Steam Holiday 2010 sales chatter

polypusher wrote:

This is the first I've heard of LogMeIn. Does it actually perform well enough to play a game?

Not feasible for live action or anything reaction based. Also the free version doesn't push the audio through to the client, but a turn-based mostly static screen? No problem! Playing Crack Heroin squares I can watch the grids draw in when the screen updates, but it's not like I'm trying to headshot fast-moving targets.
Beats getting fired for installing Steam on my work computer.

Stele wrote:
polypusher wrote:

Quick Poll: What steam games you got from the sale have you been playing for any significant amount of time since the 2009 Christmas sale ended ?

Oh I didn't see that. 2009.

Oh, purchases during the 2009 sale, played since the 2009 sale? Well, I purchased Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds Survivor, Mirror's Edge, Plants vs. Zombies and Torchlight in that time. I've played all of those games to their endings, and grown my tree in PvZ to 73' tall and played many levels of the endless dungeon in Torchlight. So, nothing to complain about here. I've gotten my money's worth. All $19 of it.

One thing I'll say about Darksiders, is that it's probably got the best art direction since Prince of Persia 2008 in terms of how good the world look for the horsepower outlay. Technically there's nothing too clever going on, but how well all the art works together looks gorgeous, everything has care and attention. And on PC great performance maxed out and practically no loading once you're in the game.

I didnt write 2009, some ninja did ><

polypusher wrote:

I didnt write 2009, some ninja did ><

Well both are valid questions. What new stuff have you played in the past 2 weeks, and what new stuff last year did you bother to play in 12 months since.

It gives some perspective and tells you whether you should buy more/less at the next Steam sale.

Stele wrote:

It gives some perspective and tells you whether you should buy more/less at the next Steam sale. ;)

The Horror!

Christmas Sale 2009 I bought:

* Crysis Complete
* Sniper Elite
* Star Wars: KOTOR
* Hitman: Blood Money
* Braid
* Medieval II: Total War

I played Crysis, Sniper, and Hitman but not the others.

This year, I bought:

* Mafia II
* Divinity II - Dragon Knight Saga
* Dead Space
* X3: Terran Conflict
* Altitude
* AI War: Fleet Command
* F.E.A.R.: Ultimate Shooter Edition

I'm worried that I won't play AI War or X3:TC because they're not the kinds of game I usually play. I typically don't like "scary" games, so Dead Space might not get much love, either. I am playing and enjoying Mafia II and FEAR quite a bit already, though.

Stele wrote:
polypusher wrote:

I didnt write 2009, some ninja did ><

Well both are valid questions. What new stuff have you played in the past 2 weeks, and what new stuff last year did you bother to play in 12 months since.

It gives some perspective and tells you whether you should buy more/less at the next Steam sale. ;)

I play a ton, and finish very few. I do tend to finish FPS for some reason. But I'll still buy a bunch this year too. Guess I have a problem

Cragmyre wrote:

I got ME2 as a gift, but have never finished ME, so I've been playing that too - not gotten from this sale, but related to it :)

Me too, just finished it today in fact and am now moving straight onto ME2 as I've been enjoying it so much.

Oh, and thanks to whoever mentioned Everday Genius: SquareLogic about 10 minutes before the sale ended, I've now lost 9 hours of my life because of that and aren't close to being finished. Getting the message that I've unlocked an additional 787 new puzzles for every 12-13 I complete really isn't encouraging either...

Apologize for the length in advance. I was compelled to do this other than game for what reason...?

Steam Thanksgiving - Total $4.99

Indie Story Pack - And Yet It Moves, Gish, Puzzle Agent, Jolly Rover, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

Steam Treasure Hunt - Total $1.25

Chime

No Steam Sale - Total $13.49

Monday Night Combat

Steam Holiday - Total $77.79

Super Meat Boy
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Lara Croft and the Guardian Of Light
BioShock 2
Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition
AI War: Fleet Command
Dirt 2
Rush
Archon Classic
The Ball
Greed Corp
Lucasarts Jedi Knight Bundle
FarCry 2

Steam Gifts - Total $39.38

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Puzzle Quest x 2
Bioshock 2
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Dead Space
Swords and Soldiers HD
Greed Corp
Shatter
Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers

