If you are a PC gamer, you will probably use Steam, Valve’s digital distribution platform which is kinda known for occasionally having insane sales. Well, One such sale has recently ended. As well as reducing near everything in the Steam store, if you checked back every day you could get your hands on some even further reduced games. And that I did, here’s what I bought and what I think of them so far.
FUEL was my first purchase, at around £5. I’d read the hype that was happening before it’s release, with it’s ridiculously huge open world and the like, but for me the game was a let down. After banging my head against the wall whilst the necessary Games for Windows Live installed and updated itself (Closing the game around 4 times in the process, I mean, what the hell GFWL, why would you do that?), I leapt into the game. Well, no I didn’t, because I needed to adjust the graphics options, which you can’t do ingame. Sigh. Another restart of the game later and FINALLY I can start playing. And.. well.. I really didn’t like it. The actual racing felt clunky and rigid and the way of accessing races, whilst probably the best way to do it with such a large world, took you out of the game. Ditching races for the moment I decided just to explore, and whilst my surroundings looked nice, everywhere felt kinda samey.. Even climbing to some of the game’s Vista points just got me to see the same stuff in a prettier way. Having said that, the weather and light cycles were really enjoyable. Driving along a clifftop path whilst the sun is setting was the most fun I had in the game. What really killed it for me though is the poor GPS, if you’re going to have a game hyped up because of it’s huge gameworld, you might want to make sure it’s usable.
Whoops, went into a bit more detail that I’d meant to there, so I’ll quickly skip over the next three I picked up. Kane and Lynch wouldn’t even start and I’ve not launched Indigo Prophecy or Painkiller yet. Both games I’ve been meaning to play for a while, and finally picked up nice and cheap. Unfortunately, other games have been calling, but I’ll get round to them eventually. Also grabbed the Hitman pack, which wasn’t even on sale. Curse your purchase convincing ways Steam! Saints Row 2, Killing Floor and GTA IV also got bought cheaply, but I’ve not played them enough to write about those either. I wonder why…
Oh yes. Because Civilisation IV EATS TIME. Taking over 2 hours to complete the tutorial (To be fair, I did carry on with the game ’till I could nuke Ghandi) it’s certainly a game you need to set some time apart for, which we have indeed been doing. We need to finish that 9 player game we started last night people, it was going pretty awesomely ’till everyone had to leave. Anyway yes, classic turn based strategy game, if you didn’t buy it you lost out.
Red Faction Guerilla was a game I nearly didn’t buy when the sale rolled round, but was convinced to do so. Glad I was, because after I’ve jumped through the glitchy hoops of getting it working somewhat on my machine (The driving still lags, anyone got any idea why?) it’s a lot of fun. I’ve been.. ignoring the missions and smashing as much as possible with a hammer. Probably says something about me, but hey, hammers are cool. Not to mention explosives. Explosives are also cool. Combining the two is, well you get the picture. For £3.75, despite it’s bugs, it’s a fun-filled destructionfest. Boom!
FlatOut Ultimate Carnage was on sale for £1.70 one day. It has online multiplayer, so myself and a couple of people in dahouse (<3) decided to snap it up for that price. The opinions you get will be.. different, depending on who you ask. I enjoyed it, the mere pleasure of racing schoolbuses around a figure of eight track was, to me, worth the price alone. The handling, or lack thereof, grew on me, and the destruction derby mode is pretty damn awesome. Toby on the other hand, was trying to find a way to remove the game from his account entirely, he was that unimpressed by it. Deary me.
Finally the sale has gotten me playing Borderlands once again, which the DLC finally being cheap enough (and containing a G enough) for me to pick it up. Damn that game is fun, that is all.
So I have all of these new games to play! What shall I play, what shall I play… spoilt for choice really…
What’s that Valve? …Engineer update?
Eh, screw those games. TO TF2!
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