Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: ps4

First touches of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 on PS4

Posted on by Viljami

I’m a big fan of THPS. I have been that way since the very first game that was released on PlayStation 1. So it’s not a big surprise I have been waiting for this remake to drop. I bought this remake two days ago. In this blog post I’m going through my feelings on this release. I have played only completed 50% of the first THPS so I have a lot to play. It’s been nice to find out that the game is basically a lot like it used to be. Oh the nostalgia!

When first THPS was released on PS1 you couldn’t do manuals. This feature has been added to the game. It’s not a bad thing. This game, or collection, if you want to say so, is a good remake. It doesn’t stand up as a full new game. It is, to me anyways, a very good remake. There are some limitations that were probably there when the original game was released. Those slight flaws are also ones that make the game what it is and what it always was. There could be another very good skateboarding game to be made. This is a very good remake of a very good original game. And I’m happy I got this for about 45 euros instead of, say, 65 euros.

I can recommend this collection even if you haven’t played original THPS one or two. It would be a nice introduction to this genre and maybe even an introduction to how gaming used to be in the days when THPS 1 and 2 were the newest games ever released. Three dimensional modelling has advanced greatly since the release of these original games. Back then it was easier to spot an object just because there were so few of them. I particularly noticed this one as I was trying to trash all the “no skating signs”. It was much more difficult to spot these signs.

All in all I am very pleased in this gaming product that was brought to us by Activision. I haven’t found anything that would disappoint me or make me unable to enjoy this experience. It’s nice to have a good PlayStation gamepad to play this game. I think DualShock 4 is way better to play this game than some earlier PlayStation controllers. I hope I find some time to play this game a lot more.

Connecting gamepad of PS4 to your PC

Posted on by Viljami

I have for a long time used Xbox Ones Elite gamepad for playing games on my PC. This is fine when dealing with PC games but when it comes to PCSX2, the emulator for PS2 games, I would like to play with a good gamepad that has buttons layed out correctly. What I mean is I would like to play with a PlayStation controller. It is kind of stupid for me to play PS2 with Xbox gamepad.

This is where a program called DS4Windows comes in to play. It is very simple to use. You just run the application and connect your DualShock 4 gamepad to your computer. You can use USB or Bluetooth connection. That’s right – you don’t need to connect your controller necessarily with Bluetooth since a USB cable works just fine. You can download this application from http://ds4windows.com/ .

I am planning on buying another DualShock 4 gamepad to use for this particular purpose. I currently only have one of these controllers. They are in my opinion a great way to somewhat make PS2 games more playble and modern. So the player can concentrate to the game instead of loosing interest as the gamepad is too bad. This can be a great improvement considering FPS games like Call Of Duty series’s games that were hardly as nice to play with older gmaepad like DualShock 2.

As PS5 will be released, I think it’s going to be sometime in November this year, there is a new controller introduced to large audience. It is called DualSense. I don’t have any experience, which in this case is understandable, of this new gamepad. I am a bit excited about it and I am curious of what kind of quality and playability it will have inside. There are some great differences between Xbox and PlayStation gamepads. One of the biggest is the layout of thumb sticks on these gamepads. I hope the new PS5 pad gives us many new improvements in technology of gaming controllers.

Making games is big business

Posted on by Viljami

Right now video games are more popular than ever. PlayStation 4 has now sold more than 110 million copies. Nintendo Switch has sold more copies than Nintendo Entertainment System. Switch and PS4 haven’t been around so long. Switch was released in 2017 and PS4 in 2013. Let’s think about this. NES was released in 1983 and the most popular and the most sold gaming console ever PS2 was released in 2000. So PS4 has been around only 7 years and Switch only 3 years. What will these figures be after 15 years? You don’t have to be any genius to figure out what’s going on. Games are popular. Making games, and selling them, is big business.

I sincerely hope that big game companies keep bringing more quality in form of good games to growing group of gamers. Making a HD remake is sometimes okay but where are the new innovations? I don’t meen big changes, such as virtual reality, but those small things that made video games of late 90s and early 2000s so great. Game developers would have to take time to experiment with a gaming console and find its limitations and opportunities. That would be a way to win my hearth back.

I have already said this. I don’t care how excited you are about PS5. I am not going to be one of the first ones to buy it. I bought PS4 back in 2014 and I was a bit disappointed in it. That just tells about me as a person a lot. It tells us about my history in gaming. I started messing around with video games well before I even bought my first console. That’s just where I’m form and that also tells a lot about in which direction I’m headed.

I am a bit worried. At the same time I am hoping the best. I keep buying PS4 titles for twenty euros and I have now about five or so games that I haven’t even opened up. I haven’t played them. I haven’t even installed them. Why did I buy them? I don’t know the right answer. I just hope we get some very good games in the future. I have to also get to my retro games at times to get the idea of what a perfect, or at least good, game is and why. And what gaming means to me…Well, there’s a lot to think about there…

The picture is a screenshot that I took from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles