Posts Tagged ‘valve’
Valve gives some nice Christmas treats!
I have a slight problem with buying lots of games for my PC. A lot of the games that I can play are slightly older (due to my lackluster PC) and I always kinda feel ripped off when I’m buying a 3 year old game for $30. Well, luckily, Valve has some insane deals right now. So, I treated myself to a few presents and got all of the following games for $16, which is not bad at all. I almost went ahead and got Civ IV:Complete for $25 but backed off because I have a feeling I’m going to need some of that money for WoW:WotLK here fairly shortly. I did pull the trigger earlier this week and bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for $5 but, alas, that deal is off and its back to $15.
I think DOOM 1 and 2 were probably the best deals. They were only $1 each and it’s nice to have them on your Steam account so you don’t have to worry about going around, finding a version, having it be illegal/full of trojans/etc. Civilization III was only $3.75 for Civ III and all of its expansions so I jumped all over that.
I will admit that I passed on Peggle Deluxe and Portal because I already had them, but probably would have gotten them if I didn’t. I still wish more people would buy Defcon–it has to be one of my favorite games just because it shows how haunting the most simplistic of games can be. I have Defcon and I do love it, but I think their price point may be a bit high at this point. I bought it initially for $20 and I’m glad I did, but $10 is kind of high 2 years out. GTA: Vice City and GTA 3 were on there for $9, which I guess isn’t bad for people who haven’t played them yet. I was honestly kind of angry that Valve was selling Half Life 2: Lost Coast for the same as Half Life 2: Episode One. HL2E1 was a pretty damn good game (especially for their list price of $10) whereas Lost Coast was basically a tech demo for HDR. I almost grabbed Rainbox Six: Vegas because I once started playing a friend’s game and never got all of the way through it, but decided against it. Doom 3 (Working Title: “We’ll spawn monsters in every dark corner. Act Surprised”) was selling for $18 on this discount.
I have to say that I was surprised by the pure amount of selection on Steam whenever I was going through all of their games. Sure, they have a lot of games that I would never be interested in, but the number of high quality non-Valve games they have is mildly astounding. I know Steam is a DRM service and, as a general rule, I don’t like DRM systems but I can handle Steam’s approach. I like having the ability to install as many games as I want and not have to deal with finding their discs, entering their CD-Keys, downloading patches, etc. That convenience is worth it to me.
TF2 Engineer Update: Horrible, Horrible Timing
According to the official Team Fortress 2 Website, Valve will be releasing an update for engineers in the coming days. Seriously? Valve has to know that finals are this time of year for everyone on a normal, semester-based college schedule. Why do they taunt us like this? I have 5 finals next week (plus the Purdue Christmas Show this weekend) and they’re putting out an update NOW??? Garrrgh.
That being said, it looks like a great update. Support for upgradable teleporters AND upgradable dispensers which, frankly, is something I think they’ve needed for a long time. Engineers in TF2 are a fairly static class. Build your entrance, your sentry, your dispenser, and then your exit. Upgrade your sentry at various points in between and then sit there hammering away until an uber-Demo comes and knocks it all down. With this patch hopefully it will provide more depth into what you build as an engineer. Is it more beneficial to upgrade your teleport and let your allies get to the front lines faster or to upgrade your dispenser so you’re guaranteed to have a constant supply of ammo and metal? This should add some (much needed) depth to the Engineer class.
Now is coward-killing time!
Great news today, people: Valve has announced more progress on the TF2 Heavy Update. They’re including 2 news maps, 3 new weapons, and a completely new gametype (we can only hope for VIP). Now, I’m not saying that I’m addicted to Heavy or anything, but this is going to be both a blessing and a curse. Not only will I be away all week next week, but everyone is going to be playing heavy. Everyone. Medics are going to love the free heal and assist points, and snipers are going to love the free headshots from thousands of heavies deciding that they’ll stop in chokehold points to spin up their gun. If you thought Pyro Fortress 2 was bad, just wait for Heavy Fortress. Of course, I’m sure my good friend Jeff Nadeau will love to go all sneaky-snake on the new heavies and up his backstab killcount. Oh well–so it goes.