Steam summer sale and activities are here! (June 30-July 10)

The Game Room
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The summer steam sale has arrived. This means pretty much everything in the steam catalog is discounted to one degree or another, along with each day bringing daily deals that last 24 hours that are even more steeply discounted.

Do not buy anything not on daily sale until the last day. You might be saying “oh hey cool, Batman AA is 33% off, I’ll grab that” and then 2 days later it’ll be 75% off on daily sale and you’ll kick yourself. Just check the daily sales every day, and if by the end if the games you wanted didn’t get a daily sale, then get then at the normal discounted price. If it keeps up like the current pace, there should be a lot of daily deals - it’s starting with 12 today.

There’s also a summer camp activities themed set of activities, similar to the treasure hunt sale last December. Every day brings new activities - they can range from easy and free (like today’s Join the Summer Camp Official Group) to being achievements in games. Typically the games they pick to have achievements from are on daily sale, so you can get them cheaply.

Every ticket you earn puts you in a drawing to win the top 10 games in your wishlist. They’ve also created rewards in participating games that you can buy with your tickets, like extra map packs, cosmetic items, etc. The list is limited I assume because they had to contact each developer to make something in their game as a reward, but still a fun idea.

I’ll be updating the thread with the daily deals, although it’s probably going to come late due to my sleep schedule, so take a look yourself when they switch at 10am PST or someone else can post the new dailies if you want.

Today’s dailies:
Borderlands: GOTY (with all dlc) $7.50 (75% off)
Back to the future: the game (all 5 episodes) $12.50 (50%)
The Witcher 2 $33.50 (33%)
Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West $1.50 (85% off)
Test Drive Unlimited 2 $10 (50%)
Bit.Trip Runner $2.50 (75%)
Reccetear $5 (75%)
Blood Bowl Legendary Edition $13.50 (66%)
Operation Flashpoint: Red River $30 (35%)
Oblivion Game of the year (complete pack) $7 (66%)
Medal of Honor $10 (66%)
Dawn of War: Retribution (stand alone? expansion to DOW 2) $15 (50%)

Of those, I can fully recommend Lead and Gold for $1.50. I like the game a lot and it’s hard not to be worth $1.50. We’ve had a few SDMB games and if there’s interest we can have more.

Oblivion is awesome, and you get everything for $7. Check one of the mod threads or start your own - the game is massively better with a few mods or one of the mod compilations.

I haven’t heard anything say anything good at all about that new Medal of Honor game.

Borderlands is fun, not great, but for $7.50 you get everything, so I’m sure you’d get that much entertainment out of that. Good for coop if oyou get it with friends.

I’m not going to list all of the activities every day, but I’ll list what games they’re for - and if you’re interested you can look up the full list. Today has achievements for bit.trip beat, dow 2: retribution, lead and gold, AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Toki Tori, Swords and Soldiers HD, and a freebie - join the steam summer sale group.

Post your questions, recommendations, or any discussion relating to the sale or the games within.

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Oh, and I forgot to mention the packs. These won’t go on daily sale so it’s safe to buy them now if you think they’re a good deal. They’re generally giant packs including an entire publisher’s game catalog at a big discount. If you don’t have many games, this can be a good way to get a whole lot of them fast and cheaply.

The THQ pack is a great deal for $50 with lots of games that’d be worth it on their own. The company of heroes series, metro 2033, homefront, darksiders, titan quest, dawn of war 2 and expansions, stalker - and more for $50.

Everything Valve has ever made for $50

You can check out the rest yourselves

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I’m trying to decide if Portal 2 for 33% off is as low as it’ll get or if they’ll run it as a daily for lower. Since it’s not one of the dailies today, it’ll probably sit at 33% all through the sale. May as well wait and see.

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The regular non-daily sales will never increase in price or go away, so you’re safe waiting until the last day to buy Portal 2 if it never goes on daily sale. I suspect it’ll be 50% at some point.

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I know this is probably a dumb question, but I only signed up for Steam recently (when someone at the Dope posted about the Humble Indie Bundle, which was far too good a deal to pass up). If I get games, are they stored on my hard drive or somewhere in Steam-land? I just have a regular old Dell Inspiron, but it’s my livelihood so I don’t want to mess it up or overload it. I know in previous Steam threads, people have mentioned having upwards of 100 games on Steam - is that on a dedicated gaming machine?

Also, with my laptop and wireless mouse, is it likely that I’ll get much enjoyment out of games like Oblivion or Portal 2 or Borderlands? I’m much more of a console girl - outside of casual games, I haven’t played a PC game since SimAnt/ SimTower.

Thanks!

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Both, in a way. Steam keeps a record of what you’ve purchased, and you can install or uninstall those on the local machine at any time.

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By my count I bought 46 games during the Steam X-Mas sale (not including expansions). I still haven’t even touched 19 of them.

Yet here I go, back into the fray.

