By Lewie Procter on September 17th, 2011 at 11:54 am.
Update: Buy Mirror’s Edge.
Oh dear. I’m going against doctor’s orders here. I was told to take some time off work after having two of my wisdom teeth out yesterday, but I don’t think the doctor realised that my job is just pressing buttons on a keyboard in the right order. Still, I am feeling a bit ropey, and my head isn’t quite straightened out after my general anaesthetic, so if I’ve missed anything obvious, or said anything that doesn’t make sense: That’s probably why. SavyGamer is still going, so that’s a web site you maybe want to visit. Here’s this week’s best value downloads:
Portal – Free
Oh Valve. <3.
Here's John's verdict of this, all the way back from 2007:
This is Valve’s trademark knowledge of the player put into a new genre. Because it knows how you’re going to think as you walk into a room, it is once more manipulating you, both to aid and hinder, such that when listening to the commentaries on a second run through, you’ll feel like the marionette of some lunatic benevolent puppeteer. You thought you looked up at one point because you were inspired to by your own ingenuity. But no – they tricked you into it. The cads.
You’d have to be crazy-silly to still avoid playing what I think is Valve’s best get yet, when they are offering it for free. This promotion ends on Tuesday, so get it asap, and make sure to tell your friends.
DEEPAK FIGHTS ROBOTS – £3.23/€3.69/$4.95
ALL CAPS, indeed. John said this of DFR:
The wonderful sitar funk appears throughout the game, in increasingly surreal and eye-distorting levels. And it’s a lot of fun. The challenges don’t ramp up too quickly, and there’s infinite lives to ensure things are focused on fun. There’s bunches of bonuses to collect, including further nods to Bubble Bobble in the form of fruit and letters. (I’ve yet to find an umbrella that lets me skip levels.) And my favourite feature are the “shields”, animal friends that’ll accompany you, and take the brunt of a collision with a robot. On death the robots will occasionally make remarks, and I think this must be the first game in which the baddies have offered “MY CONDOLENCES” after I’ve died.
Sounds fabulous. VIDEO.
Star Wars: Republic Commando – £3.49/€4.49/$4.99
Alec has Retro’d and then Re-Retro’d this, and it’s totally worth a look. It’s on sale as part of the general Star Wars promo at both Steam and Direct2Drive (UK/USA), where both Kotor for £3.49/€4.49/$4.99 and LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga for £7.50/€8.58/$9.95 are also stand out deals.
Darksiders – £5/€5/$5
I didn’t get on too well with this. There’s definitely entertaining moments, but it just felt sloppily designed, with weak puzzles and badly put together set pieces throughout. Here’s Jim’s impressions:
The game is often impressive to look at, despite a few blandments. It borrows heavily from the chaos and imperial imagery of the Warhammer universes, but that’s probably a good thing, both because that maximalist ludicrousness is just a great palette for a supernatural biff-bonanza, and also because this same developer is making the 40k MMO, and if this is anything to judge things by, they’re not going to have any trouble creating the necessary art assets to making it look suitably hyper-gothic.
Deal of the week
Time Gentlemen, Please! – 43p/€0.59/$0.77
Apply coupon “lewiepsspecialdeal”.
Here’s a special deal, from me to you, via Dan taking pity on my post-dental-surgery feebleness last night. What a sweetie. Here’s Wot Alex Thought of Time Gentlemen, Please!
TGP’s heroes, Ben and Dan, are openly overjoyed to be in an adventure game – delighted by the puzzle-potential of a newly-swiped item, and considering their inventories a physical record of joy and adventure. Often, the two will turn to each other after a clever/awful pun or ridiculous puzzle solution and both let loose a massive, shit-eating grin: they’re in a videogame, and they love it.
A great deal at full price, but it’s an utter steal for this discounted price. Use *credit card* on *internet*.
Also of note:
Tex Murphy 50% off promo.
Men of War – £2/€2/$2
Cryostasis – £2/€2/$2
For constantly up to date news on the best gaming deals across all platforms, get yourself over to SavyGamer.
