Steam Winter Sale 2012

I was watching some video last night about an ARMAII mod called Wasteland and now I'm thinking maybe I should pick up the game in case I want to try that out. How is the basic game? Is it worth the $18 Steam wants for ARMAII and its expansion if all I ever did was play the single player part?

The only things I've really splurged on so far are Sleeping Dogs and its DLC, and the Anno 2070 expansion. Plus a handful of sub-$5 stuff, but a bunch of that is just to have a downloadable version of stuff I've already got on discs. I don't expect to spend much more given the repetition so far, so this is definitely the weakest Steam sale for me, but I think a lot of it is just having exhausted the catalog in previous sales, as others noted.

Keep in mind that with all the repeats that possibly means that we won't see the traditional repeat of everything at the end. So I wouldn't assume it will come back around later this week.

Analog: A Hate Story is 75% off by default, dropping it to $2.49. It straddles the line between text adventure and interactive novel -- if you liked Digital: A Love Story, you'll know what you're in for (though it has fewer puzzles).

Fair warning: the two AIs -- the only 'people' you'll directly interact with -- are drawn as anime characters. It fits in the setting of the game (an ancient, derelict Korean generation ship floating in space) but I know there are morons out there that will avoid great games just because of a prejudice against an art style.

Anyway, it's a really good game if you like the genre.

I have never played a single Fable game. I realize they did not live up to the lofty goals initially trumpted, but with Lost Chapters on sale for $2.50 and Fable III at $12.50, is there any fun to be had? What do they actually play like? A strange and broken mixture of Adventure and RPG games?

I really liked the first Fable, the second one was pretty good also, and Fable 3 is in my backlog. First one is a fairly linear RPG, with a lot of cheeky English charm.

For all my snideness, I've done OK this year; I've managed to snag some real value. Many were impulse buys, but I haven't gone and impulse-purchased anything I wasn't already interested in (with the exception of Orks must Die II)

- Arkham City
- Orks Must Die! 2
- Dead Island
- Dark Souls (from amazon)
- Mark of the Ninja
- Civ V: Gods and Kings (from GMG)

And I think that's it. I realize I'm going to be eating serious crow given my earlier comment about restraint (deservedly so). I ended up with a bit more end of year cash this year than I'd anticipated, so I felt free to splurge a bit. :)

Arma2 is a massive milsim sandbox. There is plenty of fun to be had in singleplayer if you are willing to dig for it. The standard campaigns may or may not work for you. Fortunately there's a ton of user missions and an editor that is reasonably easy to just screw around in.

Here's Arma2 Free - the low res crippled basic version. I'd recommend trying that to get a feel for what Arma is like. It's not a typical shooter at all. There are many design choices for realism that might feel like bugs or lack of polish. On top of that, there are also lots of bugs and lack of polish. It's a love it or hate it kind of game and I believe far and away the best platform of it's kind.

I think I'll snag the first one and give it a spin. I am sitting here trying to decide whether to buy an iPad or not, though, so I really need to buy absolutely nothing.

Flash deals with ~12 hours to go:

• Mirror's Edge $4.99 (75% off). Never been on sale before, except for one million times.
• FEAR Collection $13.71 (75% off). A FEARfully complete collection of FEAR games and expansions. Individual titles also 75% off.
• Hero Academy $1.24 (75% off). Gold Pack with DLC is $4.24. Cross-platform gaming between Steam and iOS. You're not invited, Balmer!

Digital had one puzzle, just one. Analog has one puzzle but there's more to it and multiple endings. There's more game to Analog than there was Digital and its better written too.

Outposts had no respawning until you left them, but they would respawn the second you reentered their activation radius.

Well, just to be pedantic, there was no timer or anything, it's simply when the computer needed to drop the outpost from memory to make room for other terrain and so "forgot" that you'd cleared it.

The last flash deals of 2012 are up:

• Cities XL 2012 $9.99 (75% off). Repeat.
• From Dust $2.74 (75% off). Repeat.
• Frozen Synapse $4.99 (80% off). Not sure if repeat. But probably repeat.

Flash deals with ~4.5 hours left:

• Anna $3.39 (66% off). First person horror adventure set in an abandoned sawmill. What could possibly go wrong in a sawmill?
• Ridge Racer Unbounded Full Pack $11.89 (66% off). Includes the game and four DLC packs.
• Prototype $4.99 (75% off). Again.
• Prototype 2 $19.99 (50% off). Again: The Sequel.

Flash deals with ~10.5 hours left:

• Crysis Collection $17.49 (75% off). Includes Crysis, Crysis 2 Max Edition and Crysis Warhead. Each title also available for $4.99 each or $9.99 for Crysis 2.
• Towns $7.49 (50% off). Greenlight game that involves towns (educated guess).
• RAGE $4.99 (75% off). I'll eventually crack and get this. But not today.

Community's Choice is currently Dead Island GOTY Edition $6.79 (66% off).

Towns good?

Daily Deals for January 1st are:

• Max Payne 3 $29.99 (50% off). The repeats weighed on him like an anchor made of lead.
• Max Payne Bundle $7.49 (50% off). Comes with 1 and 2. Or $4.99 each.
• Awesomenauts $3.39 (66% off). Repeat.
• Torchlight $3.74 (75% off). Repeat.
• Torchlight 2 $9.99 (50% off). Repeat.
• War of the Roses $14.99 (50% off). Pretty sure a repeat.
• Total War franchise 66-75% off. Get everything in the Total War Grand Master Collection for $41.24 (75% off). Also, repeats.
• Transformers franchise 50-75% off. Repeats with big explosions.

