Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The RPS Bargain Bucket: Breaking Conventions

By Lewie Procter on December 1st, 2012 at 2:00 pm.


Whether you’re after some cheap fun games to play, or some ranting about publishers and retailers not acting exactly as they should, this week’s bargain bucket has got something for you. There’s some great games available for next to nothing, and I start to lose my mind part way through after staring at Origin for too long. Fun times. For even more discounted gaming throughout the week, you can always rely on SavyGamer.co.uk.

The Void – 85p/€1
Seemingly not available at this price in the USA. That sucks. #NOOCEANS. That Quinns chap described this thusly:

Colour is all in the Void. Colour is what stops everyone from slipping away into nothingness, and in the case of your mute character the removal and application of colour is your only means of interacting with the world. To break it down into terms we’re all used to, your amassed colour is simultaneously your health, currency, inventory, mana, conversation options and weaponry. Just as the real challenge in Pathologic was completing your objectives while manipulating a plague-ridden town’s economy, the real challenge in The Void is completing tasks while constantly having to harvest and tend to the world’s colour.

The rest is here. It’s a must have at this price.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent – Free
Clearly one of the weakest entries in the Splinter Cell series, this has levels cut in to tiny sections separated by load screens, it hasn’t got anyway near as much open-ended level design as Chaos Theory, it takes place mostly in well lit areas, and I gather the PC port wasn’t too hot either. This is free though, so it’s worth a go just to have a look at what went wrong. I don’t think that Mr Fisher ever really recovered from this, after finding a new fanbase of players that like shooting dudes in the face in slow motion with Conviction, it seems that the other new one is going even further down the path of ‘cinematic takedowns’ and mash-buttons-to-breach-the-UN-Convention-Against-Torture gameplay. Maybe Blacklist will turn out fine, but early signs are hardly promising.

Speaking of Conviction, that’s cheap at GamersGate today too.

Mass Effect 3 – £7.49/not a clue about other countries.
It’s time to vent. I’m going to vent.
Whilst sorting through the Kafkaesque nightmare of Origin’s web front end to trying and find which games might be in their highly publicised 50% off sale today, I discovered that despite EA’s prominent promotion of this sale, there’s actually no way of finding out which games are in the sale other than manually browsing the entire library by genre or series, or by manually searching for each game that might be in the sale. The genres aren’t much use since they’re applied somewhat liberally (Arkham Asylum and Darksiders 2 are RPGs apparently). The sale also seems to exclude some games that shouldn’t be excluded according to the terms and conditions (Why are The Saboteur & Dragon Age not on sale?), and other EA games like Mirror’s Edge and Crysis were cheaper in the recent Steam sale. The price at the top is only for people in the UK, it’s a pretty standard Origin policy to practise regional pricing discrimination and run region specific promotions, and the link probably won’t work for some people because Origin has different urls for every item page depending on what region you are in. You can read Jim’s opinion of Mass Effect 3 here.

FOTONICA – Pay What You Want
The beautiful offspring of Rez, Canabalt and Mirror’s Edge, FOTONICA is a game about running forward, running forward, running forward, then JUMPING! As you traverse a mesmerising wireframe landscape from first person, using just one button, you constantly career onwards, jumping the gaps and collecting the things you can collect. It’s a simple idea, executed masterfully. A great game to play, and just as great to watch. I reckon this would make a great gift for anyone just getting into games, or who struggles with complex controls, but everyone should give it a look.

Deal of the week
Company of Heroes Complete, Darksiders, Metro 2033, Red Faction: Armageddon, Saints Row: The Third – £3.55/€4.38/$5.69
Registers on Steam, or pay any price to get them all except Saints Row: The Third.
There are a broad range of responses to this. I think before saying anything else, lets just make it clear that this is an excellent deal on some fantastic games. However, there’s a degree of cynicism in it that I haven’t felt in previous Humble Bundles. Clearly THQ are hoping to make more money from this bundle than just what it generates in sales, all of the games either have a sequel just out, a sequel on the way, or extensive DLC available to buy on top of the main game, for some reason not included in the bundle. None of the other previous bundles have felt like a trojan horse for DLC sales. Whichever way you cut it, the organisers of the bundle have to some extent sold out their cross platform and DRM free principals. There’s an argument to be had over whether what they got in return was worth it, I certainly don’t know, but what used to be an uncompromising force for cross platform and DRM free gaming no longer is, and that is a shame. All gamers benefit from games being DRM free and cross platform, whether they realise it or not. It will be interesting to see if they are willing to abandon their cross platform and DRM free principals again if the right Steam/Windows only indie game comes along.

