And so...the Steam sale begins.

[Volatar]

I liked it so much I bought a second copy. I can't wait to give it to my little sister tomorrow. 

[chemical_art]

Glad you liked Burnout.

This iteration of it is different from the previous ones. This one is less...structured...no...its more free. I remember a race where 85% of it I was away from the racing pack, then in the home stretch I met them. I was boosting the whole time so I knew I took the inefficient route, but I still came out on top.

This one is very free, yet it maintains the Burnout Essence of just drive, and the pieces will follow you. Yes, you can hit that suv and still win. Yes, you can take a slighly inefficent route and still win the time trail. No, you can't win if you make a mistake unless you take some skill to make up for it.

Also, the "required" specs are wonky. It said I needed 2.6 cpu? I did not drop at all with a 2.0 cpu, but at the same time my gpu is 512mb. I was worried, but thankfully the game at least on lowest settings run great. Will try medium next time.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Published my review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, it just so happens that its on deep sale as I mentioned earlier . No but seriously, I had planned on publishing this review tonight and it just so happened to go on sale. That is crazy timing for me.

http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/my-review-deus-ex-human-revolution/

Enjoy!

[BobTheJanitor]

Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines is on flash sale now. It's kind of disappointing to see it go on sale overnight when it's least likely to be noticed, but if any euros are around maybe you'll be interested. It's a fantastic RPG marred by the fact that it was rushed out half finished. Half the dev team came back in and worked an extra week or so, unpaid, just to push through a desperation bug fix patch. Poor, poor troika studios. Anyway, there are fan patches now that make it perfectly playable (don't try it without them, though). If you like semi-open heavily story and character driven RPGs (think sort of like DX:HR) then I highly recommend it. It is filled to overflowing with memorable characters, fantastic voice work (John DiMaggio and Phil LaMarr, if that means anything to you), great locations, good mood-setting music, and a really good story with multiple endings, none of which feel forced.

It's a tragedy that the original developers probably don't see a dime from any sales and that Activision gets it all, but regardless it's still a worthy purchase. It's pretty rare to see it go on sale, as well. I think since the last big sale event, it might have been a daily deal once? Maybe not even that. Don't miss it.

[zebramatt]

Regarding movie/games, you should try Asura's Wrath on the Xbox360/PS3: it's twelve hours long with DLC and about an hour of that is 'gameplay', including QTEs. But if you're into ludicrously over-the-top anime, man it's awesome!

Fair warning on magicka. If you have an integrated graphics card, it won't work at all. Despite not really being the prettiest game.

It runs on my desktop's integrated graphics card, but it runs quite slow.  I'm relatively used to adjusting to games that play in "seconds per frame" on that machine, but Magicka wouldn't work that way because it's pretty timing-dependent.

My laptop's integrated graphics outspec the recommended requirements for Magicka by a wide margin but it simply won't run. Fires up, black screen, closes down. I asked Paradox about it and they pretty much told me that the game detects my card isn't a supported chipset and gives up the ghost without even trying! Nice.

I don't like any of the Indie Bundle games, they are just meh, don't really appeal to me.

Jamestown, Revenge of the Titans and VVVVVV are all actually a lot of fun, though they are all fairly difficult.

Those are three games out of my 350+ which I've actually played! And enjoyed thoroughly, although VVVVVV is stupidly difficult (which I quite like but still). Capsized I also really like. It's weird, it even looks weird, and it's a bit disjointed - but it's like a Metroid meets Metal Slug... yet different. Oh, it's worth a couple of quid; just go play it! (I also hear good things about Zeno Clash.)

[MouldyK]

Thank you very much for the heads up on the sale. I highly doubt I can play it with my current specs, but for 4 bucks I'll secure it for future use.

I have an NVidia 8600 GTS (2007 card). I set the game on high with 2xAA and it didn't drop a frame. They did a really good job on porting this.

Driving feels so... good. I don't know how to describe it, but it's the best feeling racing game I have played. Dropped two hours on it without even noticing. Game progression is really freeform unlike many other games. There wasn't a single moment where I felt I had to do something perfect to continue. In fact, I pretty much just drove around smashing things and doing races and I progressed without noticing.

...plus, the collectables for me were fun to hunt 2-4 years ago because of the driving.

Love me some collectables in games. -goes to find the rest in Batman: Arkham Asylum-

[KingIsaacLinksr]

So today, we have some interesting choices:

Beat Hazard is fun for what it is, I don't play it anymore, but I enjoyed the hours I put into it.
Bit.Trip Runner is just too hard for me to enjoy, but it is well made and has an a good soundtrack.


2nd hand knowledge:
I hear Eufloria is an interesting audiovisual experience
Quantum Conundrum...just not my favorite idea of fun, precision platforming in the first person experience seems like that could get frustrating fast. I watched some reviews/let's plays on this game, just didn't grab my attention. It is voiced by John "Q" de Lancie.
Batman Arkham City is apparently pretty good, I played Arkham Asylum and found it to be "ok".
Torchlight is also apparently pretty good.
I seem to recall that Fable III was considered awful. But I'm not 100% certain if this is the game I'm thinking of.

Pretty varied sale today though.

[Volatar]

ArmA II Combined Operations is now on daily deal at 40% off.

