Going Camping (aka Being a Cheap Ass)

Continuing from last week's post, where I said I felt late entering the current generation of gaming, I never considered myself a PC gamer.  Whenever LAN parties occurred at college, I always thought it was strange when people would bring in their huge gaming rigs that they purchased/built for the sole purpose of playing games.  At one party a group of non-regulars decided to bring their laptops and play Diablo II, and I remember one person scoffing at the idea that people would bring laptops to a LAN party. *puts on monocle and a top hat* "What's this?  A laptop?  Hoo hoo hoo. Inferior beings. Take a gander at my 32 inch LCD monitor, my desktop tower that weighs in at fifty pounds with two graphics cards and five hard drives, and my $100 gaming mouse." OK, I exaggerated a teeny bit, but I guess I was a bit turned off by the bit of elitism here.  So why do I suddenly own more PC games than what I have time for?

Steam's Summer Camp Sale is currently running on until July 10th, and I got a fair bit of warning from the fine folks over at Cheap Ass Gamer that people tend to spend a lot when they see games discounted so very low (and add a large number of games to their backlog).  So four days into the sale, here's my wallet damage so far:

BIT.TRIP RUNNER - $2.50
BIT.TRIP BEAT - $2.50
Braid - $2.49
Toki Tori - $1.24
Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition - $10.20
Torchlight - $2.99

So that's six games for under $25, but who knows when I'll get around to each one and what else will go on sale.  The general consensus is that while most things have some sort of discount for the duration of the sale, you're better off seeing if something you want becomes one of the Daily Deals for an even steeper discount.  So far for me it's been "Hey, it's under $5 and people seem to like it, so why not try it out?" or "Cool!  66% off Dragon Age!"  (And this is a bit sad, but I'm waiting to see if VVVVVV goes even cheaper as a Daily Deal than its already cheap on-sale price of $2.49.)

In BIT.TRIP RUNNER, Commander Video slides under a UFO to the finish line with a rainbow coming out of his behind.

My only experience with the BIT.TRIP series prior to this sale was in downloading the demo of BIT.TRIP FATE on WiiWare.  It was cool, but I felt like the demo was enough for me.  But for these two at $5 for both?  SOLD!  I only played BEAT enough just to get the achievement to qualify for the Summer Sale Sweepstakes, but I played a lot more of RUNNER.  What I like about it is that while it's a "one hit and you die" sort of game, there's no game over screen that takes you out of the experience and instead takes you right back to the beginning of the stage without missing a beat.  I haven't installed Braid yet, but I've heard good things.  I never heard of Toki Tori before this sale, though it began as a late Game Boy Color game and more recently has seen remakes on the Wii, iPhone, and on Steam.  I bought it for three reasons: it was cheap, people recommended it, and an achievement earned another entry into the sweepstakes.  It turned out to be a fun little puzzle game that mixes in some platformer elements. And yes, I was deceived by the cuteness.  The levels (especially on Hard) are more difficult than they look.  I had been waiting for a deal on Dragon Age, but I have no clue when I'll get around to it as it's a 20GB file I'm looking at and my internet connection speed isn't the fastest.  (And Left 4 Dead 2 is still perpetually downloading on and off.)  Torchlight looked interesting and was an impulse buy.

From the rate I'm going, I'll finish playing games from this sale just in time for next year's.  And that's just on the PC-front.  As a recent new owner of a PS3, there are those games to go through as well, but that's another post entirely.

So go get on Steam and grab some cheap games!