Pick-ups: So, XVMarketplace Had a Liqudation Sale

I may have gone too far in a few places.

"XVWhat?", you ask. As far as I can tell, they were an arm of Xtra-vision* that dealt in used (and ex-rental) games and DVDs. Hearing that they were liquidating their stock of PS3 and 360 games for €3 a pop, I hopped on to see if they had anything decent left. I was not left wanting, ending up with close to a hundred freakin' games by the time I was done. (I haven't even counted them yet!) Let's take a look.

*Kind of the Irish answer to Blockbuster, and doing just about as well at the moment. Yikes.



Somewhere Bobby Kotick is crying into a big pile of money. (Not because of this. Just in general. :D) With even used CoD games going for up to €20 still, €3 each was a steal for these. Having just played through the first Modern Warfare (Only the most current, cutting edge, tripe A games for me. As always.), and having quite enjoyed it (I guess I would have preferred it to be a little more open and a little less "cinematic", but damn, did it play well.), I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into these. Gears 2 and 3 less so, but like I said back at E3 time, they were €3; I couldn't resist! Haze, much like Perfect Dark Zero back in the day, I just need to know. I was a big fan of Free Radical's stuff in the early days; I need to see how it all fell apart, or hey, how Haze is actually a totally under-appreciated FPS gem. (It's not though, is it?)



More top-quality man-holding-gun cover art. With the exception of Quantum of Solace, this is all pretty well-regarded stuff. I do have a weird fascination with Bond games, so I had to grab that one no matter what though. Sadly they didn't have Blood Stone (RIP., Bizzare Creations). Quite interested to check out the 2009 Wolfenstein here - a game that's very much been overshadowed by The New Order, I think, but I remember the Giant Bomb guys at least liking it a fair bit. I think it's got some open world stuff too; should be interesting. Finally, Shadows of the Damned. Love me some Suda 51, not sure why I never got around to buying this back when it came out.



Yes! Finally I can weigh in that still-contentious Infamous v. Prototype debate. (Not even sure if Sony and Activision care at this point though. :D) Fleshed out my last-gen Rockstar collection a bit here too. After loving Read Dead, and being super bummed with the direction they took GTA IV, and even the DLC packs in, I'm not sure what to expect out of L.A. Noire and Max Payne 3. (Is it just me that finds that that guy holding the gun on the cover super out of place, and hilarious for some reason?)

Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I hope is working, because it's one of the more scratched-up discs of the lot, but also one of the games I'm most looking forward to playing (even if I never did get around to firing up the original on Steam). Also, a bit of Clanc. Like I've probably mentioned before, I've always liked the idea of Splinter Cell; it's the strict stealth that's always put me off. My understanding is that Blacklist is old Splinter Cell for babies who like Assassin's Creed, so maybe this is finally the Splinter Cell for me. (To be fair, I still need to try Conviction though.)



I told you I went too far! Yep, I picked up some Kinect games. And I don't even own a Kinect. And I'm positive that I don't have enough room for one. AND why would I ever want to play Fable: the Journey in the first place!? I can't even refuse to sign the wall at this point, and just write "NOPE" across Peter Molenuux's big bald head. :D

I do own a Move though, and all the associated paraphernalia. Still trying to justify that purchase, I picked up The Shoot and Sports Champions. (Tragically, they were sold out of the Danny Trejo pièce de résistance, The Fight: Lights Out.) Hey, I'm no motion control hater, but the Move is also no Wii Remote. I've got it to work great as a pointer in the few light gun games they put out for it, but anything requiring other motions? Forget it. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, if anything, but I thought both Child of Eden and Kung Fu Rider controlled like trash with the Move.

Another Bloody Reblog: Pickups 26/05/14

(Originally posted on Tumblr)



Holy crap! As far as retro collecting goes, I am in deep at the moment. Really need to put together a proper blog post when I get the chance, but for now let’s just take a look at today’s haul.