Buy TGP, everyone! It’s ace. Men of war looks like a pretty tasty deal for $2, too. It’s a bit too overwhelming for my feeble brain, but at $2 I recommend it to anyone who’s interested.
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Bought TGP, but when I click the download link, I get an Error 404 “Object not found!”
Did the RPS flood crash their servers?
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Got the 404 error when buying TGP as well.
I Emailed the support address and received another download link almost instantly. Startlingly quick support left me much impressed.
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Yeah, apologies. Plimus seems to have a weird issue whereby 20% of people get an error message instead of a link. I’ve moaned, but they just ignore me.
If you have a problem, just pester me at: dan@sizefivegames.com and I’ll hook you up with a working, non-Plimus link as soon as possible.
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You could always get it for Steam for full price. Considering the full price is so minuscule it’s worth considering.
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Aww, code has been used too many times.
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Darksiders is an awesome game, much better than any God of War.
Star Wars: Republic Commando is great too.
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I wouldn’t honestly compare it to God of War, Darksiders is much closer to a Zelda game, although decidedly Grimdark and with a more hands-on combat system. :)
Yahtzee’s review of the game is a good watch for some info.
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I liked it a lot, and agree with the Zelda comparison. It’s not super-original but I thought it was a lot of fun.
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It’s closer to Soul Reaver than anything, which was a gothic Metroid. I also got frustrated about an hour in by a particular enemy but it was a Learn2Play issue. A little persistence and I ended up loving the game, spending 32 wonderful hours going through the game twice and getting the achievements, which I usually couldn’t care less about.
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Does Darksiders get any different after the first 45 minutes? That’s about all I’ve played, and its just ok. I don’t really don’t have any idea what’s going on or what powers he has. It just seems like a bunch of combat with one button combos.
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The first hour is a bit confusing and linear. Basically you start with all the powers and then you get stripped of them. It’s the least impressive part of the game.
After that the game opens up and you get a much better grip on abilities because they are introduced gradually and the game becomes much more about exploring and puzzle solving.
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Lucky you still have teeth, young man..
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Darksiders is very good. One of the better games of the past year that I as a PC gamer thought I would dislike because it was too consolely. I was dead wrong. The combat (God of War style) is satisfying enough and the Zelda like puzzles make the game shine. Some of the boss fights are slightly annoying, but that’s a minor annoyance.
Grab your Xbox controller, fork over the money and enjoy. It’s an order.
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Is this real life?
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Is this just fantasy?
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Caught in a landslide
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No escape from reality
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open your eyes
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look up to the skies
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And seeeeeee
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I’m just a poor boy
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I need no sympathy
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Because I’m easy come, easy go
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little high, little low
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any way the wind blows
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doesn’t really matter to meee…
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Too me.
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I love RPS
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Think @ninjapirate was referring to this amazing YouTube video! David after the dentist-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txqiwrbYGrs&feature=youtube_gdata_player
It’s the best thing on the Internet ever!
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@Dlarit: Yea, I was. That video immediately popped into my mind when I read Lewie’s first lines.
Still, the replies couldn’t have been better!
Oh RPS. <3.
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Was very tempted to join in, but knew I would screw it up. Congrats good sirs.
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I was hoping it might continue a little longer so I could do a dumbed down for consoles gag on the “Pulled my trigger now he’s dead” line. Yeah it doesn’t really work in isolation. Possibly not really in context either.
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Why do these Rhapsody threads always end at the bridge and miss out the best part?
Oh baby, how can you do this to me baby?
You just gotta get out, you just gotta get right outta here (Denton).
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Is Cryostasis any good?
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I enjoyed it, although be warned it runs absolutely terribly on every single ATI card. Reminded me off a cross between Amnesia, although less scary and Condemned with the first person fisti-cuffs plus its pretty rough around the edges so dont expect triple A polish
Certainly worth a try for £2 though
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Cryostasis is a diamond in the rough. Definitely a breath of fresh air, as far as FPS go, but doesn’t like ATI/AMD cards, as stated.
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Its not bad
Ever played Condemned? Its like Condemned on an icebreaker ship with added logic puzzles.
Just like condemned its very good, unlike condemned its an absolute system hog. It played smoothy on a 2.4hz core duo and an 8800gts with everything turned up though.