Also of note:
Borderlands 2 – £12.99. Registers on Steam. Registers on Steam.
Jet Set Radio – £2.03/€2.71/$3.39. Registers on Steam.
Hard Reset – £3.24/€4.49.71/$4.99. Registers on Steam.
Cell HD: emergence – £1.99/€1.99/$2.24
Crayon Physics Deluxe – Free
Cryostasis, Imperial Glory, King’s Bounty: The Legend, Men of War, Men of War: Red Tide, Necrovision: Lost Company, Star Wolves 3 & XII Century: Gold Edition – £2.45/€3.03/$3.93
Nordic Promo at GOG.

For more cheap games, all the time, please be visiting SavyGamer.co.uk.

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106 Comments »

  1. 01/12/2012 at 14:02 Text_Fish says:

    Jump!

  2. 01/12/2012 at 14:03 Hawkseraph says:

    The jump appears to be broken.
    And I can only hope that THQ makes loads of money from that sale. We need CoH2!

  3. 01/12/2012 at 14:04 wisnoskij says:

    The Void also does not seem to be available in Canada at anything like that price.

  4. 01/12/2012 at 14:05 Tusque D'Ivoire says:

    That Splinter Cell deal is difficult to pass up, even though it’s supposed to be the weakest SC game. Never heard of McGame before, though it looks like a weird german steam clone. slightly suspicious.

    • 01/12/2012 at 14:14 iLag says:

      not really suspicious – they are perfectly legit, as far as I can tell – just highly unoriginal.

    • 01/12/2012 at 14:58 sinister agent says:

      Honestly, you couldn’t pay me to play that game again. First of the series I’d tried, and so terribly designed it made me genuinely angry.

      Chaos Theory is bloody good, though. Shame you have to pirate it even when you pay for it to get it to work.

  5. 01/12/2012 at 14:12 Guvornator says:

    “All gamers benefit from games being DRM free and cross platform, whether they realise it or not.”

    This is a) highly debatable and b) not really the best place for said debate, IMH(umble)O. I just came here for the cheap games, not moralizing.

    • 01/12/2012 at 14:30 Prime says:

      “Games Website Not Best Place For Debate On Games!”

      Read all about it!! You heard it here first!

      • 01/12/2012 at 14:55 Guvornator says:

        I meant that if he has an issue with it, write a piece on it, rather than just including it in what is essentially a buyers guide. Otherwise it just kicks off massive comments furball and hinders finding the those lovely bargains the RPS crowd usually post. Frankly, no matter what side of the debate their on, whenever someone says DRM on this site I die a little inside.

        • 01/12/2012 at 16:14 Tacroy says:

          You should look at the Steam Hardware Survey. Fully 29.41% of respondents have uTorrent installed on their computers, and 2.44% have Bitcomet – which means that it’s pretty much a guarantee that at least 30% of Steam’s player base has the capability to pirate games with a couple clicks.

          • 02/12/2012 at 02:08 Aardvarkk says:

            Not at all. I have utorrent and have zero pirated games on my machine. Haven’t pirated games for several years, Steam keeps me full-up on games to play.

            I do use utorrent for other things, like legitimate downloads or for movies I can’t find (Like that Batman one where Arnold was Mr Freeze)

          • 02/12/2012 at 02:56 malkav11 says:

            You’re still -able- to pirate games. You just choose not to. Which is laudable, don’t get me wrong.

          • 02/12/2012 at 06:20 pyroj says:

            I would say by that logic 100% of steam user and PC users in general have Firefox/Google chrome/internet explorer, so they all have the “capability” of pirating. Torrent applications have legitimate uses every linux distro, game mods, free file serving for small company etc..