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I understand completely. I haven’t even touched the first two Deus Ex games, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., four Prince of Persia games, Overlord II, or The Force Unleashed; as in, never even launched them since buying them dirt cheap during a previous sale. I’ve also barely played Crysis, Dragon Age, or Jade Empire. And I’ve kinda half-played Bioshock, Overlord, Psychonauts, Titan Quest, and The Witcher.

I wonder what will be on sale tomorrow.

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Hm… I’m not a sports fan but I heard Blood Bowl is cool (I think it was Blood Bowl anyway). Is it worth it?

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I got the Back To The Future bundle!

I like those old school point and click adventure games.

You can download any game you own from Steam at any time. You can also backup your games to disc before uninstalling, in case you don’t feel like waiting for a download next time you want to play it.

As long as your PC can handle the game fine, I don’t see why you wouldn’t get many hours of enjoyment from games like the ones you mentioned. Oblivion, for example is an entirely different and better experience on the PC thanks to user created mods. If mouse and keyboard is what might bother you, you can always use an xbox controller on your PC if you want.

You can tell us your system specs, or go here: Can You RUN It | Can I Run It | Can My PC Run It

And choose the game you want to play. The website will tell you how your PC compares to the game’s minimum and recommended specs.

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New daily deals:

Shogun 2: Total War $30 (40%)
COD: Black Ops $37 (38%)
GTA Classics pack (gta 1, 2, 3, vice city, san andreas) $7.50 (75%)
Dungeons $14 (66%)
Devil May Cry 4 $10 (50%)
Just Cause 2 $5 (75%), also JC1 and all dlc 75% off.
Railworks 2 $9 (75%)
Braid $2.50 (75%)
Spacechem $5 (66%)
Hamilton’s Great Adventure $5 (50%)
Heroes of Might and Magic 5 $5 (75%), rest of the series 75% off too

The activities are for Hamilton’s Great Adventure, Spacechem, Shogun 2, Alien Breed: Impact, and Dwarfs!?, also a free activity for linking your steam and facebook profiles.

I think you can complete the achievements at any time before the sale ends - there’s not a daily drawing for prizes but rather 100 drawings at the end.

Ok, so, the daily deals seem to be less steeply discounted generally than in the past, but there are more of them. Some still have pretty big discounts.

Of today’s gams, I can fully recommend Just Cause 2. It’s an open world game that’s actually a proper PC game that looks absolutely beautiful (top 5 best looking games ever) and is just a lot of fun with over the top 80s action movie style open world gameplay. It was my favorite game of last year.

Black Ops isn’t worth $40 and doesn’t deserve to be listed as a daily deal at that price.

Space Chem is supposed to be a good and clever puzzle game from what I’ve heard.

The GTA pack is a lot of gameplay for $8.

Braid is a very clever game and easily worth the $2.50.

Taking a look at Hamilton’s Great Adventure - says it has coop puzzle solving/adventure gameplay so maybe it’s like the Lara Croft game that came out last year that was surprisingly good. Might grab that if I have a partner to play with.

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Hmm, a little later they added a few star wars games to the daily sales:

Knights of the Old Republic $2.50
Force Unleashed 2 $10
Battlefront 2 $2.50
Empire at War Gold $5

And I misread one of the deals. The Heros of Might and Magic 5 pack is on sale - not just the one game. It includes 2 DLCs and Dark Messiah Might and Magic all for $5.

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Oh brilliant. I’ll have to pick up JC2 and Battlefront 2 today.

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Anyone have a quickie review of HoMM 5? I’m kind of a sucker for fantasy-genre games.

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I’ve played it and I feel like I should be able to write some sort of review of it but it’s just rather bland. Not bad but not really awesome either. For that price you might as well try it out, though.

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HoMM isn’t amazing enough for me to recommend, but I rather liked Dark Messiah. It’s a first-person (uses the Source engine, like Portal) game apparently set in the same setting, but very different in tone. The game is very linear, but it’s a fun ride for a cheap game.

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Knights of the Old Republic is totally worth it if you like Star Wars even a bit and have liked any of Bioware’s games. It’s not really a shooter, and has a pause button so you can take your time figuring out what to do next.

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Couldn’t resist Portal 2. I’ve been wanting it since it came out and was standing in Buy More just 2 days ago with the disk in hand considering it. If it drops another 12 bucks next week, oh well. I want to play it now.

My god though. 10Gig takes awhile to download.

Kinthalis How do I back it up to disk? Don’t want to ever have to sit through this download again.

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Note that this includes Portal 2, so even with it on sale, that means you get everything else Valve put out for $16.50. That’s about what you would pay just for the Orange Box on Ebay. Very sweet deal.

Many thanks for this thread. I’m getting the Valve stuff and the GTA pack. A dozen games I’ve always wanted for about five bucks each.

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I can vouch that Oblivion is a great game. I bought on Steam, after my old disc stopped working. Last week, at full price :frowning: