Steam Holiday Sale! (and Origin)

*sings*
"It's the most wonderful time, of the year!"

Now through January first, there are all sorts of crazy deals on Steam (Portal 2 for $7.50!), and like during their Summer Sale, there are rewards for earning Achievements in certain games, which coincidentally are also on sale. We even get a daily reward for using various features of the system. I have a 'coupon' for 30% off a Valve game; I already have all of their games, so the discount will probably go towards a gift. Seeing so many deals for AAA titles, I think I've reached the point where I can resist buying them for full MSRP and instead wait for the inevitable sale. Combined with the explosion of F2P games, it's a good time to be a PC gamer.

With that said, after perusing Steam I decided to fire up Origin to see what kind of holiday deals they are offering as competition. (I needed my BF3, don't judge me!!!) Drumroll please...

• The Sims 3: Barnacle Bay
• Bulletstorm

I can't even tell if those two being half-off have anything to do with the time of the year. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Origin is destined to fail. EA is simply clueless. When physical production costs are reduced to $0.00, there's no reason for a downloaded game to cost exactly the same as what you'd find at Best Buy. And on a tangent, Origin apparently can't remember that Show: Favorites means it is not supposed to show everything attached to my account. Why does EA even bother to still display the BF3 Alpha and Beta? You can't install them any more.

Steam Deal of the Day: Arcadia

For $1.70 today, you can get a rather blatant clone of Geometry Wars on Steam. Has anyone played Arcadia? I'd love to know if there is anything to differentiate it from GW. At the very least, the soundtrack sounded neat (assuming the trailer is representative).

Midweek Madness: $15 Portal 2 (and free DLC)

This week on Steam, Portal 2 is on sale through Thursday afternoon for $15! If you haven't experienced this game, buy it. Now. Although familiarity with the first Portal will give extra meaning to the beginning of the story, it isn't necessary to appreciate just how amazing this game is.

The DLC, titled "Peer Review", adds a Challenge Mode for both single- and multiplayer, and leaderboards for proving your obvious superiority to your friends.

Now I just need to clear some space off of my hard drive to reinstall it....  :>

I'm in the top three for the Bounty Hounds Online caption contest! X-D

Take a look at my captioning above, and if you like it, up-vote it. If I win, I'll receive a Nox Audio headset and 50,000 in-game credits. To see the other two finalists, go here. Voting is from now until the 5th. Excelsior!

Steam Weekend Deal: Frozen Synapse at 50% off

Frozen Synapse is now on sale for $12.50, or $15 for the soundtrack included. I've been wanting this for a while, so once I get it installed I may have to gush a little. Each purchase gets you two copies, so if you can find a friend to split the costs, even better! Or, now that you can trade extra copies of games on Steam, it might be worth it to wait until after the weekend, and see if you can trade the extra away for another game. Or more hats.

Humble Indie Bundle 3

If you haven't heard, there's once again a Humble Indie Bundle sale going on, for another five days. I think it's a wonderful idea for a fundraiser, and for the first time I threw my $.02 in (and then some). I haven't played all of the games yet, but here's a rundown of the ones I have tried:

Cogs: as a puzzle game, once you see some images/videos, you know what to expect. I like it, although I'm not too good at it yet.

VVVVVV: this was a pleasant surprise for me. The graphics are C64-style, including the loading screen ( X-D ), and the gameplay mechanics are almost Atari-simple. That said, there's a dorky certain charm about it. I can't help but notice that when you die, your character's expression goes from a big grin to a frown. The hook for me is that you're exploring and mapping out a rather large world, like in a Metroid or Castlevania game. There may not be any Steam 'cheevos, but I want to at least fill in the entire map. :-}

And Yet It Moves: I love this one. After a few minutes you start getting into a rhythm, and the experience changes from fighting to get used to the controls into enjoying the visually surreal environments. I'm rather excited to try for the 'cheevo that involves passing a level by just rotating it, without directly moving the character.

Since I paid a little more than the average donation, I also received the games from HIB 2. That was a really nice surprise, since I let time slip away and missed out on them originally...

Braid: Originally I had played this on the 360, but I'm wagering that there aren't any significant differences. The game is beautiful to look at, haunting to listen to, has some of the most original gameplay I've experienced in years, and has a surprisingly powerful finale. That said, if you want to know what the game is really about (Spoiler Alert!): It's the atomic bomb. Although the game is a masterpiece, the creator always struck me as pretentious.

