It’s that time of year again when we’re glad our wallets aren’t sentient beings capable of understanding the torture we impose upon them during Steam’s summer sale. There have been some truly great deals this year.
I feel like I’m holding back, passing up some good deals waiting for something magical to go on sale. I do this every year; I wait and resist buying anything then end up with nothing. Part of me thinks, “If I really wanted these games, I would have bought them when they first came out.” I don’t know why that part of me says this every year — it’s crazy nonsensical part. The other half screams to buy everything in sight.
I’ve been watching Arma 2: Combined Operations hoping that it jumps from 20% off up to 66%. It won’t, since the deal says it lasts until July 23, but I won’t pull the trigger until the summer sale is over and I prove to myself that I can try and be frugal. No matter what, I’m purchasing before the 23rd to play some DayZ.
One of my friends gifted me Orcs Must Die! — today, in fact — and I’ve been having a blast with it. I think the reason I never bought Orcs Must Die! is that it released right around the time that Dungeon Defenders came out. What a shame, because Orcs Must Die! is awesome — maybe better than Dungeon Defenders. I wish it had co-op because I’d buy Graev a copy. This solidifies buying Orcs Must Die! 2 for co-op.
I bought Graev Back to the Future and Sam & Max Episode 3. He loves those adventure games. He just said over my shoulder that he recommends Back to the Future.
We’re still playing The Secret World. According to Raptr we’ve put in enough time to become ‘Elite’. We completed the first three dungeons with relative ease. Our experience with groups thus far is quite positive. We simply post a message or two in the LFG channel, fill our group with the first people to /t us, and go for it. So many people post their average item quality level like it’s a gear score, or say they want experienced players only.  We die once or twice at most, learn the fights quickly, and meet nice people.
During one of our dungeon runs through Inferno, one group member said, “This is like a Zelda boss!” It’s easy to tell that many people we’ve grouped with haven’t done a MMO dungeon or raid in their life, and it’s always an ego boost when they say, “omg your’re a badass tank” when all I’ve done is spammed my aoe taunts and avoided standing in fire.
Good to see you’re finally going to play some DayZ. I know you harp on immersion and DayZ has it in spades. Let me tell you in advance, seek out the servers with third person and crosshairs off (expert setting). It makes the game more difficult, but it attracts less exploiters and the tension of sneaking around zombies is magnified when you can’t scout the room from a 3rd person perspective. The game is frustrating at first, but don’t give up. After you understand the meta game, it becomes manageable.
Steam sales are evil… I want to buy every sweeeet deal.
Meh.. Assasin’s creed revelations was kind of a letdown.
Liked AC2 better.
Yeah the Steam sale is killing my checkbook. I picked up the Assassin’s Creed pack (AC3 looks great and I haven’t played any AC since the first one) at the price of $50 it was a steal. I went ahead and picked up Avernum 4-6, Galactic Civ 2 Ultimate Edition, Gratuitous Space Battles, Lego Batman 2 (my daughter and I love it), Star Ruler, Ys Origin and Ys: The Oath in Felghana and repurchased Two Worlds II for the price of the expansion. I would have picked up more but I blew through about $150 back a few weeks ago getting pretty much every Paradox published game.
The only problem I have is the one I normally have, I have way too many games than time to play them. I have bought the Founder’s pack for End of Nations and the Elite Founder pack for Mechwarrior Online recently as well and EoN is starting beta soon and Aug 7 is early launch for MWO. Then GW2 is out. Not to mention other games I have preordered like XCOM, Borderlands 2 and Torchlight 2.
Darn Steam sales get me all the time.
That said yeah I really wanted ARMA2 to come down more as well. I just can’t pull the trigger on it at it’s current cost for the age of the game. Also considering that most likely DayZ will have some type of official spinoff coming out soon and that is the only reason I want ARMA2.
I burnt myself out on TSW. Matter of fact I went ahead and uninstalled it. It was fun but with everything else coming out in the next month and a half plus all the steam purchases I can’t justify playing TSW once it goes into the monthly charge and if I play it much more I will get too addicted to it and will not want to drop my sub. lol
By the way I agree Orcs Must Die! is great fun. I uninstalled it recently but I did enjoy it back when I had it installed.
By the way how do you guys manage your games. My desktop is a fraking mess:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZUu1hCY9gdw/UANt_4hOtCI/AAAAAAAABP8/Y_XoqJk6sJA/s1600/Desktop_7_15.JPG
@Michael Whitt: Steam manages all of mine. I only have icons for a few games (mostly MMO’s) that I don’t associate with Steam. To be honest, when I’m done with a game and I know I’ll never play it again I either remove the icon or I uninstall entirely.
