Steam Winter Sale 2012

Can't sauciness terribly impressed with this sale. I want more wargames, of one, come on devs! Run to steam and beg! More variety! More sales! More ranting!

That being said, I am not sure what I wanted to buy that I was waiting on a sale for this year. ME3? Stupid EA shop. Settlers 7? Steam seem unable to put it on sale. Hmm.

Argle bargle iPhone.

needs moar *special sauce*

Well I went away sad again.

I picked up two things: Grimrock and Ninja.

I liked Grimrock but I'm done after 12 hours. I was initially very impressed by MotN but I grew frustrated and tired of it very quickly with only 6 hours played.

Total cost $11, total time played 18 hours.

This is, depressingly, a better result than the fall sale in which I bought Witcher 2 and played it for 30 minutes before becoming disoriented and angry and Orcs Must Die 2 which simply bored me.

Total cost, $11, total time played 2 hours 30 minutes.

Deep down in my heart of hearts I want to think I'll like XCOM despite my misgivings but I just can't bring myself to pay $25 to $33 dollars to find out.

I have $50 in Steam wallet money burning a hole in my virtual pocket (Christmas GameStop Cards->Steam Credit)

I actually wish I had picked up farming simulator now but I'm not paying $30 for that either.

#FWP

Grabbed Sine Mora from GMG for $2 , my last purchase of the Winter Sale period!

I remember getting frustrated and dismayed with some of the levels of OMD vanilla, but I can't say it ever bored me. Or, if it did, it "bored" into my brain and I could barely play anything else until I had five-skulled each level. OMD2 was worse. But after I'd completed it, I stripped it from Steam, because I knew I'd keep going back to it.

Of course, I'm the kind of pseudo-intellectual who thinks he's very clever by solving Portal levels, too.

Witcher 2 can be disorienting and angry-making but I think most people love it once they're into it... I know I did despite a rocky start.

You're an idiot. Get XCOM.

Grimrock's frustration is greatly reduced once you learn how to do its version of circle strafing. Any single enemy is trivial once you can lure them into a 4x4 area. Attack, sidestep, see which way they go, turn and attack before they can turn to face you, sidestep again, etc.

As far as the puzzles go, yeah just Youtube that stuff once you get stumped. Some of them are super tricky.

I was tempted by Anno 2070 and Sleeping Dogs, but I just couldn't be sure I'd play them any time soon and there's always another discounted sale on the horizon. All I bought was the Darksiders franchise pack and KOTOR II, for a grand total of $16.

Or it can be impenetrable. I bounced off of Witcher 1 several times before finally completing it. I've bounced off of Witcher 2 like 2-3 times and I have no intention of going back. I just don't like the combat model at all.

Didn't feel like I spent $55 this time around, but apparently I did. I got 200+ hours of gaming goodness for my money though, so I'm happy.

From Steam I purchased:
Stronghold Collection $5
Bard's Tale $2.50
Silverfall Complete $3.50
Evochron Mercenary $6.75

From Amazon I purchased:
Walking Dead $7.50 (thanks Amazon EC credit!) - registered on Steam
Kingdoms of Amalur Complete $11.99 (should have waited for Jan 1st to save $2!)

From GMG I purchased:
XCOM : Enemy Unknown $17.50 - registered on Steam

So everything above except KOA is now in my Steam library. I'm playing XCOM and loving it. I will play Walking Dead in the next few weeks as I've been wanting to get into that game for awhile now. The rest will join my prodigious backlog. Honestly, I found myself tempted by many games this time around that I decided NOT to buy in the end. Games like Mass Effect 3, Fallen Enchantress and the Game of Thrones RPG (and RTS). In the end the size of my backlog was the determining factor. I have so much great stuff waiting to be played that it was easy to talk myself out of anything over my $5 threshold. I made exceptions for XCOM and Walking Dead because they are relatively new titles I really wanted to play that I was certain would not be as cheap anytime soon. Amular I purchased basically because I wasn't sure how long I'd still be able to with the uncertainty surrounding the IP, and I figured for $12 it was worth owning as so many folks seem to have enjoyed it.

