A grand old week of bargainage, this one – some big names, some superlative indie hi-jinks, and an overlooked demi-classic or two. Manning the discount decks is, as always, Savygamer’s LewieP. Go bargains!
Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition and Duke Nukem Manhattan Project – £5.55/€6.35/$8.98
Always bet on Duke. I wonder how much of the money from sales of this will be going towards 3D Realms’ legal fees. Duke Nukem 3D is still to this day a hell of a lot of fun to play. It’s genuinely surprising how fresh it still feels. Yes elements of it are seriously dated, but it’s not difficult to see past them. Never played Manhattan Project myself though. Follow the train wreck that is DNF here.
LightWeight Ninja – £0.61/€0.70/$0.99
I checked out the demo for this, and it’s a pretty basic 2D platformer, where you play a Ninja. The jumping is a bit floaty, and the animation is not superb, but it was a fairly serviceable 16 bit-esque platformer. It costs literally spare change, and I imagine it would be a great time waster to have on a netbook.
Freedom Force: Freedom Pack – £4.49/€5.84/$6.74
Apparently these games are brilliant, can anyone confirm/deny that for me? [They're brilliant - Alec]. I love me some comic book antics, and Ken Levine being attached to them gets my attention. How exactly do they play?
Unreal Tournament 3 – £6.99/€9.99/$9.99
Unreal Tournament 3 is free to play this weekend on Steam, and has a decent discount to boot. The real bargain here though is the also discounted “Unreal Deal Pack”. You get every single one of the proper Unreal games for £11.49/ I can’t really imagine myself play much of the previous versions of UT over UT3, but it is definitely nice to have the single player games too. RPS coverage here.
Bullet Candy – £2.99/€3.99/$3.99
I’ve been tempted by this more than once, but I’m going to have to take the plunge now. I’m loathe to call it a geometry wars clone, but that’s the quickest way of telling you what it is. It has lots and lots of bright lights, and the trailer on Steam is delicious. If you like it, Space Phallus from the same developer is free to download, and has a ‘not big, not clever, but kind of funny ‘ name.
Deal of the week
The Bone-Breaking Racing Package – £3.45/€4.20/$4.50
I’d strongly recommend getting just Trials 2 for this price, but including Monster Trucks Nitro bumps this up to deal of the week status, and then some. Trials 2 is a very simple, devilishly difficult, physics based action puzzle game. It looks great, and it’s very easy to spend hours and hours having “just one more go”. I’ve not played Monster Trucks Nitro, and it’s a shame it isn’t discounted on it’s own, because it is still £16.99. If I buy the package, will I be able to gift Trials 2? RPS coverage of both games here.
Also of note:
MumboJumbo games 50% off
BioShock – $9.95
Flock – £5.99/Ä7.49/$7.49
Some bad divisive Ubisoft games for cheap
Men of War – £10.79/$11.99
If that lot’s not enough for you, do check out SavyGamer.co.uk for constantly-updated bargains across all formats.
Related Stories:
LewieP : Thanks for your input. Looking around at another couple of forums, it seems that the pc port of the game is an abomination and it featured prominently on the ‘biggest waste of money’ threads.
My somewhat brief Monster Trucks Nitro review.
If it’s any measure of badness, in the PC Double Agent, you can’t rebind the ‘use’ key. That’s right – it’s locked to the larger ‘Enter’ key.
You also have to use a command-line hack to get it working on 8-series-and-up Nvidia cards, lest Sam be rendered as a shadowy squiggle – something that was never fixed despite the game being released at the same time as the 8800GTS and bundled with several cards!
In SCDA’s defense, I’ve never heard of either of those two huge problems. I played it with an 8800GTS.
Edit: Oh but the savegames were often iffy for me, not always saving properly and sometimes just loading a wrong one etc. Quicksave/load worked. I’d recommended it only after playing all the previous ones, and also Death to Spies.
Really? Never had that problem. 88 gts here, works fine except for a memory leak unless i kill the games progress after about an hour, that said its not a good game. But i’m addicted to whispering in terrorists ears before cutting them up.
You naughty terrorists! Don’t you know that terror is bad!
FF was bloody awful. I referred to is as Freedom Farce.
lol @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwOvuY0UbFM
I guest most people just shutdown the console or something with this ridiculous horrible design.
@ Solipsistnation: Freedom Force can’t be that confusing as it didn’t confuse me. Complicated games tend to overwhelm me a little. :-(
@ Lucas: I played it without creating any of my own heroes. I just used the ones they give you.
Radiant: I guess it’s a strategy RPG or something that effect. I don’t think you ever control more than 3 or 4 guys at a time.
SCDA: Don’t try to quicksave or quickload in the second part of Kinshasa; it’ll just crash, so you have to do it in one shot.
Also: Don’t try to play the game.
Lewie: I had no idea Montreal did the other version of DA! I want to try that one now, but I have none of the required hardware. Damn.
(Well at least I’ll be trying part 1 now; I’ve only played CT and DA so far).
