Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: xbox series x

Xbox Series X Has a Nice Backwards Compatibility (But Far From Full)

Posted on by Viljami

My Xbox 360 has been suffering. It doesn’t read game discs anymore. Otherwise it is fully functional. I tried opening it a bit through the disc unit as was insturcted on an official guideline I found from internet. I read from the guide that you should first power the device off, remove all cables and then try to push the wheel of the disc unit so that it opens up a bit. This was instructed to do with paper clip that has been straightened. Then you should bloww some compressed air to it.

I did mangae to do this and it fixed the problem. I was able to start a game once again. Then some weeks went by. I wasn’t playing anything with my Xbox 360. I played my other game conmsoles. As you might know Xbox 360 has a backwards compatiblity with original Xbox games. 463 games out of all 996 published are backwards compatible. We can make a quick calculation and find out that this makes 46,5 % of all games that were published for original Xbox.

If you think about PS3 and PS4 and their backwards compatibility you can propably figure how differently Microsoft and Sony deal with this issue. PS4 wasn’t at any moment backwards compatible at all. This pissed off some people. You were able to play PS1 games on PS3. Some PS3 models you are able to play also PS2 games with. PS5 however has limited backwards compatibility for PS4 games.

Xbox Series X, the latest Xbox, is fully compatible with older Xbox consoles’s games. However every game is not supported. There are 63 original Xbox games out of 996 and 633 out of 2155 Xbox 360 games compatible with the latest Xbox console. Xbox Series S doesn’t even have a disc drive so apparently it doesn’t support older consoles’s game discs. All Xbox One games are compatible with Series X.

With this information available I decided to remove my oddly acting Xbox 360 from my current setup. This meant actually that I had to remove also tens of games from my lineup. I like to keep every game that I am able to play with any console in my setup in this huge shelf. I had to remove many Xbox and Xbox 360 games.

I have now only six original Xbox games left in that shelf. The picture related to this post shows my current games that I am able to play with my Xbox Series X. I didn’t count the games that I removed so carefully. I think I set aside maybe 70 games in total. I had to put games like Halo 1 and 2, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4 and many others to storage. These were games that I haven’t had time to get into thoroughly.

I would like to be able to play every game that has ever been released for any Xbox system. This is just the way that things go. You are updating your setup and getting into some new or retro consoles. You don’t actually play every game that you own. Some games and systems you just have to set aside at least for a while. Xbox 360 is an old gaming console. It was first released in 2005. I bought my Xbox 360 as a used copy. This was about six years ago. So maybe it was time for me to move on.

Games do get old. Systems do get old. There are many games that you just can’t play, buy or enjoy in any way no more. I think there should be something that could be done to this issue of great games just disappearing somewhere. We seem to be still moving so fast forward that we can easily completely forget a nice old game.

I don’t know the exact answer to this question. Will there be in the future some websites or collectins of old games. Are we going to be able to finally play these games with an emulator? Would it be nice to have a museum that could hold many old games? I know that there are already some websites that are dedicated to old Commodre 64 games. They have archived thousands of games which are also available as downloads.

There cetainly is some knowledge about gaming that also I as a gamer have been able to develop in myself. From the moment when I first gazed at a video game in some arcade I have been curious to find out more about games. I went as far as studying the field. I dreamed I would be able to make a game or something similar. And I think I am not alone with my knowledge and I think this is an interesting topic all in all.

Nothing Special to See Here

Posted on by Viljami

This image here is a screenshot from Forza Horizon 5. I am playing it currently on my Xbox Series X. I bought it recently as a digital copy. It cost me about 40 euros. I was happy that I didn’t have to pay more for it. It isn’t the newest racing game after all.

I bought also some other games. I noticed that there are some Xbox 360 and original Xbox games available as digital copy and they were on a discount also. So, I picked up some more games. There were 9 games all in all. I picked up Red Faction II, The Darkness, Contra, Vampyr, Flashback, Call of Cthulhu, Crimson Skies – High Road to Revenge, FH5 and Gears of War 4. This cost me only about 75 euros. I saved over 100 euros. If you can call spending money saving money. Well, I think we can.

Some people are talking and even worrying about spending too much money buying gaming stuff. I don’t think gaming would be different from any other hobby that you have to spend money in. You need equipment in sports. You need money if you drive a car. How is gaming different? This talk about money makes me think about some of these big game releases. We can take the latest Zelda game for example. It is Tears of the Kingdom. I think they have a huge marketing budget. This is reality. It is so because I did saw a commercial on a bus stop just some weeks ago. I don’t remember seeing a game advertised on a bus stop here in a long period of time. If this has happened earlier, I don’t remember what the game might have been.

