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It's the most wonderful time of the year (Steam summer sale)

Started by Josef K, July 12, 2012, 06:51:29 PM

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Dark Sky

Have you tried an Xbox controller?  May not make a difference, but I switched at some point and never looked back.  Some PC games (usually bad console ports) do need a controller.

mikeyg27

Quote from: Jim Jarmusch on July 18, 2012, 09:17:46 PM
I made my first ever Steam purchase getting the GTA Collection. So far I've not been successful in mapping the buttons to a Dual Shock controller. Cheap games are useless if they don't match the console experience.

A Dual Shock? As in a PS3 controller? Can you even use them with a PC?

madhair60


Jim Jarmusch

The PS3 controller[nb]lost karma for speaking out![/nb] connects through Bluetooth on a Mac wirelessly with no drivers or plugins.

I use it for the SNES9X emulator.

mikeyg27

Really? Interesting... yet another reason for me to want a PS3...[nb]I know that's a very petty reason for wanting a PS3, just go with it please.[/nb]

Which GTA game? I've had San Andreas and Vice City running on my Mac with controller support running right from the start (not a Dual Shock, one of those Saitek PS ripoffs). My ssue with the mac version of San Andreas is that the saves from the PC version don't work on it.

Phil_A


2 hours left on the community voted deal is The Longest Journey - I clicked it out of interest and discovered to my shock that it has 91/100 at Metacritic with a userscore of 9, sitting alongside games such Arkham Asylum, No One Lives Forever, Deus Ex...  I'm going to take the plunge on it I think but just letting others know that apparently it's a true classic that I was entirely unaware of.

Also, with The Witcher 2 in the sale, the first game is available for £1.74 - anyone got some opinions on The Witcher?

Dark Sky

I adored The Witcher!  A very focussed RPG compared to say, an Elder Scrolls game, and much higher in quality in terms of story and character and moral choices, all of which impressed me a lot. 

The combat is a bit strange; you pick a steel sword (for humans) or your silver sword (used for monsters) and a combat style (slow but strong, fast but light, or crowd fighting) and then you have timed click sequences.  Yet I got used to it very quickly and it became second nature and very enjoyable.

The characters and dialogue just sparkle, and although at first glance it looks like a stereotypical fantasy setting, it isn't.  It's based on a series of Polish fantasy novels and there is a depth there you can just feel beyond the enclosed confines of the game.

Ignore those who claim people only play it for the nudity (of which there is a bit, but it's certainly not childish or out of place), or that it's buggy or ugly...  The problems were fixed by the "Enhanced Version" which is now the default copy of the game.  It's a beautiful world, the storyline is excellent (with your choices having proper repercussions hours down the line), and I adored the big ending reveal which still gives me shivers to think about it.

I also highly recommend playing it in Polish with subtitles, to get the proper flavour of it.

(Conversely I'm not that fussed by The Longest Journey.  It's a rather overlong point and click game mixing science fiction and fantasy, known for its snappy dialogue which I found tedious.  So saying, I battled my way through both it and its slightly lesser sequel, Dreamfall.  The guy who made the games is behind the upcoming online RPG, The Secret World, which is meant to be quite good.)

Quote from: Dark Sky on July 19, 2012, 10:49:23 PM
(Conversely I'm not that fussed by The Longest Journey.)

Hmm, will probably leave that one for now then as I'm not an enormous fan of point-and-clicks anyway.

Witcher sounds good though, particularly in that you compare it to the Elder Scrolls series which I too have found a little too open-ended - like nothing I'm doing is actually making any real difference to anything else. Hearing very good things about its developer too, so at £1.74 I think it's about time to take the plunge. Cheers for the advice (although if it sucks, you're getting negative karma).

Zetetic

I can second The Witcher, certainly at £1.74. I think various criticisms about the very start of the game are fair, so do try to push through the first few chapters.

Started on Thief (Gold), having upgraded ddfix. It's good, although I do feel that it's struggling valiantly against the graphic limitations of the time; I can better understand a lot of what I've read about the level design, which is trying its damnedest to give a useful sense of location with fairly onerous technical restrictions. Edit: But I have just realised that there are meant to be cutscenes. To YouTube, I guess...

Oh! Look! Fallout: New Vegas! Buy it!

Dark Sky

Quote from: Zetetic on July 19, 2012, 11:19:57 PMI can second The Witcher, certainly at £1.74. I think various criticisms about the very start of the game are fair, so do try to push through the first few chapters.

Yeah the game takes a while to open out to the more interesting locations.  So saying, I enjoyed the early stuff, and I usually get bored with games after an hour.