Ooo, Men of War for 12 bucks! /me goes over to GamersGate and quickly scans the game info page looking for the “Buy” button…
SecuROM? Ugh. I close the browser tab and the game loses a sale.
DRM: Mission Accomplished!
Freedom Force is a game I want to love but man, it gets clunky to actually play. It’s real time/pause combat with endurance management of all your powers and little to no AI for your team. Which means I tell them what to do, press play for three seconds and then pause again. If I don’t, the heroes will use the same attack over and over on the same target without regards to things like say, a gas tank exploding from their first hit and killing a team mate. The music is great, the characters are great and the voices are great but playing the game was way too slow.
So can anyone confirm that the Steam version of FF vs 3rd Reich is NOT Starforce infected?
“Marty Dodge says:
FF was bloody awful. I referred to is as Freedom Farce.”
Didn’t they actually use that joke in the game?
@DN – Apparently it was only included by the European publisher at retail, so it seems unlikely. Anyway I can tell once I’ve got it installed? Couldn’t care less myself, but I’ll do my bit for the RPS community …
Wow, they worked so hard on making the Steam forum filter incomprehensible to OCR programs, they forgot to make it legible to humans. Fifty refreshes later and I still haven’t been able to read a single one in full. Kinda gives their idiocy with TF2 unlocks a little more context. NOTE TO VALVE: HUMANS CAN’T READ AQUA ON PALE GREY EITHER.
Lol, James T, I have to agree. I’ve completely given up with trying to post on the Steam forums as I can never get the bloody authentication word right.
has anyone else found the problem in Freedom Force where after the First Tutorial level they can’t continue ad whenever you press Mission briefing Nothing happens?
You can select which powers they auto-use, and scale what speed “pausing” goes at. Between knockback, destructible terrain, car-flinging, etc and the delightfully cheesy storytelling inspired by the appropriate era of comics, both Freedom Force games are made of utter win. Best superhero games ever. (Although Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on Xbox/PS2/mebbe Gamecube comes close in its own way.
Enjoyed what I played of Freedom Force thus far.. only downer is the writinng is better than the delivery of the lines.
I owned DA on PS2 but never tried the “next gen” version that was shown off everywhere else.
I think false advertising won the day with it, because on the back of the case i have it shows the graphics and features of the “next gen” version…
I didn’t nearly enjoy it as much as I enjoyed CT, I bought CT yesterday off D2D for the hell of it, weird that I can still get 100% sucess on most of the missions even when I havent played it for 3 years. :D
Do any of you Freedom Force vets know if it’s possible to change the mouse sensitivity settings? The way it is now, moving my mouse an inch and a half covers an entire screen width.
Well chuffed about freedom force being on Steam. Own them both already on old fashioned disc, but glad that hopefully more peeps will get to play them now. Alec is right, the games are excellent. (although isn’t this piece written by Alec?) Anyways the game kinda plays like a dungeon crawler, like NWN or Baldurs gate. Pausable party based combat except its a structured into missions which are levels on thier own, rather than going round collecting quests and completing them as you wish. In between missions you upgrade your characters stats etc RPG style and you must pick which 4 heroes your going to take into each mission beforehand. Obviously each heros has its strengths and weaknesses and its an excellent couple of games. Buy them if you even slightly enjoy the combat from NWN, Balders Gate, Icewind dale etc etc.. except its a lot more accessible and comic book fun than those games. Seriously.
I bought the Duke pack when I got the email for it. Just a nice thing to have. I’ve played Manhattan Project before and I really enjoyed it then. I’ve got several of MumboJumbo’s games and enjoy them very much.
FYI, I bought the Indie Pack off steam sometime back (which included Trials 2, Eets, Multiwinia), and I did _not_ get any option to give away my existing copy of Trials 2.
RE: Third Reich and Starforce – no sign of the drivers after installing it.
“was the 11 steps to quit the game ever patched for assasin creed?”
No and neither was THE GIANT BLACK BORDERS CAUSED BY THE DISPLAY BEING LOCKED PERMANENTLY TO WIDESCREEN.
Just as the physics engine lock on Bioshock will cause me to be deeply prejudiced against it’s sequel, so too will this issue taint my reception of Assassin’s Creed 2.
As others have said, pretty much, Freedom Force plays like Black Isle/GPG small-party combat with the power knobs turned up, plus PHYSICS! and put in a mission form – chasing supervillains over rooftops, that sort of thing.
The multiplayer’s actually a hoot too, and I don’t like most multiplayer games. There’s a nice little bit of strategy as you decide on the fly how best to use your stun attack to group the other guy’s party up for your AoE and wait for your brawler to reorient to this ambush etc., sometimes interrupted by a nice little bit of action as his brawler walks up while you ponder and lamps everyone (literally) with a streetlight.
“NUU-CLE-AR VINTER
ooo OOO oooh!
TURN YOUR VORLD TO SNOW
KEEP IT ALL FOR THE MOTHERLAND”
Freedom Force is worth buying solely for that piece of in game music. x-D
@Nick
Goody. I might actually jump on this deal, then.
