By RPS on June 14th, 2009 at 10:50 am.
Apologies we’re a little late with this weekend’s round-up of agreeably-priced electric videogames: the Hivemind was busy fighting squirrels in the park when bargainmeister LewieP‘s article arrived in our inbox. Damned squirrels ruin everything. But there is yet time to indulge in one of these splendid bargains…
Cryostasis – Sleep of Reason – £7.95/€11.99/$11.99
Billed as a proper mash up of survival horror and first person shooting, with ice, Jim’s Eurogamer review makes me think this is certainly the right price for it:
“Cryostasis is a brave, fascinating, often very beautiful game, but I find it impossible to recommend it – and not least because it runs like an exploded dog on most PCs. It’s not quite creative enough – its environments fall into a monotony of samey rooms and bulkheads – and its combat is too clunky to be delicious. I’m certain that this is a game that some gamers will tuck into heartily, and happily. The ugly truth of the meal, however, is that’s it’s still frozen in the middle.”
RPS Coverage here, and demo here.
NecroVision – £4.99/€7.49/$7.49
This is an FPS set during WWI, except it has Vampires, Demons and Zombies. I feel I should turn your attention towards this screenshot. That is some kind of big walking robot, and a biplane in the background. In 1916. Fictitious robotics aside, could be fun. Demo here.
Positech games: Half price
RPS comment-regular Cliffski’s games are all 50% cheaper on Impulse this weekend:
Democracy 2 – £6.98/€8.20/$11.49
Kudos – £3.01/€3.53/$4.95
Kudos 2 – £6.05/€7.11/$9.95
Kudos: Rock Legend – £3.01/€3.53/$4.95
All Positech games are DRM free, and these should all play great on older systems too. RPS Coverage here, and demos of all the games here.
EM EM OH Sale
I’ve never actually played a MMORPG (although I have reviewed one), but Steam have a bunch of them on offer right now. In case any of you are thinking of getting Age of Conan, I just noticed it requires 36GB free hard drive space, so you might have to delete a few Peggles’ worth of stuff to clear space for it.
Deal of the week
Sword of the Stars
Ok, this one is a little complicated, and uses 3 different vendors. Sword of the stars is a Space 4X game, and it recently got a “Ultimate Collection” rerelease, which includes the two expansion packs. It seems to be on offer at 3 of the big digital distribution places:
GamersGate have the Ultimate Edition for a currency proof £7.99/€7.99/$7.99
Impulse have the Ultimate Edition for £6.49/€7.63/$10.68
Direct2Drive have the Ultimate Edition + a preorder for the soon to be released third expansion “Argos Naval Yard” for £10.95/$16.95
So, decide what country you are in, what currency you want to pay in, and whether you want the third expansion pack (at an effective cost of £4.46/$8.96), and pick the best deal for you. RPS Coverage here, and demo here.
Also of note:
1C Company sale at GamersGate
20% off Strategy Games at GOG
If that lot’s not enough for you, do check out SavyGamer.co.uk for constantly-updated bargains across all formats.
14/06/2009 at 11:06 bansama says:
Any one thinking of picking up Men of War in the current 1C sale, be aware that they have run out of CD keys — meaning that while Gamersgate will sell you the game, you won’t be able to play it until they can get you a key.
And as always, a more complete list of what’s on sale is here (at it’s new domain).
14/06/2009 at 11:17 hart says:
I am officially peeved because sometime after the write up of Sword and the Stars, I decided to purchase said title for the full price. Curse my luck.
14/06/2009 at 11:22 Lukasz says:
meh. nothing interesting this week.
14/06/2009 at 11:22 RPS says:
Bansama – while you’re doing fine work with your own site, please do resist the urge to pimp it in this thread every single week.
14/06/2009 at 11:25 Gurrah says:
Sweet, just bought sword of the stars on Impulse. Thanks for the heads up RPS!
14/06/2009 at 11:25 Joris says:
FYI, the link for Democracy 2 points to Kudos
14/06/2009 at 11:32 LewieP says:
Whoops, cheers Joris.
14/06/2009 at 11:33 popabawa says:
Democracy 2 looks interesting, might just give it a punt at that price.
14/06/2009 at 11:39 James G says:
Hehe, am I the only person sniggering at the title “Argos Naval Yard.” I can just picture a hige catalogue of ships, and approaching a naval officer with a little slip of paper with the product code of a destroyer written on it, only to be informed that it is out of stock.
14/06/2009 at 11:43 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
I still can’t figure out which Shotgunner introduces Lewie’s bargain lists, or even if it’s the same Shotgunner each week. I know it’s not supposed to matter but still.
(As an aside, I’m willing to bet the opening paragraph was written by Alkierjimohn Walkossigilleer.)
14/06/2009 at 11:44 LewieP says:
@Dorian Cornelius Jasper
They take turns, doing every fourth word each.
14/06/2009 at 11:46 ArtyArt says:
Bought Sword of the Stars a couple of weeks ago, so I am a little annoyed that they reduced the price again. Whatever, it is well worth its money, so there’s a hearty recommendation from me. Go buy!
14/06/2009 at 11:47 LewieP says:
Also worth pointing out.
Remember the Speedball 2 Steam giveaway? Well, someone appears to have saved up a bunch of serials, and has just posted them this morning in the comments for the SavyGamer post about it.
Scroll to the bottom here, and you might be able to get a serial for Speedball 2 for free.
14/06/2009 at 11:48 Chis says:
Necrovision allows you to bap zombies across the bonce with a trowel, give them a black eye, and a severe kicking, all at the same time.
Therefore, at that price, it’s worth buying for this reason alone.
The hilarious acting, and solid gunplay seem secondary to the fact that this is an FPS that makes button-mashing tremendous fun. But be warned, the game loses momentum later on: the plot implodes, many weapons become pointless, and the difficulty level is poorly balanced. But it IS worth a fiver. Just for the comboing.
14/06/2009 at 11:49 Howard says:
A warning: Avoid Necrovision like the plague! While it sounds fun and looks interesting it is one of the worst FPSs I have ever played, so filled with bad design that I will not even begin to list the problems here
14/06/2009 at 11:55 Chis says:
Nonsense, it has its issues but it IS fun. I maintain that at that price, it’s worth a punt. But it does become dreadfully repetitive and a tad unbalanced towards the end.
14/06/2009 at 11:57 Ashurbanipal says:
I tried the demo of Necrovision and gave up in frustration at the difficulty. I think there were never-ending nazi respawns, but I can’t be sure about that. All I know is that I kept dying after killing stupid amounts of them and had to give up and use god move.
LewieP, regarding the Speedball 2 serials: “Nie mamy numerów seryjnych do Speedball_2
Which I assume is Polish for “We ain’t got anymore”.
14/06/2009 at 11:59 LewieP says:
I know they aren’t giving any away anymore, but there are 6 serials in the SavyGamer comments which should be working.
14/06/2009 at 12:05 bansama says:
@RPS I would say that giving people another source of deals which may be missed by savygamer is no more “pimping” than tacking this on “If that lot’s not enough for you, do check out SavyGamer.co.uk for constantly-updated bargains across all formats.” every week.
However, if you only want people to be informed of deals based off of the bias of what LewieP likes and not on what is actually being offered at the time, then so be it. Feel free to delete all my comments if that’s what you judge to be in the best interest of your readers.
14/06/2009 at 12:05 Lambchops says:
“Hehe, am I the only person sniggering at the title “Argos Naval Yard.”
Nope, I too found myself with a desire to order myself a ship from the laminated book of dreams.
14/06/2009 at 12:08 Carra says:
Red Orchestra is up on steam for cheap. Looks like an interesting game.
14/06/2009 at 12:14 James Hsieh says:
I’m a cheapskate. I tried all six of the serial numbers posted at SavyGamer.co.uk and none of them work. Yeah. It’s my day of sharing.
14/06/2009 at 12:15 LewieP says:
Must have already been used then, never mind, it’s not all that good anyway.