This is the last game I have wanted out of this sale. I wanted so long and my waiting paid off.

[madcow]

I think its pretty funny that Arma2 had been on steam's top ten throughout the week despite not having a particularly good deal on it (until now). It makes a great case for how allowing mods can help a game out in sales.

Also, King's Bounty is one of the community choice options. I had been hoping to see it as a deal, so please vote for it if you can! The other two games had both been daily deals before.

[keith.lamothe]

Arma2 has been basically on top of the steam sales charts for what feels like months, due to the popularity of the DayZ mod.

My guess is that they've been consistently raking in a quarter of a million dollars every day for a while, but that may be rather an overestimate

[Coppermantis]

So today, we have some interesting choices:

Beat Hazard is fun for what it is, I don't play it anymore, but I enjoyed the hours I put into it.
Bit.Trip Runner is just too hard for me to enjoy, but it is well made and has an a good soundtrack.


2nd hand knowledge:
I hear Eufloria is an interesting audiovisual experience
Quantum Conundrum...just not my favorite idea of fun, precision platforming in the first person experience seems like that could get frustrating fast. I watched some reviews/let's plays on this game, just didn't grab my attention. It is voiced by John "Q" de Lancie.
Batman Arkham City is apparently pretty good, I played Arkham Asylum and found it to be "ok".
Torchlight is also apparently pretty good.
I seem to recall that Fable III was considered awful. But I'm not 100% certain if this is the game I'm thinking of.

Pretty varied sale today though.

I played the Quantum Conundrum Demo, it wasn't all platforming. There's a fair amount of regular portal-esque puzzles in there as well. The narration is funny as well, I recommend it for puzzle fans, at such a low price there's not much to lose.

Eufloria is fun as well it's a space battle game but presented in the most different fashion that I've ever seen. Pretty calming.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I tried Eufloria out and its got quite a bit of interesting stuff, I just wish the music appealed to me more, then I probably would have gotten it.

[chemical_art]

Going back to burnout, it is odd how my taste in music for racing games are. I divide it into 2 categories subconciously:

Gran Turismo (realistic driving) and everything else (arcade driving)

My first racing game was Destruction Derby 2 for the PS1. I knew it was arcady. The music was very metalish. Here is a good example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZiHgQvXTF0&feature=relmfu

After that I got Grand Turismo. I didn't like the music so much, but I did like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QKYnHJ-dck

My next game was Test Drive 5. I absolutely loved the instrumental version of it, and is among my favorite driving songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1BY03GAClQ&feature=related

Then Gran Turismo 4 came along and came with the most over the top yet awesome song ever. It may be mean, but its how I imagine Japanese video game music. Completely over the top, melodramatic, literally the fate of the world is at stake, and awesome enough to justify it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV8m37_2Y6w

Then I heard paradise paradise...and I cringed. It's not bad, just not what I'm used to listening to! I want my instrumentals or ominous chorus chanting! My original favorites of music while growing up has forever altered what I think racing music should be!

[zebramatt]

2nd hand knowledge:
I hear Eufloria is an interesting audiovisual experience

Yup, it scratches a certain RTS-meets-puzzler itch in a wonderfully serene way.

Quantum Conundrum...just not my favorite idea of fun, precision platforming in the first person experience seems like that could get frustrating fast. I watched some reviews/let's plays on this game, just didn't grab my attention. It is voiced by John "Q" de Lancie.

I'd recommend this to fans of Portal in a second. As Coppermantis says, the platforming elements never stray much beyond those you might have encountered in Half Life or Portal.

Batman Arkham City is apparently pretty good, I played Arkham Asylum and found it to be "ok".

I'm yet to dedicate much time to it - but it's basically all that was good from Arkham Asylum thrown into an open world Gotham City. It's oozing atmosphere and is really fun to play.

Torchlight is also apparently pretty good.

The base game is this decade's answer to Diablo. If you're at all into modding it takes on a whole other level of awesome. So many hours on this one last year!

I seem to recall that Fable III was considered awful. But I'm not 100% certain if this is the game I'm thinking of.

Fable I and II are aces but yes, III is... not so much.


Machinarium is a really interesting point and click -ish adventure. I'd recommend that one.

If I weren't on a games purchasing embargo I might pick up Evochron Mercenary. I hear the graphics and narration are ropey; the learning curve is harsh and out of whack; the universe is often directionless; and it's generally a bit rough around the edges. But for a fiver the practically limitless massive galaxy is pretty tempting.

And if there are any Star Wars fans who haven't played Knights of the Old Republic, I can recommend it for a couple of quid!

[chemical_art]

I've tried Evochron legends...

It has an awesome flight model. You can turn on and off inertial thrusters, so you can speed along and then turn 90 degrees and thus do a strafing run.

But the universe is empty. REALLY empty.

And progress seems odd. I remember there was an asteroid mission. After 30 minutes of work, I made 10k credits. Unfortunately, fuel ate up 5k of them. I then tried to look for a more varied mission but couldn't find any.

The game feels like a great blueprint but not fleshed out.\


X3 is better in every way except for Evochrons flight model. If only X3 allowed you to disable your thrusters in smaller craft so you can turn while still being able to drift, then it would be better in every way.