Steam recently announced the official Steam app for Android and iOS, which unlike the unofficial versions has everything from chat to being able to buy games.
I don’t know how common the beta keys are, but I’ve been lucky enough to score access to the program. I’m not sure if there’s much use for it for me outside of being able to chat with people away from the computer, but we’ll see.
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Did you know that there is a side scrolling Half Life game on Steam? Neither did I! Turns out there is though, hidden away. In a Reddit thread discussing how far Steam has come since it’s initial release, someone revealed exactly how to obtain this blast from the past.
To get the game -titled Codename Gordon- you merely have to have Steam installed, and click on this link. Curiously, it shows screenshots of the game on the Steam Game Info screen, which is odd. Why would someone go to the trouble of doing that for a game that doesn’t seem to be readily available, and as far as I know hasn’t been for years. Strange.
It’s nice to have some different Half Life content, and it’s definitely fun. I don’t understand why it’s not still advertised or listed on Steam at all; I’d pay money for it.
I know one thing; I’ll be installing it when I get home.
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Oh good, another Steam Sale. Here I thought I’d have a little money left by the end of the fortnight, then this happens.
This Holiday Sale is particularly interesting too. Much like last year’s Holiday Sale, there are achievements to earn that unlock benefits, but these benefits are much more appealing this time. For every achievement earned during this sale, one of two things can be earned.
The first one is the most immediately rewarding, being either a coupon for a game discount, or a game itself. This list shows the various things that can be won, and there are a lot of things. There are lots of awesome things, and hey, I love free stuff.
The second seems worse but really could be the better of the two options; coal. The coal can be used for one of three things. You can trade your coal away for other gifts, or items in games like Team Fortress 2. Additionally, coal can be crafted into a non-coal gift when you have enough. The final and possible best use for coal is as an entry into a massive giveaway. Every piece of coal in your possession at the end of the sale counts as a new entry, and the prizes are large. The “grand prize” is every game available on Steam, which is a lot of fucking games. The other three prizes are just wishlist games and Valve games, but those are still really good too.
Steam Sales are weird for me, because it’s one of those times when spending lots of money is actually a really fun and enjoyable experience. Also, the artwork for each day (such as the image above) look amazing.
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Wait, that’s a quote Diablo. Never mind, it’s a nice title and I’m sticking with it.
I’ve been avoiding talking about the latest game in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim, mainly because I know there is not a chance on Earth of doing the game justice in a blog post. There is just so much about the game that excites me, and obviously others judging from the hundreds of thousands that play it on Steam according to their stats page, that it could not all be fixed in a simple written piece.
I did however, want to commend Bethesda on one thing. As I’ve played and gotten more and more into the game, I’ve been moving off from the main quest and doing side quests, as I usually do in these types of open games. The idea behind it for me is to get things I would not be able to should I just focus on the main “game” and get it over with.
As I do that however, I find that unlike games like Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption or even any of the earlier Elder Scrolls games, these “minor” side quests aren’t minor at all. In fact, as I play them they get so deep in their own storyline that they could have had their own separate games or at the very least, ended up as downloadable content.
At the moment I’m knee deep in a quest for the Mage’s College, which I thought would just be some little fetch quests that would boost my magic abilities. Instead, I’m involved in a storyline with divided factions of mages, suspicious characters, Dwarven1 ruins and ancient powers. It’s amazingly detailed and written well enough to get me immersed in the events taking place in the game.
I remember feeling a bit apprehensive about forking out eighty dollars for the game, but as I play it I see that it’s proving to be worth much more than that. The fact that I can essentially bugger off in a random direction and play what could be considered enough content to fill a whole other game is just thrilling.
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I try not to let things get to me, so this is harder to write than other things in this 30 Day Challenge. Here we go anyway.
People who use “you’re” instead of “your”. I’ve come to slowly accept, as annoying as it is, that people will use “your” instead of “you’re”, due to laziness and a general inability to utilize the English language above a Primary School level. What truly bugs me are the people who try to show off how grammatically superior they are to others by making sure to use “you’re” and still use it incorrectly. “I saw you’re dog the other day.” is not the proper use, and you’re a retard for thinking it is.{ 0 comments }
One of the big things to attract players to use the replay function is the rewards; upon the successful completion of certain achievements, the player is rewarded with an item. If one of your replayed videos hits 1000 views on YouTube you are given an achievement AND rewarded with a hat.
