The Steam Summer Sale started on Thursday last week. Some years I don’t see much that I want, either because the selection isn’t that great or I’m not in a gaming mood, but this year no matter how hard I tried to avert my eyes from the screen I could not avoid the sweet, sweet siren song of cheap games. So many games.
What I have bought so far
The Witcher 2 – I’ve been looking for an RPG to sink my teeth into*, and a number of guildies recommended this. It looks dark and gritty in the preview videos, which I like. A few reviewers complain about the kludgy controls, but I’m sure it’s manageable. However, in retrospect I’m a little disappointed that I bought this. I’m sure it will be a fine game, but it’s too new to have a dramatic price discount. I usually have a rule that I won’t spend more than $15 on a game during a Steam sale, and I should have stuck to it.
* I already had Mass Effect 2, which I’ve started twice now and only gotten maybe a third of the way through. For some reason, I just can’t get into it. I mean, I love my Shephard (her name is January), I like Garrus, I like space adventure, and I know that ME2 is considered one of Bioware’s greatest games, but man.. I just never feel inspired to sit down and play it. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.
KOTOR – The classic! I bought this in part because SW:TOR is around the corner, but mostly because it has a great reputation. KOTOR is pretty old by this point, but I know it was a seminal gaming experience for a number of people. I bought it for $2.49, which is about the same as the cup of coffee I get every day before work. Now that’s value!
Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 – I bought Half-Life 2 for $3.50 last year during the summer sale. I have yet to play it, although I did watch someone play through it back in the day so I’m not a complete luddite. However, I will not let a little thing like never playing the original stop me from buying cheap expansion packs! This year I picked up Episodes One and Two for a grand total of $4. One day I might even play them. I know they will be good.
Dragon Age: Origins – Ultimate Edition – Finally, a game I have played! In fact, I played it when it first came out. On disc. So yes, I paid $10 to own a digital, Steam-friendly version of DA:O. Don’t judge me! (This set also comes with the expansion and all the DLCs, so it was actually a heck of a deal.) You probably have played this game already, but if you haven’t and you like dense RPGs it is hellaciously good.
What I have not bought so far
Assassins Creed: Brotherhood and Fallout: New Vegas – Ohhh, how I have stared longingly at both of these games on their respective sale days, but I have already bought more games than I will ever, ever play and I am saving the rest of my piggy bank for what I hope will be a great deal on Civilization V.
What I played this weekend
There are so many new games in my Steam library, not to mention the ones I bought in previous sales and Humble Bundle indie games that I have never played. Plus I had a lot of free time this weekend! So what did I end up playing? Team Fortress 2. Which.. I’ve owned for a million years and is free now anyway. Sigh.
(Seriously, y’all, the TF2 servers are packed full of new players who are just begging to be air blasted off a cliff by a pyro wearing a road cone as a hat. Some things are greater than us all!)
So in short: Damn you, Steam and Valve, for putting games on sale for so cheap that I cannot help but buy them, and for making games so good that I cannot stop playing them.
Wednesdays are tough. Have a Leia cat.
Oh sure, you’ve thought about what your favorite tabletop character might wear, or how they might look, or how they would react to things. But have you considered how they would smell?
Fortunately BPAL, the popular gothic-inspired scent house, is here to help you find out! Their new RPG line has three different series of scents for races, classes, and alignments that are meant to be combined to represent your character (or mood). Fashionably Geek seems to think they’re pretty good, but mostly I just like the idea of going around all day smelling like Evil.
I quit World of Warcraft in April, 2011, after just over six years of almost constant play. During my time in the game I met many fabulous people, had a lot of fun, and developed skills that I could legitimately apply to the outside world. While I still play for an hour or two here and there, I have not yet fully relapsed.
My time away from the game has given me some perspective on it, I think. It’s amazing how quickly one adapts back into ‘civilian’ life and things that seemed routine back in the day suddenly become strange and outlandish. My taste for progression raiding is certainly over. There are times when I can feel a twinge for it, but that’s mostly abstract competitiveness and not any real yen for raid content. In my natural habitat I have become truly casual, and the idea of spending even six hours a week in obligated game-playing gives me pause.
So here I am, fresh from the sunny elf-less void, and I have a few observations on the double-edged swords of WoW.
1. Too many numbers. I can imagine back in the day when Blizzard was developing WoW that making so much of the math available to the public seemed like a radical geek idea. And really, it was. I know plenty of folks — myself included — who deeply enjoyed burning the midnight oil calculating the exact efficiency increase between offhands. Heck, the Elitist Jerks community wouldn’t exist without mathcrafting! The problem is that by making those calculations available, they suddenly became mandatory.