Steam Total - $136.90

Other Distributors - Total $121.33
Age of Empires III: Complete Collection
Joe Danger
Drawn: The Painted Tower
Shadowrun
Viva Pinata
DJ Hero 2 Bundle
Mecho Wars
Pac-Man DX
Um Jammer Lammy
Humble Indie Bundle
Infamous
Drawn: Dark Flight
Royal Envoy

Other Gifts - Total $36.17

Minecraft x 2
Humble Indie Bundle x 2
Eliss
Game Dev Story
Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor
Osmos
Cut the Rope

Grand Total Millipede - $294.40

How has someone failed to post this?
http://store.steampowered.com/video/...

Biggest disappointments from the sale - MIA
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Guild Wars Trilogy

Regret
King Arthur Pack

obirano wrote:

Side note: I remember seeing it in this thread before, but what is the keyboard shortcut to make something run in windowed mode? I did that to Dirt 2 at some point and can't for the life of me get it back to full screen.

Alt+Tab

chaosmos wrote:

Okay, okay, even though the demo scared the bejesus out of me, I'm buying Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It seems like a great little indie developer, so at the very least I want to support them making their next, hopefully significantly less terrifying game.

According to an interview they suggested their next game would be a departure. Whether that means mood, or genre, I do not know.

Budo wrote:

1. Of all the games in your list, which is the one you are playing or will play first?

Both Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition.

Budo wrote:

2. Which of your new purchases will sit on the pile the longest (not including repurchases of games you've already played).

Lucasarts Jedi Knight Bundle

Budo wrote:

3. Which game(s) you bought were enabled by someone else?

AI War: Fleet Command
I have some interest in it, but the way in which some are passionate about it and its developer lead me to check it out.

Nightmare wrote:
polypusher wrote:

Quick Poll: What steam games you got from the sale have you been playing for any significant amount of time since the 2009 Christmas sale ended ?

I'd be interested in hearing this too.

Played and beat Dead Space and The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned.

Played a good amount of Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Osmos, Defense Grid: The Awakening, Mass Effect (Beat it previous to), and Braid.

Played little of Grand Theft Auto IV (Terrible port hardware-wise), Cogs, Shattered Horizon, Luxor 3, and Zombie Driver.

Haven't played Prey (Beat it previous to), Jade Empire (Played most of it previous to), Mr. Robot, Max Payne Bundle (Beat them previous to), Multiwinia + Darwinia, Rome: Total War Gold, Lucasarts Adventure Bundle, and Sniper Elite.

polypusher wrote:

Quick Poll: What steam games you got from the sale have you been playing for any significant amount of time since the sale ended?

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition. I'd like to play Super Meat Boy more but the game seems to have some technical problems that I'm not interested in dealing with at the moment.

Nightmare wrote:
polypusher wrote:

Quick Poll: What steam games you got from the sale have you been playing for any significant amount of time since the 2009 Christmas sale ended ?

I'd be interested in hearing this too.

Civ IV, Torchlight, PVZ from last year. edit: also the 2nd Bookworm Adventures.
Only spent about a half hour with Fallout: NV from this year's crop (yeah that's right: barely through character creation given how difficult it is to wrangle something non-ugly out of the face-creator. And unless they've vastly improved the 3rd person view, I'll be playing mostly in 1st person anyway so why does it matter blah blah blah)

From the Christmas 2009 sale? Let me pull up my Steam account...

I've played Torchlight, part of the King's Quest collection, part of the LucasArts adventure bundle, Osmos, and Chains.

I haven't really played Cogs, The Secret of Monkey Island, anything from the Space Quest collection, X-Com, AI War, Gratuitous Space Battles, or anything at all from the iD pack.

Your point is well-taken, tboon.

polypusher wrote:

Quick Poll: What steam games you got from the sale have you been playing for any significant amount of time since the 2009 Christmas sale ended ?

Given that I picked up over 100 of my 140 games during the 2009 sale, the answer is none :oops:. I put in 25+ hours in Dragon Age: Origins which I bought just before the 2009 sale, but most of that was spent playing thru the Human Origin story twice and when it consistently crashed for me after entering Denerim, I just gave up.

What steam games you got from the sale have you been playing for any significant amount of time since the sale ended?

I played about a dozen or so levels in PB Winterbottom, and considering I only paid 49¢ for it, I got my money's worth.

I also played and finished Mafia II. Put in about 18 hours total, give or take. It could've been a better game (more open-world/sandbox things to do), but I really enjoyed it for $12.50. I also bought the Joe's Adventures DLC for $2.50, so I'll probably play that next before moving on to the next Steam sale game.

Most of my purchases this Steam sale were either indie bundles to get one or two titles that I was curious about, or double-dips for the convenience of having a game I already own for another platform or on disc available through my Steam collection, so my list of stuff I've put significant time into since the sale is pretty limited.

I played through Spectromancer's campaign; it is, as advertised, an addictive little card game that scratches some of the same itch as Magic The Gathering. I was disappointed by the lack of any significant customization or deck-building options, though; with MtG:DotP I expected it because I didn't expect them to cannibalize their foil-wrapped-packets-of-cardboard sales by offering as complete an experience on the PC, but it would've been nice to be able to at least choose my "loadout" in Spectromancer instead of getting (as far as I could tell) a random selection of cards of each mana type going into each battle. Also, there doesn't seem to be a lot of variety after you beat the campaign; you can start over as a different class, but this only swaps out the fifth "special" mana type for another one, meaning that you're playing with 80% identical cards. Given the price I paid for it, I certainly got plenty of entertainment for my money, but I also wound up sucking it up and double-dipping to have Duel of the Plainswalkers on my PC after I was done and found myself still hungry for more card-slinging fun.

The other game I've been playing is New Vegas. I'm only a few hours in, still tooling around Goodsprings, but I've been having a good time so far. I haven't had any major stability or performance issues as of yet; I played F3 on the 360 so I was interested in trying out some mods this time around, so I installed a UI mod that makes the menus take better advantage of the higher-rez PC display, a Realistic Lighting and Color mod, one that lets you continue exploring and doing side quests after the main quest ends (honestly, Bethesda, HOW did you not learn your lesson after having to patch this into Fallout 3 post-release?), and the New Vegas port of the F3 Civil Defense Radio mod that adds a new radio station with a bunch of songs. All the mods made my frame rate dip a little (or maybe it's just because I'm exploring large outdoor areas now), but my next session I'll try dropping my AA setting by a level and see if that balances things out again.

hbi2k wrote:

I played through Spectromancer's campaign; it is, as advertised, an addictive little card game that scratches some of the same itch as Magic The Gathering. I was disappointed by the lack of any significant customization or deck-building options, though; with MtG:DotP I expected it because I didn't expect them to cannibalize their foil-wrapped-packets-of-cardboard sales by offering as complete an experience on the PC, but it would've been nice to be able to at least choose my "loadout" in Spectromancer instead of getting (as far as I could tell) a random selection of cards of each mana type going into each battle. Also, there doesn't seem to be a lot of variety after you beat the campaign; you can start over as a different class, but this only swaps out the fifth "special" mana type for another one, meaning that you're playing with 80% identical cards. Given the price I paid for it, I certainly got plenty of entertainment for my money, but I also wound up sucking it up and double-dipping to have Duel of the Plainswalkers on my PC after I was done and found myself still hungry for more card-slinging fun.

Spectromancer is also the game I've spent the most time with. I haven't completed the campaign yet as I'm playing two different characters on two different machines. Have you tried any multiplayer duels and how well do they work? I have a strong feeling that most of the tactics I'm using against the AI would get squashed by a real person. I was going to quickly drop into their multiplayer servers and give it a shot, but haven't yet created an account on their servers.

I bought the Indie Fantasy Pack, largely for Spectromancer (which I've really enjoyed). I'd heard some snarky comments about Faerie Solitaire, so I had to try it.

I have no idea why anyone would make fun of this game. This game is utterly epic. Finally, I feel like I've achieved some closure in life, and that one of the all-time great, unresolved questions in the universe has finally been answered:

"What is, without question, the least necessary adventure mode ever imagined for a game".

