damn dude you cleaned up during this sale. you're going to be one busy bee.
23 Games from Steam Winter Sale 2013
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 On 01/02/2014 at 06:12 PM by Super Step See More From This User » |
Ok, maybe 20 games if you count the complete GTA pack as five, plus three copies of GTA III, VC, and SA that I can't install and a handful of games I still want, but dammit, I reserve the right to use a number that is better associated with 2013, and Steam tells me there are 23 games in my library, so there.
So I went from owning exactly no new games in 2013 to spending approximately $66.90 on Steam Winter sales for some sweet PC gaming on my new laptop. $50 of that was a gift card from last Christmas, so really, I only spent about $16.90 of cold-earned cash for 23 great games at only a little more than the price of a new physical copy of a console game, the way I see it. I feel rich and smart. This gets me in the mood to start investing.
Before I go all Wolf of Wall Street and leave you all for cocaine and hookers until eventually watching my stock options destroy me though because I don't really know what I'm doing though, I'd like to tell you what games will be getting my hands back on a controller, finally.
I got started with Arkham Asylum, which I wasn't sure would run on Windows 8 without the OS being officially supported. I uninstalled it and re-installed it after some issues, but still was having trouble launching the game, which pissed me off, cause the demo had run fine. Then I realized the menu you use to launch the game looked exactly the same as the one used to launch the demo, so I deleted the demo and it's been running mostly great since. I say mostly cause there is some slowdown here and there, and I was upset to get kicked off for not having an Internet connection once. I guess that's what I get for buying my games digitally, on the cheap.
As for the game itself, I'm about 27% through it and it looks absolutely great to me. I know you guys who have owned newer consoles for a while and seen what games look like at the end of their lifespan might not be as impressed as I am. Granted, many of the faces and mouth movements look laughably unrealistic even to me, but it's still the best-looking game I've ever played more than a few hours of thus far, dammit!
I like the stealth and fighting gameplay as well, although the game is pretty linear and the fighting can feel like a glorified QTE at times. Still, I love solving the Riddler's clues, finding his trophies, as well as the character interviews and biographies. The interviews especially really add to the dark atmosphere of the game. Although, I still wonder why people would choose to live in Gotham. There's a lot of Ted Bundy types for just one city, plus all the corruption. I guess that's true of Chicago too, though, and Detroit isn't the happiest place in the world either, though I don't know how much of that is due to mentally ill super-criminals.
Speaking of gameplay and graphics, I appreciate that detective mode adds a layer of Metroid-like gameplay to the mix with looking for new paths and items and such without hurting my eyes like Metroid Prime's thermal vision did, but I do sometimes feel I have to use it too often if I want to find everything, which I think cheats me out of really experiencing the true environment in a way. I forget how great the game looks sometimes, until I turn off detective mode.
The other game I've been playing is Fez, which I'm well on my way to beating, having gathered a decent bit more than 18 of the 32 cubes. I want to say I've collected roughly 60% of all cubes? Granted, I'm not sure whether or not the game ends just because you collect all the cubes, but don't spoil it for me.
It's a very relaxing game, and I liked the philosophy espoused by one of the first characters you meet ("reality is perspective, and perspective is subjective") so much that I made it the theme of my final blog of 2013, which is still on the front page of Pixlbit and can be found here, if you haven't read it yet.
For the most part, the puzzles are not very difficult, it's mostly a matter of knowing where to look and when to turn the world. I got stuck on one involving ladders recently, as well as didn't initially know I was supposed to turn the world as I pushed on certain levers to get them to work, but otherwise it's a breeze so far. Well, mostly. I do wish the world map were a bit more clear on where the doors are. I actually picked up quite a few extra cubes on my way to open the door requiring 18 of them to open, simply because I kept getting lost in places I hadn't picked up the cubes from yet. It can get frustrating, but at least I profited from it this time.
As minimal as the story is, I'm interested in where that's going as well. I find a lot of the dry humor in the dialogue endearing as well, and I love finding little secrets here and there.
The rest of the games are ones I have yet to install on my computer. I'm going to try and beat certain games, then install others so that my computer doesn't get too bogged down with too much space being taken up. We'll see.
Tomb Raider is the only game I bought for more than $5 that wasn't a collection. I know people have complained about QTEs and such, but it still looked fun and interesting to me, as well as graphically appealing. That last part is a bit unfortunate, as I only meet the minimum video card requirements, but I can put up with running it on low settings, I think. I think I'll replace Arkham Asylum with it once I'm done with that game.
I never liked the first two GTA games it seems to be like, so I don't know how much I'll like Hotline Miami, but the story sounds interesting, a lot of people have praised it for its humor, and it was cheap, so I'm willing to find out. If nothing else, I know it'll run fine and not take up too much space.
I picked up Portal because I saw that it had gone on sale at the same time as Portal 2 for cheaper than its sequel, and I hadn't played either. I wasn't sure if I'd like it, so I downloaded the demo first. It's not the prettiest game, and I got stuck on a puzzle in one room where you had to figure out how to get a moving particle thingy to come out a different wall I think, but lately I've been more into puzzle games, and I enjoyed it enough for the price to buy the full game. I never installed it on my PC, but it says I can play it, so I guess it's an online-only game or something. Oh well.
I also decided to buy Alice: Madness Returns despite never playing the first one, a mediocre IGN review (though honestly, some of the problems like not being able to go certain places I didn't think sounded that bad, as the comments section said as well), and the fact it didn't offer controller support, simply because the world looked so interesting to me. I'm glad these games are so cheap, because it makes me try games I otherwise might not.
