By Lewie Procter on August 15th, 2009 at 1:29 pm.
Physics abounds in this month’s Bargain Bucket, as SavyGamer’s Kaiser of Kost-Kutting LewieP rounds up a slew of science-orientated videogaming treats to while away a weekend….
Trine – £14.99/€22.49/$22.49
“£20 they want for this? what a ripoff!” says I, Mr. Angry internet person, “That’s £10 per dimension!”. Well, they’ve heard your cries that £20 was too much, and lopped off 25%. Trine is a pretty 2D indie physicsy platformer, with production values and then some. The three playable characters with widly different abilities are the biggest hook, it’s a mechanic that gives you opportunities to mix up platforming/combat strategies. There is an RPG-lite system for upgrades, and lots of niceness and polish. RPS Coverage here, and demo here.
Obulis – £3.49/€3.95/$3.95
I really like this puzzle game. I blazed through the first chapter in a few hours, and got stumped by a puzzle more than once. Each time I got stuck, I left the specific puzzle that was troubling me for a while, and came back to it later. Each time when I returned, I solved it instantly. Funny that. It’s got physics and balls and goals. Basically like World of Goo, but it’s got no way near as much charm (but then let’s face it, what has) or goo. That said, it is certainly attractive to look at. My biggest complaint is that some of the harder levels boil down to “time this click exactly right to not fail”, which is a shame. This gameplay footage is probably enough to decide if it is ‘your thing’. Or to be extra sure, there is a demo here.
Osmos – £6.95/$10.95 for two licenses
I’m fairly cynical, so I’m gonna call Osmos out for looking exactly like Orbient on the Wii. I’m sure it plays differently, but the premise is similar, and it would be very possible to mix up screenshots. That said Orbient is a good looking game, and from the looks of things, so is Osmos (I’d wager slightly prettier in fact). The deal here is that one person pays £5.95/$9.95 up front, and they get sent an email, which they then forwards to a friend, who can get the game for £1/$1. A sort of ‘Buy one get one almost free’ sale. This is a preorder only offer, and the game is out on Sunday, so be quick! RPS coverage here.
Flight Sims on GOG – 30% off
I guess I am some kind of philistine, but I see flight sims as the same way as I see racing sims, just with an extra axis. Rogue Squadron is about as technical as I can get, maybe Pilotwings too (speaking of which, Nintendo really should make a new one of them). GOG have four classic flight sims on promotion this week, in both WW2 and modern flavours. Enjoy!
Deal of the week
Half-Life series – 66% off
11 years ago? Bloody hell. Here’s the deal – The Half-Life games are basically better than other games. My favourite thing about the original Half-Life was that for the first time in a blockbuster FPS, I believed that the world wasn’t just designed around me. Black Mesa research facility felt like a very real place, not just a series of corridors designed around FPS gameplay. Valve are one of the most respected outfits in the PC gaming industry, and that can all be traced back to what they achieved with the release of Half-Life. Half-Life 2 was similarly ground breaking, it had (at the time) by far the best use of physics in a 3D engine, and indeed gameplay that I had ever seen. Excellent voice acting was to be expected, but wonderful facial animation was not. I didn’t care too much for the vehicle sections, but that’s really not enough to tarnish the game.
Valve also pioneered episodic gaming, by making games in smaller chunks, they were able to release games far faster, so we got Episode 1 and 2 far quicker than we would have done otherwise. Er, supposedly. You’ve probably already got all these (I’m considering getting HL:Source), but this is the best chance you’ll have to fill in any gaps at discount prices, and if you know anyone who is new to PC gaming, I urge you to urge them to give these games a try. RPS coverage here.
Also of note:
Playfirst sale on Steam
Meridian4 sale on Gamersgate
Empire: Total War Special Forces Edition – £17.50/$24.95 (Buy from D2D, and get a serial to plug into Steam)
Battleforge – £12.50/$19.95
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning – £9.95 (seems to be a UK exclusive promotion)
World of Goo – £8.50/$9.95
The Witcher – £16.93/€19.58/$27.99
Probably a disappointing weekend deal for people who have been using Steam a while, but a great opportunity for gamers out there without Half Life 1/2/etc to top up their collections.
Both of you.
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I decided to pick up Half-Life: Source, purely for completist sake, and the spangly source water effects in good old original half-life. I’m contemplating Trine too, that looks fun.