WWF Wrestlemania 2000 (N64, PAL) £3

Kirby Air Ride (Gamecube, US) £5

So Kirby’s basically the reason for this entire package. :D After searching fruitlessly for months for a cheap US copy I could run on my Wii in 480p, I came across this disc only one on Retrogames, a site I used to buy SNES and N64 stuff back in the early 00’s. Having already saved a good €20-25 on that, I decided I’d have a poke around their Bargain Basement section. It was all downhill from there. :D

Wrestling’s never something I’ve been into, but the glowing reviews for the N64’s WWF games in particular always had me curious to try one of that era’s games out. Eh, can’t go too far wrong for £3 anyway.



Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (N64, PAL) £4

Another N64 game I’ve been eager to get my hands for ages. Haven’t had too much experience of the Goemon games, but I’ve heard very good things about this one and it looks completely bonkers, which is always a plus. £4 is a great price for this too. I’ve never seen it go for less than €16-17 on eBay. Mind you, this was listed as having a non-working battery. Pretty sure this doesn’t have even have on-cartridge saves, so I’m hoping that just a mistake.



Excite Bike 64 (N64, PAL) £7

Wave Race: Blue Storm (Gamecube, JPN) £5

And the last N64 game, Excitebike 64. Don’t really know too about this one to be honest. I guess it kind of passed me by in the midst of my fervent Gamecube anticipation back in the day. It’s always been on my list to check out though and £7 wasn’t a bad price at all.



(Though the contacts in all of them could do with a clean.)

In another case of chasing that 480p dream, I also picked up a Japanese copy of Wace Race to replace a PAL copy I bought back in January only to immediately regret it once I saw it in action. Yeah, 480i isn’t a huge step down in image quality, but having played a bunch of NTSC games through component on my Wii now, it’s hard to go back.



Ninja Gaiden (Xbox, PAL) £3

Finally, a copy Ninja Gaiden for the OG Xbox. Not really sure I’m up to the challenge of this, but for £3, I couldn’t resist. I hear the NES games are unlockable here too, but I imagine there’s a pretty good chance I’ll never even get that far. :D

Steam Holiday Sale 2011

Having already bought a holiday sale's worth of stuff in Steam's Autumn sale last year, I was looking to take things a bit easier when the real deal rolled into town on the 19th of December. 'How did that go?', you ask. Well...

Monday, 19 December 2011

Dark Void Zero €0.79
Fable The Lost Chapters €2.24
FLOCK! €1.99

The first day of the holiday sale kicked off with a nice surprise: the original Fable making an unexpected appearance on Steam. Always wanted to try this out and it'll be the perfect way to gear up for the pure gaming ecstasy that will undoubtedly be Fable: The Journey.

Equally surprising were a set of uncharacteristicly deep discounts from Capcom. Out of those I decided to go for Flock (maybe just because the screen shots vaguely remind me of Space Station Silicon Valley), and Dark Void Zero, which seemed to be received pretty when when it hit DSiWare. Can't believe the stupid lost game backstory they made up for it lives on though, years later and on another platform. Well, at least they left out the Jimmy Fallon bit. Ugh!

Tuesday, 20 December 2011

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale €3.74

I'm not really sure what I'm in for here, but everyone seems to love this, so what the hell.

Wednesday, 21 December 2011

The Sherlock Holmes Collection €8.74
Swords and Soldiers HD €2.49

The further away I get the sale itself the more I'm questioning the wisdom of throwing down for six freaking Sherlock Holmes adventure games at once. Six! I've heard some positive buzz about these and I've enjoyed what little I've read of Mr. Holmes escapades, but I don't know - The voice acting seems kind of cruddy and they look kind of cheap and nasty. I was only going to try out one for €2.50, but for €6.24 more I just couldn't resist grabbing the whole pack. Weighing less on my mind though is Swords and Soldiers, which looks like a pretty neat spin on a strategy game.

Monday, 26 December 2011

Bastion €4.75
FarCry €2.49
Rock of Ages €1.99
Worms Ultimate Mayhem + Reloaded €6.18
Worms Reloaded DLC €4.32
Worms Blast €1.49
Worms Crazy Golf €1.99

With the Steam store recently loaded up with Worms games, as somewhat of fan from back in the day, I was hoping for an awesome value Worms pack all sale long. I finally got my wish here, well almost. The pack itself still seemed a bit pricey, but with the 75% discount applied to all the individual parts, (through a series of spreadsheets and flow charts) I was able to work a way of grabbing everything I wanted for an even lower price.

Bastion and Rock of Ages were two pretty recent games I was eagerly awaiting to show up as daily deals. Bastion looks freaking amazing from everything I've seen and I was kicking myself after passing it up a few weeks earlier in the Autumn sale. Rock of Ages, on the other hand, just looks totally insane, and I want to be part of that insanity.

My final purchase for the day was Far Cry. Not sure if this is really any good or if it was strictly the graphics that had people going nuts at the time, but I've always been curious to find out and I don't think it's ever been on sale for this little before.

Saturday, 31 December 2011

Ankh 2: Heart of Osiris €1.11
Hitman Collection €4.99
Magicka: The Stars Are Left €1.49
Magicka: Vietnam €1.24

Did you know that Hitman 2 on the GameCube takes up a full 59 block memory card to save? Despite having a copy since 2006, I've never made it past the second or third level as I've always needed
whatever card my save was on for something else later on. Well, that and my general dislike for stealth. I decided several years ago that the best way to solve the save problem would be to pick up the PC version at some point and now I have, along with Hitman 1 and Blood Money. Yay, me! That's probably not going to fix my generally low tolerance level with stealth games, but I find the idea of the Hitman games so neat, I'm determined to stick it out and at least try getting to the end of one of them.

I also thought I'd try out one of the Ankh games - Telltale-looking adventure games set in Ancient Egypt. I always see them show up on the cheaper end of of my Steam catalogue trawling come sale time, but they never looked promising enough to take a chance on them at €3 or €4. For a little over a Euro though? I'll give this a shot.

And my last buy, on my day of purchases saw me grabbing two more bits of cut-price DLC from my still-unplayed copy of Magicka. A Steam copy that I actually acquired through a bizarre trading sequence on Green Man Gaming, originally starting out with 1 penny copies of Defcon, Darwinia and Uplink.

TOTAL: €52.03

A pretty nice haul that's not exactly going to break the bank, but may just send The Backloggery's servers into another meltdown. :D Pretty happy that I walked away with Bastion and Rock of Ages, and all the Worms stuff. Still not sure about those Sherlock Holmes games, but on the upside, at least I managed to avoid loading up on the usual bunch of random sub-€2 games like every other year; Chrome, Caster, Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood, Tidalis - those are the type of Steam games I've got so little intention of playing at this stage that I've mentally blocked their presence on the Library tab.

Steam Autumn Sale 2011 Pick-ups

With a big backlog already, especially of Steam games and the big Holiday Sale coming up, the last thing I needed around Thanksgiving time was a third fully-fledged Steam sale this year. Gabe though, obviously thought otherwise. Who was I to argue?

Day 1: Wednesday, 23 November 2011

Critical Mass €1.12
Cthulhu Saves the World & Breath of Death VII Pack €0.68
I-Fluid €1.25
Insecticide: Part 1 €0.74
Madballs in... Babo:Invasion €2.24
Musaic Box €1.24
The Oddbox €3.74
Roogoo €0.74
Turba €2.25

Day one's purchases were mostly heavily discounted indie games I've had my eye on for a while. I know the conventional wisdom is to wait for daily deals, but if these were dalies later the savings would only be a matter of cents. I'm particularly interested in trying out Cthulhu Saves the World here. Any coverage I seen of it makes it look awesome, though I can't help feeling that I should get around to playing FFVI and Chrono Trigger first for a bit of context. Not too difficult as they've both been languishing in my backlog for about a year.

The only daily I bought on day one was The Oddbox. Last I heard Stranger's Wrath still wasn't fully patched, but for that price, I'm willing to take a chance on on, in the hope they'll get it running properly at some stage. Am I crazy or is the plan to update the Oddbox version to HD version from PSN at some stage too? If so, this could work out pretty well for me in the end.

Day 3: Friday, 25 November 2011

Eversion €1.00
Garry's Mod €2.49
The Mawesome Pack €2.99
Serious Sam HD: Gold Edition €3.99

After skipping day two, I went on to grab the Serious Sam pack from the day three's deals. I've actually had the original versions of both games for a few years now. Quite enjoyed the couple of hours I put into The First Encounter, but now do I pick back up from where I left off there or switch over to the HD version instead? Ah, First World problems.

Eversion looks like a fun, little retro throwback for €1, though I hear it gets kind of weird later on.

I'm not sure I'll get a whole lot out of Garry's Mod - fiddling around with level editor-type stuff isn't really my thing, but €2.50 was certainly the cheapest I've ever seen it going for, so I decided to give it a go. It'll stop me mulling over it's purchase every Steam sale, if nothing else.

The Maw, I've heard mixed things about and I'm not really as big a fan of Twisted Pixel as most people, but €3 for the game and all the DLC seemed like the right price to try it out at.

Day 5: Sunday, 27 November 2011

Doc Clock: Toasted Sandwich of Time €1.25
Red Faction II €1.69
SiN + SiN Episodes: Emergence €3.00
Unreal Gold €2.49

I rounded off my Autumn Sale purchases with Doc Clock: an interesting-looking little puzzle game and a trio of old-ish first person shooters.

I bought the original Red Faction in the 2009 Holiday Sale, only playing it at last a few weeks ago. For the most part, I enjoyed it. It's a pretty competent shooter, taking a lot of inspiration from the original Half-Life. Of course the big gimmick is the G-Mod stuff and whenever I busted through a wall with explosives it never failed to feel a little magical, even ten years after the game came out. Whoever came up with that sequence with the bomb at the ending though can fuck right off though - easily the most frustrating bit of gaming I've had to force myself through in recent years.

Red Faction 2 fared a bit less well critically, but with most of the criticism seemingly levelled at the its short play time, I don't think I have too much to worry about after paying less than €2 for it.

The SiN + SiN: Episodes pack seemed like pretty a good deal at €3. I really don't know much about either game. I remember seeing SiN in a feature on upcoming shooters in an issue of Arcade once and I've often heard Sin Episodes tossed around as an example of the failure of episodic content, but that's about it. I'm having a bit of trouble getting SiN to run at the moment, so maybe that's the way things are going to stay. :D

The original Unreal is something I've wanted to pick up since I first laid my hands on a PC in 1998. I remember reading an article at the time on the gaming section of RTE's teletext service raving about the graphics, which got me quite excited about it at the time, but running it on an outdated 486 with no graphics acceleration wasn't really going to fly.

Sale Total: €32.90

If I did my maths right, the total of all that comes to €32.90 - certainly more than I've spent in past Thanksgiving sales, but this is the first really conventional one they've done with store-wide discounts as well as daily deals. I thought they really delivered a nice selection of deals this time, especially on older stuff like SiN, Insecticide, The Maw etc., stuff I've been interested in for a while, but that never seemed to drop much at sale time. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my haul to Euro ratio, my ever-increasing tower of a backlog: less so.

And It Was All Going So Well...: The Steam Summer Camp Sale

So, I guess Steam's summer sale is annual now. Pretty bad news for my gaming backlog, but how could I resist these fine deals?

Day One: 30 June 2011

Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition (€6.80)

I may have had to pull myself away from Morrowind last year for fear of never finishing another game ever, but I enjoyed the hell out of the fifty or so hours I put into it, and I've been chomping at the bit to try out Oblivion. I passed it up during the holiday sale for €10, but now I'm slightly glad I waited, cheapskate that I am.

BIT.TRIP RUNNER (€2.00)

This looked awesome when it debuted on WiiWare, so it was a no-brainer for €2. . It plays a lot like Tomena Sanner, another WiiWare game. It's kind of a rhythm game masquerading as a platformer. In each level, you automatically run from left to right, encountering a series of obstacles, which you need to avoid by hitting the appropriate action button at the right time. When you do, a little beep or bloop is played, which form into an 8-bit style ditty, when you pass a bunch of obstacles in a row. Pretty neat, but it does get pretty hard pretty quickly.

Day Four: 3 July 2011

Torchlight (€2.99)

I've heard a lot of great things in this, mostly on the Bombcast, but I've often had to turn down a discounted copy on Steam in favour of some other, more desirable goodies. On the 3rd of July, I said "No more!". (Not really though.)

