steam sale: Summer camp special

[Cyborg]

Terraria for $2.50, excellent.

I'm surprised they discounted it that much. but yeah, if you haven't already, pick that up. I'm actually having fun with fate of the world and universe sandbox at the moment. I'm trying to match up real-life formulas with the results in the game. It seems like they have the Newtonian physics, everything you learn in a basic physics course; although some of the results appear to be calculating at the point of insertion. What I mean by this is, if you change the mass of an object in the middle of a simulation, or any other change, it doesn't really feel seamless. It could be user error, as I am new to it, but I'm getting a lot of slingshot effects that seem exaggerated.

[Nalgas]

Terraria for $2.50, excellent.

I'm surprised they discounted it that much. but yeah, if you haven't already, pick that up.

Yeah, I'm very, very surprised by that, too.  My friend was impatient and bought it for $7.50 earlier in the week and is kicking himself now, and I didn't bother stopping him and telling him to wait, because I figured there was no chance of them discounting it any further, because it's been selling so ridiculously well ever since it came out.  Shows how much I know.

[Cyborg]

Well, it's all over. I finished up at 27 tickets, as I found some low hanging achievement fruit on the final day (altitude, counterstrike, trine).  That was a lot of fun, and there are a lot of games I will be coming back to play again. There are some that are really for specific moods, like "and yet it moves." There's a game you really can't sit down and plow through.

spacechem wins the award for me for best hidden gem, a great puzzle game. Certainly the most challenging I have played; it's as deep as you want to make it and the research online puzzle area has a lot of great contributions. I like how the campaign missions are projects that you can work on at your own pace and solve little bits at a time when you feel like it.

Killing floor wins the most outrageous FPS award. It plays like gratuitous violence, with excellent dismemberment and player damage effects. This game doesn't pretend to be anything other than mayhem, violence, and outrageous destruction. Even geeks like me can enjoy something like this once in a while. I know that the Supreme Court was all up in everyone's business about violent games, but people have been playing with toy soldiers and creating imaginary armies since the dawn of time. This is just a more modern way of doing it. Crazy people will always exist; it's not the game's doing.

universe sandbox wins strangest new title. Mainly because it is not so much a game as it is a sandbox to try out new ideas, import your own models, and create systems either graphically using the mouse and keyboard or importing them from what appears to be XML. It's an academic kind of "game," for anyone who wonders "what if" or if they could create some galactic event simulation (you can!). It also has very weird simulation side effects. I will get a lot of mileage out of this one.

Alien breed 2: impact wins best DLC. The Zenith remnant is really the best value on the list, but alien breed 2: impact is a free game all by itself, so it wins just for that.

It was fun, great achievements, lots to do; I hope they do it again in the future.

[Nalgas]

I finished up at 27 tickets

Completely coincidentally, so did I.  Lots more than I expected.

There are some that are really for specific moods, like "and yet it moves." There's a game you really can't sit down and plow through.

I really wanted to like that game, because it's a good idea, but every time I've tried to play it I end up hating it more than the previous time.  It just feels unfinished in a frustrating way.  The controls are really loose, and some of the level design gets to be annoying in a "did anyone actually playtest this?" kind of way at times.  Still like the idea, just not what they did with it.

It was fun, great achievements, lots to do; I hope they do it again in the future.

Some of the achievements were great.  I had more fun getting the Defense Grid one than I did playing the game itself.  When I originally played it I got bored halfway through the campaign and stopped, but I really enjoyed the restrictions the achievement put on how the game is played.  On the other hand, the achievements for some other games were obnoxious because they depended entirely on things like the random number generator feeling generous or were otherwise terrible (see: most of Dejobaan's, like the "play the entire game from start to finish in one sitting" one).  Some people know how to come up with compelling/fun achievements.  Others really, really don't.  Some types of games also lend themselves better to stuff like that than others, I suppose.

[Echo35]

spacechem wins the award for me for best hidden gem, a great puzzle game. Certainly the most challenging I have played; it's as deep as you want to make it and the research online puzzle area has a lot of great contributions. I like how the campaign missions are projects that you can work on at your own pace and solve little bits at a time when you feel like it.

Ditto on that. I bought a lot of stuff, but Space Chem is a ton of fun. I have a big soft spot for puzzle games, and this one rocks. Very tough, challenging, well designed, and fun!

Killing floor wins the most outrageous FPS award. It plays like gratuitous violence, with excellent dismemberment and player damage effects. This game doesn't pretend to be anything other than mayhem, violence, and outrageous destruction. Even geeks like me can enjoy something like this once in a while.

I've had KF since it came out, and still play it a lot. It's completely ridiculous, over the top, insane, and a ton of fun. I play with my friends a lot. It has a very old school Doom like feel to it (Run and gun, blasting monsters, crazy violence and heavy hitting weapons), yet still has just enough to it that you can use tactics and teamwork. I always recommend this game to people looking for a good co-op shooter.

[Cyborg]

Some of the achievements were great.  I had more fun getting the Defense Grid one than I did playing the game itself.  When I originally played it I got bored halfway through the campaign and stopped, but I really enjoyed the restrictions the achievement put on how the game is played.  On the other hand, the achievements for some other games were obnoxious because they depended entirely on things like the random number generator feeling generous or were otherwise terrible (see: most of Dejobaan's, like the "play the entire game from start to finish in one sitting" one).  Some people know how to come up with compelling/fun achievements.  Others really, really don't.  Some types of games also lend themselves better to stuff like that than others, I suppose.

which games were using a random number generator? The worst that I saw was that toasted sandwich of time game and super meat boy achievements.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Bought Braid, Beat Hazard and Fate of the World, and gifted Trine.  Only got 15 tickets but oh well, been busy last week.  I had SpaceChem before this sale.