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I posted a long diatribe then the bastard laptop TrackPad clicked on RPS’ donate button :( Either that or RPS sensed I had my debit card out and pounced.
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I hate it when Witcher’s bargains are posted. They don’t want to sell it to most of the world anyway so why bother?
Each time one of these is posted I head over to Impulse just to be disappointed again.
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@marxeil
How annoying, I posted it, and the UK price, because I didn’t see any mention of restricted regional availability, but you are quite right. Despite quoting a UK price on the game’s page, it isn’t available to UK customers.
Sorry for getting your hopes up.
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I found The Witcher in my local PC World for a tenner. Non-enhanced edition, but the patch is free anyway. They also have Dead Space for a similar price.
I’ve played a bit, and it’s shaping up to be a good enough RPG. It’s very serious in tone, but also quite schlocky, so it remains to be seen whether a proper balance is struck.
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Is there anyway to rename Steam Games.
I don’t like how Opposing Force is mixed in with other games because it doesn’t have the Half-Life title before it.
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Half-Life Source is generally not much different than plain Half-Life. Except there are no mods for it that I know of. Would have been nice to at least have a gravity gun cheat.
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REALLY want to get hold of TF2, but either I keep missing deals when Valve do them, or there’ve not been many deals.
Ideally there’ll be an orange box deal soona actually, as then I can snap up all three valve games I’m missing in one go.
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Empire for £17.50, now that’s a deal.
God knows why anyone buys games new at the moment, wait a few months and get a bargain.
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“Empire for £17.50, now that’s a deal.”
I got it for 9.99 from Zaavi the other day, even better!
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Just noticed that D2D also have the regular edition of Empire for slightly cheaper.
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Incidentally, they had stacks of Witcher boxes in store (this is the Kingston branch). Combined with the low price I’d deduce they’re finding them hard to sell…. :|
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@Paul Maloney: Didn’t Zaavi shutdown like 6 months ago?
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@Joe: Witcher is cheesy and occasionally it’s impossible to work out what the hell you are supposed to be doing. But the hacking to death with swords and magic part of it is solidly enjoyable and after about 7 or 8 hours you might fathom out how the potion mixing works. Some of the boss fights are a bit annoying though.
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Direct2drive also has Trine 25% off, which makes it $22.49 +tax, kinda better for European clients than Steam’s “deal”.
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No mention of the EVE deal? It’s 66% off on Steam at the minute so £2.99 in this country and if you sign up for the 21 day free trial before you buy it then you get 51 days play for £2.99 (and you do just need to sign up for the trial not us the 21 days which would obviously take you outside the sale period). Seemed like a good deal to me, enough to make me give it a try anyway. Oh and since what you’re basically buying is an account upgrade you don’t even need to play it through steam so you can do the ultranerdy thing I’ve been doing the last couple of days, playing TF2 on my desktop while earning a little extra cash in EVE by mining on my laptop.
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@ Owen:
maybe you can get more luck finding the Orange box retail, Im sure I’ve seen it around for que equivalent of $10 USD. Too bad the store where I saw that abandomned box doesn’t have it anymore.
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Persus-9: Jeez, that’s ultranerdy! Chapeau, good sir.
I couldnt resist buying HL Anthology and HL Source, I played the boxed copies of hl and opfor, never even touched blueshift and hl source i think, and it’s time for a replay on those I have played anyway. Can’t believe that would be considered “retrogaming” or whatever the kids call it now… Bloody hell indeed.
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It’s Battleforge free 2 play now? Or is the deal at D2D not for the F2P version? WTF? FTW? ;-)
Delboy
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Just found this spare Speedball 2 serial for use on Steam:
XZB2H-VLTHG-HLRRY-ZEXKM-6HRIX
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What’s the verdict on HL: Source? Is it is worth playing?
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@mcw
It is the original HL with some elements of the Source engine applied to it–namely, ragdoll physics and prettier water effects. Otherwise, it’s really not much different at all from the original HL.
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Trine is still to expensive…when will it get to a tenner…then I’ll buy it…
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Zavvi is online only now, and do some of the best deals. I picked up STALKER Clear Sky for £5 the other day. They’re still selling Empire for £15.95, free delivery.
I got the Half Life 1 anthology, as I only had Half Life 1 before, and the serial key had somehow already been used. (Not sure how when I bought it pre-Steam, but there you go).
I was considering Half-life Source, but figured I may as well wait for Black Mesa.
Another deal is Mirrors Edge for £6.50 here: http://www.coolshop.co.uk/catalog/product/55825-mirrors-edge–for-pc. I’ve got too much to play right now, but that’s the best price I’ve seen it yet.
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£20 for Trine? GAME want £30, so this deal is actually half-off!
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@Krondonian
Mirror’s Edge is a fantastic game, if anyone’s not picked it up yet, I can’t imagine it being available for a better price than that any time soon.
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Get halflife one if you don’t have it, even if you have already played it. If only for the mods. They hunger, natural selection, the specialists and decay (the ps2 expansion coop campaign, now available as a mod) make a good start.
I know a few people who pirated halflife back then and non of them understood the majesty of mods.
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I’m getting my 2D kick fulfilled with bionic commando rearmed at the moment. I’ll wait for trine for a tenner.
It just seems like all i can tolerate paying for anything lately, empire tw and dawn of war 2, both half a year old and a tenner. The age of £30 rrp is well and truely over for me.
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[Is there anyway to rename Steam Games?
I don’t like how Opposing Force is mixed in with other games because it doesn’t have the Half-Life title before it.]
Any ideas people?
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I bought the Half-Life 1 Anthology Pack and while I do have the games somewhere it was cheap and nice to have all Half-Life stuff finally on my Steam account. Started playing HL1 also again, and still awesome.
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For people complaining Trine is too expensive: Buy it! It’s worth it.
Trine’s full price is enterily fair, and 25% off is incredibly nice.
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Like some others, I’m also thinking about getting HL:Source, since it’s the only one not on my Steam account. I’ve never bought a game just to have it, though. Also, that’s a strange thing to do with in these “digital times”, but it’s only a few euros, so…
Time for the annual HL1 rerun.
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“Just found this spare Speedball 2 serial for use on Steam:
XZB2H-VLTHG-HLRRY-ZEXKM-6HRIX”
Been used now, and not by me alas.
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I’d like to point out that EVE Online is having a sale on Steam– first month is $4.99.
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The Half-Life 1 Anthology and Half-Life: Source for $8?
Yes. And again, yes.
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The PlayFirst sale on Steam really is NOT worth looking at. If you want those games, you grab pretty much all of them from BigFish Games for $6.99 (and no stupid pound/Euro fixed pricing), meaning savings of up to 56% off Valve’s pricing.
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I bought game of the year editions of both HL and HL2 and had all the little gaps filled in at that time. HL2 is still the best game I ever purchased retail. The Orange Box is the best game I’ve bought online. I’d like to buy them all again but I don’t have the money + it would be kinda stupid.
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@Freudian Trip: You could try go to Games -> Add a non-Steam to my games list and make a custom shortcut to the EXE of Opposing Force.
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I’ve found Tomb Raider: Underworld for £6.98 at http://www.game.co.uk.
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To Trine or not to Trine, that’s really the only question. Everything else of note here I already have…
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@Vinraith: It was the same question for me. Then I had a weak moment and just bought it. It’s always the same with Steam deals: I’ll think it over and over again but then I purchase it anyway. Digital payment is too easy :(
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I’ve also found The Witcher Enhanced Edition for £13.58 at http://www.amazon.co.uk
This is turning into a great weekend!
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Bought Episode 1 and 2 for 6€. Haven’t played these 2, so that’s a great deal. And a friend of mine got the whole HalfLife series für 17€.
Also got this Obulis thingie. Don’t know anything about it, but what the hell, it’s only 4€ :]
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Basically, the key has already been nabbed by some c*nt with a key generator. I think Valve still allow you too email the support team a photo of you, a scan of the barcode and a receipt of the game purchased new – they don’t offer the service on pre-owneds.
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Trine 25% off isn’t much of a deal when the standard price on the console was originally lower than the PC release.
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Trine 25% off isn’t much of a deal when the console release was priced lower than the PC.
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What’s Empire TW like these days? Is it patched up to a respectable state or am I going to be disappointed by the AI and diplomacy again? It is horribly tempting for >£20…
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@Optimaximal: It was at least 9 years ago, and it may have been pre-owned, I can’t remember.
A quid to have it on my Steam account is fair play though.
