Hat Trick Maker

Ubisoft is giving away 7 games right now and today is the last day to claim them (Uplay account required). Prince of Persia Sands of Time Splinter Cell Rayman Origins The Crew Beyond Good & Evil Far Cry Blood Dragon Assassin's Creed III https://club.ubisoft.com/en-US/ubi30

Apparently, SEGA want our email addresses. http://www.makewarnotlove.com/ It kinda sucks that Alpha Protocol isn't free...and I have yet to receive my keys they promised. Oh, and I'll get back to your earlier reply once I have the time, g_bassi13

They are going to invite more people when the closed beta comes back next week or so (mid Feb), so check your inbox. The beta weekend was probably my best FPS experience in years (Battlefield 3 came close). When one of your best moments made it in the Play of the Game, that feeling is just awesome.

The trilogy was for $3.79 US on Indie Gala (a bundle retailer like Humble Bundle) a few months back. Might happen again.

I bought a grand total of one game this past Winter Sale. It's a CDN$7 management simulation called Empire TV Tycoon. The game seems a bit overpriced after playing through it though, but that says a lot about my overall attitude toward this sale. I think the online market has become a lot more saturated and there are fewer and fewer quality games, yet the consumer base is still expanding with their ever growing library. There are simply fewer options when it comes to picking something that really catches your eye. And did I mention we have been spoiled for way too long and way too much? As an example, I have more games on Steam than I want to admit and I will probably never finish all of them in my lifetime (50% will be a lifetime achievement on its own), even without any further purchase. There is simply no immediate incentive for me to buy ANY game (unless its name is Overwatch), even for a big discount. However, I do buy games, but only out of habit, not out of hedonistic necessity. Nevertheless, here are a few indie games I recommend on Steam, in case you guys are wondering what to buy in the next sale. Sang-Froid - Tales of Werewolves [Third Person Tower-defense] (g_bassi13 recommended it a while ago, was not disappointed) http://steamcommunity.com/app/227220 Legend of Grimrock I/II [First Person Tile-based RPG] (unique/retro gameplay; great puzzles; sequel has best menu music only second to Civ 4's) http://store.steampowered.com/sub/49358/ Door Kickers [Real-time Tactic] (Rainbow Six 1 and 2 from Top-down) http://steamcommunity.com/app/248610 Qvadriga [Tactical Chariot Racing] (self-explanatory) http://store.steampowered.com/app/297760

Thank you for the heads-up, I'm downloading it now! I've heard about the reboot, but I didn't realize they could release the game this quick in any form. I hope it retains what has made the original game such a classic. For me, UT has forever spoiled my expectations for the FPS genre. IMO, Epic's "jump" from UT to Gears is a total devolution of shooters, playing the Gears multiplayer feels like driving a tank, although the single player campaigns were great fun.

The game is now 33% off on Steam for the next 24 hours. http://store.steampowered.com/app/301120/ CDN$ 11.38

I've had this game on my radar (wishlist) for sometime now, but I'm still not swayed by the price tag just yet. For me, story-driven adventure games are always a risk to buy. They're either an exceptional experience or a huge letdown.

Saw g_bassi13 last replied, and came expecting an essay. Was not disappointed. And yeah, no way I'm getting any multiplayer-centric games at launch nowadays.

I wanted to give Steam more money today, but the god-awful deals saved my wallet.

Not yet, but the new game engine is beautiful. Anyway, I did pour a lot of hours into the first Crusader Kings though. It’s my second most played game on Steam and I only started playing it like this year. It’s basically a royalty-crossing simulator and an addictive one. In my still incomplete CKI run (at 7th generation), I started off small in Ireland and took ages to take over the country. Then I conquered most of northern Africa and slowly inched into Middle East. I didn’t bother England for some reason (nor Iceland for that matter LOL). The latest I did was move into Iberia (from my secured African base) and try to stir things up in the French kingdom (who is, or was, one of the two major powers, the other being Germany). I also had some small remotely vassalized provinces here and there in the continent, but not much success otherwise. I’ve only inherited like one piece of land so far (in the middle of nowhere in Sweden). I was appointed Papal Controller once, and it felt great. Overall, I think CKI may be a harder game than its sequel, because in CKI you just can't invade anyone you want. You have to spend prestige to wage war and prestige is so hard to come by when you start off as a nobody. You just have to do everything on your own and with patience. If there is one thing I hate about Paradox, it is their mass production of overpriced DLCs. So I always wait until they put up some bulk deals or something on the DLCs. I think I got vanilla CK2 from Paradox’s Humble Bundle and later bought a discounted DLC collection from GamersGate, albeit an incomplete collection. I also had the save problem with HoI 3 where hours of world conquest went to waste after the update, and I had never heard of the update/version control you spoke of and I doubt it’d save my progress. Hearts of Iron 3 is also one of the poorest optimized 2D games with just sprites. The late game is barely playable even on a modern machine and the cure Paradox offer you is via a full priced DLC expansion which fixes the performance issue. If Paradox had real competition in this particular niche of gaming, they wouldn’t get away with this BS.

I snapped up the game right away when it was on Amazon's Editor's Choice promo for $2.50. I've always wanted to get a copy for the console before they ported it to PC, especially it'd been floating around in retails for $10 I think. I bought Bastion a few years back during the Winter Sale and played it for about 20 minutes only as a means to get the sale achievements (which give you prize tickets I think). But I really liked the art style and especially its soundtrack, which is probably one of the best for a video game. Having said that, I definitely want to go back and actually play the game for fun.

Longer development cycle, growing development cost, stiffer competition, and a saturated market are part of the reason they want to squeeze the most money out of your pocket. Personally, I choose not to spoil them. I don't, however, want to moralize the whole thing. There're developers who deserve better and there are ones who deserve to do better.

It's my third most played game on Steam and it's probably one of the better zombie games out there (single-player wise). Gameplay somewhat resembles The Last of Us (in my opinion anyway), but it has an open-world setting and decent RPG elements. You also get to recruit/rescue and play different and random characters as well as choose and upgrade your own base of operation (which you need to defend at times). But the combat in this game can be hard to master and any characters including the main story characters can actually DIE if you're not careful. And deaths are permanent in this game because of the auto-save. The game's chilling main theme also kind of reminds me of the theme from The Last of Us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vaPbKwq0wA Breakdown is pretty much a sandbox mode of the main campaign. Your goal is to gather as much as possible and recruit as many or efficient as you can. Level your characters and so they are prepared for the next difficulty which always has fewer resources and more enemies than the last. Once you get to the next difficulty, rinse and repeat. If enjoyed the campaign, you might enjoy Breakdown, otherwise skip it. Using a controller for this console port is highly recommended. It makes the combat so much smoother and the overall gameplay more enjoyable.

So far from the Summer Sale I bought... Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon DLC (finally at a good price) State of Decay - Lifeline DLC (at long last some real new content since the original, but now I forget how to play this game) Payday 2 DLCs (meh, knee-jerk purchase) Magic 2014 (because I'm into collectible card games now thanks to Hearthstone) FTL (butthurt after default difficulty, but had fun; definitely not a game for everyone; wish to have bought it for $2.50 instead of $4.00) Gone Home (still bought it despite all the negative user reviews; is it that bad?) and other notable purchases... System Shock 2 (from a $3 bundle at Bundle Star) Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves (from a $1.9 bundle at Indie Gala; thanks goes to g_bassi13 for the suggestion, the game seems very interesting)