Next I want to try out Machinarium, Cortex Command, and Revenge of the Titans, and eventually I'll get to them all. I was a little saddened that Cortex Command isn't currently available on Steam, as all the rest are, but I just need to clear out some hard drive space and fire up the installer. If you're still on the fence, go check out http://www.humblebundle.com/ and see how much money has been raised for Child's Play, the EFF, and the developers. It's pay-what-you-want, so even $1 will help and you'll get some neat games.

TF2 F2P: Why I'm Not Bitter

So, Team Fortress 2 is now free-to-play. Is this good? Bad? I say mostly good. If you're unfamiliar with Valve's model for the game, free-players only get basic item drops, can't instigate trades, and some other limits. If you're content with the default weapons or are uninterested in getting fancy hats, you might not notice what you're missing out on. By making any purchase through the in-game store, you get upgraded to a Premium account, which is the same as if you bought the game at retail. I feel slightly bad for anyone who recently paid full price (hi Maggie!), since all they get is a hat for their $20, but I'm not bitter about the game I paid for (three years ago?) becoming free.

So many of my friends are gamers, but when I consider how many of them:
...play on PC, and
.....use Steam, and
.......play TF2, it's not surprising that I've never played TF2 with any of my friends. Now that there is no financial barrier to entry, they have no excuse to not at least try it. And anyone who has gamed socially knows, games are exponentially more fun with friends. Being able to unite your R/L friends in one or two games will make their first experiences better as well, since they'll have each others' support and won't have to deal with as many jerks online, nor alone.

I will suck less. By comparison.
With the exceptions of the original Dead or Alive and Wipeout XL, I've never focused so much on one game that I become truly great at it. With a whole slew of new players who are worse than me, hopefully future matches won't be the trainwrecks of hyper-competitive players insulting their own teammates because not everyone is playing at an e-sports level of efficiency.

Be ready to do some coaching, 2Fort combat vets.
The downside to a whole slew of new players is that the absolutely larval newbies may still be learning basic strategies, like an Ubercharge on a Heavy is a bit more valuable than on a Sniper. Or even how to use Ubercharge. If the old-timers simply get frustrated and start filling the voice channels with feces, that impression is going to stay with the newbie and harms the community as a whole.

I find it fascinating to hear that already, some veteran players are using their Proof of Purchase hats to distinguish themselves from newcomers. We'll see if human nature drags down the gaming utopia that Valve appears to be working towards, but I for one welcome this grand experiment in PC gaming. I don't believe that full retail games will ever die out, but hopefully this will spur other large game developers to try out F2P financial models.

Steam F2P: Round One

Steam is now distributing a handful of microtransaction-based free-to-play games, and the first one I'm trying is Forsaken World. With some more playtime I'll write a review, but so far in the first hour or so I haven't found any deal-breakers. The graphics remind me of WoW but not as angular, so it runs quite well on my aging gaming rig. Overall it feels a tad generic, but there's still plenty of opportunities for unique gameplay to emerge.

MineCraft on Xbox 360?!

At E3 on Monday, Microsoft announced that MineCraft would be coming out on Xbox 360 sometime near the end of the year. Normally I wouldn't care, but a couple specifics caught my eye:

• cross-platform functionality between 360 and PC
• Kinect support

I can't help but wonder why bother including Kinect support, other than to add a bulletpoint. It doesn't seem like the kind of game that would be improved at all by marching in place, flailing your arms, and/or saying "inventory" aloud vs. using a controller. Whatever cross-platform features are implemented should be more interesting... and ACHIEVEMENTS!

Hackers Ruin CoD: Black Ops Matches Also

I was excited to see that Call of Duty: Black Ops is having a free (multiplayer) weekend on Steam. That is, until I encountered one or more game hackers in a match. If you've never played a recent CoD game, one of the handy features is a "kill cam" showing who killed you, from where. After getting killed immediately upon spawning (multiple times), I watched the kill cam for as long as it displayed. The camera of the player in question was moving in an unnaturally jerking manner, racking up kills through multiple layers of walls. It was quite obvious that this wasn't the behavior of a normal player, and 'his' 77-0 kill/death ratio seemed a bit odd as well. Teammates agreed that it just wasn't fun anymore, and we all left the match.

This is why I don't mind paying $50-60/year for Xbox Live. It may be a walled garden, but Microsoft at least tries to keep an even playing field by punishing cheaters. Only time will tell if CoD: World at War settles down from an online Wild West, but between that and Black Ops on PC, I won't be taking for granted a fair (fire)fight any time soon.