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I got it to work ok on my ATI card but I had to be a bit modest with the graphics settings. Strangely enough if I cranked the graphics up to max it wasn’t a performance issue it actually gave me lots of weird artifacts.
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Guys has anyone installed republic commando from steam using window7?
I really want to get this game, it’s one of those ones I missed at the time because of another big release right next to it. Unfortunately I was recently remined of another such game (FSW) which I bought from steam and it simply would not work at all on windows7, and you can’t compatibility mode a steam game.
Appreciate any replies b4 I buy it..
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It runs for me on Win7 64-bit. I’ve held off in the past, but apparently the (non-Steam) DRM is effectively gone now. (And, crikey, three-quid-fifty? I don’t care if it’s the wrong trilogy, I remember it being a pretty nifty teamworking manshoot.)
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I run Windows 7 and it runs fine. It’s not through Steam, but I don’t have any problems with it at all.
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Zero problems for me, and it’s a hell of a game.
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It runs for me (Win7 64bit) as long as I don’t raise bump mapping above “low”.
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Same as Nova. Republic Commando runs fine on Win7 (64-bit) through Steam. Widescreen can be enabled through an .ini edit. There is a known problem for recent graphics cards, though (especially ATI cards?), where the game refuses to run with bump mapping turned on. It crashed for me until I put bump mapping on low.
Also, mouse controls seem slightly screwy, like the vertical/horizontal sensitivities are different, which is weird.
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I noticed that the mouse sensitivity is resolution-dependent (BUH), so it’s not impossible that if you’re making it do widescreen when it was never designed for it that it is scaling the two axes differently now.
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I got Republic Commando working on W7 (not through Steam) with some jiggery pokery in the graphics settings – I found out the details at the widescreen gaming site which also sorts out newer resolutions etc. for older games…
It’s a cracking – if a bit basic – squad FPS thingty – well worth a few quid.
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Republic Commando is one hell of a team based shooter. Get it.
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but will it work on win7 through steam?
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It works fine for me.
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Does TGP register on Steam?
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Nope sorry, you’ll have to buy it through Steam if you want it on Steam. This deal’s for direct purchases only :(
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Steam has released a four pack for dead island that works out to £22 each (a week or so after the games release).
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Green Man Gaming have a war games coupon this week for 20% off that covers
ARMA II Operation Arrowhead £11.96
Total War: Shogun 2 £23.96
Sengoku £19.96
IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover £28.00
Men of War: Vietnam £23.96
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
Nuclear Dawn with instant beta access £11.52
Just enter WORLD-ATWAR-20PEC @ the checkout
If you join through a friends referral link you n your mate both get 5 of whatever the store currency is that you two use. If you don’t have a mate with an account but want the £5 here’s mine http://www.greenmangaming.com/?gmgr=cinokehe
Sorry Badger I see what you mean, I’ve changed it to look a touch clearer.
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Damn, I read that as Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad AND Nuclear Dawn beta access £11.52. In hindsight that obviously wasn’t going to be true!
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Why isn’t KOTOR 2 part of Steam’s Star Wars collection? Does anyone know where you can still pick it up?
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It looks like Amazon still sell it for £8; ‘swhere I got a copy.
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Sith Lords is not on Steam to begin with.
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For Uk and Europe in general;
Physical copy of Red Orchestra 2 with free shipping, 22.49 euro
http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/19780373/Red-Orchestra-2-Heroes-Of-Stalingrad/Product.html?searchtype=allproducts&searchsource=0&searchstring=red+orchestra+2&urlrefer=search
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That’s £18 in The Queen’s currency. For comparison I’ve spotted it for £20 in my local GAME, so it’s not a huge OMGWTFBBQ deal, but it’s most certainly a nice price.
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The Tex Murphy games, the FMV ones, are damn good and worth it at that price. There were about 6 good games to come out of the whole FMV adventure obsession, and Under a Killing Moon, Pandora Directive and Overseer are three of them.
The controls take a little getting used to but after an hour or so you get used to it (you use the mouse for movement). If you only grab one as a curio get Pandora.
