Steam Perils of Summer Sale

Not content to just wring our wallets dry at the end of the year, Steam sprung a surprise Perils of Summer sale on us on June 24th. Knowing that the only real peril here was Steam itself, I waded into the bargain-infested waters.

Alien vs. Predator Classic 2000 (€0.75)

I'm not sure if this is any good or not, but for that price I'll buy pretty much anything. It did sound kind of interesting in the preview I read of it in Arcade in 1999. Never thought I'd be downloading a legal copy of it from the internet for a pittance in 2010.

Shatter (€2.00)

I've had the supposedly awesome soundtrack for this for a few months without listening to it, might as well grab the game so I can fully ignore all things Shatter.

I'm kidding. I have played through a few levels and the soundtrack is indeed awesome (glad I grabbed it now). The game itself looks promising - it's a Breakout-style game with a really nice look to it and suck and blow (I'm sure that's the official name) mechanic is a really clever addition, allowing for greater control of the ball than any of these games I've played before. Looking forward to getting deeper into this one.

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (€1.99)

I don't know much about this either, other than it involves solving puzzles to steal pie. The art direction looks awesome from what I've seen of it though.

Beat Hazard (€1.74)

I've been having a ton of fun with this since I got it. It's an awesome little 2D shooter where the levels, and the strength of your ship's laser at any given time are based on the the music track you've loaded into it. Just like Audiosurf, it's fascinating playing different tracks just to see what the game turns them into and I always like to do something else to occupy myself while listening to music, so this is right up my alley.

Max and the Magic Marker (€3.75)

Previously a WiiWare-only game, this has you using your mouse cursor as a pencil to fashion wonky-looking stairs, platforms, boxes, rafts and the like to help a crazy-haired kid (who you control with the keyboard) to make his way from left to right. Enjoying it so far, but it looks like every level has the same music. It's not grating or anything, but I'd like the option to mute the sound and put on my own music instead, an option that I haven't found so far.

Puzzle Kingdoms (€0.95)

I'm always hearing great things about Puzzle Quest, so a spin-off made by the same guys has to be worth a shot for that price.

Super Laser Racer (€1.00)

I've never been particularly good at old school overhead racers, but the colourful, vector-style graphics caught my eye. I mightn't get very far, but it was only a Euro.

Chrome + Chrome: Specforce (€1.49)

As I'd been fairly sensible with my purchases throughout most of the sale, I felt the overwhelming urge to grab something stupid as it drew to a close. The gleeful cat slaughter of Bad Rats put me off that and Alpha Prime looked like it might chug on my relatively modest PC, but two cheap, janky-looking shooters? Sign me up. (I'm never going to download these, am I?)

In the end, that's a total of €13.67, a surprising show of restraint for once. I guess it helped that I was still sitting on a massive backlog from the Holiday Sale; Starting off by playing Morrrowind may not have been the best move in retrospect. :D

Walkers Flavour Cup: Part Three

With the actual World Cup winding up soon, it's high time to get off my lazy ass and wrap up this crisp tasting extravaganza - or at least I would if I could track down the remaining flavours. The Scottish, Welsh, South African and Australian crisps remain elusive. I'm thinking the first two may be exclusive to the UK, but surely the other two must be out there somewhere? In the meantime, let's put another three bags through their paces:

Irish Stew

I don't think I've ever came across lamb flavoured crisps, so I was kind of excited to try these. Sadly, like the Brazilian ones, they barley taste of anything. There's some kind of meat flavour deep down there, but it's easily overpowered by the base flavour of the crisps. A single head-butt is almost too much.



Spanish Chicken Paella

I've never had paella, but I'd wager that it involves chicken and peppers from tasting these. The peppers come across way more powerfully than the chicken does and these are easily the saltiest Walkers crisps I've ever had. Like the cheeseburger ones, that may sound bad, but I quite enjoyed them. I'll give these a respectable three out of five.



Italian Spaghetti Bolognese

Initially, I got kind of a barbecue flavour from these. That soon gave way to a herby, meaty stab at a bolognese sauce. It's a decent stab, but I think one bag of these is plenty for me. I'll give these two unenthusiastic head-butts out of five.