The STEAM Sales and Releases Thread - WINTER SALE 2024

[Annonchinil]

EU III is great too. Started a game as the Teutonic Order and I've set about converting the pagans in my rebellious province, trying to get Casus Belli against Riga and muscling out trading competitors in the Hanseatic league.

I wish I could get into paradox games but always have trouble with the real time engine that they use.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Thus far I've picked up:

Winterbottom
Thief 3
Red Faction Guerrilla
Shatter
Flotilla
Gothic bundle
Introversion complete pack
Painkiller Overdose
Necrovision
Cryostasis
Full Pipe
Broken Sword bundle
Puzzle Kingdoms
Avencast
Jericho
Lead and Gold
Ghostbusters
Serious Sam HD bundle (Only for Second Encounter unfortunately)

Pretty happy with my haul thus far but there are a few stinkers in there. Namely Necrovision (Bought it since I heard it had some ex-Painkiller guys and was supposedly a fast paced shooter, played about half an hour to see it was a waste of $3-4), and Lead and Gold (Game itself isn't horrible but servers seem a bit laggy and not many players, waste of $5). Haven't looked at all the games yet but everything else I've taken a peek at has been fun. Especially Shatter, I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying that.

Even when I get bad games on Steam during sales like this I don't feel too bad about it. The price is low enough it doesn't bother me much, and sometimes I get surprisingly good games like Shatter out of nowhere. As it is I basically never buy games except for Steam deals, be it giant ones like this or the 1 or 2 games they put on sale a week. This entire haul of games still cost me less than one brand new retail console game.

 

[Metro]

Even when I get bad games on Steam during sales like this I don't feel too bad about it. The price is low enough it doesn't bother me much, and sometimes I get surprisingly good games like Shatter out of nowhere. As it is I basically never buy games except for Steam deals, be it giant ones like this or the 1 or 2 games they put on sale a week. This entire haul of games still cost me less than one brand new retail console game.

Pretty much. You basically got 20+ games for around $40ish where some momos go out and pre-order crap for $50 plus only to find it on sale a month later. It's what I love about Steam. Back in the day you had to shell out $40-$50 for nearly any game regardless of age. It doesn't really bother me if Steam tanks in five years (which I highly doubt it will) because the bargains are absurdly good.

So far I've only gotten Winterbottom, Thief, and Red Faction. I balked at the Gothic pack when it went from $2 to $5 but, meh, it will probably be on sale again at Christmas and I have plenty of other stuff to play not to mention Civ 5 coming out soon (which I'm sure will be good enough to justify $30ish retail).

 

[Darth Roxor]

I forgot about the quest where the King of Mercia asks you to go into the northern woods because I was involved in quite a brutal war with Wessex. Just as soon as a finished off Wessex a message came that the King had ran out of patience with me and set off into the woods himself. A few turns later his subjects found him dead which caused a war of succession between his sons and split the kingdom into East and West Mercia. Fuckin' A!

The splitting into East and West Mercia always happens. But maybe not doing the quest speeds it up, I dunno.

 

[Black Bart Charley]

Dude, you are missing the point by at least 5 lightyears.

Btw, is there an easy way to rip the bought game from steam for archival reasones and bring it to a friend and play without steam?

 

[Joghurt]

Personally, if the game doesn't come on a physical disk in a box and with a manual I won't get it. What's the point of a digital download? May as well pirate the thing as you get the same effect without the steam crap. I'm prepared to pay double or even more for a game I like as a physical copy to sit on my shelf, but would very rarely buy steam stuff.

Well in some cases you get full multiplayer support and don't have look for private cracked server to get into MP. If the MP is fun then I think it's worth 5$ for a digital copy.

 

[xrm1]

Paying 5 bucks for a multimillion game. 5 dollar.
Feeling superior to pirates. priceless.

Too bad that the pirates already finished it 2 years ago. Pirating is still cheaper though and doesn't need steam.


Personally, if the game doesn't come on a physical disk in a box and with a manual I won't get it. What's the point of a digital download? May as well pirate the thing as you get the same effect without the steam crap. I'm prepared to pay double or even more for a game I like as a physical copy to sit on my shelf, but would very rarely buy steam stuff.

