The End of the summer (sale)

The end of my summer vacation coincides almost perfectly with the end of the Steam Summer Sale. These incidents coupled with the rather lousy weather we've had today has me in an almost autumnal mood.

I figure the best cure is a pizza followed by some sweet gaming. After all I had a fairly successful sale this year. The final haul looks like this; Banished, E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, Hitman: Absolution (with Hitman: Sniper Challenge included), Starpoint Gemini 2, Stronghold HD and Tomb Raider (2013).

So six games total. Not that much I know. A friend confessed to buying about 30 games this sale, and I have to wonder how he found so many to buy. In past sales I've bought more, but that's due to my library being smaller. It's only natural that as my collection grows, there will be fewer games I want to buy. Even if money wasn't an issue, I'd be hard pressed to find 30 games I'd want. Oh well, at least I got a couple I've really wanted for a while, and a couple I've been considering a bit.

In an effort to not buy what I don't play, I decided to go back to Dishonored (I also bought the final DLC my library was lacking) and finished the whole thing, including both story based DLCs The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches. I can honestly say I'm blown away. This is sucha good game, and both the story and the world are absolutely wonderful. If you like stealth games or steampunk get this game. It's well worth it. Particularly since you get different endings depending on whether you play with High Chaos (kill everything) which is easier or Low Chaos (kill as little as possible) which is harder but almost more satisfying. I look forward to ghosting as many levels as possible.

That's it for me. I'm pretty exhausted from being back to work so I'm going to assassinate my pizza. Cya next week!

Summer Sale 2014

Another week is upon us, and the Steam Summer Sale is in full swing.

Apart from the obvious pleasure of getting games I've had my eye on for some time really cheaply, the whole event is pretty interesting.

Take the voting system as an example. Every eight hours new Flash Sales pop up. That's four games with a discount of about -75%, and at the same time, you get to choose between two set of games that will be on sale next. The set with the most votes goes on sale.

Now, I'm a very selective gamer. There are several categories that do not interest me at all, like sport and racing games.

Even within categories that I do like such as shooters, strategy and RPG's I'm very choosy. In part due to financial reasons but also because of time restraints. So what to do when neither set of games is of any personal interest?

Well, I could simply not vote, but that seems petty to me. Rather I either look for the biggest price reductions or games that I've played and know are good. Simple guidelines, but sometimes I really have to sit and think.

There are a couple of new features this year though. The most obvious is the Summer Adventure. When you get your first virtual collectible sale card, you're randomly added to one of five teams; Red, Green, Pink, Blue and Purple. Much like Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs, I was dismayed to become Pink. But that's not important. Ostensibly, the teams earn points every day based on some stuff I'm not entirely clear on. I think it's a combination of sales and badges.

Anyway, having observed the process for four days now, I'm pretty sure it's a sham.

You see every day, 30 of the winning teams members get three games from their wish-list for free. And so far each day, one team has been in the lead with a huge difference. All the other teams are clumped together in a pretty similar mass.

If this event was in fact totally up to the customers, it couldn't possibly look like it does. I of course have no evidence, and if I did I wouldn't care, since some people get free games. It's all good, if pretty weird.

What's not so good, is that I can't get any more cards from voting until my Steam Account gets to level 8! You can use the cards to craft a badge that will give you some small in-game cosmetic changes in a couple of games I don't even play.

So it's not like I really care, it's just pretty rude to have this system of card rewards for votes and then say “If you want more cards, you have to spend A LOT more money”. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Over all though, I'm pretty happy with my Thus-far-haul. My major score was getting Banished, but I've also picked up Hitman: Absolution, E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy (for 98 cents), Stronghold HD and Assassin's Creed III.

I'm still hoping to pick up Thief, Starpoint Gemini 2 and Murdered before the sale is over.

Well that's it today. Have a great week!

Steamy Desperados

The other day I reconnected with an old favorite game of mine; Desperados:Wanted Dead or Alive. What's so amazing is that this great game was released in 2001, yet it works on Windows 7. Thanks to Steam, I got it for just over one euro, and I couldn't be happier.

Desperados is a real time stealth game set in the Old West. Other games in this style are the Commandos series, Robin Hood The legend of Sherwood, and Chicago 1930. There may be more games like this, but I'm not familiar with them.

However, Desperados is without a doubt my favorite of the bunch. And boy does it still stand strong, even after thirteen years. It still looks great, it's just so much fun to play. It has great humor, wonderful atmosphere and even at times nail biting suspense.

I love how each map has several different ways to solve the “puzzle”, i.e. find a way to isolate the enemies and kill them. Or knock them out. What ever you prefer.

My favorite technique is what I call the Corpse Trap, a.k.a. The Cadaver Conga Line. What you do is strategically place bodies in a line so that enemy after enemy follow them until hey step in line for an ambush attack. I believe my record is sixteen corpses.

By the way, Speaking of Steam, it seems the annual Steam Summer Sale 2014 is just around the corner. Leaked info from Valve has the date set as 19 June to 30 June, so get your systems warmed up, and please leave yourself enough money to be able to eat until your next paycheck.

I'm currently in the countryside, so this is all for this week.

See ya next week!

Did you know?

Greetings and Salutations on this balmy summer morning (sort of).

My vacation continues quietly, just the way I like it. But none the less, I figured I'd try a little bit harder than last week, so this week you get some interesting historical facts.

You can pull this out at parties or at the office to fill gaps in conversation or just to seem smart, here we go:

• The Bank of America was originally called the Bank of Italy.
• The shortest war in history, England vs. Zanzibar, lasted 45 minutes.
• Women were first allowed to vote in 1895, in New Zealand.
• Contrary to popular belief, the trains in Italy didn't run on time under Mussolini.
• Stalin studied to become a priest in his youth, before he funded the revolution by robbing banks.
• George Washington was given the chance to become King of America, but he said (and I don't quote), We didn't fight a war against one King George just to get another King George.

That's all my sleepy brain allows me to come up with today.

Until next week!

Summertime!

Ok folks, it's the first day of my vacation today so in the spirit of not having to do any work you're not getting much of a post today.

However since you took time out of your day to come here, you deserve a little something.
So here are a couple of hilarious mastercard commercials. Mind you, they're not serious. The first one is official (as far as I can tell) but not serious, while the second is considered a spoof.

Also they're somewhat NSFW, especially the second one.

Until next week, happy June!




and the links if the embed is messing with you:

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