14/06/2009 at 12:19 vrikis says:
you guys should note that Peggle for iPhone is just £0.59 or $0.99. I know it’s iPhone not PC, but it’s a killer price! It won’t stay like that forever!
14/06/2009 at 12:47 RPS says:
The link to Lewie’s site is our thanks for his writing the post for us, Bansama. Do point out specific/important deals you think he’s missed, but please don’t use the thread simply as free advertising every week. Our threads are for discussion, not promotion. By all means start up a forum thread about it, however.
At the moment, cherry-picking fits what we want to this short’n'sharp post be be: recommendations rather than a catalogue. Eventually the Bucket might evolve into something more completist, however.
14/06/2009 at 13:23 waste_manager says:
apparently UT3 is £5 at Toys r us at the minute – a friend of mine just rang and asked if I wanted one.
14/06/2009 at 13:26 Stu says:
I agree with vrikis; considering the love that both Peggle and the iPhone get from the RPS boys, I’m surprised there’s been no mention of the 59p iPeggle offer. I believe it expires today so you need to get your skates on if you want to take advantage of it — and you should, you really should.
14/06/2009 at 13:48 Sam says:
I’ll be another person throwing my hat in the ring for NecroVision. Everything Chris says above is true. I also found it hard going early on until I realized that, once a rifle was dropped into my hands, I shouldn’t waste time will all that accuracy and iron sights nonsense and should just sprint towards entrenched positions battering enemies about the head and neck with the stock. It’s perfectly absurd and I don’t regret picking it up at full price.
14/06/2009 at 13:56 Professor says:
Sword of the stars is a terrible game, a vastly inferior version to Sins of a Solar Empire.
I wouldn’t pay a dollar for that piece of garbage.
14/06/2009 at 14:00 Professor says:
Also, an important note, you should buy Red Orchestra, it’s for only 5$ till tomorrow on steam. It’s well worth this cheap price tag!
14/06/2009 at 14:18 ArtyArt says:
Well, no. Sword of the Stars used to be a terrible mess when it was first released. Not anymore. Lots of bugs are gone, a vast amount of new gameplay elements has been added. I wish every company had such great support from its developers.
Besides, comparing SoaSE and SotS is a little like comparing Red Orchestra and Day of Defeat. Well sure, both games are WW2 multiplayer shooter thingies. However, they focus on two completely different things. Same thing with SotS – the amount of planetary micromanagement that we know from the likes of GalCiv is completely gone, while designing your ships for combat and combat tactics are far more important. If you play SotS like a (let’s call it) “traditional” 4X game… well, there’s not too much fun to be had there, it’s true. (Plus, the learning curve is enormous, thanks to the poor video tutorials.)
14/06/2009 at 14:33 RogB says:
Bansama: a suggestion : put the price in pounds+euros too.
is the red orchestra community still pretty good? while i find it wierd paying for whats essentially a mod (even if its the price of a pint), if the community is still strong i’m quite intrigued. However, just looked at the videos and it looks pretty damn hard.. especially unforgiving for newbies… anyone recently given it a go for the first time?
14/06/2009 at 14:41 radomaj says:
I find bansama’s site great and if you won’t let him pimp it, then you should pimp it yourselves.
14/06/2009 at 14:57 bigredrock says:
I agree – bansama’s site is just as useful as LewieP’s. Can’t we pimp them both?
14/06/2009 at 15:37 Sargasso says:
Another in agreement about the usefulness of bansama’s site.
14/06/2009 at 15:40 abhishek says:
I also grabbed a few extra keys for Speedball 2 for my friends when they were giving them out. Somehow i mistakenly associated the game to be like Spectraball (which is actually fun). This game, not so much, but free is free… if anyone wants, they can use these keys -
XZB2H-RLBPQ-P5TZ4-FM35I-CSC5I
XZB2H-RE9JE-XX4V5-MNLWL-8DZM2
XZB2H-RHW5D-5LYI8-CH6IY-G4GV6
XZB2H-RAQPM-VNIWR-ZP9X7-VRVAR
14/06/2009 at 15:42 Carra says:
I think we all agree that bansama’s site is good to find bargains. However, the question is if this is the place to promote it and not if it’s a good site.
