Tag Archives: Steam
Despite the many merits of Minecraft, I dislike the current state it’s in because it’s too sandboxy for me. Without any clearly defined goals set for myself to push through, Minecraft’s effect wasn’t that strong on me. I ultimately get bored playing the game after less than 30 minutes.
That said, disliking the game doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what Minecraft’s effect on me was.
While it could be said that my first Indie game purchase was Torchlight (Torchlight is, in fact, the first game I ever purchased through Steam, and my second Steam-enabled game after The Last Remnant), Minecraft was what really brought independent game development to the forefront of my game-loving mind.
Minecraft’s popularity and media coverage made many gamers take notice of independent developers and their many offerings, whether it be a storekeeper’s RPG in the form of Recettear, a roguelike like Dungeons of Dredmor, or a FPSS (First Person Santiy Survival) thriller such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Indies these days allow for exceptional gameplay experiences that do not necessarily require a high price to enjoy. Indeed, with Humble Indie Bundles and Royal Bundles available to the public these days, getting into the groove of loving low-cost, high quality gaming is proving to be a steadily popular choice among the discerning gamers out in PC and Xbox 360-land.
Even now, Minecraft is probably the biggest example of what indie gaming is, but since there’s no formal definition for what an indie game is, I doubt it actually holds the title of biggest indie game in a person’s heart.
That game probably goes to whatever awesome game is out at the moment. It’s a fickle way of thinking, perhaps, but it also means there’s a lot of love to go around. While The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Saint’s Row: The Third are going to be the AAA hits I look forward to playing in the near future, it’s the indie games that’ll keep me company when the money is tight and gaming urge is strong.
Who knows? Minecraft may even get randomized quests for fun before 2012. At least, I hope it gives me a reason to play it again. I could use a good excuse.
The Dungeon Siege III Bundle on Steam is theoretically awesome.
You get three games for the price of one, and can basically play out the (somewhat meager) story that comes through in the first and second games.
Of course, it’s never really that simple, as you’re playing two rather old games, and it’s been nearly six years since the second Dungeon Siege game came out.
Here are some factoids on what you will not get if you go purchase the Dungeon Siege III bundle, like I did.
1. You will not get multiplayer. This is stated prior to anyone even thinking of purchasing the game.
2. You will not get the expansion for Dungeon Siege II.
3. You (possibly) will not get to play Dungeon Siege I on your brand spanking new computer, though this appears to have been remedied somewhat, if the Steam forums are any indication.
Personally, I want to see if Dungeon Siege 2 is any fun to play, but that’s just me.
The world of Magicka is a rather twisted one, it seems. The main bad guy of the game, from the way the story is presented, appears to actually be more of a prisoner than anything else, chained at the end of the world by a council of wizards who wanted to keep the “bad guy” from developing a super-powerful spell that would, essentially, create peace across the land.
Your first task as a magician? Why, to stop by the farewell party the other magicians are having without you. They even finished the goat cheese before you could get there!
Magicka obviously doesn’t take the game world and setting too seriously, which is refreshing to note in this day and age where every game world you’re in is ultimately in peril. In the world of Magicka, the world has been in peril at least thrice in the span of one magician’s lifetime! They have a horrible track record of maintaining the peace, probably because they chained up the guy who wanted to develop a spell to end all strife.
I digress, of course. Let’s get to the meat, bones, and other choice exploding bits of this game. Once you’re able to find your way out of the magic academy to take on enemies, you’ll realize that combining spell elements together to create flaming balls of butt-kickery and icy death rays is a good idea. Compared to single-element attacks, your damage increases far better with spell element combos, such as fire and arcane, or my favorite, cold-arcane.
My run so far consists of the first three chapters of the game, all done solo, as the game’s multiplayer is a bit buggy at the moment. The game doesn’t care how many people you’re playing with though, because it still promises to give you tense moments of running and casting and bomb-avoiding and dying. It’s just more possible to die (hilariously, perhaps) due to friendly fire with more people in-game.
The game isn’t perfect though. There are points of game slowdown on the rig I’m running, which can run other games without a hitch on relatively high settings. The spell system, while fun to play, appears to reward unbridled use of offensive element + arcane combos, as they create death rays that pump up damage quickly, allowing you to take down single opponents faster and reposition. Fireball damage is a bit weak as well, though it hits far more people.
Much like any magician though, I’m sure that more time spent playing Magicka will result in the game casting its spell over me. I only hope that spell is a healing light and not some infernal death ray come to smite me for not coming up with better words to describe the game.
Breaking news folks.
Destructoid has just reported that the PS3 version of Valve’s upcoming game Portal 2 will allow players to not only play with PC and Mac gamers via Steam functionality (a first!), but also to play on the PC or Mac as well.
According to Valve, anyone who purchases Portal 2 for the PS3 will also get a free Steam play copy of Portal 2, which will work on the PC or Mac.
Feel free to check Destructoid for more details, and save up some cash for the PS3 version, why dontcha?
December was a rather tumultuous month for me for a variety of reasons. In addition to school, I was looking for a new job and was constantly rebudgeting my money to compensate for a lack of willpower due to various personal events happening in my life.