I’ve been sniping some of the smaller games I never got around to playing like Bastion, Ys Origin, etc. I’m eyeing a few of the packs though even though I know I’ll never get around to playing them. I’m weak…
I’d hold off on Arma II for now, I bet it will drop. Mount and Blade Warband started on sale at like 60 percent off or something and today just dropped again and got a bundle pack so it is possible for multiple price drops to happen. That being said I finally got a few of my friends to pick up M&B Warband now that it’s only 4.99 lol. DayZ has potential but in its current state there just isn’t enough to do it keep me playing. The cons outweigh the pros;
Pros
1. Can be immersive at first.
2. Decent idea.
Cons
1. Terrible inventory system, literally the worst I have ever encountered.
2. Character and enemy models/animations are bad.
3. Not much to do, find spawning items on the floor in buildings, get chased by zombies, see the lone player once in a blue moon.
4. Poor game engine or mod execution, not sure which since I didn’t play the core game Arma II at all.
If someone would fund this guy and get him a talented team and a decent game engine this could be Really good. But this ain’t no minecraft yet, I’ll leave it at that. Kinda upset I purchased this one still lol, sorry for the rant.
Look at you guys having fun with a Funcom MMO. What is the world coming to?
Best deal thus far right now.
Fallout new Vegas ultimate edition. (all DLC)
10Eu.. prob 10$ for the rest of you.
So far I have only bought the Mount & Blade Collection, mainly for the Napoleonic Wars DLC. Two hundred player battles sound like fun.
Woot! FO:Las Vegas Ultimate $9.99. I can finally play it 🙂
How is Mount and Blade? I haven’t heard much in detail about it, but iirc some folks have said it’s really underrated. That said it got panned by reviewers and the user reviews on gamespot, for example, aren’t much better.
I have M&B and M&B:WB. They are pretty nice but I have never spent too much time playing them. I hear that M&B:N is great for multiplayer. It is pretty free form.
LOL I am at about 50Gb downloaded so far from this steam sale, and I still have about 20-25Gb still downloading.
M&B Warband is really fun. I’d suggest it to someone that likes to play muliplayer fps, even though you can switch between first/third person perspectives. The graphics arn’t great mind you but they actually add a bit of charm for me and make me laugh sometimes so I like them. Gameplay and mechanics are solid though, if you enjoy shooting people with bows/crossbows in games like skyrim then you’ll have fun. Easily the best swordplay in a multiplayer format I’ve seen as well. As basic as the controls are for directional combat, they take awhile to master. You see you can attack as melee in 4 directions left, right, over head and thrust. As a blocker you must match your opponents attack with a block to block successfully. As easy as that sounds it can be pretty tricky. Throw in 2h weapons, shields that eventually will break, and a slew of different weaponry to choose from with different strengths and weaknesses and you have a really deep combat system. Throw in mounted combat, different game modes, and mods like the cRpg mod which is like the multiplayer but with levels and stats you can distribute and you just can’t go wrong. I’d highly suggest it. As a side note if you just can’t stand the graphics the same company is making a new game called War of the Roses. I’m trying to get into the beta and they have a little promotion way of doing it, you can sign up for it here and I’d love it if you would put me as a referrer so I can get into the beta. http://www.waroftherosesthegame.com/?ref=34e3213ea96 .
Mount and Blade Warband is epic – one of my favorite games. I play it for the single player campaign. They have a pretty good modding community. I recommend using the Floris Mod Pack, it fixes a lot of what is broken in vanilla.
Time is the issue for me these days: I’m letting plenty of deals go buy because even at £3-£4 per game I’ll never have the time to play them.
An unplayed game is wasted money no matter how good the deal appeared to be.
Having said that I bought Metro 2033, Fear 2, Fear 2 DLC and Fear 3 last night 😛
I got Orcs Must Die! and Dungeon Defenders in the sales last year and honestly thing Orcs is a way better game though it lacked the Multiplayer option that saw me log epic time on DD. Actually to be fair one is a pure solo game, the other is practically MP only.
With Orcs Must Die 2! launched next week that final issue is laid to rest as it’s at least 2-Player 🙂
So far:
Crysis 2 – 11.99
KotOR – 2.49
Legend of Grimrock – 5.99
F&S expac for M&B – 2.49
Saints Row 3 – 24.99 (My own real regret so far!)