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.
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!)
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:
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.
Last week Syl at Raging Monkeys wrote an interesting article about game difficulty. It’s almost certainly on the decline in the modern era, but was the difficulty of old school games actually part of their design or just the effect of old code on old consoles? Does one’s perception of difficulty change depending on the genre of game?
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately because I fail at Mass Effect 2. After triumphantly exploding anything that crossed my path in Dragon Age 2 I decided to give ME2 a shot again and see if I couldn’t finish it this time. I’m playing it on normal mode, and I die a lot. A lot, a lot. They’re all particularly frustrating deaths, too, where instead of making tactical errors I can’t get the controls right. (My squad are experts at standing around without cover being shot in the face.) It’s frustrating, and it makes me not want to play.
When I was seriously playing World of Warcraft, on the other hand, I craved challenge and felt like I wasn’t playing right if I wasn’t liable to die at any moment (raiding and PvP). Death and frustration and keyboard pounding waves of emotion… well that’s just part of the game, soldier, so suck it up and get over the top! I would and still do cheerfully defend the difficulty level of WoW when others said it was too tough.
Why do I find dying and difficulty more acceptable in WoW than in ME2? Perhaps I see ME2 as a story more than a game? Is it just that I’m getting older and becoming more of a wuss? I’m not entirely sure.
I will say this: “hard mode” gaming needs more defenders right now than the opposite. More and more it seems that game developers are supposed to appeal to the Farmville market and are no longer satisfied with just making a really good game for a healthy niche of game-oriented players. So I suppose in solidarity I will stop my whinging and, as the internet tells us, Learn2Play. It will feel all the better when I finally convince Garrus to be my main lizardman and kick some Reaper ass.
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While I’m talking about Bioware (yes, I know, this happens a lot), here’s a really interesting article on “bisexuality”, romances, and author intent in Mass Effect 3. It uses the phrase “Shepsexual”, which delights me to no end.
Work is being really pushy about me doing work and not just reading news sites all day, so I have but one quick thing to share with you all. On the upside, it’s about Diablo 3! (My love affair with World of Warcraft ended abruptly earlier this year, but Blizzard can still woo me back with some sweet, sweet click-smashing.)
This is a brand new video that was leaked early by some Korean news site about followers in D3. And don’t forget that the beta is supposed to start in Q3, so make sure your Battle.net account beta options are set!
I wrote this about six months ago for another website, but it seems equally appropriate for Prolixity. I have seen a lot of scary movies since I wrote it, but I’m not sure any deserve a spot more than the movies that are already here. Bunhongsin (The Red Shoes) was extremely well done, but I can’t say it keeps me up at night. La Horde, a French zombie movie, would be another candidate, but I need to see it another time or two to be sure.
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It was actually pretty tough to make this list — I ended up with 15 good movies and had to winnow out the weakest entries. My final standard of recognition was how long the movie sat with me after I turned it off. Did it haunt me that night? Was I still chewing over the ending at lunch the following week? Do I still to this day worry about finding… well, just wait and read the list.
The most influential horror movie of the last 10 years has to be Saw. It spawned a million sequels, revitalized indy horror, and really gave a name to the torture porn genre (link is safe and informative!). That being said, I generally loathe torture porn movies and you won’t find Saw or any of its ilk on this list. Instead we have an unsurprising 5 zombie movies, 3 generally supernatural titles, and 2 plain ol’ human killers.
And so, in alphabetical order:
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| … or how I learned to stop worrying and love the fast zombies. This had everything you could ask for from a serious zombie movie: “who is the real monster?” philosophizing, a solid origin story, devastating urban wasteland, and a true crushing sense of being alone. I walked out of this movie with the sense that I had just watched the most realistic portrayal of a zombie apocalypse since Dawn of the Dead classic.
A link: The 28 Days Later Urban Exploration page for abandoned asylums. Why is the group named that? I don’t know, but these photos are creeeeeeeepy.
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| Frailty talks a lot about god, has a twist ending, and stars Matthew McConaughey, and yet it improbably all comes together in a very satisfying way. I almost can’t say anything about the movie without giving away a bit of the magic. Let’s just call it an interesting take on the line between religious fervor and insanity. If you enjoy psychological thrillers more than blood’n'guts, this movie is for you. |
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| Okay, let’s get this out of the way up front: I hated the end of this movie. The twist? At the end? Arrrrgh. Crappy crappity crap crap. But up until that point, High Tension lived up every bit to its name. The movie oozes terror from every pore. Plus it’s French, so if you watch it with subtitles it also counts as a cultural experience.
A link: 50 Must-See French Horror Movies |
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| I debated internally for a while about whether this is actually even a horror movie. And really, that says a lot about the quality of this film: it has a vampire and more than one horrible bloody death, but at the end you are left with a sense of poetry and perverse whimsy that transcends the genre. Hollywood made an American remake of this, of course, those buzzards. It’s titled “Let Me In”, which makes me think right off the bat that someone doesn’t understand the true message of the original. |
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| Of all the movies on my list, I predict this one will cause the most groans. (Stuff it, Max!) I stand by my decision, though. Rodriguez (and I suspect a bit of Tarantino) smooshed up all of the greatest genre cliches into one rollicking ride of a movie. It has hot babes, dastardly men, military intrigue, cheesy over-the-top special effects, and a LEG GUN. I’m not saying it’s a pinnacle of art, but much like another movie that almost made it on this list, Zombieland, Planet Terror is two hours of good fun American movie-making.
A link: How to make a Cherry Darling cosplay gun (no amputation required). |
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| From a raucous American movie to reserved Canadian content! This is a small, subtle movie with approximately 3 sets, 5 actors, and one giant idea. What if a deadly disease isn’t spread through biting or airborne molecules? What if instead it is spread.. through speech? A linguistic virus — it’s a fascinating concept. In a press interview at the time the director (Bruce McDonald, famous Canadian!) said that his movie doesn’t have zombies but instead “conversationalists”. Conversationalists. Love it. Love it! Love love lovelovelololololooooooooooooooo…… |
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| So there I am, sitting in my dark apartment by myself, watching a cinéma-vérité-style movie about zombies in a dark apartment building. It was TERRIFYING. And you don’t have to be in an apartment to find [REC] scary — this Spanish flick excels at being horrifying without showing its hand. The characters are confused, they’re scared, they’re in the dark, and things want to eat them. Plus: subtitles, so again you can feel all cultured. |
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| Interestingly enough, despite having seen many of them, the only Asian horror movie on my list is.. an American remake. And don’t get me wrong: most J- or K-horror remakes are abominable, but The Ring somehow manages to keep the heart of a good atmospheric ghost story with just a dash of North American dazzle. Plus, it has that scene. You know the one, with the TV? Possibly the most horrifying 10 seconds EVER. (I also spent way too long thinking about who I would pass my Evil Video Tape to if I got Ring’ed in real life.)
A link: Watching the cursed video on YouTube won’t haunt me, right? Hang on, my phone is ringing…. |
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| David Caruso is frequently scary in a oh-god-why-am-I-watching-CSI-Miami way, but he delivers a subtle little performance in Session 9. This movie is definitely a psychological horror, with an abandoned asylum, mysterious patient tapes, and ambiguous flashbacks. Probably the best flick on this whole list for the squeamish. |
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| Well duh. |
Always a bridesmaid: Cloverfield, The Decent, Pulse (yes, Pulse), Tale of Two Sisters, Zombieland.
The internet reports that the gorgeous retro-style Portal 2 poster that made the rounds last week will be up for sale soon on the official Valve Store.
Do. Want.
