Blue Kae

The Steam Perils of Summer sale is over. Based on what I’ve seen, I’m somewhere in the middle on money spent at $70. For only $10 more than getting a single console game, I now own:

• Audiosurf
• Beat Hazard
• Borderlands + all the DLC
• Dawn of Discovery – Venice
• Galcon Fusion
• Introversion Complete Pack (Uplink, DefCon, Darwinia, Multiwinia)
• King’s Bounty: Gold Edition
• Supreme Commander 2
• Witcher: Enhanced Edition

I’ve been torn about whether or not to get Borderlands since it first launched. As a co-op focused game, I couldn’t decide if I’d end up playing more with Xbox friends or PC friends, plus there’s always GamerScore to think about. At $11 (+$12 for all the DLC), it was just too good of a deal to pass up. Plus, I saw a lot of my Steam friends getting it as well, so I figure there’ll be lots of people to play with.

I already own the original Witcher on DVD, but I bought the Enhance Edition anyway. This was purely out of laziness, now I don’t have to mess with patching the game when I reinstall it find the disc.

SupCom 2 and King’s Bounty are games I’d thought about getting at one point or another. I didn’t have a PC that would run SupCom2 well enough when it came out, and then when I had a PC that would run it, it was too old for me to buy at full price. King’s Bounty was one I wanted to buy when it launched but didn’t because of some DRM or retail issue, I can’t remember at this point.

Of all my purchases, Dawn of Discovery – Venice, was the only game I’d planned to buy soon. I really like Dawn of Discovery for city building, but I was waiting on getting the expansion until I’d finished a few more of my console games.

The rest of my purchases were all impulse buys: Audiosurf, Beat Hazard, Galcon Fusion, and the Introversion games. I’d demoed Audiosurf and Galcon before and liked them, but I’ve been out of a casual gaming mood for a long time now. Still at under $5 for each, they were worth adding to my library for whenever I was in the mood for a quick play session.

I haven’t played all of my purchases yet, but I did want to mention how surprised and thrilled I am with Beat Hazard. I picked this game up because it sounded fun and was only $2.50, but I didn’t expect to play it a bunch. It’s a shooter similar to Geometry Wars, but it uses your music collection to drive the gameplay. Oddly enough, it fills the same gaming niche for me that Rockband 2 does. Rockband is a game I play only once a month or so, but when I do, I play for a couple of hours. It’s a chance to listen to music that I like while also gaming. Beat Hazard is pretty much the same thing, only it’s an Asteroids-like shooter  instead of a rhythm game. Unlike Rockband, Beat Hazard is quick to pickup and play for five minutes at a time, and I think it’ll become a part of my regular gaming-life.

As a former XP user who skipped Vista, the UAC functionality is something new that I’m learning to deal with.

I’m sure a lot of people just turn it off, but I’m trying to find ways to work within the security setup.  I’m happy to click on a UAC prompt when I’m installing a program, that’s not something I do daily, but I don’t want to click on a prompt every time I launch Xfire or Steam.  Xfire requires it be run in admin mode.  Steam doesn’t have to be run that way, but Fallen Earth (which I bought through Steam) does.  If you run a game in Steam that requires it be in admin mode, but Steam is not, then you get this very unhelpful message.

Of course the game is actually available but you either have to run the program directly from the SteamApps folder in admin mode or you have to launch Steam in admin mode.  Either way you’ll get a UAC prompt.  Every time.

Continue reading ‘Xfire and Steam in Win7’ »

In the division of household chores between my wife and myself, I am the one tasked with mowing the lawn.  I can’t complain about it too much, since it only needs to be down for six months out of the year (as opposed to laundry), and it takes my only about an hour to do the front, the back, and trim with a weed-eater.  Despite all of that, I don’t like lawn-care, or gardening, but  I love Plants versus Zombies.

This game was not on my radar until I heard an interview with Jason Kapalka on the Gamers With Jobs Conference Call 133.  I bought it on Steam for $10 ($9.99), although you can also get it directly from PopCap but it’s listed as $19.95.

I’m not going to do any kind of in-depth review because I’m having too much fun playing (4.8 hours according to Steam).  Plus Syp over at Bio Break already did a better job than I could have.  I will say that the sense of humor and quirkiness reminds me of World of Goo.

Update – Destructoid also has a review up if you want something even more detailed or just to see some screenshots.  You can also find a demo on both the Steam and PopCap sites.

After recommendations from Bill at Dubious Quality and Darren at Common Sense Gamer, I finally made some time to download and trout the Mount and Blade demo through Steam.  Did I like it?  Yes.  How much?  I started with the tutorial around 9:30 pm, after my wife and son went to bed.  After the tutorial I started a game.  I played for a bit: got some quests, failed one and completed others, gained a few levels, got captured once.  I was having fun and then some part of my brain wondered, “What time is it?”  It was 2 am, and I needed to get up in 5 hours for work.  While this isn’t too out of the ordinary, I actually continued to play for another 30 minutes.  Just had to finish one more thing.

So yeah, I’m really enjoying the game.  I’ve since hit the level 7 limit of the demo and purchased the complete version.

I’m actually surprised I liked it so much. I’m a pretty shallow gamer.  Graphics are a big part of games for me, enough so that I don’t usually play older games or indie games.  Even when the gameplay is great, if the graphics aren’t good then I’m not interested.

My only complaint isn’t actually game realted.  When I purchased the full version, Steam didn’t convert my existing installation but re-downloaded the full game again.

So if you like RPG’s go get it.  It’s a little bit Oblivion and a little bit Total War.

Event like the Gears of War DRM debacle perfectly illustrate why Digital Rights Management is such a bad idea for the PC platform.

As a software developer myself, I can guarantee that there is no such thing as bug-free code.  Any piece of software that has more than 50 lines of code in it is going to have bugs, and any bug fix can introduce additional problems.  So anytime a developer adds functionality (like say DRM) to a product they are adding new possible problems.

When new functionality improves the game experience, this increased risk of problems is worthwhile to a gamer, but the addition of DRM usually provides no experience  improvements.  This is why Valve’s Steam has so much customer buy in.  Games are digitally distributed so there’s no CD/DVD required in the drive and I can buy and play a game without having to leave my house, and Steam allows me to download my purchases again if I need to.

With the exception of MMO’s, I’ve stopped buying PC games except through Valve’s Steam or Stardock’s Impulse.

Game publishers (and movie studios) need to look at what happened with the music industry.  Record studios pushed DRM in different forms for years without success, and now both iTunes and Amazon are doing great business without any DRM at all.  Customer’s pay for convenience and quality, not hassles.  Pirates won’t pay no matter what kind of protection is included.