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*