I have all the Tropicos. Outside of Campaign Mode, you get to rule your little island for 50 years or until you’re removed from office (either by vote or by gunpoint), which go by rather quickly. 'Course, I pretty much always play at the fastest speed because it takes so long for the builders to really do anything.
Titan Quest Gold for $5 looks really nice. I’m a little concerned that the demo didn’t want to work when I got it from Steam, though. I don’t remember why exactly, but it would fail every time I tried to fire it up. My system specs should be well over whatever they require for that game.
Anyone else have this problem? Should I avoid the full game based on the demo failing to start up?
Never had any problems with titan quest. If you get an error message you can usually google it for a quick resolution, or if not ask around on the steam forums for that game. Often when something fails to launch it’s because the game tries to run at a resolution that for some reason your monitor or video card doesn’t like - but you can usually quickly edit the game’s setup files to launch at your preferred resolution. This frequently happens with oddball monitor sizes, not sure if this applies to you. Occasionally my totally standard 1680x1050 display falls victim to this, but Titan Quest worked fine for me the first go.
PB Winterbottom looks like a really clever game, sort of like Braid. Gonna grab it for $2.50, no brainer.
Might rebuy Thief: Deadly Shadows too. I actually own it around here somewhere but I’m too lazy to figure out which box I put the CD in. Oh, optimal media, how quaint…
I bought Tropico 3 the last time it went on sale, for about $7.50, I think. I played it for about 5 minutes and totally wrote it off. I had no idea I was going to have to be responsible for staffing the banana plantations. I can’t take that level of micro-managing.
Maybe there’s a level of playing that’s more generic, for lack of a better term, but that sort of minutia really bores me to tears. Take the Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise … I love building the theme parks and roller coasters, but fuck me if I want to be responsible for the price of hot dogs.
Each work location has the option of “set this wage for all workers of this type” and “set this wage for all workers of this education level”; I use the latter. Like 5 for uneducated, 10 for high school grads (except my highly-paid personal guard), and 20 for college grads. When the island gets profitable, reduce the disparity between the pay levels if you want to please the local Communists.
Good news - the flatout keys are in in, I just launched the game and got one.
Odd nes - it’s downloading 1.6gb worth of … something. I downloaded the full game of 4.5 gb yesterday, so what this 1.6gb could be I have no idea whatosever.
Anyway, start the process of playing the game so you’re sure to get your key.
Damn, missed the $2 Flatout Ultimate Carnage sale. I enjoyed the hell out of Flatout 2.
Subscribing to this thread…
That might be the laziest act ever. “Heh, I’ve got the CD somewhere in the room but fuck it. Not spending 5 minutes looking for it is definitely worth 5 bucks.”
I may or may not have done that before. My lips are sealed. 
If you knew how messy my room was, you’d back me up on this one. It could take a crew of 12 people 4 days to find anything in here.
I don’t generally like rebuying stuff I already own, but sometimes if it’s really really cheap I will just for the convenience.
I’m also not sure if I have thief: deadly shadows or just the first 2 thief games.
I bought the X-Com bundle last time it was on sale despite already owning the games. Not having to deal with the crappy old sound-card selection was more than worth it.
Okay, this is starting to get aggravating. Red Faction will only run for five minutes at a time before it freezes up and the screen goes black, usually just as I bust something up. Bioshock has a buzzing noise instead of audio that starts up just after the plane crash. Anybody else having problems with these games?
It might be an issue with a program you have running. I had to remove one of my anti-virus programs to get a lot of the games to work.
If some programs are locking up, try disabling the show steam toolbar (or pop-up) when you press Shift + Tab. It helps me to get my Disciple II running.
I mentioned Lead & Gold when I bought it a few days ago but I wanted to pimp it again. I’ve been playing it more and it’s probably the most fun new game I’ve gotten in the last 6 months, and I’ve had no shortage of games in this timespan.
It’s got a great aesthetic and it just has the pure fun factor that a lot of games don’t manage. It’s still only $7.50 during the remainder of the sale and there are at least a few of us to play it with.
So is Borderlands worth $10.75?
Borderlands is sort of like Doom or Serious Sam, but with smoother co-op multiplayer. Lots of different guns, although many are just variations of fire rate or accuracy. But LOTS of guns. Sniper rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, pistols, assault rifles, RPGs, grenades. Many different types of armour and grenades too.
Watch some gameplay videos at gametrailers.com or youtube.com.
Borderlands is a lot like Diablo in that weapons are randomized using adjectives (“Fearsome Machinegun of the Vanquisher” etc.) It kind of has that feel, except in FPS form. The story is crappy, but the gameplay is what it’s about. I bought it for multiplayer, and actually never got around to doing that, but single player was a bit of fun. I hear it’s best to play with people you know/trust not to be item hogs.
The money is shared automatically at least, I like that feature. And there is a pretty good skill tree for when you get enough experience to level up.
Yes, it’s a lot of fun playing multiplayer with friends.
New sales today
Half-Life 2 $3.39
Max And the Magic Marker $5
Bionic Commando Pack $11.24
Day of Deafeat: Source $2.50
Beat Hazard $2.50
Star Wars Empire At War: Gold Pack $5
Crysis Maximum Edition (Crysis, Warhead) $20
Prototype $15
Borderlands $10.19
Saints Row 2 $7.50
Half-life 2 is obviously great at that price but who doesn’t own it at this point?
Max and the Magic Marker sort of looks like Crayon Physics meets Braid so it might be good. I’m a sucker for indie games and want to support them so that these people don’t end up getting picked up and raped by Bobby Kotick’s death squads.
Bionic Commando pack has the new game plus the Rearmed game which is a remake of the old sidescroller. The new game doesn’t have good reviews but the remake does.
Day of Defeat: Source is alright, but if you’re interested in that type of game you should’ve bought Red Orchestra at the same price. You should still buy RO instead for $5.
Crysis is underrated for the dumbest reasons but there have been better deals on that maximum pack, it’s not a must-buy at that price, I think I picked it up for $12 during the Christmas sale.
Borderlands is good - the base game doesn’t have a ton of content but it’s fairly replayable. There’s a lot of DLC but no cheap DLC combined packs or anything yet that I’ve seen. Still, if you want a 3d action RPG you’ll get $10 out of it definitely.