Really? How many games do you own then? I can count the number of surviving CDs/DVDs on one hand and I must have bought loads of games over the years.
All that remains is the box of Planet's Edge, Space Quest II on 5 1/4 inch disks, Wizardry collection and the C&C1 expansion, all of whom are probably broken anyway and wouldn't work if I wanted to play them.

If you have some bigass nerdshelf in your mom's basement to store all the boxes that might be different but I prefer to use the space for books, less social stigma and unlike games the physical form actually adds value.

Brick and mortar stores can fuck off and die as far as I'm concerned, they're pretty much just leeching revenue that could be used to make games instead and their business practices make it even harder for small companies to actually sell their games.
It's not like they stock anything besides 50 copies of MW2, shitty hidden object casual games and Garbage Truck Simulator 2010 anyway unless you pay them obscene amounts of money for shelf space.
The sooner the majority of PC games sales moves to digital distribution the better for PC gaming.

 

[piydek]

The best that games can gain from digital distribution is the very real possibility of cutting out publishers and physical distribution, which is the thing that costs the most. It brought so much to independent music and independent music labels. Major music industry's butthurt gets bigger and bigger every year. And for those wanting nice physical and quality stuff there's direct mailorder from labels and LP as format. So, I hope the major music industry finally crumbles and dies.

So, with games i see possibility for something similar. The only difference is there's plenty of people out there today who are into good music. On the other hand there seems to be very few people who are into good games. Maybe mainstream games just haven't gotten to be shitty enough just yet for that to happen. Mainstream music has gotten to be shitty enough for that to happen many years ago.

 

[Metro]

What's the point of a digital download?

Digital download sites have made it a hell of a lot easier for indie developers to get their product to people and kept them going.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

While I was quite skeptical to digital distribution at first I have to say I find it quite agreeable. However the problem is that if the company bankrupts your out of luck if you want to play your games. I can still get out my old copies of Civ II or Lords of the Realm II and play them. Not that I'm afraid that Steam will die any time soon, it may very well last for the next 20 years or more.

In any case I'm getting some good deals, and it is worth it even with the risk, and when they some day kick the bucket I can (hopefully) pirate the games I would like to play again.
As long one doesn't behave as a consoletard and buy everything at release for 50 euro+ you still get good value out of it.

King's bounty Gold edition 9 euro, yae or nay? Does the game please the hivemind?

 

[Quilty]

King's Bounty was really fun for a couple of hours, but forget about the story or quests. It's all pretty incomprehensible. I never finished it, but like the atmosphere. Watch out, though, it's got a case of WoW "art".

 

[Joghurt]

Another one for the hivemind - is Titan Quest (and the expansion) worth 5 euros ? Never played it, but heard that it's a pretty good Diablo clone with shiny graphixxxx.

Bought Thief 3, but still can't decide about Titan Quest.

 

[Mortmal]

How is that X3: Terran Conflict game ? Anybody tried it ?

It's EVE Offline
At first you will be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the game, but then will realise that you just grind grind grind for more money and space has no exploration aspect due to each sector being a square + same stations everywhere. In the end I managed to get fun out of it by cheating 9999999999 of moneys and playing with various toys I could buy but that gets boring rather quick.

I bet your real life job is 10 times more fun than this

Oh i cant believe you are so harsh with that game, i know its skyway and you have a reputation to keep bu this game is clearly the most complex solo game released in the last years, its really a wonder to set up you own industrial empire placing stations, setting up auto traders and transporters , defending your sectors with automated ships or yourself in dodge fights ala wing commander.
Tthe main plot isnt so bad either and they added lot of side quests + an epic arc.Its true i prefered an open world like elite but theres still some exploration left and hidden sectors to find, not everys tations are the same and youll have to search a bit to find every type of ships .
I can really recommend it especially at this price. The only flaw is the grinding if you want to win everything the galaxy can offer but every game has grinding its not anything worse than elite.
No really this game is a must have especially at this price.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Real question is, are there mods that makes those games worthwhile?

[EDIT] Nevermind, it appears the discount is up, even though there's still an hour left to the next sale cycle. Fuck it then.

 

[Berekän]

How is that X3: Terran Conflict game ? Anybody tried it ?