Anyway, NO MOAR PURCHASES for me until the Summer Sales.* We need to start a "Backlog Club" or something where we all agree to play the same game out of our backlogs as if it were brand new and compare progress and impressions. Misery loves company!

* - I still have at least one Amazon EC credit. The CAG Amazon guy mentioned he was trying to get more games included in the Editor's Choice list, and get discounts on them. If Diablo III makes the list with a discount that drops it to $25 or less I will have to bite on that, backlog be damned.

The Walking Dead was worth every penny. XCOM too.

Steam should have a tool where it measures out the likely length of time it would take to play through your backlog.

Then it takes into account your age, gender and where you live and the day your backlog is longer than the remainder of your likely lifespan, you get an achievement.

I think I see Steam's ploy with making the sale so long as I'm still checking the store front after the sale is over. Well played, Valve, well played.

Ok I think I may have to change my tune on the sale. In desperation on the last day I bought Saints Row the Third and so far I really like it! Keep your fingers crossed.

I don't want to go in to the Walking Dead thread because I'm only halfway through and I'm afraid of spoilers. But I need to post this somewhere:

Fuuuck.

Better than I expected as well.

I got so used to Creole Ned's daily updates that I'm not quite sure what to do now ... does Steam still exist if Ned doesn't post about it?

You're another one of us now. There's no going back.

And that's why I'm afraid to install and play the game. Thanks!

Walking Dead: I don't watch the show at all (watched the pilot, but it did nothing for me), do you have to know anything about it to enjoy the game? I haven't wanted to google the game to find out because of potential spoilers.

Okay thanks, then I'll keep on my radar for the future. I've been avoiding it because I'm zombied out, but all I hear are great things about the game, so it's probably worth making an exception.

Don't look it up, you'll stumble upon spoilers in every shadow.

The game will pluck at heartstrings you didn't know you had. It'll resonate with you for a while. At least, it did for me.

Until he does, Steam is just a taskbar icon that I right-click to launch Dark Souls.

The game and the comic take place in the same universe, the show is adapted from the comic but given some clear differences takes place on Walking Death Earth-2.

And no, no familiarity with the source material beyond 'shit! zombies!' is really necessary.

Well, there's a character crossover. We find out what Glen was doing before he fell in with the Atlanta group.

Crossover with the comics? There's actually two. Or two and a half. Or three and a quarter? Hershel, the farmer you meet in episode 1, also appears in the comics*. And then Lilly was originally meant to be the same Lilly the characters come across in Woodbury, but apparently some time between episode 3 and episode 4 someone read the Walking Dead novel which gave Lilly a different backstory, so they severed that tie and changed the achievement and information on their website which suggested it was the same person.

Thanks, Steam!

Solar 2 Y/N?

Brian Rubin on Solar 2 from the Bargain thread

I enjoyed it. It's sorta like Katamari without the craziness. You start as an asteroid and smash into other asteroids and eventually you turn into a black hole and devour the galaxy.

That fulfills like so many things on my bucket list

...was wrong, It's a cool little game, easily worth $2.50.

FWIW, Talisker is correct, it's definitely worth a couple bucks. I don't know about $10, but I've easily gotten several hours of fun out of Solar 2 so far. It may help if you go in with the understanding that it's a fairly simple game in terms of mechanics and progression.

I managed to get Fortune Summoners in the Steam sale for a couple of quid (it was a flash sale)~ :D I've only played 10-ish hours of it, but that's because of exams, not because I've gotten fed up of it.

Though there were times I got fed up, but that was mostly when you have to play as Sana, since ugh, magic-users. D: Let me play as the adorable sword wielding Arche any day! But it's really good (I've wanted to get it for ages), and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it runs perfectly on my laptop - which, rather than being a gaming one, is actually for uni work.

Just finished spec ops the line. Won't say too much other than I didn't like it much. I'll put more detail into the proper thread complete with spoiler tags when I get home tonight.

I need to go back and finish my planetcrap Xcom game. BobJustBob keeps panicking and killing squadmates. I wasn't able to finish the final mission due to a bug where the floaters would try to take cover outside the level, making it impossible to finish.

Next up I'll probably play Dishonored. I've been in the mood for steam punk lately.


Errr... this was supposed to go in the "what are you playing now" thread. FAIL.