Day Six: 5 July 2011

Beat Hazard Ultra (€1.12)

I picked up vanilla Beat Hazard during last summer's sale and enjoyed it a ton for a few days and then, sadly, kind of forgot about it. Hopefully, this cheap and seemingly large piece of DLC will rekindle my love for music-fuelled, twin-stick shooting.

Day Ten: 9 July 2011

id Super Pack (€29.99)

The big one. I've been lusting after this since I first joined Steam in 2008, but it's always seemed a bit too expensive to grab, even for €30 during the previous sales it popped up in. This time, I hadn't gone too crazy with my spending beforehand, so I decided to finally throw down the required amount and finally get to play some Final Doom, Commander Keen, Hexen etc. and not for id's over-inflated asking prices. Seriously, €20 for Doom 3, €20 for Quake III, €10 for each of the classic Doom games. Is there anyone out there who'd pay that much for those games in this day and age?

Eternity's Child (€1.00)

I remember this was slated for a WiiWare release at one point. I'm not really sure what happened there, but I always quite liked the art style and it's got to be worth a go for a euro.

NyxQuest (€2.50)

A WiiWare game that did actually make it out, I really enjoyed the demo for this that Nintendo released a while ago. I guess I'm legitimising their disinterest in demos by going ahead and getting this on Steam instead of WiiWare though. Sorry, everyone. :D

Total: 

If my calculations are correct that brings my total spending to €46.39. Ouch! A bit more than I was expecting to drop, especially given how frugal I was last during last summer's sale, not to mention the size of my backlog (again). Still, I'm glad I finally grabbed the id pack. When it didn't go on sale during the holiday sale, I was afraid I missed my last chance to get hold of it for €30. Now, to get source ports of all those games up and running and then never touch any of them ever again. :D

Steam Holiday Sale 2010

An actual train of thought from a few weeks ago: "I wonder if I should try out FlatOut 2? Hold on, do I own FlatOut 2? Didn't I buy it during the Steam sale? Holy shit, yeah, there it is! Fuck." Time for a little holiday sale recap, maybe?

This year's sale kicked off on December 20th with more daily deals than ever, a bunch of crazy-cheap indie bundles and publisher packs galore, all presented in a nifty flash-based sale catalogue. This year I was hoping to grab Oblivion and Super Meat Boy for cheap, keeping spending to about €40. So, how did that all go?

Day 1

Super Meat Boy €3.50

I grabbed this one before the store front was even up, worried that such a deep discount on a pretty recent release could only be a mistake. I'm on World 2 at the moment, really digging the look and the music and it's nice to see my investment into a wired 360 pad is finally paying off. Much like N+, which I've played a fair bit of lately, it's hard as balls, but super-addictive. Finally figuring out the strategy for getting through a seemingly impossible level and then pulling off is the most satisfying thing in the world.

F.E.A.R. €2.24

I think the first I heard of FEAR was through a Quicktime trailer on a PC magazine cover-mount in 2005. It looked pretty cool, but there wasn't a hope in hell it'd run on the shitty Packard Bell I had a the time. Better late than never.

Peggle Complete Pack €4.79

After playing both Peggle Extreme and the free WoW-themed version, I was confident I had had my fill of Peggle; It was fun in a mindless, casual kind of way, even a little addictive, but there was no way I was forking out even €10 to get more of it. Dammit though, Popcap got to me somehow; As soon as I saw both games for less than a fiver, I was thinking "Hell yeah, I want to buy Peggle!". Bastards.

Magnetis €0.50

Originally a €5 WiiWare, that I was kind of interested in, how could I pass it up for 50 damn cents?

Day 2

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light €3.60

Who'd have thought that that unplayed Steam copy of Tomb Raider Anniversary would have come in so useful in the end? Thanks to owning that already, I was able to nab this for €3.60 instead of €5.10. Another sweet deal on a pretty recent game.

Puzzle Quest €1.50

When everyone was ranting about how awesome this Bejewelled-fuelled RPG was, I thought they they were insane. Since then though, I've come to know the joy that is match-three gameplay and I'm quite eager to try this out.

The other deal from Day 2 I was strongly considering was The Witcher for a paltry €3.99. Knowing that in all likelihood, I wouldn't get around to playing it before next year's sale, and trying to stay within budget, I took a pass on it in the end.

Day 5

Overlord II €1.35

In a continued (and rare) showing of self-restraint, I managed to resist any purchases for a whole two days until I snagged a copy of Overlord II for a little over a Euro on Christmas Eve. To date, I've only played a few hours of the original, but it was pretty damn fun. No way I could pass up on the sequel for that price.

Day 6

FlatOut 2 €1.00

Having bought it in 2009, I've only got around to playing the first FlatOuta bit of it in the last few months. What better time than now to add the sequel on top of a backlog so immense that the games on the bottom have formed into diamonds? :D Eh, the first one seemed like a pretty solid racing game and I'll buy pretty much any thing for €1 or less. Speaking of which...

Caster €0.89

I was planning to buy this along with a bunch of other cheap, non-daily deals to round out the sale. Seeing as I was only spending a Euro on FlatOut 2 though, what was the harm in another eighty nine cents?

More reckless fiscal policy after the jump.

GameStop Pick-Ups: PS2 Games from 99c, JiliK Goes Wild

The following recently-finished, four-month-old blog post is brought to you by laziness...

Urgh, as if my backlog wasn't sizeable enough already, I wandered into GameStop last week with €20. Seeing that PS2 games were on sale for as little as €0.99 and that there was a buy two get one free promotion, I knew it was my mission to buy as much stupid shit as possible.

I rifled through the PS2 section, grabbed ten games coming to about €18 and marched up to the counter with my haul. It was a spectacularly low-rent display of extravagance, like waving around wads of dollar bills or speeding around in a Honda Civic. Having thoroughly impressed all the eight-year-olds in the shop with my purchasing prowess, I headed home to check out my big bag of crap.



From Russia with Love - €0.99

The first thing I picked up, mainly because it's one of my favourite Bond movies and I was always curious as to how this turned out. I can't really comment on the game from the nanosecond I had it on for, but the inclusion of the Connery era gun-barrel is pretty awesome and I really like the box art. I think this is the style of Everything or Nothing though, which wouldn't be a good thing, given how much of a chore I found that to be.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 - €0.99

Believe it or not, I've never picked up one of the Tiger games. 99c seemed like the perfect price of entry, so I decided to give this golf thing a go. Rather than being constantly berated for my lack of club-swinging prowess, I made sure to shut the commentary hitting the green - a move well justified as it took me more strokes than you'll see at a masturbation convention to finish the first course. The controls were pretty easy to get the hang of though and this seems like the perfect game to just pick up and play while you're listening to a podcast or something.

Enter the Matrix - €0.99

Oh, Year of the Matrix, where did it all go wrong? From what I've played of this, I'm not especially hopefully that it'll be any more enjoyable than stinky turd that was Revolutions - the camera's jerky, the graphics are pretty poor and the tutorial has you constantly referring to the controls menu to figure out what button does what. A Matrix game could have been awesome, but not like this. (Sorry)

More bargain bin crawling after the jump.

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

Steam Holiday Sale 2009: The Aftermath

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.

GameStop Pickups 24/04/09

I popped into the local GameStop today for another raid on their used PS2 section. It hadn't been turning up too much of late - mostly old football games of various shapes and sizes. But the was plenty of good stuff on offer today - Dark Cloud 2, Destroy All Humans 2, Scarface and even a copy of the somewhat elusive God Hand (at a hefty €29.99 though). I had €24 to spend and decided that it was best put to use thusly:

Everybody's Tennis - €9.99

Looks like a nice, solid tennis game so far. There's more than a whiff of Wii-style inclusiveness in everything from the cute characters, the relaxing music to the menu design. I started off on the training mode, trying to hit panels on the opponent's side of the court, quite fun. The Challenge mode looks to be the where meat of the game is. For my first match I went for a little girl on girl action on the beach (sorry, I'll stop). The AI character put up pretty decent challenge. It's definitely not the lightweight casual game the presentation might suggest.

Second Sight - €6.99

For some reason, I woke up with a question this morning. I don't know what I was dreaming of, but I was trying to think what was the other PS2/Xbox telekinesis game besides Second Sight - Psi-Ops came to me after a while. Anyway, I really liked the TimeSplitters series and I've been meaning to check out Free Radical's other last gen offering for ages. I played the PC version of this on GameTap for a bit last year, but the voices were all screwed up for some reason and I've always found third person games tricky to control with the muse/keyboard combo -no such problems here.

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 - €5.99

It's been forever since I played a Tony Hawk's game and despite the dodgy reputation this one has, I decided to go for it given the budget price. I hear there are a number of ill advised additions that came in with the "Underground" moniker, but so far it seems like business as usual and I was pulling off a string of ludicrous combos in no time. Liking the soundtrack so far too - "That's Life" by Frank Sinatra was a pleasant surprise.

Purchases Round-up: January/Febuary

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

As I was finishing up Final Fantasy X-2 and wondering what I'd turn my gaming attention to next, I felt the overwhelming urge to grab this off eBay and jump back into my favourite GTA locale - Vice City. The city, the style, the awesome soundtrack - they're all in place and despite a few shortcomings, it's another enjoyable crime-filled journey through the streets of Vice City.

The game does have a share of minor technical problems - The low res textures on far away buildings have a habit of not being swapped for hi res ones until you're right next to them. When there's too much going on there's the occasional framerate dip where everything moves as if it's floating in molasses. Sometimes all the cars disappear from the road - not helpful if you're stuck in the middle of nowhere and you've just trashed your ride.

I also can't help missing Tommy and his posse from the original VC. Vic is a bit of a sick in the mud in comparison and the likes of Kent Paul and Ken Rosenberg are nowhere to be seen. Thankfully though, all those niggles fade away into the background when you're careering through a sea of flaming Cholo cars with "Living On The Ceiling" by Blancmange blaring out of your speakers - I've missed you, Vice City.

Ghost Squad

I've been half meaning to pick this up for ages. I spotted it for a tenner after Christmas so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I don't have the Wii Zapper or any of the many gun shells on offer for the console, so I had to stick to the remote only. Playing without a gun and with the cursor enabled did feel like cheating a bit but it still proved to be a fun justice-dispensing romp.

As you'd expect for an arcade conversion, it's a bit on the short side, with a full play through possible in under an hour. Each of the three missions in the game offers a choice of paths at various points though, so there is some replay value there and new paths get unlocked as you replay the missions. The graphics aren't great and the voice acting is so bad that it must have been done that way intentionally, but all in all it's a nice, enjoyable rail shooter. I wouldn't pay more than €20 for it though.

X-Files Seasons 2, 3, 4

Although I was a fan of the show back in the day, I didn't actually start watching it until a few episodes into Season 5. How heck did I understand what was going on? I'm not entirely sure I did, actually. :) The Firefly box set had sort of put me in the mood for more TV on DVD and I saw that they were selling most of the X-Files seasons for about €23 on CD Wow, so I decided to start catching up. Sadly, season wasn't in stock, so I had to start off with Season 2.

So far, I'm about halfway through the Season 2 box set and really enjoying it. It is a bit strange watching the closing credits without having some obnoxious continuity announcer talking over them though. I grabbed Seasons 3 and 4 in February, but I've yet to get started on them.

Steam Sale: Second Pass

Just when I thought I was done with the Steam sale, I took another look through what was on offer, tried out a few demos and ended up buying this lot yesterday:

Ghost Master (€2.50)
This looked like it might be an interesting strategy game when it popped up on GOG a while ago, but for $9.99 I wasn't ready to take the plunge. After reading up on it a bit more, I thought it'd be worth a look for €2.50. It's downloading at the moment, so I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Reaxxion (€0.99)
A really nice Breakout clone. One of the interesting aspects of the gameplay is the ability to collect molten metal dropped out of some of blocks once they're broken. Collecting it adds to a reservoir of the stuff on your bat, making it wider. Once you have enough metal in reserve you can generate more balls at will. It's a dynamic that works well as safety net, preventing the loss of a life when all the balls in play have whizzed past you.

So far, it's been really enjoyable. It looks great and there are a ton of levels on offer. Worth full price, I'd say and a steal for 99 cents.

