Comments on: Prices Venting: Steam Sale On

By: Paul Emil

Paul Emil — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:35:30 +0000

Huh. I tried to get L4D and Fallout 3 in the sale, but my brother’s credit card wouldn’t work due to a problem with the address verification (No credit card of my own) >:( . I ended up going to Game, standing in a bloody awful queue, and still couldn’t get FO3. I got L4D though. Happy times!

By: RichP

RichP — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:24:31 +0000

Sure enough: the Unreal Deal is back. $20 will get you every Unreal Game, including UT3.

By: Blather Blob

Blather Blob — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:42:02 +0000

Trials 2 is a steal at $2.50, though this is coming from someone who thought XMoto was somewhat entertaining (but I don’t think I can go back to XMoto after playing Trials 2). Another nice thing is that the game’s .exe doesn’t actually require Steam.
I also got Space Trader MM, which is looking like it will be fairly amusing, in a small sort of way. It also works just fine without Steam, which is always nice. In fact, they don’t mention it anywhere in the game or readme (which I think is just a mistake on their part), but Space Trader is based on the GPLed Quake 3 engine, and they have the GPLed source code of the game (minus the datafiles, of course) on their website.
I also picked up WOG (I pre-ordered it for my brother earlier this year, but now is the perfect time to get a copy for myself), which is completely charming. The Steam version doesn’t seem to support 1920×1200 properly, at least on my computer, although the patch from their website fixes that and also removes Steam as a happy side-effect.
And then I played the demo of Gravitron 2, which forced me to immediately buy it, even though it isn’t really on sale. The patch from their website also removes Steam and also adds another whole set of levels.

As to psychonauts, I played it last year, and I didn’t have trouble with the mouse and keyboard so much as the tendency to have jumping puzzles involving judging distances into the monitor, which doesn’t really work on a 2D display. The meat circus especially was full of those sorts of jumps, non-stop. But it was worth putting up with just to see what the developers had come up with on the next puzzle, cutscene, or level.

By: RichP

RichP — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:40:38 +0000

FYI: The Rome Total War Complete pack is once again available for a cool $8.99 (at least in North America)

Evidently, they ran out of R:TW keys during the first day of the sale :O

Hopefully the Unreal Deal pack will return shortly.

By: Sagan

Sagan — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:11:39 +0000

Valve Complete Pack costs 81 euro in Germany. That’s an insolence, considering it only costs 40 pounds in Britain. My brother just bought Left 4 Dead, Portal and Team Fortress 2 for just over 40€. He could have gotten the Valve Complete Pack for the same amount in Britain…

Oh well there is no real reason to complain. Those three games for 40 euro is still a great deal.

By: aoanla

aoanla — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:41:41 +0000

@Man Raised By Puffins: I dunno, I gave up on Psychonauts due to not having a joystick and finding mouse+keys control to be far too clunky.

(Apropos other things: looks like I’m not buying the Unreal Deal pack then ;) Although, it was low on my list…)

By: Man Raised By Puffins

Man Raised By Puffins — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:12:41 +0000

@ ILR: Indeed, like most initially overlooked titles, the cult following does tend to overrate BG&E somewhat. Still, it’s a lovely little game though.

@ A-Scale: Can’t say I found a joypad necessary really. Been through Psychonauts almost twice without any problems using a keyboard and mouse. Well, apart from the meat circus but that was down to despicable level design rather than control issues.

By: RichP

RichP — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:22:50 +0000

Ha, Valve pulled UT3, UT2k4, and the Unreal Deal pack from Steam because they ran out of CD keys! They’re working with Epic to get some more before the sale’s over.

By: A-Scale

A-Scale — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:07:09 +0000

And I finally bought Psychonauts too…perhaps I shouldn’t have gotten 5 platformers at the same time…

Use a joystick. The game was very entertaining, but nearly unplayable with a mouse/keyboard.

By: aoanla

aoanla — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:08:37 +0000

@James: oh, it’s who who filed that bug? You might notice that I’m the person who confirmed it ;)
And, yes, I suspected that L4D would be iffy in Wine, being DX9 only. In a couple of months, though, who knows? (Bioshock annoys me more, frankly, given that it’s been out for ages and still barely manages to get past the first level…)

By: Kua

Kua — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:24:26 +0000

Nice work Joseph. Anyone know whether its possible to change the controls in Trials 2?

By: Mathieu

Mathieu — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:47:16 +0000

Penguins Arena is available for 6,49€ only! Come on!
[url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/11280/]http://store.steampowered.com/app/11280/[/url]