It's EVE Offline
At first you will be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the game, but then will realise that you just grind grind grind for more money and space has no exploration aspect due to each sector being a square + same stations everywhere. In the end I managed to get fun out of it by cheating 9999999999 of moneys and playing with various toys I could buy but that gets boring rather quick.

I bet your real life job is 10 times more fun than this

Oh i cant believe you are so harsh with that game, i know its skyway and you have a reputation to keep bu this game is clearly the most complex solo game released in the last years, its really a wonder to set up you own industrial empire placing stations, setting up auto traders and transporters , defending your sectors with automated ships or yourself in dodge fights ala wing commander.
Tthe main plot isnt so bad either and they added lot of side quests + an epic arc.Its true i prefered an open world like elite but theres still some exploration left and hidden sectors to find, not everys tations are the same and youll have to search a bit to find every type of ships .
I can really recommend it especially at this price. The only flaw is the grinding if you want to win everything the galaxy can offer but every game has grinding its not anything worse than elite.
No really this game is a must have especially at this price.

Wel,l Skyway is right here. I haven't played it myself but I've seen someone playing it IRL and in the end he was just playing an Excel sheet . He just spent all the time docked in one of his stations sending orders to his convoy's and watching while money was growing, without doing anything really interesting.

I think the main problem with the game it's it really needed some more dynamism. Yeah, you could set your trading empire, and earn enough money to build a fleet of ships. You could also send that fleet and destroy whole enemy (or human) sectors. But that's it. The AI wouldn't send a huge fleet to one of your sectors searching for vengeance, it would just stay there, doing nothing.

In the end, you just notice you're playing a fucking empty sandbox.

 

[Mangoose]

Real question is, are there mods that makes those games worthwhile?

[EDIT] Nevermind, it appears the discount is up, even though there's still an hour left to the next sale cycle. Fuck it then.

I think X3 was yesterday's sale. So yeah.

 

[xrm1]

Another one for the hivemind - is Titan Quest (and the expansion) worth 5 euros ? Never played it, but heard that it's a pretty good Diablo clone with shiny graphixxxx.

Bought Thief 3, but still can't decide about Titan Quest.

For 2.50 euro it is IMO, TQ Gold includes the expansion btw.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Real question is, are there mods that makes those games worthwhile?

[EDIT] Nevermind, it appears the discount is up, even though there's still an hour left to the next sale cycle. Fuck it then.

I think X3 was yesterday's sale. So yeah.

Sales last 24 hours, and the last one has 20 minutes to go. The discount should still be there.

 

[DefJam101]

(Bought it since I heard it had some ex-Painkiller guys and was supposedly a fast paced shooter, played about half an hour to see it was a waste of $3-4)

It gets better, but you have to sit through something like 6 levels of shit.

Then you head underground into this weird zombie gnome city and it suddenly becomes an action game about spamming rockets and commanding legions of reanimated SpecOps vampires.

 

[Mangoose]

Real question is, are there mods that makes those games worthwhile?

[EDIT] Nevermind, it appears the discount is up, even though there's still an hour left to the next sale cycle. Fuck it then.

I think X3 was yesterday's sale. So yeah.

Sales last 24 hours, and the last one has 20 minutes to go. The discount should still be there.

I mean I think it was two days ago. Or something, I don't remember for sure.

Borderlands for $10? Tempting, but I think I have enough on my plate.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Borderlands wasn't good when I took it for free, certainly won't be good for 10 bucks either.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Necrovision (Bought it since I heard it had some ex-Painkiller guys and was supposedly a fast paced shooter, played about half an hour to see it was a waste of $3-4)

Eh, give it another try. I admit the first two levels are mediocre, but afterwards comes superawesum cheesy fun, and around the middle the quality skyrockets.

 

[Metro]

I'd describe Borderlands as an FPS version of Torchlight without armor slots and meaningful talent trees.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Crysis + exp for 20$. Still horribly steep but i'm getting a new graphic card soon to replace my old gt7800 and it would be nice to have some game to test it on. How shitty is the gameplay? Is it Farcry shitty, or worst?

 

[DefJam101]

It's bearable, sort of. The only difficulty worth playing is Delta, the hardest one, which removes crosshairs and makes the enemies speak Korean. Problem is it also gives them 100% accuracy and superhuman field awareness, so the only viable tactic is to abuse the nano suit's cloaking system constantly.

All the other difficulties are too easy, though.