For those that don’t know, Steam is an online game platform developed by Valve software (one of my favourite developers/publishers). For a price you can download games directly to your PC and play them, but what’s more you’re buying the right to download and install to as many different PCs as you like whenever you like. It’s really, really convenient and when it’s linked to Paypal it only takes about two clicks to buy something (always fatal)... which is where the sales come in.
Every now and again (most recently Christmas and the Summer holidays) Steam has a massive sale. Almost everything is reduced, sometimes by as much as 80%. Who couldn’t resist money-saving offers like that? Certainly not I. Since November I’ve bought and paid for 24 games. The galling thing is that due to our emigration, work, studying, family, life, et al I haven’t had a chance to play any of them yet, and in fact my PC has been in a container since January! They’re all stored up waiting for some undetermined point in the future, when everything is unpacked and all the important tasks (find a house, job, kindy, supermarket) have been done and I can sit down and think ‘Right, nothing needs doing, the kids are asleep, Sarah is otherwise engaged enjoying the sights and sounds of our new life... time to play a computer game’ – which you know is never going to happen. They are going to sit there and sit there being picked at here and there and will always be taunting me.
Every now and again (most recently Christmas and the Summer holidays) Steam has a massive sale. Almost everything is reduced, sometimes by as much as 80%. Who couldn’t resist money-saving offers like that? Certainly not I. Since November I’ve bought and paid for 24 games. The galling thing is that due to our emigration, work, studying, family, life, et al I haven’t had a chance to play any of them yet, and in fact my PC has been in a container since January! They’re all stored up waiting for some undetermined point in the future, when everything is unpacked and all the important tasks (find a house, job, kindy, supermarket) have been done and I can sit down and think ‘Right, nothing needs doing, the kids are asleep, Sarah is otherwise engaged enjoying the sights and sounds of our new life... time to play a computer game’ – which you know is never going to happen. They are going to sit there and sit there being picked at here and there and will always be taunting me.
To make matters worse I’m the kind of person that likes to stick with a particular game until it’s finished. I don’t like to jump around between different games so I’m going to have to come up with some kind of ranking plan to decide what gets played first. I know, it’s a major conundrum up there with the likes of Fermat’s last theorem.
At least I’ve been quite picky, IMHO. There’s no rubbish in there, it’s all quality stuff (although some is quite old). For those that are interested, here’s the complete list...
Nov 24, Plants vs Zombies (£3.49)
Nov 26, Osmos (£2.00)
Nov 27, Star Wars: KOTOR, Geometry Wars (£4.73)
Nov 28, Left 4 Dead (£6.24)
Nov 30, Evil Genius, Mirrors's Edge (£4.98)
Dec 29, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor (£2.49)
Jan 03, Bioshock, Red Alert 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R:Shadow of Chernobyl (£5.49) - that was a good day!
May 09, Civ 4 plus Warlords, Beyond the Sword, Colonization (£6.25)
Jun 16, Command & Conquer 3 plus Kane's Wrath (£14.98)
Jun 19, Mass Effect (£3.24)
Jun 26, GTA: Episodes from Liberty City (£9.99)
Jul 02, Star Wars:Empire at War Gold, Thief: Deadly Shadows (£3.74)
24 games (including addons and extras) totalling £67.62. At least my addiction isn’t going to put us all on the streets.
Plants VS. Zombies is awesome imho!
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, if you leave it too long, the technology of the day will be such will you want to play those games? I mean Magic Carpet & Descent, were great games but would you, or even could you play them now? There’s nothing for it, you need return on your investment. Get playing asap.
ReplyDelete(Or you could leave it 25 years until they are real classics - you’ll need a Windows emulator to play them on your ‘hyper-bio-virtual-being-of-light-cloud computer' of course...)
Hi Mimi - yes, PvZ is in fact awesome. I bought it mostly on the recommendation of the UK PC Gamer magazine and partly because I can play it on my laptop, which is about the only piece of kit I've got that hasn't been containerised.
ReplyDeleteChris - in a perfect world I'd be zapping those aliens and 4X'ing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X) like a lunatic but it won't be a perfect world until the 24th August ;-)