Deadlight was also cheap, and despite the fact I don't like zombies, I do like 2D side scrollers and Contra, which the videos for it reminded me more of anyway, so I got it.
Limbo didn't look interesting to me at all at first, but the game's art style grew on me, I was curious about the story, and it was cheap, so I decided to be interested after all and bought it.
My biggest purchase was the Grand Theft Auto: Complete Pack. I had been waiting for GTAIV to go on sale, since I remembered enjoying what I played of my older brothers' PS2 GTA games when I got the chance, but never actually played through one, myself. I get bored watching friends play these games, but I do find them find when I play missions in them.
I asked my older brother which game he would get, since Vice City and San Andreas were also on sale and cheaper, and he gave me a lot of good feedback about all the games, but said I should just play all of them through from III to V. A friend on Facebook told me she recommended San Andreas and that IV had pissed her off at times. I was leaning towards either IV because of its relative newness and being the only one I hadn't played yet, or Vice City, because I liked the 80s setting. So finally I realized that I still had enough left on the gift card to wind up spending less than $20 of my earned money on everything I wanted even if I got III, IV, SA, VC, and Tales from Liberty City for $12.49. I stopped thinking so damn hard about it and just did that.
Also, when I say "23 games" in my blog title, 3 of those are copies of III, SA, and VC I can't install for some reason, so really it's 20 games I got, but 23 in 2013 has a better ring to it, so there.
I was right to hold out on Super Meat Boy until there was a daily deal for it, and once there was, I jumped on it. I'm looking forward to having it kick my ass, since the developers for it were my favorite people in the documentary, Indie Game: The Movie, and 2D platformers are some of my favorite games.
Mark of the Ninja looked cool and had a daily deal, so I bought it.
Finally, today they just had repeats of older deals, so I decided to buy the games I had left on my wishlist that I had been eyeing since the sale started, including Psychonauts and Beyond Good & Evil, as well as deals on games I had always wanted to play that I became aware of later on, like Bioshock and Bit.Trip Runner 1 and 2.
I have wanted to play Psychonauts since I heard it came out for PS2 and XBOX, but not Gamecube, which really irked me back in the day, cause I thought for sure its kiddy nature would mean it would release on GCN, but no dice. I love 3D platformers and thought Tim Schafer's premise of having the levels be the thoughts of characters was really interesting, so I was really looking forward to playing it. I guess it all works out in the end, though, cause now I own it for only $2.49.
Beyond Good & Evil is another one from the GCN days I have always been curious about, but never really sought out or saw at Blockbuster. It is rangergirl's favorite GCN game, I believe. Don't quote me on that, but I do know she has said she enjoyed it.
I've wanted to play Bioshock since its release as well. I was initially going to get Bioshock Infinite on sale, but I don't have the recommended CPU, so eh. I have all the proper specs to run this one, plus it was cheaper and I should probably start from the beginning anyway, although I guess this and Infinite aren't related story-wise, I don't think.
Bit.Trip Runner was 99c and a ryhtm-action game, so I couldn't pass it up, even without controller support.
Finally, Bit.Trip Runner 2 was on sale for $2.54, and today I realized after I thought I was finished shopping that I had about 53c on my gift card and took that as a sign that I should pay for this game with my credit card and later on pay part of it off with the last bit of money on my gift card. It looks great, so why not?
Some other games I had my eyes on included Mass Effect 2, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, Duck-Tales Remastered and a bare-bones looking platformer called VVVVVV.
The only reason I wanted VVVVVV was because it was 50c, but when I tried to buy it with the Steam app on my phone before I saw Wolf of Wall Street, it wouldn't go through, so whatever.
As for Mass Effect 2, I downloaded the demo to see if I liked the gameplay,and maybe I'd buy it since people regard it as the series' best most often, or its cheaper predecessor. I did like it overall, but playing the demo made me realize controller support wasn't offered, and while I know people swear by keyboard and mouse for shooters, it's just not for me, so I passed. I find moving and looking around with dual analog sticks much more natural. I'm sure I'll run into this problem with Alice: Madness Returns as well, but I don't think I'll mind as much in a platformer as opposed to a shooter, odd as that may sound. We'll see.
I really wanted Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, but a couple factors steered me clear of it. For one, it was $7.49, and I tried to keep my individual game purchases below $5 as much as possible. The other thing is that it's a Capcom game, and given their reputation with DLC, I just didn't know if I trusted them enough to feel like I was going to get the full game with my money. In fact, during the sale I'd often search for games that I knew were part of a series to see if their predecessors were cheaper as had been the case in a couple instances, and when I looked for Street Fighter IV, most of the results pages included DLC content for Street Fighter X Tekken and of course a few DLCs for SSIV variations. That looked real suspicious to me, so I passed.
Duck Tales Remastered had a daily deal for $6, but I didn't get on it quick enough and it went back up to $10. I really want to play it, but I still think anything over $5 is a bit much for an NES remake, in my opinion. Some of you that have it may disagree, but I never played it when there was an NES in the house, so I don't have any nostalgia for it. I wish the original would show up on nintendo8.com instead of them only having the sequel. Oh well.
Anyway, at least I finally have a blog on here that involves me getting some new (to me anyway) games. What games have you all gotten or been playing recently?
Oh, and Spotify has a really cool recap of 2013 music right now, as far as what their 24 million users streamed during the year. Apparently, London listens to 162% more Fleetwood Mac and Stockholm 110% more Abba than anyone else in the world. New York listens to 88% more Jay-Z than most places. Plus, while I didn't have the greatest year, I'm glad Macklemore did, and overall I don't mind what got popular in 2013.
My next blog will be a list of some of my favorite music from 2013.
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