Playing with Imaginary Friends

In CoD: Black Ops, you can play "Combat Training" bot matches. It surprised me to find that the PC version names the bots after people on your Steam buddylist. It was nifty at first, until I thought about how few of them would actually play a FPS online, let alone B.O. *le sigh*

CoD: WaW Hackers

Looking through my pile of clearance games to play, I decided to try out the multiplayer in Call of Duty: World at War. (Don't know why, but I recently heard the siren-song of ranking up in CoD again.) The first thing I noticed while waiting for the match to start was all sorts of colorful player names, some cycling through multiple hues. No biggie, that might just be a bonus at some insanely high level. Once I got into the match, however, things went downhill. The entire upper-left quadrant of the screen quickly filled up with automated messages from a couple players hawking a YouTube channel apparently about game modding (a bannable offence on XBL). I reported them, but soldiered on through the match since leaving early shows up as a loss on your record. It didn't help that occasionally I would see a player levitate across the level in mid-air. I can't prove this, but I think some of my opponents may have been invulnerable as well, unless there's a perk that allows you to survive melee attacks to the back of your head.

Normally I wouldn't care about what others are doing for fun, but the spamming messages obscure my vision, and I'm paranoid about getting suspended/banned from XBL because the automated matchmaking throws me into games that may be hosted on modified consoles.

My question is this: why is there so much blatant game modding in World at War? I play MW 1 and 2 also, but have never noticed such a flagrant disregard to the TOS. Is it simply because the game is older and not policed as strictly as the 'big guns' of XBL, MW2/BlackOps? Or is there something about WaW that makes it easier to hack? 

OnLive: It Just Works

Intro
The concept for OnLive is pretty cool: you install a small client program or use their set-top box with your TV, and as soon as you click the Buy button (or Free Trial button), you're playing the game, in flippin' sweet graphical goodness. No installs, play on any computer, easy peasy. The whole concept is that the games are running on their servers, so you're simply sending keystrokes/mousing to the server, and watching a video stream of the action in real-time. If you're computer can handle YouTube, it should be able to handle any game on OnLive. So, does it work as advertised?


OnWard to Victory!
I decided to try the 30-min. trial for Unreal Tournament III, a game that I already own. That way, I could compare the two experiences. Just like the company claims, as soon as I clicked the button to start the trial, I was looking at the title screen. I played a round of Warfare and one of CTF, against bots. I was a little curious how well a twitchy shooter like UTIII would work via streaming, especially since I use wi-fi (something OnLive doesn't recommend). If this works, the only thing more demanding regarding accuracy would probably be Homefront, since Counter-Strike isn't offered for some reason. ;)  Amazingly, it worked. Really well. There was a tiny bit of lag, but on par for me with playing online. Never did I wish I was playing my installed version instead, and that's the big thing for me; if you can forget that the game you're playing isn't installed on your computer, mission accomplished for OnLive.

If you don't want to be restricted to playing on a computer, purchasing some AAA-titles will score you an OnLive 'mini-console' for free. It's a little box that you plug into a wired internet connection, your TV via HDMI, and a USB keyboard and mouse if you don't feel like using the included wireless controller. When the price for the device is $100, spending $45 on Warhammer 40k: Space Marine (pre-order) and the mini-console and the game Darksiders doesn't seem that bad of a deal.

A nice bonus to having someone else handling your game's hardware is that the game will look as pretty as they can make it look. Although it's rather early to see this in action, one conceptual advantage to OnLive is that they can upgrade their servers to whatever's cutting edge, freeing you from the expensive cycle of hardware upgrades. Also, they offer a $9.99/month PlayPack subscription that gives you access to 50-something games at a time. Provided that the selection changes regularly, it would be like NetFlix for computer games. Some games also offer rentals for a few days at a time, something that you can't exactly do through Steam or store-bought PC games. Not all of the games offer this, but that may be the game publisher's decision.


