies also gives you gems. If you have defeated an enemy earlier in the game you get a point. If you get enough points you get an extra life. There are also particular extra lives that can be collected.

The game play feels very nice in overall. There are lots of puzzles to be solved including how do you get to some area that has a dragon to be saved or some gems to be collected. I don’t even understand how this game was originally released for PlayStation 1 in such an early moment in video gaming.

Is Spyro a bit childish game? Maybe so, but I think that it offers problem solving and deep thought and challenge while also being a game that the whole family can enjoy and play. The trilogy, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, consists of three first games of this series. I am currently playing it with my PS4. It is also available for PC and the latest Xbox and also for Nintendo Switch. It was released already in 2018.

So, the original Spyro The Dragon was released in 1998 by Insomniac Games for Sony PlayStation. It is considered a very strong and well-known piece of gaming. It definitely stands out being a platform game designed to be played in a 3D environment. If you haven’t played Spyro The Dragon games earlier this trilogy release might be a good point to start your experimenting. It also isn’t a pricey choice as a game. I bought it some weeks ago for 20 euros as a used copy for PS4. There are also many Spyro games released for many consoles in the history of gaming. This trilogy introduces three first games of the series.