It only comes but once a year and when it does it brings a great need need to drop cash on cut price PC games you'll probably never even download. Yes, the Steam Holiday Sale was in full effect from December 23 to January 3 much to the delight of gamers everywhere. Wallets, on the other hand were less pleased. So what did I pick up? Well I'm glad you asked...
Lucasarts Adventure Pack €2.50
Even though I already bought Fate of Atlantis for €4 when it came out (and still haven't played it), this bundle crazy cheap, especially considering what these games were going for on the likes of eBay a year ago.
Space Quest Collection, King's Quest Collection €2.50 Each
From what I've head these two series seem a lot less accessible than LucasArts back catalogue, but I figured they were well worth a shot at that price. I hear the collections don't agree with 64-bit versions Windows though, although a few of the games do work in SCUMM VM. Luckily, I'm still running 32-bit Windows XP though.
Indigo Prophecy €2.99
I always wanted to check this out but I must have missed it coming to Steam (I wasn't about to take a chance on whatever third party DRM it has on Direct2Drive). It seems pretty interesting so far, although the camera control's a bit iffy. It's also pretty easy to unlock the virtual orgasmic sex scenes in this version. Yay boobs!
RIP Trilogy €0.99
I passed up on this in last year's sale when it was €2.50, but for a euro, I thought I'd be worth a look, so I installed the demo of RIP 3. For some reason, I thought these were strategy games, but I quickly found out that RIP 3 was, in fact, a dual stick shooter and a pretty fun at that.
Disappointingly though, the original RIP has you in control of a fixed turret only. You can't move your character around at all which makes for a more shallow and less enjoyable game. I've yet to try out the second game, but €0.99 for the third one alone was a good deal nonetheless.
Zombie Bowl-O-Rama €0.99
I'd never even heard of this, but with a concept like that and a €0.99 price point how could you go wrong? From what I've played, it's quite fun. Killing zombies in an unconventional manner will never get old.
Red Faction €2.49
I seem to remember the Penny Arcade guys disliking this back in the day, but it got pretty decent reviews and I was certainly up for trying it out at that price.It seems to be a pretty competent Half-Life homage so far, but I'm finding it extremely easy to get lost wandering around the early areas.
More rampant consumerism after the jump.
Lumines Base + Advance Pack €2.99
Who knew this was available on Steam? I was planning to get the 360 version when I finally go and get one, but this seemed much better value for €3. Disappointingly, this seems to be a pretty lazy PSP port, so it doesn't support the higher resolutions you get on a PC. As well as that, it looks like this is missing the licensed skins from other versions, so, bleah. I guess I can't complain too much at that price though.
Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood €1.39
This looked like a fun little shooter for next to nothing, so I decided to grab it. The first level is really kicking my ass though. It's the kind of level where you need to defend a target from oncoming attackers on all sides - Definitely not my favourite kind of challenge; I just don't cope well when there's too much stuff to keep track of in a game at the same time.
Zombie Driver €2.24
I know I have a tendency to go a bit crazy in the midst of a sale, so from this point on I was trying to keep my spending a little more under control. I wasn't too sure about this, so I almost left the daily deal on it slide. I'm glad I didn't though. This reminds me a lot of old school GTA and not just in terms of the camera view or the controls - It's got the sense of tension and excitement as you career around the streets, desperately trying to reach your goal before the time runs out or your flaming car explodes and the same sense of satisfaction when you manage to do just that.
Max Payne 1 & 2 €3.74
I haven't even touched these yet, but I wanted to play them for years and this was an insanely good deal.
Luxor 3 €0.99
I bought Luxor 2 in last year's sale and it was a lot of fun, so this was a no-brainer. I found the second game got crazy hard later on though, so hopefully they've toned it down a little. From what I've played, this seems to be largely more of the same, but they have given the graphics a nice polish up.
Zombie Shooter €1.24
There were a bunch of Sigma Team's Shooter games on sale for €1.24 each. I wanted to try out one and I figured I liked shooting zombies more than aliens, so this was the clear choice.
Star Wars Jedi Knight Collection €9.49
I had my eye on this since the start of the sale and at this point I figured that it was unlikely to be one of the daily deals so I went ahead and grabbed it. So far, I've only played a bit of Dark Forces, which is a fairly interesting-looking Doom clone. The games I really wanted the pack for though were the Jedi Knight games, which I've yet to try/download.
Morrowind GOTY Edition €4.99
Dammit, just when I thought I was done with the sale this pops on the second last day as one of the daily deals. Again, I've yet to fire it up, but I suspect there's an awful lot of content in there for a fiver.
STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl €2
I REALLY thought I was done at this stage (the last day), but this deal popped up again and although I passed up on it the first time, thinking my PC wouldn't be up to it, an examination of the recommended specs revealed that they weren't quite as extreme as I had assumed. With a download of almost 6 gigs though, this is one game I won't get to try out any time soon.
And that was that, 37 games for €43.81 or less than the price of one PS3/360 game. A pretty awesome sale and a fine haul of digital goodness if I do say so myself. The only thing I'm disappointed about is having missed out on Prey for €2.24; The CD keys ran out midway through the daily deal and it's still not available at the moment. Oh well, there's always next year I guess...
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