I prefer Gnomoria, which is the same price as the discounted Towns by default. It has a much slicker, more intuitive interface.

On the other hand, Towns is "done" while Gnomoria is still in that indie alpha/beta preorder phase.

Except it's not even close to done. It may have been released, but it's actually in a far worse state than Gnomoria.

I agree with your first sentence...Gnomoria all the way.

Flash deals with ~10.5 hours to go. To quote the immortal Yogi Berra, it's deja vu all over again:

• Company of Heroes Complete Pack $12.48. A repeat and it's been cheaper elsewhere.
• Deadlight $7.49 (50% off). Repeat.
• Space Pirates and Zombies (SPAZ) $2.50 (75% off). Repeat.

Should I keep posting the flash deals? They are nearly all repeats now but they may still be useful for people who missed something the first (or second or third or tenth) time around. In any case, with around 11 hours left, the latest flash deals are:

• Dawn of War II Collection $9.99 (75% off). Party like it's 40,099.
• Crusader Kings II $9.99 (75% off). Party like it's 1099.
• Day of Defeat: Source $2.49 (75% off). Party like it's 1939.

Community Choice for the next 11+ hours is Borderlands 2 for $29.99 (50% off).

While I've bought enough stuff already (6 items and counting) that I can't really complain, I do agree that the flash deals stuff is pretty odd. They have a ton of games on sale - I wonder why the same ones keep popping up? Makes me wonder if they "sold" the shelf space, so to speak.

The worst part of the flash deals are my friends getting games a few hours after the deal ends, saying oops they missed the deal, well I better get it now.

ONLY to have Steam flash deal the game again 4 days later...

For this year I've actually gifted away more than I bought for myself. This makes me happy inside. :)

Liking your posts doesn't do justice to how awesome/gigletastic they are.

Your brother could be cut almost in half, leading to decades of regret and somber award-winning music.

I bought plenty too, so I shouldn't really complain either. But there has been plenty of stuff missing from this sale that always showed up in the past, and I've been keeping an eye out for it since I've got some money burning in my pocket.
I haven't seen the Majesty franchise up, or the Star Wars one (my husband has been eyeing the Force Unleashed ones for years but never bit, I was going to gift them). I don't think I've seen the Gothic games up either, but I have them all so I might be wrong. Same with the Two Worlds games.
I don't think I've seen many (non-horror) adventure games, for example Whispered World pops up regularly but not this time.

I was hoping to pick up either Warlock: Master of the Arcane, Fallen Enchantress or Heroes of Might and Magic VI, but never saw any of those either.

I don't mind the repeats, I'm sure not everyone has the time over the holidays to check all those flash deals, but it's a shame this seems to mean missing out on other great games.

I also was hoping for Heroes VI, and for the third sale in a row, Settlers 7. It never seems to go beyond the basic third off. Majesty 2 , though, is 50% off, only $9.99 for the game and all expansions.

Settlers 7 is on sale at Gamersgate for less than $6. I got tired of waiting for Steam to feature it and broke down. Not like that's news or anything. ;)

Flash deals with ~7 hours left:

• Tropico 4 Steam Special Edition $5.99 (80% off). Does not include DLC, though some of it is also 80% off.
• L.A. Noire $4.99 (75% off). Solve the mystery of the extras 'e'!
• Miasmata $7.49 (50% off). A survival adventure game brought in through Greenlight. You play as a plague-stricken scientist on a remote island looking for a cure. And then shenanigans happen.

Thanks, but I'm (a) trying to limit the number of places from which I make digital purchases so that I can keep track of them; and (b) nervous about Gamersgate in particular based on things I've read. I've got enough of a backlog that I can wait for Steam to come around on it, though if it's not restricted by the publisher from being deeply discounted, it's odd that Steam hasn't done it.

a) I can understand but b) needs some explanation. I've never heard of anyone having bad dealings with Gamersgate, and if there are people who have I'd like to know about it.

Easy. "La" indicates feminine gender; the masculine form would be "Le Noir."

Thanks for solving that! I got violently sick of the game halfway through and never wanted to play it ever, ever again, but I did wonder about that. This makes sense.

From reading posts at the Other Place, I gather that they have made a series of outrageous pricing errors throughout the holiday sale season, with inconsistency in accepting/denying the resulting orders. Throws up a red flag I don't want to bother worrying about.

Overall, I've had decent success with GamersGate - Unity of Command, Dawn of Discovery, Kings Bounty and Settlers 7 were all purchased from them. I had a problem with the DoD purchase - Ubisoft sent them a bunch of bad keys for the game+expansion version and only the expansion would work. I complained and they said they were working on it. That wasn't good enough for me, so I told them to give me my key or refund my purchase. So they gave me not only my game + expansion key, but another key for just the base game. So I have no beef with GamersGate and continue to shop there.

Hey now, just found Settlers 7 at Amazon for $7.49. Done and done.

Holy crap, the Holiday Sale is still going? It's January 2nd. They gonna just roll into Valentine's Day?

Agree. It's 8 days too long, or thereabouts. I'd like to see it Christmas eve through New Years Day. This one is Dec. 20 through Jan 5th, and that's right after a Thanksgiving sale (which I ignored). I recall feeling the July 4th sale was too long, too.

Really? Complaining that a sale is too long? You would rather have them charge you more for the games then I guess.

I think it's cool that you only read and replied to one post and ignored the context of that post by choosing not to read the entire thread full of discussion. I mean, other people might find that annoying or lame, but I think it's charmless and offputting! So good on you!