QuoteStarted on Thief (Gold), having upgraded ddfix. It's good, although I do feel that it's struggling valiantly against the graphic limitations of the time; I can better understand a lot of what I've read about the level design, which is trying its damnedest to give a useful sense of location with fairly onerous technical restrictions.

The graphics weren't great at the time, and I think it was kinda deliberate...  But the Dark Engine is an interesting beast and has a very distinctive and atmospheric look about it.  But the real power of it was behind the scenes; the sound work and AI in that game was leagues ahead of the time.  In fact, AI hasn't improved that much since that first Thief game, I don't believe.

QuoteEdit: But I have just realised that there are meant to be cutscenes. To YouTube, I guess...

There are fixes to get the cutscenes playing...  Usually it requires running a particular codec before playing the game.  I'd have thought Steam versions would have fixed that long standing problem, though.  I'm sure CD Projekt did (tying this back to the Witcher!) with the gog.com release.

But definitely view the cutscenes, they are amazing!  Brilliant animation, and fantastic music by Eric Brosius.

QuoteOh! Look! Fallout: New Vegas! Buy it!

This was a flash sale a few days back and I snapped it up then!  Glad it's back though as it meant I could buy a copy and gift it to a jealous friend who missed out before.

rudi

OK then. Just bought the three Thief games, Shatter (it's a breakout style game! yay!), Gravitron and the two Rome Total War games. There goes summer...

Solid Jim

I wrote this thing about The Longest Journey once. I'll link it instead of copy/pasting and pretending I just thought it up.

http://lefthandedgamer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/longest-journey-is-not-very-good-game.html

It's worth owning if you enjoy point and click adventures. If you have no tolerance for the genre then it is unlikely to change your mind.

Eis Nein

Quote from: Dark Sky on July 20, 2012, 12:14:16 AMthe sound work and AI in that game was leagues ahead of the time.
Three levels of alert and some superb voice work. It broils my gruds that nobody's come close to perfecting that simple combination since.

mikeyg27

Playing through Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution at the same time gives me hope that Eidos Montreal will do a pretty good job of updating Thief.

If anyone here is a fan of point-and-clicks (or just looking for a punt on something) then the Amanita bundle is worth a shout, especially for Botanicula which is by some distance the most charming and endearing game I've played in a long time. You can demo the prologue on the game's website here if you want.

Phil_A

Quote from: mikeyg27 on July 20, 2012, 10:22:39 AM
Playing through Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution at the same time gives me hope that Eidos Montreal will do a pretty good job of updating Thief.


Hmm, I hope so. One of the most disappointing thing about Thief: Deadly Shadows was it did away with the huge, sprawling maps of the first two games, instead dividing up the missions into discrete areas. This not only took a lot of fun out of it for me, but also meant that the constant threat of being discovered was much less, as if you were chased by guards you could just nip to the next area of the map and they wouldn't be able to follow, thus nullifying much of the tension.

HappyTree

Quote from: The Region Legion on July 19, 2012, 09:22:13 PM
2 hours left on the community voted deal is The Longest Journey - I clicked it out of interest and discovered to my shock that it has 91/100 at Metacritic with a userscore of 9, sitting alongside games such Arkham Asylum, No One Lives Forever, Deus Ex...  I'm going to take the plunge on it I think but just letting others know that apparently it's a true classic that I was entirely unaware of.

The Longest Journey is the best game I have ever played. The sequel Dreamfall was good fun ("Oh Wonkers!") but the first one is just unbeatable. The perfect game.

Hangthebuggers

Just got Far cry 2 for less than £3 - it's fairly low spec and works fine on my laptop. If you're a fan of open-world FPS style games, then give it a shot.

Lots of detail, nice graphics, good sound effects and a decent plot.

Zetetic

Mechanics that are a pain in the neck, alas. (Arguably either horrendously broken, or horrendously apt.)

monolith

I feel anesthetized by the choice of what is available. I have about £100 I could jut about part with, but despite the fact that spending that amount will probably give me enough games to play until 2017, There's enough value elsewhere that I could buy a completely different set of games and maybe have enough games to play until 2018.

I just don't know what to do. I haven't bought a single game yet which is just madness.

monolith

Quote from: Phil_A on July 20, 2012, 09:30:21 PM
Hmm, I hope so. One of the most disappointing thing about Thief: Deadly Shadows was it did away with the huge, sprawling maps of the first two games, instead dividing up the missions into discrete areas. This not only took a lot of fun out of it for me, but also meant that the constant threat of being discovered was much less, as if you were chased by guards you could just nip to the next area of the map and they wouldn't be able to follow, thus nullifying much of the tension.
I know Deadly Shadows always gets a bad rep, especially from Thief die hards, but I absolutely loved it.