Bejeweled Deluxe (€0.99)
You may have heard of this one. :) I wasn't sure about whether to get it or not. It really didn't click with me right away, but after spending a bit of time with the demo I started to get a bit more into it and decided to pick it up.

Heavy Weapon Deluxe (€0.99)
A fun little arcade game where you blow up aircraft with a tank. How can you go wrong with that?

Luxor 2 (€0.99)
This one's quite similar to Puzzle Bobble/Bust a Move, but with a moving set balls to make disappear. The demo had me hooked instantly, so this one was a no-brainer.

A nice set of games for €6.45, I think. I'm kind of glad the sale's ending tomorrow though. I've got a gaming backlog as long as both arms at this stage. :D

Steam Sale is On

The image says it all. After a nervous few days thinking that it might not be happening at all this year, the Steam holiday sale has finally started. There's at least 10% off everything and lots of even better bargains on offer. If I didn't have them already, I'd definitely grab Portal (€3.74) and Beyond Good & Evil (€3.74). The id Super Pack is also superb value at €34.99, but I was looking for something on the cheaper side and I wasn't disappointed. Here's what I picked up:

Ultimate Doom (€0.99)

I never owned a PC version of the original Doom. It was finally time to right that wrong. The cheesy midi in this is so much better than the serious ambient soundtrack of the PS1 version.

Doom II & Master Levels for Doom II (€0.99)

I've always loved Doom II, so I thought I'd check out the Master Levels add-on. To my surprise it came bundled with the original game.

Half-Life: Opposing Force (€0.99)
Half-Life: Blue Shift (€0.99)

Believe it or not, I only played Half-Life for the first time last year on the PS2. I really enjoyed it, even though the used disc I was playing was scratched to hell, leading to all sorts of bizarre audio glitches. I've wanted to pick up these two ever since. No time like the present.

BioShock (€4.99)

I've heard lots of good things about this and for a fiver how can I resist? I'm not sure if it'll run too well on my PC but I guess I'll find out when it finishes downloading. Sometime next week. :D

EDIT: It plays okay at the very lowest settings, but it ain't pretty. Time for a graphics card upgrade, I think.

So there you have it. Five games (and an add on pack) for €8.95. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some things to shoot.

Acceptable in the 80's

Despite my dislike of The Daily Mail's unique brand of journalism, I'm a total bargain whore and in September they were running a pretty sweet promotion. Presumably to boost readership, they were giving away a complete 80's studio album every day for two weeks. To get the set for free you had to redeem a coupon in the paper that day at one of two chains of stores. Seeing as that would be a lot of hassle and saddle me with more inky toilet paper than was strictly necessary, I opted to collect seven tokens and send away for the full set instead.

It finally arrived yesterday in a long card envelope. The CDs all came in their own card sleeves featuring the front and back artwork of the original release. The discs themselves were all kept to a uniform design though. There's no artwork on the label, just the artist and album name in a common font and various record label logos.

Content-wise, it's a pretty nice collection, featuring several big albums from the time and at €9 and seven copies of the paper (€7), it's only a fraction of what it would cost to get them even as a digital download. I've only had a listen to some of the acts that I'm more familiar with yet. I quite enjoyed Dare! and Colour by Numbers and True by Spandau Ballet definitely has its moments. Now, time to crank up some Bonnie Tyler for maximum gravely-voiced power balladry. (EDIT: Well, that sucked :D)

Bargin Hunting 23/10/08

I went into GameStop yesterday for a quick rummage around the used PS2 games. It may be predominantly made up of old sports games games now, but there's still a gem or two to uncover if you look around for long enough. I managed to grab the copy of Final Fantasy XII that I've had my eye on for a while for €14.99, as well as picking up Jak & Daxter for €3.99.

Seeing as I'm working on FFX-2 on an on/off basis at the moment, FF XII is going right on my backlog. I've been playing Jak & Daxter a bit though. So far, it looks to be a nice, solid platformer. The graphics still hold up well IMO, but I'm a bit let down by the music.

For me, the music in a platformer needs to be a big, bold expression of fun. What I've heard so far in J&D is a couple of inconsequential, almost ambient tunes. It's a little disappointing, but it's not going to put me off too much. I guess I'm just going to have to hum some tracks from Super Mario Galaxy while I play. :)