For once, I gave a digital gift through Stargrace’s Secret Santa. I bought a copy of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and I’m hoping MMO Gamer Chick, the fine blogger who received my gift, enjoys the numerous hours of immeasurable terror it brings.
On the side of my personal purchases, I had an active sub to World of Warcraft. In addition to this, I bought Mount and Blade and its Warband “expansion.” I spent some money to alleviate some personal depression, but it ended up making me feel worse, so I actually went and purchased even more games to try and forget the guilt I was feeling, and my inability to say no to a good deal sort of killed my budget severely. MMO Gamer Chick, who happened to be my Secret Santa, also gave me her gift, which was a Steam copy of Borderlands, which I’ve played quite a bit.
As Christmas neared though, some unexpected gifts came in. People started giving me money, and I started saving it up, only to realize that I wanted even more games because of some rather intriguing deals and my own lack of Willpower. I purchased Just Cause 2, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Team Fortress 2 within the past two weeks. I also unsubbed to WoW, and replaced it with a sub to Darkfall in order to make an attempt to resurrect Blackrod LeDouche.
Finally, Longasc from Twitter enticed me to purchase Guild Wars with some healthy talking points on Twitter, and because of some luck on my end and some assistance from Ardua as well, Steam had the Trilogy on sale and the Eye of the North expansion was available on the NCSoft Store for 10 dollars. Total damage: a little over 35 dollars for the full package, once I finish installing the Guild Wars Trilogy.
Right now, I’m not sure if I’m really happy or not, but one thing I do know is that I’m loved, not only by my family, but also by the friends I have here at home and also those of you online who comment on my tweets or read my blog. To all of you, it means a lot.
To all of my friends online, I just want to say thank you, and Merry Christmas. Much love to all of you, and cheers! 
Well, folks… it looks like the Mount and Blade key saga has come to a close.
After sending in a ticket to be sure that my issue was addressed with regard to the CD Key issue, I fired up Steam an hour ago and noticed that it downloaded something for Mount and Blade Warband. As I thought, it was a fix to allow players full access to their game.
I played the game for an hour and everything seems fine now. No ads when exiting, and no demo version notice when starting up the game.
All well and good then. Just restart Steam, and you should be good to go. For more information on the game though, feel free to check out my impressions piece written a few hours ago. Cheers!
Just wanted to let the folks who are enjoying the Steam sale a heads up on the one deal I decided to take part of. Personal experience, along with some confirmation from the Steam and TaleWorlds Forums, has arrived at the conclusion that Steam may have screwed up the delivery of game keys for Mount & Blade and Mount & Blade Warband.
When activated, Mount & Blade Warband requests that you activate the game using a serial key that Steam should have on hand for your copy of the game. The key I got, however, is a 5×5 input key (25 digits), whereas the actual key required by the game is a 4×4 input key (16 digits). Your purchase, therefore, relegates you to demo status for the game until such time as when the folks at Steam can resolve the issue for all the gamers who purchased the game (or the bundle packs!).
This just in through the Fallout Twitter. The PC version of Fallout: New Vegas has a second patch out for players who are suffering from certain issues. I was unable to cover the first patch, whose info can be found here, but the second patch is pretty straightforward.
Here’s the word from Bethesda’s Blog and the official forums:
As you may have seen, we released a patch over Steam for PC users last night. While we didn’t release a full changelist, the patch contains quest and scripting fixes. It’s not a minor hotfix, it contains over 200 fixes in all. We are in the final stages of testing this update on both 360 and PS3 and we hope to have them out to users very soon.
We are also pleased to say that we have just released a second fix for PC users to address the autosave and quicksave issues that some people were encountering. That particular issue was never seen prior to release and it was extremely difficult to reproduce reliably, even after the game had launched. In order to fix this problem we have had to disable Steam Cloud functionality. It has been turned off, and we won’t turn it back on until we’re absolutely sure it will not cause any more problems. Please restart your Steam client to make sure you get the update.
The forum post also notes that the infamous rotating Doc Mitchell issue and some other reported “bugs” were caused by corrupt files being pushed through Steam and can be solved by re-validating your game files through Steam. For the actual creepy video, feel free to check after the jump.
You may have finished Recettear by now, but that doesn’t mean Recettear is finished with you! Recently announced on Carpe Fulgur’s Recettear page was the release of a patch for the item shop sim.
Impulse buyers should be able to get the patch already, but owners of the Steam version of the game should check to see if it’s been rolled out already, as they only wrote “soon” on the front page, and that was on October 8.
In any event, so I don’t misinterpret anything, you can find the patch notes for the this 1.108 patch and the previous 1.106 patch after the “Read More” link and the download and instructions for manual patching can be found here. Cheers!
So…
A bunch of people from my blogroll, as well as a couple of sites I frequent, have written about the item-shop sim called Recettear.
I can afford to purchase the game, but I’ve always been on the fence about management sims because my skills as a manager are about as good as Peter Griffin’s, if he were to manage a cupcake stand (insert obligatory Family Guy non sequitur joke here).
Nevertheless, I want to support this game, if only because I’m curious about it and want to see if I have any actual management chops. I can organize words in my mind logically enough, but taking stock of ever changing variables over time… that’s something worth investigating.
In the meantime… some links for you to look at, in the order in which I read them.
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