I played Thief briefly back in the day but never really got into it. I was straight into T:DS though, and that orphanage/mental asylum is the scariest shit I've ever had to deal with in a game.

I decided to go back to the original Thief games and unfortunately I couldn't really get past the graphics, which is a real shame. There are some games where graphics don't matter still, Civ IV being the most obvious example, but after T:DS I couldn't go back to non-existent shadows. I would like to see a happy medium between the two styles of games though as although I adored T:DS, I can see the attraction of a Thief 1 + 2 style game and would be happy to see that sort of game in Thief 4.

Rev

I'm confused by time differences - does the sale end at 6pm tomorrow, or does the last day start at that point?  I'm assuming the former.

Good to see Fable 3 mysteriously going up in price in the space of a few days; today's 75% discount is a quid fifty more than it was when I bought it a few days ago.

Dark Sky

Quote from: monolith on July 21, 2012, 08:39:49 PM
I decided to go back to the original Thief games and unfortunately I couldn't really get past the graphics, which is a real shame.

Really?  That is a shame, as the joy of Thief is the gameplay, not the graphics, and the gameplay in Thief 1 and 2 is way ahead of Deadly Shadows.  How much did you play, out of interest?  I would've thought if you completed the first mission...the incredibly Bafford's Manor...you would be hooked.

eluc55

Just finished the first Portal, which I brought on steam a few days ago. Great game, albeit very, very short - I must have done it in under two hours, easy.

GLaDOS is just such a good character; one of the few times that a game manages to be consistently, organically funny. The final battle alone must have 20 stand-out quotes as she gets more and more deranged. I don't know how they did the voice - whether they had an actor or did it all on computers - but the ultimate effect is very good indeed.

Overall, top marks: I loved mucking about with the portals. Making endless falls, infinite rings and impossible catapults.

Thursday

Portal 2 is a lot longer, so you'll want that. It's not as consistently good and it has Stephen Merhcant in it, but he does a decent job.

Also, I think you can play through the game again with "commentary" there's various things you can click on throughout where the developers will talk about the level design/writing and some bits from the voice actress who play's glados.

eluc55

I got Portal 2 on steam, too, so I'll make start on that next week. Maybe I'll listen to the commentary on the first one first, though. It won't take long to speed run it again.

Such a simple idea, well executed. Unusual for a puzzle game to have a decent, dramatic story, too.

Dark Sky

Quote from: eluc55 on July 22, 2012, 03:38:41 PM
Just finished the first Portal, which I brought on steam a few days ago. Great game, albeit very, very short - I must have done it in under two hours, easy.

GLaDOS is just such a good character; one of the few times that a game manages to be consistently, organically funny. The final battle alone must have 20 stand-out quotes as she gets more and more deranged. I don't know how they did the voice - whether they had an actor or did it all on computers - but the ultimate effect is very good indeed.

Overall, top marks: I loved mucking about with the portals. Making endless falls, infinite rings and impossible catapults.

The first Portal is short because really it was just an experiment; Valve were impressed by a small indie game made by a group of students as a university project that they hired the whole team and asked them to develop a newer version using the same portal based technology, really as an experiment.  (They did a similar thing with a different group of students and a different indie game, which they then worked into Portal 2.)  They knew they couldn't really release Portal as a full game, so bundled it in with the Half-Life 2 pack "The Orange Box", essentially as an extra.  And it proved incredibly popular...as it should've, being not only a unique and genuinely brilliant puzzle game, but also because it is one of those rare comedy games which is - shock horror - genuinely funny.

GLaDOS is played by a lovely older lady (and a professional opera singer) called Ellen McLain.

Portal 2 is thrilling.  The puzzles in the single player are probably a bit easier, and a bit more hand-holdey (though the very good co-op stretches the brain noggins a bit more), but the story and design work and voice acting and jokes and music in Portal 2 are just sublime.  Absolutely sublime.  I cannot stand Stephen Merchant, but he was excellent in Portal 2.  It's a very, very, very good game, even if it does feel slightly disappointing after Portal 1.  I'm not sure why that is, and it's confused a lot of people.  I read a user comment on YouTube once which summed it up brilliantly, which said something like this: "Portal 2 is the best game Valve has ever made, but it's not as good as Portal 1".

I love those games a lot, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel good about the human race.

Consignia

Maybe it's a function of being told it's hilarious, but I never found Portal funny at all. It struck me as forced and smug. I particularly didn't like any of the memified bits, but I don't remember even cracking a smile whilst playing it.

I wasn't super impressed with the game itself, either, but that's more down to the fact I physically have trouble with anything first person.

dredd

I took a punt on Ben There, Dan That for 60p (available for the next 15 minutes or so). Point and click adventure fun!