In any case, keep up the good work, I love these bargains :)
14/06/2009 at 15:45 Bob says:
@ abhishek: Thank you very much!
First key used.
14/06/2009 at 15:54 RogB says:
@ abhishek: nice one, cheers!!
-pinched the last one
14/06/2009 at 16:33 Marty Dodge says:
Dem. 2 is bloody awful…not even worth that much.
14/06/2009 at 17:24 malkav11 says:
I highly recommend picking up Cryostasis for the above price. It’s better with the original Russian voice acting (and subtitles) but what I’ve heard of the US version seemed reasonably quality and it’s an amazing game.
14/06/2009 at 17:29 Vinraith says:
Democracy 2 has a very intriguing demo, but I think for an indie game of this nature (with no DRM) I’d prefer it to be client-free. Sales price or no, I’m more inclined to just buy it directly from Positech so as not to have to deal with a third party piece of software for no good reason.
As to the earlier poster that said Sword of the Stars was an inferior version of Sins of a Solar Empire, I’m not sure what he’s smoking but I’d like to get my hands on some. Not only are the two markedly different games (in different strategy subgenres) but I find Sword to be by far the more interesting of the two. Sins is very pretty, but ultimately repetitive and shallow to a fault. Sword has some genuine variety, and a fair bit of effort has gone into ensuring the races don’t all play identically.
Of course, I’d argue both are inferior to Gal Civ 2, but that’s another thread. :)
14/06/2009 at 19:09 Katsumoto says:
Bansama’s site would be far more useful if it wasn’t just in dollars, as stated above.
As ever, some top bargains here! I love bargains. Except I don’t, because this thread keeps pointing them out so often I end up spending more money than I would do normally anyway!
14/06/2009 at 20:34 Dead Fish says:
I just bought the Cryostasis/Necrovision/Other Game combo from Gamersgate. Thanks for the tip! :)
14/06/2009 at 21:42 PC Monster says:
I was just about to lay down some moolah for the SotS set, when a nagging half-memory stopped me; I tried the demo a few months back but couldn’t properly remember if I liked it…which probably meant I didn’t. It sounds like the kind of game I’d happily lose myself in for weeks at a time – my beloved GalCiv 2 has remained installed on my PC since it was released (practically unheard of) – but perhaps I’ll wait until there’s a Supreme Ultra Ultimate Edition in a few months…reduced to a fiver on Steam. ;)
I bought The Tomorrow War from the 1C sale instead. Time to see if this is any good.
14/06/2009 at 22:48 abhishek says:
I picked up Eve Online from Steam. I figure that combined with the 21 day free trial, I can get 7 weeks of playtime, which seemed worth it for 7.5$. I am aware of the ridiculously hard learning curve but I’m hoping that I’ll have enough time to overcome it.
14/06/2009 at 23:29 Blather Blob says:
Sword of The Stars looks interesting… Anyone know how good the demo is? I understand that it’s changed somewhat with the release of patches and expansion packs, and the demo’s pretty old. Has the interface gotten any less clunky in the latest, ultimate version?
And a quick price note: Sword of The Stars is actually $7.99 from Impulse. The Argos Naval Yard expansion can also be preordered from Impulse for $8.99, meaning the two combined are pretty much the same as at Direct2Drive, $16.98.
14/06/2009 at 23:42 Scott R says:
SOTS is a great buy, and I echo the sentiment that comparisons to Sins of a Solar Empire are invalid. SOTS is like the Total War series in terms of gameplay, with the most configurable and option-full ship editor in any space game, and races that are Starcraft-level different.
Loads of fun. Heartily recommended.
15/06/2009 at 02:21 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Which is the best amongst gamersgate, impluse, and D2D? Those are pretty good prices and I still need to get the last expansion (the murder of crows one) and the naval yard one looks good too.