      • 01/12/2012 at 15:52 dudleyfisher says:

        Please – lets not turn this into a massdebate

    • 01/12/2012 at 14:40 Shivoa says:

      Yes, highly debatable. Gamers benefit from games where you have to ask someone’s permission to install or even play them after purchase and being locked to one platform that may mutate over time to place more limitations on the end user (potentially, see Win8 store and OS X unsigned code is not installable default setting) vs being locked to a legacy platform which is not advancing with the rest of the software/hardware business (if you stick to your current OS – something that will eventually leave you open to unpatched vulnerabilities).

      Or maybe DRM free and cross-platform help all gamers, as seen in the many comments by writers on this site and independent developers about both of those topics.

      • 01/12/2012 at 16:09 mwoody says:

        The opposing argument is pretty simple: a) companies wouldn’t use DRM if it didn’t make them more money (stopping piracy, collecting personal/demographic information, hurting used game sales, etc). And b) more money in the games industry means more and higher budget games.

        I know people can (and, no doubt, will) argue with both a) and b), but that’s the argument for you.

        • 01/12/2012 at 17:17 malkav11 says:

          Sure they would. They don’t have to -actually- make more money, they just have to think they do, and/or feel the need to placate ill informed shareholders at the expense of their customers. Not every business decision companies make is a carefully researched one based on the best available data and the maximum long term benefit for both themselves and their customers. In fact, rather often they’re nothing of the kind (see the way movie companies battled tooth and nail to defeat home video, when that turned out to be an enormous source of revenue that frequently dwarfed box office proceeds even when going to the theater was still consistently the preferred way to see movies, and gave them a long tail that keeps money rolling in decades later).

        • 02/12/2012 at 02:03 The Random One says:

          More money and higher budget gamers means higher stakes at risk if a game fails.
          Higher stakes if a game fails means publishers are less likely to be bold and innovative.
          Therefore, DRM causes games to become more boring over time.
          QED.

      • 01/12/2012 at 17:01 Unaco says:

        Steam has done a fair bit for PC Gaming though, huh.

    • 01/12/2012 at 14:48 tmargul says:

      Seeing as it’s his column, I’m pretty sure he gets to decide what content is appropriate to discuss. You are more than welcome to go make your own website where you don’t discuss such things.

    • 01/12/2012 at 16:37 diamondmx says:

      You may be on the wrong site, as many of us here love the fact that RPS has strong opinions on stuff, and isn’t just a review/demo/video/sale pumping site.

      • 01/12/2012 at 22:36 Guvornator says:

        I doubt it – it’s the only website I read for games. My point is simply that if Lewie has such strong feelings about Humble’s DRM, it’s probably best if he writes a whole screed purely about it (also picking said apparently apocalyptic, principles-voiding bundle as his deal of the week indicates a certain level of confusion on his part).

        In this section he’s basically presenting his opinion as fact, which it isn’t.

  6. 01/12/2012 at 14:12 iLag says:

    That Splinter Cell deal might run out quite soon. They only have 25k keys, so you better hurry. Curiously, an earlier promotion where they handed out free Ubisoft games didn’t work for me at all (tried 2 different email addresses, no luck). Boohoo.

    Mass Effect 3 is 14,99€ in Germany, which is the cheapest the game has ever been here (if still a bit more expensive than for you UK people).

    Furthermore, if you like strategy games, take a look at the current IndieFort bundle, which has Hegemony Gold (registers on Steam) and Strategic War in Europe. And two other games. $4 (or $3 if you bought last week’s IndieFort bundle) http://www.gamersgate.com/indiefort-bundle

    • 01/12/2012 at 14:40 blankname says:

      Another recommendation for Hegemony, absolute steal at $4.

    • 01/12/2012 at 15:49 Wut The Melon says:

      Yeah, ME3 can be had for €16 in retail in Holland (has been that cheap for a while, too), so I’m not really jumping at this Origin deal… fair prices would be nice indeed. Still, the advent calendar shows ME3 on 19 December, so maybe it’ll get cheaper still.

