Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: 3d games

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Posted on by Viljami

Shadow of the Tomb Raider joins my list of finished games in the year 2026. I have beaten already several games this year. What did this Tomb Raider game have to offer and how it was like to play it? These are the questions I am right here trying to answer to you so you can decide if you want to play it also at some moment.

I have to say that it took some time for me to finish this game. I spent almost sixteen and a half hours playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I played it on my Xbox Series X. The game was released already in 2018. It is the third game that we saw on this series of games that started with “Tomb Raider” back in 2013. This game I do remember very well because it was the first game I bought for my PS4 when I got it back in 2014.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider includes some very neat graphical experience. The scenery looks very beautiful. There is a lot of playing with some light effects that makes the screen look amazing at times. The game includes lots of puzzles and also thinking. There are some action and also role-playing elements. You actually get to update your different weapons and your character gets updates too. Everything in this game seemed to work well. The game has received good reviews on Metacritic. The overall rating for Xbox One game is 82 out of 100.

The game isn’t perfect. Some puzzles are frustrating to try to figure out. You easily can get stuck for even some hours to some puzzle that you must figure out to proceed in the game. I felt frustrated also at times in some climbing scenes. I felt down many times and the character died. I have to say that saving a game works decently and you don’t have to replay a part over and over again a lot. This makes the game a smooth one to play.

I can say that I do prefer to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider over playing any of the remakes that have been released just recently. There was the first three Tomb Raider games and also the collection of fourth, fifth and sixth game. I really think that these games were neat back in the day but I really don’t miss the way you had to play them.

There are tens of Tomb Raider games that have been released in the course of the history. The first game that started it all was released in 1996 for PC, PlayStation and Sega Saturn. It was among some of the first games that offered us gamers a truly three-dimensional experience. This was the time in the history of the video games when the games started shifting towards three-dimensional presentation and experience more and more.

There have been already tens of games released in this series since everything started back in 1996. There have been some discussions about the future of the series. We are going to see some Tomb Raider content in a form of some TV series and movies, soon. We are going to see what kind of a future this franchise does actually have. Are we going to see some more games? Time will definitely tell.

Also this game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, is currently available for a very cheap price as it isn’t the most newest game. It is also available for PC and PlayStation 4 and 5. I think it offers a solid gaming experience and I do recommend getting into it if you like modern Tomb Raider games. It also reminds me of the game Uncharted 4 that I played through earlier this year. They do have some similar elements.

Stray (Switch)

Posted on by Viljami

The next game that I wanted to play was Stray. I first played it on my PC as I bought it from Steam. As I might have told before I am identifying myself as a “couch gamer”. So, this means that I just had to buy the game also for a console. I picked the Switch version since I have liked my Switch 2 very much and been playing on it. It was for me an easy decision to make. Why am I a couch gamer? I like to play my video games when I wake up and I have found out that I easily fall asleep in the morning if I am on my personal computer. Am I getting old or something? Lets just say that I today prefer console gaming.

So, I am a cat fan. This is because it was 2007 when my parents got a cat. Sadly the cat died just a few years ago. He was an old cat already. But this is the main reason that I almost instantly started to like this game. In Stray you are controlling a cat in a fantasy/sci-fi scenario. Basically the game is about finding a path to the next location by choosing where to run and/or jump next. There are some puzzles also included.

Graphics look nice. I also liked the soundtrack which features your typical electronic music that sounds very nice to my ear. If you know anything about my habits in the field of music production I think you find it not so surprising that I am actually thinking of maybe sampling some of this stuff because it sounds basically very good.

The game takes (according to HLTB website) about five hours to complete. This is a somewhat relief for me as I had to pause my journey into Final Fantasy VII Remake after I had played over six hours of it. I had to pause because I kept thinking that the game would take over 30 hours to finish. That might be too long for me. So, at this point five hours seems just enough.

I have spent almost 4 hours now playing Stray. The game isn’t the most newest one while it also is a very fresh one. It was released in 2024. I have to say that the game does look better on my PCs screen. If you like to keep your graphics sharp you might want to actually play the PC version. I don’t know how the Xbox Series X version would look like. Currently there isn’t a Switch 2 optimized version available. At least not as a physical copy. I do like to play most of my Switch and Switch 2 games as physical copies.

If you like cats and also realistic 3D graphics and adventure games with some mild puzzle game elements Stray is a game for you. For me it cost just some euros under 40 euros. I also bought Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster for Nintendo Switch at this same moment. I hope I get some time to play also this game. Just yesterday I gathered every Switch game I have bought recently and haven’t had, yet, time to even install and I came up with some 15 games. Very many of these games were actually still sealed. What can you say? I am buying lots of video games at this moment.

There are still all the games for PS3 and also some games for PS2 that are still in a “not-yet-played” condition. The latest PS3 title I played was Need for Speed Most Wanted. I almost ended up writing a blog post about it. I played it for over 15 hours. It is a good game but not so straightforward as I would have wished for. There is a lot of goods luck involved in the game-play is what I basically mean.

Rayman 3

Posted on by Viljami

I recently bought Rayman 3 for GameCube. I paid fifteen euros for it. This is a very nice price and the disc was in good condition. I am also glad that unlike my PS2 and original Xbox consoles my Nintendo GameCube seems to be working at least at the moment. I have owned GameCube maybe for two years already and I haven’t had a critical issue with it.

If you know something already about Rayman series of video games you definitely know that the first game was a pure two-dimensional platformer type of game that also had some medium difficulty level problems or puzzles that you as a player had to go through and solve. The first Rayman game was described to be a hard game to compplete. It was released for Atari Jaguar, PlayStation, Sega Saturn and MS-DOS.

Back in 1995 it was still unclear if video games would actually be fully three-dimensional when it comes to gameplay and graphics. But when Rayman 3 was released for GameCube in 2003 it was clear that it would be a 3D platformer game. This was the direction in which video were clearly moving.

I have to say that this is a very good game. You have some action in it and also some puzzle solving. I haven’t fully completed the game but I have played it for maybe 4 to 5 hours when I’m writing this blog post. It takes about nine hours to complete Rayman 3. So, I have a lot to play still.

While Rayman 3 is a very good game there are some things that kind of disappoint me. This has everything to do with the game being a bit old after all. There have been many advancements in the field of game development since Rayman 3 was released. The camera is most of the time on a nice angle but sometimes it gets a bit frustrating to adjust it. Also figthing scenes are also frustrating since the aiming system is a bit wack. You have to really try and handle the main character when there is a battle going on with some of the game’s enemy characters.

Graphics still look nice. The game is a nice addition to my collection of Nintendo GameCube games. It’s hard to actually realize that the game is now over 20 years old. The GameCube’s controller fits perfectly to the needs of the player that is involved with Rayman 3.

The latest Rayman games I have seen were released as some sort of platformers for PS4. I haven’t, yet, played a Rayman game on the newest consoles, like Xbox Series X or Nintendo Switch. Of course the game is designed also so it can be played also by the youngest players we have – little kids. The game is also suitable for a grown up. This is definitely a plus for this game and it has gained many fans through the years.

Rayman 3 can be frustrating at times but in overall the game feels nice to play. It offers you a decent three-dimensional experience and some nice action that you can be involved in. It is a good buy for a Nintendo GameCube collector and I can recommend it to every retro game fan out there.