OnDead
Maybe I've gotten too used to the Steam school of storefront aesthetics, but the vertical-scrolling list of available games seemed rather quaint. When your library of games is small, however, it works. As an unproven concept, OnLive is in a catch-22 where publishers don't want to invest in an unpopular system, but it won't become popular without compelling games/prices. The list of upcoming AAA titles like Duke Nukem Forever and the new Deus Ex are encouraging, but this definitely isn't Steam yet. One oddity when I was playing UTIII was that it was in widescreen format, with the video options being customized so I couldn't change it. I suppose that shows how determined OnLive is about promoting their service as an alternative to gaming consoles (vs. PC gamers). Just like Steam, if the company ever disappears so do your games. And with no local files at all, your OnLive games are VERY gone. For some reason I felt inspired to actually look over the TOS agreement when I updated the client, and something stood out to me: apparently OnLive can delete your account if you don't log in and actually use the service for a year. I'd be curious to see if the TOS for Steam has anything like this. I still reinstall old games on occasion (American McGee's Alice right now), and I'd hate to think that a chunk of my gaming library would just vanish if OnLive doesn't offer any new games that I'm interested in for a year or more.

This isn't a ding against OnLive, but I'm wondering if they're slightly ahead of their time given the current state of American internet access. When the ISPs have things like undisclosed bandwidth caps & traffic shaping to combat what they consider "excessive usage" of their advertised unlimited plans, it makes me nervous to pay full price for, and then play for hours on end, a game that could cause service charges or get my internet cut off for the rest of the billing cycle. (But considering how much NetFlix some of my friends watch on their Xbox 360, maybe I'm just paranoid. :> )


Conclusions
I really hope OnLive survives to reach the critical mass that Steam saw, with tons of new games big & small added all the time, and crazy-cheap sales. Right now I can't see myself paying $50-60 for a game when the company doesn't have a very long track record for their completely new concept yet, but if three things happen I could definitely see myself splitting my online purchases between OnLive and Steam:

1. OnLive emerges as a stable company that will still be around in a few years.
2. They offer impulse-buy sales for games. Under $10 is my sweet spot.
3. American ISPs legitimately upgrade their infrastructure, enabling truly unlimited, fast connections.

Also, if more games offer the rental option, I could definitely see myself trying them out on long weekends. I'd highly recommend downloading the client and playing a trial or two to test the OnLive service before plunking down any cash, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on. 

Bungie is Making a Steampunk Game

Bungie has sent word to Seattle's steampunk community (of which I am an upstanding member), that they need models for a photoshoot pertaining to an upcoming game. So to recap, my handsome mug might be in a steampunk video game, made by the Halo folks. My head just exploded from the awesome. Good thing I can touch type.

Minecraft!!!

Yep, I finally did it; sprung for the full version of Minecraft. The first thing I did? Started on an underground lair in the side of a small cove. I'd heard about the Creeps, so I wanted someplace safe to hide at night. The only way to get to it is by swimming, so it's been perfectly safe so far. As a kid that grew up with Legos (and still has them), I'm in heaven. <3

Lego Rock Band: Under-appreciated Gem?

INTRODUCTION
I've been playing plastic-guitar games since the original Guitar Hero came out for PS2, and have tried all of them except for RB: Green Day (one of these days, though). The descriptions for Lego Rock Band made it out to be a slightly different experience from RB1, which is apparently the era in which it was developed during. Was it worth the $10 at Gamestop? Read on.


THE FEEL
Not even completely through the teaser cinematic, it's obvious that this is meant to fit in with the other contemporary Lego games: a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the source material, that happens to be family-friendly. I couldn't help but notice that some of the pre-made characters are Lego versions of the RB standbys like the Duke of Gravity. Much like in RB3, cinematics are used to tell the story of your band's rise to superstardom. While demolishing a building, ghost hunting, and fighting off a sea monster, among other Challenges, I caught myself cracking up (and maybe even squeeing at one point) at the genuinely funny videos. And that's coming from someone jaded enough to not flinch at anything he encounters on /b/.


MECHANICS
If you've played any RB games, the gameplay is exactly the same. One small difference is that when you fail, you can work your own way back in without relying on a bandmate's star power. Since the game is meant to be accessible to younger players, the difficulty ratings for songs seems to be a bit more generous, and I believe there are a couple more ratings to better show differences in difficulty. My hard drive has exported tracks for RB1, 2, and a lot of downloaded songs; the game detected the RB1 and downloaded tracks, filtering out any that are apparently deemed inappropriate. It was nice having a decent number of songs to choose from, since the tracklist for Lego Rock Band is rather "meh" for me.

A nifty addition that the builder in me enjoyed is that you have a home-base that you navigate around rather than static menus for campaign stuff. Your band can be seen just hanging out, and the characters you hire such as your manager and roadies will occasionally wander through. As you progress through the campaign you will unlock decorative items to buy and position around your home, although there is not as much variety as in a game like The Sims. Along with your band members, the roadies and members of you entourage can be customized as well.