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+1 for the recommendation. The games are awesome.
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Paradox Catalog sale still running on Steam this weekend. The entire catalog including Mount&Blade Complete, Magicka, and a ton of other strategy games you always meant to check out can be had for $99 USD.
I took advantage of today’s(er, yesterday’s now, apparently) daily special on King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame Complete for $7.49 USD, and am currently enjoying it much more than the last few Total War games.
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Not a sale price, I know, but Play.com has F1 2011 for pre-order (stupid phrase) at £17.99. Which, given that the best steam deal for F1 2010 has been £14.99 is a fantastic starting price.
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I bought F1 2010 from Steam for less than £4…
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Mount & Blade Complete is on sale for $12.49 on Steam, and each of the three games individually is at a pretty decent discount right now, too.
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There’s really no reason to buy anything but Warband.
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Not even Fire and Sword, which seems to be newer and cheaper and standalone (buh?)?
It’s a game people seem to be raving about which I don’t seem to “get”, mind.
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Fire and Sword is basically just a (super, super buggy) Warband mod. It’s fun to play, I guess, if you want firearms. Otherwise, you’d be fine just getting Warband as it has about 1,000 fan made mods that are alot better than Fire and Sword (and free!).
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What do you miss out on by not having the original game’s content? I thought Warband was more multiplayer focused?
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@Suede
Nope, the single player in Warband is an expanded and enhanced version of the single player in the original game (and more substantial than the single player in Fire and Sword, since F&S is really just a mod to base M&B). Whether SP or MP is what you’re after, you want Warband.
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Sounds odd, and even a little dodgy in that case to keep selling the original as part of the bundle, but thanks for the tip!
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I might be wrong, as, despite owning Mount & Blade and Warband, I’ve not actually played them, but are there not a few mods that only work with the original. Seem to recall hearing that, but might have complete imagined it.
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Mount and Blade, 75% off on Steam. How’s Steam M&B with mods?
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There are no issues with mods and M&B on Steam. Or at least none that I’ve come across. The mods (tend to) go in a folder, inside the Modules folder… so they aren’t changing the “Native” content, and there’s no problems with Steam validating and resetting the files. The launcher lets you choose which self contained mod/folder gets loaded when you launch the game.
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Never had any trouble with Steam and mods of any sort, considering that Valve is one of the most mod friendly video games developers overall this doesnt come as a big surprise. Did anybody of you ever run into trouble running mods on Steam?
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The Steam versions of some games don’t play well with mods, especially those without “offical” mod support, as the Steam version is often a slightly different program.
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I’ve run several different mods in M&B, installed at the same time on steam. It works flawlessly, IME.
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It depends on the game. Source games, Gamebryo games, Cryengine games and “Valve approved” games like Mount and Blade (which is basically a steamworks game, given that you can register retail copies on steam) work great with mods.
But some games don’t work so well. I know many GTA 4 mods don’t work with the steam version–which sucks as GTA 4 has some awesome mods. So it’s usually best to research before buying on steam if you plan on modding.
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The GTA IV mod issue isn’t Steam specific, it’s that the mods for some reason are based around a mostly unpatched version of GTA IV and don’t work on later versions, while the Steam download is fully patched. What I don’t get is why the modders aren’t modding the latest version.
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Yeah, Steam has zero issues with MnB and mods.
I recommend Warband + cRPG. Great fun to be had there if you stick with it.
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Gah. wrong post. Fuck this comments system in the ass, mouth, and cunt!
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That’s thorough!
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agreed. It’s his attention to detail that impresses/scares* me the most. ;)
*delete as appropriate
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They really should make changes. It’s a badly implemented reply system.
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It’s a terrible reply system, it doesn’t correct for user error at all!
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Noooooo. ><
Been wanting to buy Mirror's Edge for ages and ages but waited for a sale…
Then it comes on sale which will end less than 5 hours before I get paid!
Dammit… fml.
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Er… It’s just 2.5€. That’s the price of a single student meal! You can’t possibly be that poor.