If you spend long enough editing your replays, the Star Of My Own Show achievement gets unlocked, and the Director’s Vision unlocks. This is a funny taunt you can equip to a class, and press the Action Key (Defaults to ‘O’) to activate the taunt, which you can see in action below.
My point, because I do have one.
Now this is neat, but it brings me to the big thought on my mind. One of the only things that separate the Mann Co. Store from the Robot Enrichment store in Portal 2 is that you can buy taunts for the co-op robots called “Gestures”. Team Fortress 2, up until now, has not had equipable taunts. With the introduction of the Director’s Vision, I can’t help but wonder if there will be more in the future. The most logical step is that Valve will start selling them in the store and maybe have them in the occasional crates.
I can see them being sold for maybe five or ten dollars. I think it’s a great idea, as it adds further optional customization, and if there’s a particularly good taunt in the store for say, the Pyro, I wouldn’t mind shelling out five dollars for it.
While it may be a good idea, the problem will be the community. Half of the Steam Powered User Forums will bitch and complain about how it should be free, forgetting that they don’t even matter. b00bies from KritzKast will adamantly cry “macro transactions”, and people like myself will stubbornly defend Valve’s decision.
However it may all pan out, this is the beginning of something new for Team Fortress 2, and while this is all speculation, it’s fair to say it is pretty likely we’ll see more “unlockable” taunts in the future.
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One of the more interesting and apparently controversial ideas implemented in Portal 2 is that of TF2-style customization for the co-op robots P-Body and Atlas. Players can equip hats, custom skins and “gestures” (cinematic gestures they do with each other, such as high fiving, though that one is free in the game.). You are automatically given certain hats from TF2 if you already own them in said game, and receive special items for unlocking certain achievements.
The real uproar seems to be around the various things you can buy in the store, and the fact we’ll be able to eventually trade items with fellow test subjects. These minor inclusions have resulted in so-called fans calling Valve “evil” and likening the company to Hitler and Activision.
My mistake was I didn’t realize that such a large portion of Valve’s fan base were greedy retards. You see:
Other games have worse and get away with it.
This point is the most important to me, so instead of a number, it gets it’s own subtitle. What bothers me most about people’s reaction to both stores that Valve have included is that other companies do these things and people seem okay with it. As an example, Blizzard offered a horse called the “Celestial Steed” that players could own and ride, as long as they coughed up a whopping $25. What did it do? Nothing. How much did Blizzard make? Millions of dollars in the first day. Why do they get a free pass for charging so much for so little, while Valve offer up items that cost 99 cents and people instantly hate everything about the company?
I’m sorry, but I’m seeing a double standard here.
I love the game, and the store takes nothing away from that love. If Valve decide to create new content, or allow us to easily make and share content, I will gladly give them money for some extra customization. As for all you haters, suck my dick1.
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Yesterday (Which was my birthday, by the way) at around lunch time, Portal 2 was officially released on Steam for all users who bought it. I booted it up, and next thing I knew it was 7pm and I was in need of nourishment.
The game was that involving that I just couldn’t stop playing until it was done. The level of humour, the plot and diversity in the levels all set the stage for a vivid world I wish I could of explored more. While I wouldn’t of complained if the single player game had been longer, I see it as being more of a epilogue to Portal to finish off the story with Chell before bring the two co-op bots into the spotlight. After all, robots make better test subjects since they don’t die, feel or void their bowels.
I’ve only touched co-operative play a tiny bit; just enough to play the first few test chambers (read: maps) and get trolled by my fellow players (Looking at you @ryantheleach and @doc_swarley!), but what I saw was very promising. Having not gotten into the more complicated levels yet I can’t say much on gameplay, but I really like being able to play along with someone.
My hopes and dreams involving portals.