GRAPHICS, SOUND & CONTROLS
Exactly what you'd expect from the RB series. The visuals during the ghost-hunting challenge was the funniest (intentional) thing I've seen in a video game for as long as I can remember.


CONCLUSION
Will I be getting rid of Rock Band 3? Heck no. As a one-time experience, however, I'm loving Lego Rock Band. And for achievement-hunters, there's nothing too hard (except for the Endless Setlist). My usual RB buddies didn't really care for small issues such as long-ish load times, but that may be because we're quite used to the more-refined systems in RB3. For $10-20, you could do worse. A lot worse. *cough(GH Rocks the '80s)cough*

RIP Parabellum

Yesterday I was looking for stuff to clean off of my computer, and realized I still had Parabellum installed, that scamp of a F2P shooter with some innovative concepts but poor execution. I decided to give it one last chance before sending it to the same fate as the Companion Cube, but what happened when I tried to start it up?

It couldn't check for updates. The helper program for that, GamersFirst LIVE!, no longer shows Parabellum in its list of F2P games to download, nor does the GamersFirst website list it. Guess it was just too advanced for its time. Or a lousy game.

Brink - A Redbox Review

INTRODUCTION
After hearing about Brink, I was immediately in love. Mirror's Edge is one of my favorite games (as a one-time experience), but I cut my gaming teeth on games like Quake II and Counter-Strike. More guns were needed, and Brink delivered.


THE FEEL
Brink is what would happen if Al Gore watched "Waterworld", played Mirror's Edge and then penned the backstory for Bioshock. A floating arcology (The Ark, get it? lololol) is built sometime in the next 44 years out in the Pacific, as a(n expensive) haven for the rich, brilliant, and hip. Due to the seas rising, presumably from the polar ice caps melting, The Ark sees tourists replaced by refugees. In a scene right out of Snow Crash, all those extra commoners end up in an organic growth of boats and anything else that will float, moored at the edges of The Ark. As far as we know, no one in The Ark knows if there are any other survivors elsewhere on Earth. The two playable factions are Ark security forces, looking to maintain order, and a loose-knit band of rebels who want to escape and go looking for dry land away from The Ark. And maybe some olives.

I'm probably forgetting some classic, but this is the first game I can remember that really tells a compelling story within a round-based shooter. There are little cinematics before, after and sometimes during a match, with audiologs that you unlock as you level up. It made me unnaturally giddy to see my created character inserted into those cinematics, even if 'I' am just checking my weapon in the background while two teammate have a conversation. It's the little things that count.

Speaking of character creation and the little things, you maintain two costumes per character: one for Security and one for the Rebels. You can switch between them at will, and the music subtly changes for each. As you level up, you'll unlock new clothes to customize your officer and ragamuffin. Although some more choices would've been nice, especially regarding hair/hats, the last time I paid so much attention to my clothes was in Soul Calibur IV. Kinda random, but apparently there are no women in the Ark Security forces, nor in the fighting branch of the rebellion.


MECHANICS
Once you create a character, you can choose to play through the story, do challenges to unlock weapon modifications and get onto the leaderboards, free-play versus games, and tinker with your character & weapons. Modding weapons really stood out for me, since each gun can have up to four mods added, and each mod will improve some stats while lowering others. Most mods also are visible on the gun itself, giving you a sense of ownership after taking a 'stock' weapon and making it just right for you.

There are four classes: soldier, medic, engineer, and operative (read: spy). Each one has unique skills that you can buy with points earned from leveling up, and matches will generally require a mix of classes to complete multiple objectives. It's nice how classes are completely separate from weapon choices, and you can change your class at command posts mid-match. Pretty much anything you do in a match gains you experience points, even 'guarding' a door while you wait for the one operative on your team to come plant their doodad on it, fighting in close proximity to teammates, or playing online. It's a beautifully simple way to encourage players into playing the way that the developers intended.

Each level of the story is a match between the two teams, with the aforementioned cinematics and objectives that are appropriate with that part of the story. If your match settings are set accordingly, friends or strangers will simply replace bots. There's no gameplay outside of combat, unless you're like me and agonize over optimum weapon loadouts.