King

[Nalgas]

which games were using a random number generator? The worst that I saw was that toasted sandwich of time game and super meat boy achievements.

I'm pretty sure there was at least one more, but the only one I can remember off the top of my head without pulling up the list is "Summer of '69" for Worms, which required a worm starting a turn with 100 hp and and ending it with 69, so somehow taking damage in any combination that added up to 31.  People did work out some clever ways to do it where you could probably end up with it if you used the right weapons lined up with the right terrain features, but there's no guaranteed way to do it, and just playing the game normally it could take a while.

I suppose the Audiosurf one could also be said to depend on the RNG, because even if you do think ahead and use one of the "characters" that makes it easier/possible, you still have to hope that it's feeling nice to you and generates the powerup you need when you need it.  I got fairly lucky with that one, though.  I really feel like there were more than those two...

I actually would've done the Super Meat Boy one if my controller weren't busted.  At least that's something fun to do if you like the game to begin with, which I do.  Is it appropriate for the summer sale?  Not really.  Does it fit in perfectly with the sadism of the design of everything else in the game?  Absolutely!  Heh.

[Cyborg]

The achievement for super meat boy is devilish, and is appropriate for that game, but it was still a little too hard to accomplish compared to the other achievement. In regards to Worms, that really didn't take that long. That is not a random number. Actually, if you picture the board as a grid, it's a little bit easier to understand the way they are calculating damages. So to accomplish it, all you had to do was light a piece of dynamite and figure out how far away you are supposed to be standing/dropping, move in, move out, until you get to 31.

I like audiosurf, but I had no idea how to do that. I'm not particularly good at that game. I hope that the next version gets hooked up to Pandora.

[arcee]

The other Summer of 69, from Poker Night at the Inventory, was also random - but not as hard as it sounded, you just needed 2 of your final 7 cards to be 6 and 9 - I won with a straight, T7 -> 689 x x.

[Cyborg]

Bought Braid, Beat Hazard and Fate of the World, and gifted Trine.  Only got 15 tickets but oh well, been busy last week.  I had SpaceChem before this sale.

King

is beat hazard any good?

[Nalgas]

The other Summer of 69, from Poker Night at the Inventory, was also random - but not as hard as it sounded, you just needed 2 of your final 7 cards to be 6 and 9 - I won with a straight, T7 -> 689 x x.

Yes!  That's what I was thinking of.  It wasn't hard, but it did take me nearly half an hour before it felt like actually giving the cards to me, and that was after turning speech off, clicking through everything at high speed, and folding every opening hand that didn't have at least a 6 or 9.

is beat hazard any good?

I've had it for a while and find myself only playing it infrequently.  It's decent but not amazing, although there are some people who think it's great.  It feels like it goes for style over substance in some ways and gets a bit carried away with the flashy lights, to the point that it's hard to tell what's going on sometimes when you max out your powerups and it goes into full seizure mode (disclaimer: I actually do have photosensitive epilepsy, but Beat Hazard has never come close to triggering seizures in me, and it really does go nuts with the strobe effects).  You can turn down the effects so it's easier to see your ship, the enemies, and the powerups/multiplier pickups, but your score gets penalized for doing that, which is kind of lame, and without the constant strobing etc., you'll discover there's a bit less to it than something like Geometry Wars.

As far as games that generate gameplay based on music go, I prefer Audiosurf.  As far as dual-stick shooters go, I prefer...lots of things.  Even in the extremely small category of music-based shooters, I'd take Everyday Shooter over it, which is an amazing game, but that has the same (procedurally generated) music every time, so Beat Hazard still has its own niche.  It is good enough that I keep it installed in my "time killers" category and fire it up every few months, though, so that says something, I guess.  I haven't played the "ultra" addon/expansion yet, so I can't say how much that adds to or improves it, but I picked it up in the sale.

[Cyborg]

Okay, that's right, I have played beat hazard- for 10 seconds. It assaulted my eyes. I couldn't handle it. I liked everyday shooter, but it got boring fast.

[Nalgas]

I liked everyday shooter, but it got boring fast.

It's not something I'm in the mood for all the time, or even very much of the time, but when I am, I really like it.  I think I do have a certain bias toward liking it because I came up with a very, very similar idea a couple years before he made it but was never able to do anything with it because it was right before I got the whole seizure thing diagnosed, so I was pretty much disabled at the time with it completely untreated.

It was a little disappointing at first to see someone else make it first, but then after about five minutes it was mostly just fun getting to check out all the neat little ways he'd come up with completely different approaches to the same basic idea compared to what I'd been thinking of.  And he gets a hojillion bonus points for making a game with that type of procedural music system that does not use electronic music.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Bought Braid, Beat Hazard and Fate of the World, and gifted Trine.  Only got 15 tickets but oh well, been busy last week.  I had SpaceChem before this sale.

King

is beat hazard any good?

Its well made, but I had bought it in the intention of getting it as an "arcade" style game.  One of those, pick-up-and-play-for-15-minutes-of-mindless-fun types.  I have a small collection that I will rotate through.  Mostly because some days, I really do not feel like playing deep games like Ai War or STALKER, which I'm playing right now.  So in order to blow off steam, (haha, get it? ) I'll grab one of these games and just have at it. 

But to answer the question, its good for the cheap price I got it.  I wouldn't have paid more than $10 for it (which is funny enough the price it is regularly).  I'm not going to recommend it more than just its just a good, mindless entertainment that is interactive, but it will assault your eyes so be wary of that. 

King