As poor beleagured Ghostcrawler, Blizzard’s current numbers guru, said in a recent post: “I’d love to have the discussion some time about how close two similar specs need to be before players will play the one that is most fun for them and not the one that does theoretical higher damage. Is it 5%? 1%? 0%?” It’s hard to defend playing the fun spec when the raw math is staring you in the face. In retrospect I wish WoW had held back some of the information to create a little fuzziness around that 5%.
2. Too many choices. WoW revolutionized the idea that an MMO can suit any lifestyle, and honestly now I think that was a critical mistake from the design perspective. Cross-server LFD? To hell with server community, or any community for that matter. Respecs whenever you want? No excuse not to be have a “perfect” spec in your back pocket. Addons to customize your UI? Gearscore!
To be fair, I feel a little silly demanding that MMO developers stop giving us so many options. And I am certainly not saying that progression raid guilds shouldn’t emphasize individual performance, although in all honesty I think most guilds that seriously raid make themselves crazy over that 5% damage difference when in fact it really only matters to the best guilds in the world. Are we just not able to accept the great responsibility that comes with the great power of having a company attempt to cater to our every gameplay whim?
3. People. Last week someone I trusted not only left our community (which is always sad but understandable) but attempted to pull the whole thing down with them on the way out. MMOs and other group games give us the opportunity to meet new people, make friends, and feel like part of something larger than ourselves. They also, occasionally, remind us that people can be dicks.
I guess really that’s my point for this whole piece, such as it is: perhaps Blizzard gave us the tools to be dicks to each other, but we’re the ones who use them.
Look, I would stop humping Valve’s leg if they would stop being so freaking awesome.
First they added the frankly amazing Replay Update for TF2, which integrated basic video editing functionality with replay captures. Then yesterday they taunted us with a fiendish puzzle:
We’ve been holding one of the surprises pretty close to the vest for months now. We don’t want to ruin it, but we’ll give you four clues to get you guessing:
1.) It IS a “Meet the” short.
2.) It involves ONE of the two remaining classes.
3.) It’s NOT the Pyro.
4.) It’s the MEDIC.
Whatever could it mean?! PC Gamer reports that there are suspicious (and explosive) doves flying around maps at the moment. Want to see for yourself? Well you’re in luck because TF2 is free to play all week and weekend long!
In the meantime, here’s my favorite from Valve’s Saxxy Awards for best use of the new replay capture system. This entry won “Most Epic Fail”.
So I can’t really post the image directly here because it will ruin the gag, but you should follow this link: Amnesia is a pretty scary game. (Safe for work!)
The new big name sports and pop culture blog Grantland got off to a roaring start this week, with one of my favorites being the HBO Recycling Program article and infographic. I’ve often commented on how Oz was the show that launched a thousand character actors*, but I see The Wire has it handily beat. (Many of these actors also appear in random episodes of Law & Order and Criminal Minds, too, but that is a story for another graphic.)
Do you recognize this man?
This article also reminded me of Željko Ivanek, who I believe may be the ultimate “hey, it’s that guy”. At one point last year he was appearing on my screen on a weekly basis in True Blood, Big Love, and reruns of Homicide: Life on the Street. I love seeing him appear on a new show — you know Ivanek is going to act the heck out of his character, and he’s probably playing a shady scumbag.
For more on character actors of past and present this blog has a really excellent, detailed list along with biographical details.
* A thousand character actors, but only one precariously placed tiny hat.
E3 is happening RIGHT NOW. If you can’t wait for the details, Giant Bomb lists the live streams of five major publisher panels over the next two days. The Microsoft panel is just about over as I type this, but the big news to my mind is the announcement of Minecraft on the 360. That’s the first console partnership for Notch and the Mojang crew, and more importantly the 360 version supposed to have full integration with Kinect. Yes, now you can punch trees… well, not quite literally yet, but closer!
(As a person who got sucked back into the Minecraft vortex for several hours this weekend, forcing me to actually jump and punch and stack will at least give a fitness value that is absent from my current obsessive careful arranging of virtual cube trees.)
If all this news and change is overwhelming for a Monday morning, don’t worry — sit back and revel in the good old days with this Let’s Play of Knights of the Old Republic 2. It’s got action, adventure, humor, and clever writing… and that’s just in the Let’s Play! If you’re in more of a visual mindset, I’m currently working my way through SuperGreatFriend’s video LP of Deadly Premonition. It’s a 100% playthrough of a Japanese survival horror title loosely based on Twin Peaks, and both the game and SGF’s comments are quite entertaining.
Okay, okay, less words and more action! Let’s end off this E3 Monday post with a hot-off-the-presses gameplay video from Mass Effect 3:
This might be too nerdy, even for me.
(link from obviouswinner.com)
E3, arguably the most prestigious trade show in the game industry, kicks off next week and I see they’ve already started the marketing hyperbole and hype:
Oh, wait, that’s Skyrim. That’s not hype, that’s the thing that will control my life this winter.