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Nice timing on the Mirror’s Edge, as I was just listening to the themsong on grooveshark yesterday. But the sys reqs say 3Ghz, my comp is a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo. Anyone know how much CPU clockspeed this thing really needs?
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I think none: I had E4300 unclocked 1,8ghz. ran smoothly.
[edit: also on 8800, (320mb shitty version] no physicX of course)
Anyways! get the game – the game is original and cool, could compare with portal’s even.. It’s unique and it shouldn’t dissapoint for sure!
2,50€ = go for it! I’m getting two for gifts (tho I don’t even buy games for myself that much)
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I’m running it on an e7200/8800GT and it’s flawless with physx turned off.
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Unless the specify Dual Core, you can usually ignore the Ghz requirements if you have a dual core CPU.
The 3Ghz probably means single core (P4?) and so basically all dual core cpus should be faster than that… at least that’s how i understand it – me being a PC gamer who refuses to care about hardware and benchmarks.
Anyway, I ran it on a medium powered c2d laptop and it ran smooth and looked lovely… unreal scales pretty well i think.
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I’m thinking about getting mirror’s edge, but I’ve heard things about the DLC not working on the steam version, and that seemed the most fun. Is the shooting(which I don’t really like) part of it big?
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If you fire a bullet at any point during the singleplayer campaign you’re doing it wrong. The time trial content that comes with the game is better than the DLC, imho. The DLC is good, but I enjoyed the regular time trial levels much more.
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I loved the game (for the first half) but the second half can get annoying if you don’t shoot.
That is to say, you don’t ever NEED to shoot – but my resolute determination to finish the game without firing a shot lead to a fair amount of frustration in a few of the later levels where you have to get past/take down a lot of enemies. I’d have had an easier (and probably less frustrating) time if i’d just shot them in the face.
But it’s an awesome game and worth getting regardless of it’s flaws. Not played the DLC – but I do also recommend the time trials – they take the best parts of the gameplay (running and jumping quick) and skip a lot of the annoying stuff (bad guys).
And this is from someone who doesn’t usually play those kind of story-less extras.
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Is it even possble to run Mirrors Edge with PhysX on?
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I’d imagine a GTX card could handle it, or dedicated hardware. It’s weird how Arkham Asylum’s physx implementation adds so much more detail than it does in ME and doesn’t incur anywhere near the performance hit.
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The massive performance hit from Physx is because the game uses by default old shitty drivers in the game’s directory instead of the installed main ones. There’s a trick to getting rid of them that I can’t recall from memory right now. Think it was a simple delete. Once you get rid of them the game finds PhysX elsewhere and it will run much smoother.
Found the trick on the steam forums and tested it on a 2,4 ghz duo with nvid 8800 GT and 2 gb ram. Ran very well.
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Thanks for the tip! That works beautifully, no performance hit whatsoever.
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Coupon for TGP fails with this message:
“Coupon has exceeded maximum use limit”
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Went to buy TGP but same here, coupon exceeded maximum use limit…
Looks like we missed out on the deal :(
I don’t suppose there is any chance of getting this deal again?
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I’ve heard good things about Sword of the Stars, and it just so happens it’s part of the Paradox deal on Steam at the moment. It’s the complete collection. Worth getting?
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If you enjoy a somewhat streamlined 4X gameplay with realtime combats, absolutely. It’s one of my favourites, and I’m looking toward the sequel (Which is a continuation of the metaplot) with interest.
You can also choose to skip the battles if you want, but the autoresolve tends to suffer far greater ‘calculated casualties’ than a skilled player, who will snipe off critical systems and the like.
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IMHO, Sins of a Solar Empire is a better space strategy game.
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Sure, and I love Sins – but it’s really a Spaceship RTS rather than a true 4X. You buy tech for starcraft-style upgrades and unlocks, rather than the 4X “I now have this awesome shiny laser. Given I’ve got a new spec armor too, time to crank out a new generation of warships” feel to things…
A lovely game in its own right, and massively thematic while you play it – but certainly not the same style gameplay at all.
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Magicka is 75% off, so complete pack for 6,24€ atm!
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yeah!.. so : today only !
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was back here to say that ! and it’s today only !
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i meant to reply to Silver
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