Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: PC

Silent Hill 2 Remake

Posted on by Viljami

So there is a new remake of Silent Hill 2 in the makings. I was thinking that in this post I wouldn’t go so deeply into what is coming for us gamers but I thought I should write something I feel about this series of survival horror magnifiency that Silent Hill has delivered and what is my relationship with it.

My first memories are about the first game of this series. I think I never owned the game. I did play a short demo of it. I liked it. Later I have played it but I never completely finished it. The latest connections between me and Silent Hill are made by playing PS3. I own the HD collection and also Silent Hill Homecoming. I had Downpour but I decided some years back to sell it. I also have Silent Hill 3 for PS2.

There is always a comparison between Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Both of them are survival horror games. They do differ a lot. While Resident Evil offers a constant feel of anxiety, Silent Hill does take you deeper into characters and how they feel and how the story keeps forming. I wouldn’t like to say that Silent Hill is in some way better or worse. Instead I would like to think that they are just different games. And they are good series of games all in all.

My history with Resident Evil is a lot closer. I started with Resident Evil 2 on PS1. I have completed also RE 1, RE 3 and RE 5. I almost completed RE Revelations and I am talking about the first in the series of two games. So I have some experience but I am not the master that has completed every game and every game in the whole world. There are lots of games in these series’s.

Silent Hill 2 is definitely a legendary game. Currently we know that it will be released for PS5 and PC. There will be no Xbox or Switch versions. There has been also some conversation about the game’s system requirements. They are going to be high. What is there to be for us? I think the time will show us. I am waiting to see something more out of this game.

A Very Nice Hockey Game

Posted on by Viljami

You know how many sport games are, don’t you? The game stays almost like same and there is a release every year. So there aren’t big changes in the game every year. But something always changes if we compare these games closely or then compare a game that is ten years old to the most recent one. I thought that I would bring up a game from a bit over twenty years ago and tell all of you how it is as a hockey game.

There have been many good hockey games in the whole wide history of gaming. One of my favorites is NHL 94 for Mega Drive. I played also NHL 97 for PC for a while. NHL 94 was good but if you compare NHL 95, 96 or 97 to it you find that it’s basically the same game that is released for Mega Drive and there aren’t so many updates. NHL 97 for PC is offering already 3D graphics and the gameplay also has an appeal.

The latest hockey game that I got in my hands was NHL 2021 for PS4. I didn’t like it. I couldn’t get the difficulty level to something that would have been correct for me as a gamer. It was too easy and I scored almost everytime I made a shot and I won my opponent with ten goals every time or it was a bit too difficult and none of my shots would find their place. It was nice that the game had Patrik Laine and all other real and recent players in it. I couldn’t understand the gameplay completely.

I think many PS4 games have this issue that playing the game has been made a bit hard. I don’t know if this is a choice that has been made to make the games more appealing to eSport hobbyists and professionals. This can also be a thought only in my mind. You should definitely have your own opinion on this matter. There are propably games made for PS4 that are very playable and enjoyable. But in my opinion NHL 2021 isn’t a game that would inspire me a lot.

So why to play NHL 2000 for PlayStation 1? It’s appealing and inspiring game. You can definitely adjust the difficulty and I found that playing was the most enjoyable with second easiest difficulty level for me. I picked Mighty Ducks as my team since it had Teemu Selänne and also Paul Kariya. These both are fast players and their shot is very accurate. They both play in the first attack line of Anaheim.

As a hockey game NHL 2000 feels very nice to play. There is a lot of randomness. Situations change quickly. One of the best ways to score a goal is to have a breakaway. I have made lots of goals with Selänne or Kariya as they are fast. Another way to score is to give a pass and shoot the puck as a one-timer. It helps if you are closer to the goal and if you can make the goalie to move sideways there is a strong opportunity to score a goal.

One thing I hate about NHL 94 is that it offers only playoffs as a game mode. NHL 2000 has different kinds of seasons for you to pick. You can have a season of only a bit under 30 games, a season with about 60 games or a full season. Of course as is common you can adjust the play time and how often fights occur and also some other options for modifying rules of the game.

This is a hockey game for you if you don’t mind a bit retroish feel to the graphics and like fast, easy and enjoyable gameplay. There could maybe be more statistics, I don’t know. I am not the kind of a gamer that spends lots of time inspecting some deeper statistics  but it is nice to see how many goals the best scorer of my team has made, what is my goalies percentage of preventions or some other stats like this. This is definitely your game if you are into PS1 games all in all.

Playing Xbox One Exclusive from Remedy Entertainment

Posted on by Viljami

I sort of missed Quantum Break when it was originally released back in 2016. I surely didn’t have Xbox One then. I actually had only PS4 connected to my main screen that was Full HD 32 inch television. It also had SCART-connectivity. PS4 was my only gaming console that was connected to my television. It would have been possible for me to purchase this game  from Steam and install it for my PC. So there was a possibility that I didn’t choose to follow for some reason or other.

I am a huge fan of Remedy Entertainment. I have been that way since early games like Death Rally and Max Payne series. I did play Alan Wake and I have also played Control. Being a fan of Remedy can partly be explained with the fact that this game company is based in Finland. Sami Järvi actually was the person that gave Max Payne his face and he is also currently the Creative Director of the company.

If you have followed what I’ve been lately writing about you surely know that I recently got myself Xbox Series X. I actually removed Xbox Series S from my setup and replaced it with Series X. This more expensive model of the latest Xbox has an optical drive and two times more disk space for installing games. I also get to enjoy the backwards compatibility. I get to play Xbox One games also with the latest Xbox model Series X.

There are some really nice games that have been only released for Microsoft’s devices mainly being PC and Xbox. Some titles worth mentioning are Gears of War 4 and 5, Dead Rising 3 and 4, Forza Horizon series and Halo series. As I was ordering WRC10 and Back 4 Blood for Series X I decided to go also with copies of Fallout 4, which was sold for only 4 euros, and this Xbox One exclusive, Quantum Break.

It was about a week ago that I received the order from post. I have played lots of WRC10. I started playing Quantum Break just this morning. I have already completed 11 percentage of the game. It isn’t a long game and that is perfectly fine with me. Based on a fact that I found while browsing the web it takes about ten hours to complete Quantum Break. It is a nice game. It includes nice graphics, as you can see from the screenshot related to this blog post. It also has elements from action and shooting games. It also has already offered me some puzzles to be solved. It reminds a bit about Max Payne but at the same time it is a completely own kind of a game.

This far I have very much enjoyed this game. Remedy has once again done a great job. While it’s not the latest of latest it still offers a solid experience. If I would have played this back in 2016 when this title was released I probably would have enjoyed it maybe even more as it is always exciting to play some game that has just been released and is using the latest so to say tricks. I don’t want to give it a grade. The Metacritic has given it a score of 77 out of 100.