@Nick
Goody. I might actually jump on this deal, then.
Space Phallus is the stuff of legend. Linux-native too :)
How does the original Splinter Cell go with mouse+keyboard, or will I NEED a 360 (or alternative) pad?
BTW, for those umming and ahhing about Freedom Force on Steam, there is a demo (and Third Reich demo here.
Freedom Force is a nice buy, the game concept rocks, the story is so bad its awesome (in fact its more faithful to comics than most movies and official games), the gameplay can be as complicated as you want to make it
My only complains are that the difficulty curve is a little fucked by some “random” effects and the turns-in-real-time-with-pause just doesn’t work as well as full turn based action leading to unnecessary waiting around for mana to recharge, a lot of pausing during the best action pieces because you cant follow whats going on (kind of killing the tension, turn based keeps the tension up much better) and other frustrating things (the first example out of my head is the first mission with the fire dude where you have to choose either to wait around for you mana to recharge, making the mission 5 hours long, or getting your character stunned all the time, making the mission 2 hours long with higher chance of dying)
however, tell me the last game that put you in the shoes of an aquaman wannabe with a Sean Connery accent that needs to recover a woman’s snached purse while a group of gigantic robots destroy half the city and huge ants are creating enemy spawning holes everywhere
There are batman-like missions, there are superman style missions and many spiderman missions but the last half and the second game are mostly X-men style
and smashing a light pole on a guy while other dude is throwing half the cars in the city at you and then in desperation you unleash a huge explosion skill that takes out the buildings in the entire screen is just too cool (and this in a game that is actually pretty old yet still looks nice and works on low end computers)
… damn why did they never make a third game of this or at least a spiritual sequel ?
@MeestaNob!: its works perfectly with kb and mouse, the only issue is that the pistol aiming reticule is a *little* off by a few degrees so at a long range the bullet hits a little higher than what you are aiming at (annoying when trying to snipe light bulbs)
These damn weekend sales are starting to create a real backlog problem, I have a giant (metaphorical) stack of digitally downloaded games I’ve yet to really play at all, and there’s no break in sight from more good ones showing up at can’t-pass prices. It’s a good problem to have, but argh!
That said I bought Men of War, Sword of the Stars, and the Freedom Force pack. At this rate I’m going to run out of hard drive sometime in June…
Yeah, they did a good job translating the original Splinter Cell’s controls. They get around the run-or-walk-with-nothing-in-between issue keyboards have by tying your movement speed to the mousewheel.
i like the mousewheel a lot more than the analog stick for setting speed, you can just set a speed and run with it instead of worrying if you are pushing too hard or not, i would like to see that control style more often on ports actually
You can only gift extra games if they’re Half Life 2 or episode 1, but you can say that an item you’re purchasing is a gift. Doesn’t work for that pack, but…
Love the website. :)
Just to be in the know, is this ‘Trail’s 2′ thing an inside joke?
I’m glad some of the RPS staff like DN3D. It really is a great load of fun and yes, it’s still (somehow for reasons i can’t grasp) very very playable to this day. Infact I played through the whole thing only a fortnight ago. Great stuff.
Hmm.. I’m actually quite tempted by Clear Sky. I’ve not played SoC though.. Is that really so much better for one fresh to the series?
Yes, SoC is by far the better game.
I have no money to spend on games this month, yet I still bought the Trials 2 pack and the Freedom Force pack :(
Lightweight Ninja Demo uses some godawful authorisation software. softwrap or something.. only 3 trial runs before it refuses to run.
Tried it on my Eee, screen flashed, nothing happened. clicked it again,’2 activations remaining’… wtf?. tried again,same. Demo then refuses to run until you buy it.
okay, it might need some setting tweak or something, but a demo shouldnt have a bloody limitation, especially if you cant guarantee its going to bloody run.. grrrr..
it might be cheap, but they can go f’ themselves for that stunt. Potential sale – LOST
tossers.
Wow a demo with 3 install limits, for a small, cheap indie game? That is paranoid stupidity on the part of the developers.
In the options, you can change the pause settings in Freedom Force to various slow down speeds so it’s like using Bullet Time if having it pause completely is too jarring for you.
I quite enjoyed Assassin’s creed when I picked up the disc version for £20.
One weird thing about it was there were some performance problems which looked like it was caused by the game phoning home via the internet.
Blocking the game in my firewall stopped that little trick and it worked flawlessly after that. Not sure if the Steam version will have the same problem.
The game itself is atmospheric, beautiful, but ultimately very repetitive. The assassinations don’t work very well – there’s almost no way to do it stealthily, though I did manage it on one occasion.
It’s worth getting for a tenner though, just for the atmosphere and graphics.
I got Men of War last night via this article.
Playing it borders on masochism, but I’m loving it!
FREEDOM FORCE FREEDOM FORCE FREEDOM FORCE
Agreed
Got bioshock from d2d,orange box and SCDA from steam,Thief 3 from gamersgate
PC gaming rules,the console counter parts more than 30 $