15/06/2009 at 02:45 Vinraith says:
@Mad Doc
Personally I’d say Gamersgate > Impulse > D2D, but here’s something to help you decide for yourself:
http://reclaimyourgame.com/
Scroll down the left hand column and look under Digital Downloads & In Game Ads Explained for a summary of how each service works.
15/06/2009 at 02:54 Blather Blob says:
I haven’t used GG yet (but am thinking about the UFO trilogy for $10), but my understanding is they’re all three about the same. D2D and GG provide regular HTTP downloads but wrap the game/installer with an online activation check, Impulse requires a client for download & install, with the activation check built-in to the client. They all three require an internet connection to install, obviously. I think all of them require modified patches, different from the retail patch, though the Impulse client will download and install the patch for you, and D2D is notorious for taking forever to release modified patches. None of them require any sort of client to run the game. All of them allow redownloading, I think, though D2D makes a big deal during the checkout process of how they’re allowing you to do it free even though they should charge you extra for it. Gamersgate promises to help you unlock more activations if you ever run out, Impulse promises they don’t count activations unless you are using too many, and D2D doesn’t have anything about that in their FAQ, and I’ve only ever bought DRM-free games from them (they mark the DRM-free games pretty prominently, which is nice).
I’d probably go with Impulse, since I already have the client installed and have already worked around its quirks (set an extraction directory in settings if you don’t have tons of space on C) and they’re pretty clearly supportive of redownloading whenever you want to install, which I like. And D2D would probably be third on my list, just because of their slowness of releasing patches and the faceless megacorp vibe of their website/FAQ. But that isn’t a really strong suggestion. If you have an account with one of the stores and none of the others, that’s the one you should probably go with.
15/06/2009 at 03:07 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Crud. Figures the one that I’d be least comfortable with has the expansion pre-order. :P I guess I’ll just wait for the ultimate+naval yard package to be on sale later…
Thanks for your help, Vinraith and Blather Blob. I think I’ve got a better handle on those once-nebulous non-steam steam-things now. :D
15/06/2009 at 03:19 Blather Blob says:
@Mad Doc MacRae: All three have the naval yard expansion for pre-order. D2D is bundling it together with the ultimate bundle. But GG and Impulse both charge only $8.99 more for it, so Naval Yard plus the ultimate bundle is approximately the same price from all three stores.
15/06/2009 at 03:33 Satsuz says:
Did that odd trial system that they had planned for Age of Conan ever get sorted out? The general consensus seems to be that it’s not worth getting into, but… I still have a nagging desire to give it a try. Any advice/help?
15/06/2009 at 04:02 Grawl says:
http://www.robothobo.com/ddd/ is an awesome way to keep track of online digital deals (Steam etc.).
15/06/2009 at 06:51 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Thanks again Blob. I feel my credit card calling me… :D
15/06/2009 at 12:35 PC Monster says:
If anyone’s interested, Tomorrow War is awful. Passable space combat wrapped in the worst plot, writing and voice-acting I’ve ever seen in a game. It’s infested with graphical bugs, too. A shame: in this condition it’s not even worth the tenner I’ve just paid for it. No wonder 1C delayed the European release so long.
15/06/2009 at 22:04 sinister agent says:
36 Gb? Thirty six? Seriously? Holy hell, I know I’m always late to the PC party, but jesus god, what the hell is in that game that needs 36 Gigabytes? It doesn’t install Arnie himself directly into your hard drive, does it?
16/06/2009 at 03:04 LewieP says:
Head start on next week:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/29900/
16/06/2009 at 21:40 Chis says:
PC Monster: That’s a real shame about The Tomorrow War. I had Tarn Chronicles, and though it was rather shallow gameplay-wise, it was a fun and interesting space opera romp.
17/06/2009 at 12:29 LewieP says:
Also:
Far Cry 2, PC – £2.93 delivered
17/06/2009 at 23:53 Blather Blob says:
@LewieP: Or, to repeat last weekend:
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1699/