I don’t seem to have this activity. In fact, it’s not listed at all for me. Given the number of TF2 videos I’ve already made, I want my ticket! I’d go look at the Steam forums, but they seem to be down at the moment.
EDIT: And not a minute after posting, the Steam forums finally came up for me. It seems that Valve removed the activity due to bugginess in linking your Steam and Youtube accounts.
Another one in favor of King’s Bounty, if you’ve ever liked a HoMM type game. As long as you have a massive amount of hours in your life that you don’t need, anyways.
Like Alessan, I’d like some opinions on GTAIV vs. Batman: AA. I enjoyed the GTA series up to San Andreas, but heard GTAIV was a buggy mess, a letdown, and a poor port - but maybe it’s been fixed? On the other hand, I’ve only ever heard good things about Arkham Asylum, but so far the character of Batman has never grabbed me - is it worth buying anyway?
Anyhow, I agree that King’s Bounty is good fun. I really enjoyed Far Cry 2 personally, but it has some issues that can be a pain occasionally (in particular, constantly respawning guard checkpoints in a game that involves a lot of travelling around the map). Gothic 3 is truly awful.
I’ve never played any of the GTA series, but I can say that Batman: AA is amazing. I can’t recommend it enough. And for $7.50? It’s easily worth that.
I didn’t care too much for the “new” GTA. I’d suggest the Batman, and I hate Batman but it is a really good game.
I didn’t buy anything the last couples days so I “splurged” with Far Cry 2, L4D2 and Batman: AA.
Well, woohoo! I just got Batman, after a ridiculous fiasco of a failed attempt last year. Super-happy. But now…
Woah, I never realized that King’s Bounty was like HoMM. I freakin’ LOVE the HoMM series, even HoMMV, which is otherwise pretty reviled, and I revisit them every couple of years. Having never played King’s Bounty, which would be the best to buy this time around?
Right now I’m gamely trucking my way through Europa Universalis, but I look forward to Batman, and certainly to whichever of the King’s Bounty games y’all recommend.
Looks like they removed the video posting achievement because it was bugged.
NM: I just saw that all three were for sale for seven bucks. Problem solved.
I’ve got two killing floor guest passes (I believe they are 3 day passes, but I’m not 100% sure) if anyone wants to try the game out. They let you play the full game (no restrictions of any sort) for the time period.
I think you can use them to get the achievement for the ticket, I’d prefer them go to someone who’s actually considering buying it rather then just wants a free ticket but it’s not like I’m going to police that even if it was possible.
Add me on steam, I’m BurnedToast (in the SDMB steam group) and let me know if you want one, or just PM me here with your steam username.
The tactical combat in KB is essentially what you would wish a 3D, updated version of the HoMM 3 combat would look and play like: turn based hexes, a lot of unit types and abilities, heroes casting spells and providing stats, generally a ton of fun. The “overworld” part of the game is more running around and completing quests, getting artifacts, recruiting creatures, and levelling up your character. There’s no city building, resource control, or anything like that. The games definitely just “work”, though.
King’s Bounty: The Legend came first. It’s the most raw of the three releases, for sure, but it also has a sort of endearing, wacky, Eastern European sense of humor to it.
Armored Princess was described as an “expandalone”; it’s an (extremely) loose sequel that reuses most of the same assets as the first, but adds a number of minor changes and new features to make things play more smoothly. It also is significantly better (though not perfect) at balancing the three classes. The one down side, IMO, is that the script plays it a bit straighter. The writing is neither especially good nor especially important, so it works a bit better with the ridiculousness that The Legend is prone to at times.
Crossworlds is an expansion to AP, and does several things. Most notably, it takes the same campaign/story as AP and adds some new mechanics and creature types on it to give it a different theme. It also adds some additional things to do as you work through the game. I haven’t actually completed this one - it came out right after I had finished AP, and I didn’t really want to do it back to back - but I’m sure I’ll get back to it at some point. People who have played it tend to recommend it as the best of the lot.
All three games are the same engine and same gameplay, but the iterative improvements definitely make the later versions play a bit better. They’re all worth playing, but if you only want to spend, say, 40 or 50 hours of your life on it instead of 150 or so, you might as well just start with Crossworlds.
Thanks, Heller Highwater and RandMcnally! I’ve now bought Batman. 151 games in my Steam list now, so, giving priority to Batman due to curiosity, I should find some time to play it on… checks calendar September 17, 2013! 
It’s amazing how few games i have bought this year because i already own almost everything that’s been on sale.
…and haven’t played it yet. :smack:
At least some of the “camp activities” are prompting me to load games I’ve got and play with them a bit. I played Trine for a while last night just to get to some water for the Summer Dip activity, and it’s a rather fun little platformer. Now that I’ve installed and started it, I’ll probably finish it.
Of course, I also played the Cold Stream campaign for L4D2 last night to get Stream Crosser, and it annoyed me enough that I don’t expect to play the game again any time soon.
Thursday’s sales:
Audiosurf $1.50 (85%)
Risen $15 (50%)
Rift $10 (75%)
Quake franchise 75% off, or a complete pack for $7.50
Dead Rising 2 $20 (50%)
Sanctum $3.75 (75%) or 4 pack $10
Command and Conquer franchise 80% off, all games either $4 or $6
Street Fighter 4 $15 (50%)
Company of Heroes Franchise 75% off. $2.50 original, $5 expansions.
Tomb Raider franchise 75% off
Cities XL 2011 $8 (80%)
Counter-strike Source $5 (50%)
Activities for Sanctum, audiosurf, CSS, Tidalis, Metal Drift, Wonderful End of the World, Poker Night at the Inventory (I think an SDMBer did that one, I remember a thread asking for suggestions for a poker game achievement), Fate of the World, and the freebie is to download and watch a trailer through steam. This usually means downloading the full HD version and watching it in the steam player, rather than just watching it on the game page.
Not sure why someone wouldn’t have audiosurf by now, but grab it for that price.
The company of heroes games are pretty great. At the very least pick up the original game for $2.50, it’s one of the best RTS games ever. If you’re going to get one expansion, opposing fronts is a lot better than the other one - it adds 2 new factions.
I might give rift a try since people seem to like it, not sure if I want to get into an MMO again though.
The Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light game ($3.75) is surprisingly good, especially if you have someone to play coop with.
Is Sanctum any good?
Holy frak, you’re right. I’m so proud!
Some achievements are retroactive, which is good since I wouldn’t know how to deliberately get the Tidalis one. Now to get the Audiosurf achievement…
Rift is WoW for people who hate WoW but want to play WoW. It’s really not a bad game at all and does some interesting new things, and the dev team is one of the most active and connected to the playerbase I’ve ever seen. If you want to play a good MMO, it’s absolutely worth a $10 initial payment, but it’s certainly not something to just pick up off the cuff like most of these games.
There’s a CSS/gary’s mod combo that’s only $1.25 more than CSS, so grab both if you’re doing that. Or Gary’s mod is $2.50 on its own. It’s fun, give it a go
I read the review at RPS and they were positive so I tried the demo. It seemed a rather decent 1st person tower defense game so if that’s your cup of tea, sure. It’s the only game I might buy out of today’s batch. 
So, Spectromancer+DLC is up for $5.
I loved playing Magic: the Gathering as a kid, but I didn’t really like the demo for MtG 2012 released earlier this year; it looked like I couldn’t control my deck beyond replacing a few cards. Does anyone have a good idea of how Spectromancer compares to Magic (card or computer form)?