  7. 01/12/2012 at 14:17 SilverSilence says:

    Use this code on GMG for an additional 30% off: GMG30-DEC01-ARFC9

    Also works with the awesome pre-order deal, get game 1 for 30% off then game 2 for 35% off

    http://blog.greenmangaming.com/2012/11/pre-purchase-game-and-get-35-off-voucher.html

  8. 01/12/2012 at 14:21 tobecooper says:

    Are humble guys selling their principals now? What happened there? How do you go from drm-free cross-platform goodness to human trafficking? Man!

    • 01/12/2012 at 14:33 UmmonTL says:

      We need DRM free schools!
      Although I’m not sure which platforms a principal needs to cross I guess that can’t hurt either.

      • 01/12/2012 at 16:52 tobecooper says:

        Free the principals! Let’s do this on a principle of love. I think they learned their lesson about crossing platforms and they’ll keep to the drm-free bridges now.

    • 01/12/2012 at 15:03 Randomer says:

      I really don’t think it should be as big a deal as everyone out there is making it. They’ve done different atypical bundles in the past. Me, I had no interest in the eBook bundle, but I didn’t make a big stink over it. But it’s nice that they are having a variety of bundles above and beyond the regularly scheduled Humble Indie Bundle . It might bother me if they were eschewing their regular bundles for this publisher bundle. But it seems like the frequency of their bundle output is only increasing. So what’s to complain about?

    • 01/12/2012 at 16:09 Rich says:

      My only problem is that because THQ have had so many lay offs recently, there’s a good chance the actual devs of these games won’t see a penny. I don’t have so much of a problem with it that I didn’t get the bundle anyway, but then I am a hypocrite.

      • 01/12/2012 at 16:36 Llewyn says:

        The people who worked on these games will have been salaried employees who wouldn’t have directly benefited from this sale in any case. I assume the aim is to try to keep the remaining dev teams in work for as long as possible, hopefully until THQ can become profitable again.

        At which point THQ will presumably go back to the AAA games industry norm of making teams redundant at the end of each project to avoid having to pay them during downtime. Sigh.

      • 01/12/2012 at 22:50 GunnerMcCaffrey says:

        “there’s a good chance the actual devs of these games won’t see a penny.”

        They were never getting much in the first place. Welcome to capitalism. See also, the surplus value of labour.

    • 02/12/2012 at 01:57 ShineyBlueShoes says:

      The question though is one of whether their primary principal is to support indie devs or to support charities. If their primary goal is to support charities I wouldn’t be surprised if this is their most successful bundle between the caliber of games and that a lot of people are probably going to put all the money to charity this time.

  9. 01/12/2012 at 14:27 Mac says:

    While this article continues to ignore the likes of Greenman Gaming and the deals they are running then it is just worthless – far more complete roundups available!

    • 01/12/2012 at 14:40 adonf says:

      Apparently GMG and Lewie have buried the hatchet. I saw one of their games on his site last week, so we’ll probably start seeing them here too in the future.

      • 01/12/2012 at 17:20 malkav11 says:

        Um, some of the links up there are from Greenmangaming right now.

      • 01/12/2012 at 19:37 Llewyn says:

        To be honest, I’d been quite happy that Lewie was keeping GMG out of the Bucket. Their payment processing system is horribly broken and they seem to have either no idea why or no interest in fixing it. That doesn’t really make me want to trust them with my CC details, even if they would actually accept orders from me.

      • 01/12/2012 at 20:04 Donkeyfumbler says:

        I would LOVE to know what happened between Lewie and GMG that meant he has ignored them for all of this time. I know he wasn’t terribly positive about their way of doing things (the whole trading things in bit) to start with, but it must have been more than just misgivings about their business model that meant it has lasted this long.

        I’m very glad though that it seems to have ended. GMG may not be the best store around but they have stuck around and they have some great deals which I’ve happily taken advantage of, and it has been a bit annoying that savygamer, as my first port of call for decent info on deals, has kept them off the site.

      • 02/12/2012 at 04:00 Reality says:

        I have to agree with Llewyn here – GMG’s broken payment processing meant I was out $50 for almost a month when I tried to purchase xcom and it failed. It’s not worth taking the risk there again for me.

    • 01/12/2012 at 19:42 fish99 says:

      I like GMG, but I wish they’d upgrade the 33K modem they power their site with to a 56K.

  10. 01/12/2012 at 14:34 blankname says:

    Groupees Be Mine 6: http://groupees.com/bm6

    $1 minimum gets you:

    Eschalon Book 1
    Ceville
    Paranormal

    $5 also gets you:

    Dawn of Fantasy
    Worms Reloaded
    Two Worlds
    Gorky 17
    Earth 2160

    Some music included at both levels

  11. 01/12/2012 at 14:44 mwoody says:

    With all the incredible press it’s picked up, any last minute preorder deals on Far Cry 3 PC? I guess at this point they would be NA-only, since you filthy foreigners are already playing it… *sniff*

  12. 01/12/2012 at 14:50 Electricfox says:

    Also: Strategy First has a Thanksgiving bundle of games for $4.99. Ordinary price for the lot (according to them) is $149.93.

    http://strategyfirst.com/games/2681-strategy-first-thanksgiving-bundle.html

    • 01/12/2012 at 15:21 Colonel J says:

      Yes amazing value for $5 a lot of tankshootybang fun to be had in there with Achtung Panzer and Steel Fury. Not sure I’ll ever install the rest of it though, I got it just for the APOpStar DLC packs and Steel Fury.

      Beware though, Strategy First are a bit shit, they have a 5 x download limit on purchases and their download was basically unusable for me today, crawling at less than 20KB/s all morning but hopefully that’s just this w/e and them getting hammered while the deal is going. For $5 I’m prepared to be patient but I’ll be looking for other ways to download it they don’t sort it out.

      • 01/12/2012 at 17:35 Barman1942 says:

        I have the same problem. The downloader Strategy First uses is absolutely crap, it was downloading part 1 of 4 of Achtung Panzer at about 15kbps, which puts download time for the total game at around 40 hours. I’m not waiting two days to download the game, then another two for each DLC, not to mention all the other games in the pack. Really feel ripped off with this “deal”.

  13. 01/12/2012 at 15:15 Voronwer says:

    I see that Kingdoms of Amalur is finally discounted both on Amazon (UK) and on origin. Tempting.

    • 01/12/2012 at 18:50 fish99 says:

      I may be one of the few people, but I really enjoyed KoAR, and played it to completion. The combat is fun, the world is gorgeous, excellent music, I enjoyed the lore and there’s a good 100 hrs of content there IIRC.

      The cons would be – occasional poor voice acting, and random monster fights (as opposed to quest enemies) become pretty straight forward.

      • 01/12/2012 at 18:53 Voronwer says:

        I played some of the demo and was charmed by the game, just not at the price it’s been at.

        Do you know if the DLC is worth getting?

        • 01/12/2012 at 19:34 fish99 says:

          No idea, sorry, didn’t buy them. Metacritic says they’re ‘ok’ so maybe if they were a couple of quid each. You do reach the level cap in the regular campaign though (in my case about an hour before the end, doing every side quest) and the DLCs don’t raise it.

        • 01/12/2012 at 23:14 Samuel Erikson says:

          If you don’t mind the gameplay, the DLC is worth a discounted price. The story, while not great, is more focused and more satisfying than the main campaign.

          [Minor edit for clarity.]

          • 02/12/2012 at 01:25 Voronwer says:

            Thanks! I think I might see about getting a version with DLC then.

      • 02/12/2012 at 02:34 mwoody says:

        I wouldn’t say you’re one of the “few,” as I recall it being very well received. I enjoyed it, but one of the major drawbacks of the game is that it’s basically a single-player MMO. By which I mean it has enough quests that you’ll go mad doing them all – and horribly outlevel EVERYTHING – but as a completionist gamer, I couldn’t help myself. I’d end up so incredibly powerful that I’d have to push through and skip entire zones to get some challenge back, but missing those story bits drove me mad, so I petered out around the 30 hour mark still in what I’d call the early areas.

        • 02/12/2012 at 06:19 Tacroy says:

          Kingdoms of Amalur had the bones of a great game in it, but it was in dire need of someone with editorial powers to cut out the the tons and tons of flab. There was about 30 hours of actual gameplay there, maybe 45 hours or so for a true completionist.

          If they hadn’t tried to go for the “single player MMO” thing, it would have been a significantly better game.

          • 02/12/2012 at 17:59 fish99 says:

            I finished the game, did every quest, nothing beyond that, and it took over 100 hrs IIRC. I don’t agree with the single player MMO bit at all, the game doesn’t play like an MMO. MMO combat means no feel of connection in the combat because of latency, whereas KoA combat feels like an action RPG, with impact and requiring timing. Also the quests are fully voiced, often have multiple stages and have more variety than you’ll find in an MMO. They’re no worse than you’ll find in Skyrim.

            I do agree that you become overpowered, especially the magic, but only for the random enemies. You still come across challenging fights on quests, even towards the end of the game. I know all this because I’ve played it. Plus you can play it on hard if you need more challenge.

  14. 01/12/2012 at 15:26 quijote3000 says:

    “Whilst sorting through the Kafkaesque nightmare of Origin’s web front end to trying and find which games might be in their highly publicised 50% off sale today, I discovered that despite EA’s prominent promotion of this sale, there’s actually no way of finding out which games are in the sale other than manually browsing the entire library by genre or series, or by manually searching for each game that might be in the sale. The genres aren’t much use since they’re applied somewhat liberally (Arkham Asylum and Darksiders 2 are RPGs apparently)…. The price at the top is only for people in the UK, it’s a pretty standard Origin policy to practise regional pricing discrimination and run region specific promotions, and the link probably won’t work for some people because Origin has different urls for every item page depending on what region you are in”
    THIS. Damn, I hate when Origin do this

  15. 01/12/2012 at 15:50 gschmidl says:

    If you enter through Origin’s front page and use the advent calendar it does appear all games are 50% off today.

    e: nevermind, not all of them, but many. Which was the ORIGINal complant.

  16. 01/12/2012 at 17:11 J.Kruegger says:

    Ah stop the bitching about the THQ HIB already!! People are flocking en masse to save their favorite franchises, not a company.

    • 01/12/2012 at 18:53 DClark says:

      Yes, I know I’d be annoyed if like likes of EA, Activision, or Ubisoft got their hands on THQ’s franchises. I didn’t mind throwing ten bucks their way even though I already own the games in the bundle that interest me.

  17. 01/12/2012 at 17:15 rustybroomhandle says:

    There’s more to the strategy behind this THQ thing. They have gone into a forbearance agreement with Wells Fargo, granting them grace until 15 Jan 2013 to prove that they can recover. This sale seems to be working towards that. In addition to straight-up revenue from Humble sales, their stock price has also shot up about 40% since the bundle started, and seems to be holding steady-ish.

    Altogether this is good for THQ.

  18. 01/12/2012 at 17:51 Martel says:

    Borderlands 2 – £12.99. Registers on Steam. Registers on Steam. This is from a site (SImplyGames) that is just selling the cd keys. Sounds a little fishy. Anybody used them? Is it legit?

    • 01/12/2012 at 19:28 nindustrial says:

      Also, will the keys work for registering on steam in the US?

    • 01/12/2012 at 20:28 c-Row says:

      Some games are sold both as Steam keys and physical. I will let you know how it works out within the next 15 minutes.

      • 02/12/2012 at 02:03 ShineyBlueShoes says:

        So what’s the verdict?

        • 02/12/2012 at 02:11 FluidLogic says:

          Yeah, I’m sort of waiting for some more info to pop up on this as well. I’d really like to take advantage of a great price on BL2, but having had no experience with this site, I’m not eager to just go for it.

          Would love some confirmation on whether it can be redeemed on the US version of Steam.

          • 02/12/2012 at 02:25 ShineyBlueShoes says:

            The part that makes me wary is “In over 93% of cases, our customers are receiving their CD Key’s around 7 minutes 27 seconds (Avg 2012) after placing their order”.