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Goddammit, the Mirrors Edge deal got my hopes up. Then it turns out Coolshop.co.uk only ships to the UK…
@Ed: Hard to say what you would be disappointed by. I’d say it’s up to the usual TW standard by now. Far from perfect, but definitely playable. The worst bugs have been ironed out and I think it’s good fun. They’ve still got a couple of major patches in the pipeline though, so their long term support is looking a ton better than with their previous games.
That rather depends on how much the person forking over the money likes the game, doesn’t it? And also on that person’s financial situation. There is no universal and objective scale for price “fairness”. Just because a price seems fair to you doesn’t guarantee that others will agree. ;)
I don’t think it’s worth it *for me*. Not because I don’t want to play the game, but because at the moment, the list of games for which I can justify paying over €20 is rather short.
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To those in the know:
How long is Trine? Is it worth replaying?
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@Krondonian: If it’s the original edition, that key gets you the Half-Life anthology, Half-Life 1: Source, Counter Strike, Richochet, and I can’t remember, but maybe Day of Defeat.
@Flappybat: I don’t think it’s actually come out on consoles yet, it keeps getting delayed. But yeah, it’s going to be cheaper for console owners than even this sale price when it does come out.
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For people in the US, GoGamer seems to have thrown up another 48 Hour Sale since yesterday’s. Nothing great like the $6.50 Mirror’s Edge a couple weeks ago, but Dead Space is $13. And GTA 4 is probably worth $20 if you have enough hardware to compensate for its ported bloatiness (it runs ok on my GTX 260 and 4GB of RAM). Oh, and Blood Bowl is $30 again.
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Trine may be a little dissapointing if you play it solo, but the more people you add, the more difficult and complex it becomes.
If you have a full three players, there’s none of that character-swapping malarkey, where if you couldn’t reach a high platform with the wizard or knight, you’d switch to the thief and just switch back up there. With a full team, you have to work together. If someone can’t make it up a jump, the other two have to help them up.
It essentially turns from a fairly neat physics-based platformer to The Lost Vikings.
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Boy, Trine is so good. This marvellous narrator voice lulled me right into a state of absolute pleasure. Combined with the lush environment and nifty physics, it’s great fun to play. A tad too easy, but nevertheless worth every cent.
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Oh, and I can’t wait for a friend of mine to come by so we can try co-op. Playing on one machine can be some much fun. I remember the good old days with Dynablaster and I have never gronw tired of it.
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Bought Half life for less then one dollar on its anniversary. But I might buy the two expansions at those prices :)
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Thanks jalf…. I might wait for the next patch and the next price cut ;)
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@Freudian Trip: Zaavi are still going online, with the occasional bargain:
http://www.zavvi.co.uk/zavvi/home.dept
(I see they now have Arma 2 for £15.95)
P.
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I’m slightly confused. Is the £2.03 Half-Life Steam are selling Half Life: Source, or just Half Life?
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Oh yeah, the trine demo crashes at boot for me. Now i remember why i’m not interested in it.
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Ah well seemingly both are £2.03. Here’s the saucy version in case you’re interested: http://store.steampowered.com/app/280/
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Wow, an excellent bonus deal for UK folk:
Batman: Arkham Asylum, PC – £16.15 delivered
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£16.15 for Batman? Lawks the console buyers will be miffed about that one…
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@Freudian Trip
You can’t add windows shortcuts, it has to be a .exe, but you can re-add whatever steam game as a non-steam game which will create a duplicate listing (steam will call this one a shortcut though). Right click for properties on that, and rename the shortcut.
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^^ You’ll probably have to Browse to find it, it won’t likely be on the list generated by the add window.
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I bought Obulis for the disgustingly tiny price of $4. So far I’m loving it, and it’s definitely a challenge, but the strict timing requirements do get a little frustrating. I’m still on the first map, but I’d say it’s worth the paltry asking price for fans of this type of puzzle game.
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I’m tempted to get episodes 1 and 2, ive played both already but i need to complete my collection?
Maybe not.
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Sadly the Osmos demo contains little new, save for tweaks. But with the dev’s own site listing it on pre-order for $9, I went for it. Love the demo, will certainly love the full game
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The Empire TW price was tempting enough for me but then yet again I was screwed up by living in the 3rd world, Australia that is, the offer isn’t valid here :(
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