Looking at the co-operative play, it seems like Valve are hoping the game becomes less of a throwaway title and more of something you want to return to again and again. I’m hoping this is the case, and the company go down their usual route of adding new maps and courses, and giving the community the means to do so as well. It seems realistic that they’d release the SDK1 and allow people to do so, and add them to their game. How they would do so in the game’s current state is a mystery, as the game isn’t played on servers like Valve’s other releases.
Regardless of what they do in that regard though, I love the game for what it is. If they don’t do anything beyond fixes (Or making it so my friends can actually play the game) I’ll still be happy with it. I may not get all the replay value I hoped for, but what I do get out of it is memorable.
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I’ve come to have a bit of a love affair with Steam. It’s been a little over a year, and it’s helped cement my love with Valve as a game developer, having invested almost a thousand hours in it’s games and the sales they have always making me depart with my hard earned money.
However, while I love Steam, I’ve still got trouble convincing myself to depart with over fifty dollars for a game. This is where I’ve come to find myself searching for and enjoying indie games like VVVVVV, Onslaught Arena and World of Goo. Luckily, I invest the money pit that is PC PowerPlay Magazine1, and they pointed me in the direction of Desura.
What is Desura?
Well if you didn’t catch on from my dedicating a paragraph to a digital distribution system, and another to indie games, let me spell it out; Desura is a digital distribution system dedicated to mods and indie games.
The system was launched publically last year and while still fairly new, the community boasts over half a million users with several hundred joining every day. Created by the people responsible for ModDB and IndieDB, the social aspect of the program syncs with that of those websites, with a universal user profile over the three.
Why should I care?
Where Steam is an all round system, selling commercial games as well as the more popular indie games like World of Goo, Desura targets the complete modding and indie game creation community, and adds a more interactive spin to the whole experience. Going to a game’s or mod’s page, you’ll see news for the game, images videos and a threaded comments section in which community members and the developers can discuss the game.
This level of interactivity with the creators makes the experience feel a lot more sociable than the classic shop style of Steam. Imagine being able to walk into a games store, and have members from Bethesda Software on hand to talk with you about Fallout: New Vegas.
Games also can be ranked 1 to 10 by players and reviewed, so you know whether what you’re about to buy will be worth it. Luckily, unlike other indie-dedicated platforms like XBox Live Indie Games, Desura seems shit free; I haven’t seen a single bad game.
Desura IS a constantly changing beast though. Being so new, it gets updated at least once a week, and new features and enhancements are constantly in development (Unlike Steam, Desura is planned to have a Linux release).
Oh, the best part!
If I still haven’t convinced you, allow me to point out two more simple things. They have multiple free games on offer. That’s right, besides the array of free mods on offer for games like Half Life 2, Desura has multiple standalone games on offer that are completely free. Two fine examples are Warsow (A fast paced multiplayer FPS with an art style similar to Borderlands) and Alien Arena (A deathmatch style FPS built off of the Quake II engine).
The other thing? The games are DRM free. Unlike Steam, which binds your game to your account so you have to be logged in to play your games, Desura lets you play them without needing it. Sure, this means risking people pirating the games on offer, but it also gives a certain level of freedom which is much appreciated in this sort of community.
tl;dr
In closing, Desura is a new comer to the digital distribution scene, but being dedicated to a particularly large niche, and already having a big audience, it’s fairly established. There are plenty of free games so even if you weren’t interested in buying games, it’s worth it for the value you get for the sweet price of nothing dollars and nothing cents.
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For those who don’t know, Desura is a new game distribution system similar to Steam, but focussing more on independent titles, and user created mods. I’m giving it a fiddle with now, and so is my partner. Just wanted to share a little bit of conversation between us that I thought was funny.
Miss Kneesocks: Dude. You can add desura to a steam shortcut.
Miss Kneesocks: INCEPTION OH MAH GAWD.
Miss Kneesocks: Yo dawg, we heard you like gaming platforms.
Miss Kneesocks: So we put a gaming platform in your gaming platform.
Miss Kneesocks: So you can…
Miss Kneesocks: Gaming platform, while you gaming platform.
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