Forza Horizon 5 is already an old game. It isn’t actually old. Its just not the newest game providing racing and entertainment. I decided to start playing it because I hadn’t done it earlier. It has received some good ratings. It would take me at least 20 hours of time to finish it. Or so tells the well-known website named “How Long to Beat”. This is my preferred website if I want to seek information about how long does a game last. Some times, like in the case of Diablo II – Resurrected, I have noticed that it takes me some more time to complete a game than what is told on this website. If you want to see the website, just use your favorite search engine. As you might have noticed I don’t promote any special search engine.

I am hoping to enjoy some more Forza Horizon 5. I hope that I can finish it some day soon. I have spent already maybe 5 hours playing it. There is, as is usual today, many different areas of interest in this game. There’s a lot going on. We have definitely more than a racing game  here. I hope to continue playing it and to explore its content as thoroughly as is possible.

About Modern PC Controllers

Posted on by Viljami

This blog post deals with controllers for PC. I have used these three different gamepads for gaming on Windows 10. I don’t know, exactly, how these controllers work in Linux gaming. So, that part is out of the context of this post. Let’s get to it!

There are three, mainly, three controllers I have used. They are Sony Dualshock 4, the controller of PS4, Microsoft Elite Pad, that is designed for Xbox One and, my latest addition, PDP Neon Carbon that is used, mainly, with Xbox Series S/X. All these gamepads can be used with Windows 10.

Dualshock 4 (the red controller in the image) needs an app so it can be used. That app is DS4Windows. This gamepad works very well with PC. Only thing that is really annoying is the mapping of buttons. As I have learned by my experience, Windows apps tend to map controllers as Xbox One or Xbox Series S/X controllers. This is a bit irritating. I think this issue can be solved. There are for example USB dongles that can be used as a solution. As I noticed this problem I had a quick fix for it already – I changed to my oldest gamepad that is Elite Pad (the one in the middle in the image).

Buttons have been configured correctly when you are using Xbox One’s gamepad. It is often taken care that a controller that can be used in a Xbox Series console will be compatible with Windows also. I think you can even take a Xbox 360 controller and plug it in so you can use it to play with a PC.

By the way, all these controllers I have been using have had a wired connection. I haven’t even tried to get bluetooth to work with these. Why would I do that? My desktop doesn’t even have a bluetooth itself. I use a bluetooth dongle for a wireless connection whenever there is a need for such. It also seems that all these three controllers have a USB-to-micro-USB connection. Even the third gamepad, that is meant for new Series X, also sports a micro-USB, instead of the most popular, USB-C. This however makes only a little difference. And basically all you need is a cable that has about a metre or one and a half metres of lenght.

So, I was very involved in this and I was using the Elite Pad. It is of a very good quality. It was expensive and it has served well over ten years of use. After all, it started to break down a bit. There was a part, that I think was originally glued to its place, that I had to remove. It was sticking out and the controller didn’t fit so nicely anymore. I decided to get a newer controller. Of course my thoughts were to buy a controller of Xbox Series X. I had some thoughts about DualSense, but since Xbox and Windows go well together, I decided to go for the Xbox on this one.

It first seemed that the replaicment would definitely be a combo of wired and wireless. It would be an Xbox Series X controller. I first thought that I would buy the official controller. I made my way to a store. I found out that they were actually out of these controllers. I noticed an optional model. It actually was this PDP Xbox Series X controller.

The controller was only 45 euros or so. So it was 20 euros cheaper than the official controller. When it comes to gaming this kind of a swing can be a gamechanger. And that’s how it was for me in this situation. I got the gamepad and went home as a happy duude.

First thing I noticed with this controller was that it doesn’t have a battery included. It is a wired controller. It has a functionality and you can remove the cord. This might seem useless but it actually makes sense in a way. You can replace the cord if you are on the move or if it gets damaged in some way. It is very light. The feel is awesome. I like this controller and I haven’t noticed anything to complain about. It is compatible with Windows 10 and you don’t necessarily need any app to use it in this way. There is some sort of an app avvailable as a donwload.

We can have a tiny summary here out of this blog post. I am very content on my new controller. It is a nice update to my old Elite Pad. I have to say that Elite Pad really served very well for its price of 130 euros. It has an option to load a battery in it. It also has some adjustments and a bit of weight for the controller to feel good. It was although time to move on with it. You can also try to use PlayStation controllers with a PC. Some games might feel better this way. I didn’t go through Linux or Mac gaming in this blog post but as you can probably figure there is a wholea other world in that way also.