Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: ps3

Need For Speed Shift Series

Posted on by Viljami

Need For Speed Shift was first released for PS3 in 2009. There is also a sequel to this game (Need For Speed Shift 2). I remember these racing games very clearly. I have only good memories when it comes to Shift 1 & 2. I was in a situation with my gaming hobby in which I only had one game console attached to my television. It was already a modern tv and not anymore a CRT television. PS4 was still in the process of development and wasn’t available yet. I also played some games with my PC but PS3 was my main game console at that time.

I had a wheel and pedals which I had received as a gift. Although I played some PS3 games with wheel and pedals I did play Need For Speed Shift only with a game pad. I have went back and forth with using my racing wheel but I have always returned to playing racing games with a game pad. I also had at one moment an adapter (I think it was 2019) that enabled me to play with this wheel on PS4. Actually the wheel and pedals were Logitech G27. I did find them to be of great quality. Also, I think if you want to play these more realistic driving games you should also have a decent driving chair.

I did spend tens of hours playing Need For Speed Shift 1 and 2. I especially remember one summer. It was 2011 and I was having a long holiday free from my studies. Time flies when you are young and enjoy your time. I didn’t think that PS3 games would have had a low video display quality. Today they don’t stand a comparison to some more modern and newer gaming consoles. It is a bit sad that the series didn’t continue later on. We have seen many NFS games but we haven’t seen a new Shift game for a long time. Maybe some day we will see a remake?

What Need For Speed Shift games had to offer was somewhat realistic driving and a solid single player campaign. They offered together tens of hours of play time. “How Long To Beat” website tells me that it takes 13 hours to finish the frist game and 20 hours to finish the sequel. You get to choose a sports car for yourself. The driving feels nice and I often times found myself in a nice flow. It was a pleasure to spend those hours playing something like this.

Need For Speed Shift can be a pleasure for you to play if you enjoy single player driving and do enjoy playing still PS3 games. Today, I have, again, my PS3 connected to my 4K television. The graphics for me already seem a bit muddy. But if that doesn’t actually bother you you can enjoy these driving games. I have recently played some PS3 games. One of them was Resistance 3. I also actually read a book related to this title. I discussed this booka and Resistance 3 in an earlier blog post. If you think you would enjoy reading my old post just try and find it. It was written some weeks earlier.

What more do I have to say this time? I try not to write too long blog posts. I have had this as a bit of a habit of mine that I end up writing very long texts. This happens also in other forms that I do write. It happens even with some music lyrics that I also do write. I write them in Finnish but this blog is completely written in English. So, without further conversation we must stop here for this time and for this blog post. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

Resistance 3 (PS3) Is Finished

Posted on by Viljami

Resistance series, in which Resistance 3 belongs to, is a science fiction slash fantasy themed first person shooter game that was popular in the dominant era of PS3. The games in the series are PlayStation exclusives and you can play them on PS3 consoles. I have some experience about Resistance – The Fall of Man. I actually bought the game already some time ago. I really didn’t get into it. I didn’t somehow like it. It was too different from the experience provided by Call of Duty. I like CoD games very much.

I got interested again in the series after I found a book related to the video game series from flee market. The price of the book was 2 euros and I recently read it completely. I had some curiosity against the Resistance series and decided to try the third game which is actually Resistance 3 the game that we are dealing with in this blog post.

So, how is Resistance 3 as a video game? The controls take a bit of time to get adjusted to since they differ from CoD and Halo a bit. After you get the basics which means in this case the slight zoom, which button does fire your weapon and how different weapons work, where to throw a grenade and everything else related to basic gameplay of Resistance 3, you really get to enjoy the game very much.

I assume that the budget of Resistance 3 was a bit bigger than the first games’ budget. This shows as better graphical output. Also the cover seems to me somewhat more pleasant. The game uses horror and science fiction elements and reminds me at times of games like FEAR 2 and 3 and also the already mentioned Halo series. There are several different weapons available. The number of weapons increases as you progress deeper in to the game.

There are some strategic considerations that have to be discussed here. There are lots of enemies and sometimes it is better to try to progress with not taking out every single one of them and instead try to progress to the next checkpoint so you get through and actually move forward. I have only so little to say about the plot. The main character is the hero of the game and is making his way to New York as the evil alien “Chimera” is trying to conquer the planet Earth. There are different types of enemies from huge monsters to regular alien soldiers. You even get a chance to fight these enemies with a melee weapon (it’s a huge sledge hammer). There is also a strange weapon that I did use in the game that was called “mutator”.

I really enjoyed this game. Graphics are somewhat awful if you compare them directly with the display of graphics in some modern games but this is still a good game to play if you just consider it as a bit older game that actually does count as a retro game already in 2025. If you can handle PS3 games’ graphical poverty you can definitely play and also enjoy this game. Resistance 3 offers a nice about 8 hours of time of a playthrough. I think I used something like that while I played the single player campaign with “Casual” as the difficulty setting. You can of course play the game again with increased difficulty level if you wish to play the game through again in this way.

I really don’t have anything to say about multiplayer experience since I mainly play all my games as single player. I didn’t even bother to try the functionality of this game in this way. I don’t know if the server are still up. I think assume they might not be. Resistance 3 was published in 2011 for PS3 as an exclusive game. It might be nice to see a remake of some sort some day. The game is very good and it was the first Resistance game that I played and also finished.

I just yesterday finished purchasing and also installing the new Silent Hill f game that actually was officially released yesterday. I was positively surprised that it is now easier to pay your purchase in Steam app. It is possible now to use Trustly and functions of your own web bank. This makes acquiring money to Steam wallet easier for me. I am waiting for the weekend so I can sunk my teeth in Silent Hill f. I have now a new Windows 11 PC that I am going to play it on. The Xbox Series X version of the game was 10 euros cheaper but I prefer more power in the graphical end. So, I chose to get the PC version. Have a nice weekend, everyone!

The Push for New Hardware

Posted on by Viljami

What is the push for new hardware and where does this kind of thinking fit? What are some options for getting your hands on the latest hardware? Are you playing video games with older hardware? Where does emulating retro video game consoles fit right in this discussion? These are only some of the questions I am trying to answer in this latest blog post. I am happy to have you on board!

I was recently playing some PS2 games on my current PC setup. I started thinking about some modern games and how were they compared to these old PS2 games. There is just some deeper appeal in these so called retro games for me. I have also played lots of Xbox 360 games recently. One of these Xbox 360 games is Dirt 3 and there are many other good games that you can actually play on the latest Xbox, Xbox Series X, through its backwards compatibility.

For me the golden era of video games was, or is, the 2000s. Back in the day we had consoles like PS2, PS3, original Xbox and also Xbox 360 along with GameCube. Sega Dreamcast has to be also mentioned when it comes to the hardware of this golden era of gaming. There are also ways to run these games on emulators. So even after the hardware might be broken, that being the console or the actual game disc, you can still get back to playing games from this era. Today we are getting lots of power out of PCs. It is today possible to emulate Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware with a decently powerful, new, PC.

Why are we getting pushed for new hardware? This is a very good question. The hardware manufacturers have to sell some products. After all there would be no manufacturers if there weren’t new hardware products for them to sell. Also the software is getting sold mainly for same reasons. Without mentioning any specific company we can say that there are some facets that get profit from pushing the new hardware to us consumers that also are the gamers in this world.

What is enough when it comes to performance? We could have a device that would be roughly as powerful as a PS4 and that would actually provide all the power needed to run modern video games. One particular gaming console that has made a difference when it comes to performance was the first Nintendo Switch. in the recent years it couldn’t stand up against its greatest competitors.

Do we need new hardware so badly? For me the answer is actually no. You can have a ten year old PC that you would connect to a screen of any type and play the best games from 2000s with a brand new Xbox One controller and enjoy the golden era, according to my viewpoint, with this kind of a setup. We have some hobbyist that actually like to play with and fix old computers. Also many old PC games cannot be run with a modern PC at all. You might need an older operating system and also some old drivers for older hardware like graphics processing unit or an audio device.

I have had some tough luck with my older video game hardware. I have broken two PS2s, one original Xbox and also one Xbox 360 console. The main issue I’ve had was that the console isn’t somehow able to read the game disc anymore. This has everything to do with dust. Also original Xbox has some electrical components, condensers, actually, that are very sensitive to wearing down when time progresses. So, for me it is way more easier to just abandon a broken down console and turn to some emulation on a suitable PC.

These were some thoughts that I had in mind. They were appearing to me as I was playing some PS2 games as I told you in the beginning of this blog post. I ahve to say that I was actually playing Need for Speed – Hot Pursuit 2, but I just couldn’t find the original game to take a photo of. So you are going to have to be content with another great PS2 racing game Burnout 3 – Takedown. I actually do play my PS2 emulator games with this fresh Xbox Series S/X compatible game pad. It is very handy as a controller on a Windows PC.