Within a match there will be a primary objective (e.g. a Soldier needs to plant explosives on a door), and secondary ones to help your team. If you aren't the 'right' class for the primary objective, it will display to you as Guard the Door. Hopefully this will encourage players to work together towards the primary goals. Secondary objectives might be blowing open a shortcut or securing a CP that grants a team-wide bonus. You can bring up a radial dial to select an objective, and it displays how many teammates are also working towards it. It's handy to see at a glance if no one is bothering with the most vital goal of the match. The levels are laid out like what you'd expect from a game that's about parkour gunfights in a dystopia, with plenty of places to jump, climb and slide around (except for the big, linebacker characters).


GRAPHICS
Yep, it looks like you're in a run-down shell of a place that was once great, except this time you're on top of the water. The rubble & such looks good, though... at least, as well as rubble can look. One complaint I had was that certain places were really dark at times. That's fine if it's for dramatic effect, but on occasion I would have trouble entering the battlefield, simply because our shipping-container HQ wasn't properly lit for emergency egresses.


SOUND
There isn't any background music during matches, unless I was so wrapped up in shootin' that I didn't even notice music. What you do hear, though... WOW. I was playing with headphones on, and I haven't heard such a satisfying shotgun since Quake II. Hearing that, I half-expected to see a head go flying 50 ft. as if I'd gotten a crit-hit with V.A.T.S. Oh, and the other guns also sound good & dangerous. Something rather random, though, is my character's apparent Foreign Accent Syndrome. I'm the type of player that will make created characters (the first one, at least) roughly based on myself, so it came as a surprise when my Washingtonian Filipino/Germanic avatar started talking with a Jamaican accent. Normally this would be a non-issue... except that you can't change a character's voice after he's created.




CONTROLS
Coming from Mirror's Edge, going nuts on junk lying around the environment came naturally to me, although there aren't quite as many moves available this time. If you hold down the sprint button (more like a brisk jog button), you'll automatically vault over obstacles and climb up ledges you jump towards. Crouching while sprinting will slide you under things like pipes & gunfire, and is a rather effective way to slide past enemies en route to putting some holes in the back panels of their armor. Raising up the sights for your weapons felt a little slower than I'm used to, but it didn't seem to affect gameplay. After the CoD series, it just feels weird. A nifty feature that I hope other games will implement is how a medic revives someone. Rather than running up to a downed teammate with defibrillators, the medic will toss them a syringe. It's then up to the casualty to decide if it's safe for him to revive himself. It's certainly not realistic, but you'll appreciate it the first time a pack of enemies run right past your almost-dead body.




ONLINE ASPECTS
There's been some scuttlebutt about Brink having issues with online multiplayer. It's all true.
Besides the $2 rental, I chose to try Brink on 360 due to the typically solid performance I've had with XBL. When I tried out a public game, the two other human players I was with brought the match down to a slideshow any time I tried to move. It definitely wasn't gameplay slowdown, as the bots were moving around as smoothly as usual when I stood still. I learned to play Counter-Strike on dial-up with ping of 200, so I can tolerate not having pixel-perfect accuracy & other players simply having better connections, but this was unplayable. This is why the big titles like Halo: Reach & Gear of War III have betas, even though they know the DVD factory is simply printing money: to iron the kinks out beforehand. It really burns my butter when developers & publishers are willing to let the early adopters be beta testers who pay $60 for the privilege.

Similarly, there's a Brink stats-tracking site; I even have the code to link my gameplay stats. Too bad the site isn't up, with no word (as of 18May11) when it will be.




CONCLUSION
I like this game. I really, really do. Bethesda or Splash Damage must have snuck a Polybius machine into my local theater, and used it to find out exactly what features I'd have in my dream game. That might also explain why I don't remember ever playing Polybius. And the night terrors.

Will I be buying it? YES... eventually. I didn't even play the game on release day, yet someone in charge at Bethesda, Splash Damage or ZeniMax thought it was okay to release a game centered around online multiplayer, with online features that aren't even finished. Am I just bat-guano crazy to expect a non-MMO game to have the features that work as advertised on release day, or have been adequately playtested? It's great that problems can be fixed after release through patches, but it seems like developers are getting lazier now that they know that the game doesn't have to be perfect by the time it 'goes gold'. Looking at what was shipped on the Brink disk +8 days of patching (or not), it's not worth $60. If I found it for $30 or less, definitely. If it's patched to the point where everything 'just works', I might ever reconsider $60. I just hope that Brink becomes popular enough that it'll be supported to the point where price meets quality, wherever that is.

Still Alive

Just a short update from my phone: I haven't forgotten about this blog, and the next F2P game I'm looking at trying is CrimeCraft. More to come...