It's solitaire. SOLITAIRE! WHY AM I RELEASING FAERIES? WHY ARE THERE TWO SENTENCES OF BADLY-SPOKEN VOICE-OVER BETWEEN WHAT CAN CHARITABLY BE CALLED LEVELS? WHY???

It's not that it's bad, it's that IT'S SOLITAIRE! It's just dumb. I spent an hour at lunch playing it, just for the morbid fascination of seeing if anything would happen. It doesn't. I am hard-pressed to even imagine a more pointless "game".

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I bought the Indie Fantasy Pack, largely for Spectromancer (which I've really enjoyed). I'd heard some snarky comments about Faerie Solitaire, so I had to try it.

I have no idea why anyone would make fun of this game. This game is utterly epic. Finally, I feel like I've achieved some closure in life, and that one of the all-time great, unresolved questions in the universe has finally been answered:

"What is, without question, the least necessary adventure mode ever imagined for a game".

It's solitaire. SOLITAIRE! WHY AM I RELEASING FAERIES? WHY ARE THERE TWO SENTENCES OF BADLY-SPOKEN VOICE-OVER BETWEEN WHAT CAN CHARITABLY BE CALLED LEVELS? WHY???

It's not that it's bad, it's that IT'S SOLITAIRE! It's just dumb. I spent an hour at lunch playing it, just for the morbid fascination of seeing if anything would happen. It doesn't. I am hard-pressed to even imagine a more pointless "game".

But did you hatch any eggs and raise any pets?!? Those pets do absolutely nothing for you in the game. Yet I still play, and I still raise the pets. If anything I'll get some Steam Achievements for doing so

Cragmyre wrote:

But did you hatch any eggs and raise any pets?!? Those pets do absolutely nothing for you in the game. Yet I still play, and I still raise the pets. If anything I'll get some Steam Achievements for doing so :)

Yes, I did. And I have no idea why.

I'm beginning to think this is some sort of post-modern Dadaist expression of the confusion engendered by technology in our lives. It's the gaming equivalent of a urinal as art.

polypusher wrote:

Quick Poll: What steam games you got from the sale have you been playing for any significant amount of time since the 2009 Christmas sale ended ?

Well, let's figure it out together shall we?
(played/total games)

Crysis Complete (NA) ----- Crysis Completed. Warhead Never Played. (1/2)

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne ----- Completed. (2/3)

Time Gentlemen, Please! - Unplayed (2/4)
Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box - Played, found not to my taste. (3/5)
Torchlight - Played 8 hours or so. (4/6)

IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 - Played for a couple hours. (5/7)
Grand Theft Auto IV (US/AU) Played, never completed. (6/8)
Audiosurf - Played. (7/9)
Oddworld Abes Oddysee - Tried to play, never got past third screen or so. (7/10)
Abe's Exoddus - Unplayed (7/11)
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition - Played, never completed. (8/12)
Sniper Elite - Played a tiny bit but not enough to feel satisfied. (8/13)
Mirror's Edge - Completed (9/14)
Red Faction Guerrilla - Completed (10/15)
Emerald City Confidential - Completed (11/16)

So in the end it 68.75% played, at least to the point where I could feel OK with the purchase. Of course, the majority of unplayed titles are either in a pack or were very inexpensive (Abe's Exoddus/Oddysey, Sniper Elite for 1.99) so not so bad all in all.

Cragmyre wrote:

But did you hatch any eggs and raise any pets?!? Those pets do absolutely nothing for you in the game. Yet I still play, and I still raise the pets. If anything I'll get some Steam Achievements for doing so :)

The thing about Steam achievements as opposed to the XBL flavor is that, since they don't contribute to a running total and function solely as markers of what you've done in-game, I think they have more potential to function as badges of shame. (-:

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is on sale for $5 (75% off). Posting it here since it was on my wishlist for the Christmas sale but never reached impulse buy territory. Snagged.

What? Only one game on sale. Pffft. Whatevs.

garion333 wrote:

What? Only one game on sale. Pffft. Whatevs.

I know. How will I ever get to be l33t at this pace?

Let it go guys! The 2010 sale is OVER! Get with the times, yo

Steam sales should move back to the normal Deals thread now, imho.