        • 02/12/2012 at 02:26 hypercrisis says:

          As he disappeared, one can only assume the price was his own life

        • 02/12/2012 at 08:09 c-Row says:

          Well, until now it seems they have a strange idea of how long 7 minutes are. No key yet, but it still says”ordered” on their homepage so they acknowledge it’s not fully processed at this point. Maybe there’s no 24/7 service…

        • 02/12/2012 at 10:08 c-Row says:

          Well, they either read my tweet or really are out of the office during the night – my key just arrived and registered in Steam just fine. Downloading now…

  19. 01/12/2012 at 18:39 LionsPhil says:

    Whichever way you cut it, the organisers of the bundle have to some extent sold out their cross platform and DRM free principals.

    Very much this.

    • 01/12/2012 at 19:45 ThinkAndGrowWitcher says:

      The shock! The horror!…

      …both of which you can get from playing some of the *excellent games* in this bundle ;)

      How about we stop the heavily exaggerated pseudo-morality bitching over the Humble Bundle becoming the Devil’s spawn and just take each of their bundles on their merits?

      This one has many, even if they don’t all conform to *what other people* think they should be doing/standing for.

      As Paddy McGuinness would probably say: “No like-ee, no buy-ee”

      • 01/12/2012 at 20:36 hilltop says:

        “heavily-exaggerated pseudo-morality bitching…”

        I’m impressed you managed to read that in the comments here.

      • 01/12/2012 at 20:43 Skabooga says:

        . . . and just take each of their bundles on their merits?

        It could be argued that one of the demerits of this bundle is its DRM and single-platform nature.

        • 01/12/2012 at 22:05 Gargenville says:

          I’d be a lot angrier if the DRM wasn’t the most relaxing hassle-free way to manage games in the world and the OS wasn’t the one every major PC game depends on (cue 12 dudes shouting about wine and cedega and how they can run one specific game without too many game breaking glitches).

        • 02/12/2012 at 02:29 ShineyBlueShoes says:

          I’m sure they have plenty of numbers on what they’ve done and I wouldn’t be surprised if games with multiple options are redeemed in a far greater quantity on Steam than any other method. After all that’s what the majority of people buying these bundles want, if there’s not enough Steam games many people end up passing.

  20. 01/12/2012 at 19:34 stillunverified says:

    This fucking stupid “PUBLISHER BAD INDIE GOOD” black and white morality bullshit has to stop.

  21. 01/12/2012 at 20:40 EiZei says:

    It’s a real pity that the vastly better (and very different as it was made by an another studio) XBOX 1 version of Double Agent has been forgotten. It is pretty much Chaos Theory 2.

  22. 02/12/2012 at 01:46 FluidLogic says:

    Anyone know whether the Borderlands 2 deal from Simply Games will register on US versions of Steam?

    Assuming it can ever be purchased from here in the US…..

    • 02/12/2012 at 03:19 scottyjx says:

      It looks like a no.

      http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1493316.html

      “Their Country options for “Billing Address” do not include the United States?”

      That’s a shame.

      • 02/12/2012 at 04:21 ShineyBlueShoes says:

        Well it looks like they support paypal so you might be able to use a UK address, though I’ve never tried that. I’m more worried about the legitimacy/reliability of getting a key.

      • 02/12/2012 at 05:25 FluidLogic says:

        Yeah, at that price it is a shame. But maybe it’s for the best. A couple others have suggested that the site may not be entirely reliable, and there’s some reviews mention that resolving issues with that site is a problem as well. Some folks even said they never received a key (not for BL2, but other games) and couldn’t get a reply from their customer service guys.

        Might just wait to see what the Winter sale is like for Steam. I’m not convinced it’ll be $15 give-or-take, but anything over 50% would be cool.

        • 02/12/2012 at 08:35 ShineyBlueShoes says:

          Yeah, considering that it was $25 at several reputable places this past week I think I’ll wait until the next round of big sales.

  23. 02/12/2012 at 18:22 fish99 says:

    I’ve already helped THQ by buying all those games individually for a lot more money, some for full price.

  24. 02/12/2012 at 20:27 jmtd says:

    principles.

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