Now Playing: January 4th

"Now Playing" is a post scheduled for the first and third Friday of every month. Here I'll give an update on what I'm currently playing. Just because I'm playing it now doesn't necessarily mean that it has been recently released.

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Dueling Team Fortress 2 teams in Hero Academy for iOS/PC (Steam).

Now is the time of year when everyone plays all of the video games they received for Christmas! Or, in my case, the games I purchased for myself... months ago.  

Recently I've been playing some more Team Fortress 2, as my play time has significantly increased now that I have a close friend who plays consistently.  My lone purchase for the Steam Winter Sale so far is Hero Academy, a strategy game I can also play on-the-go on iOS.  While the base game and one team is initially available for free on iOS, my $1.24 Steam purchase unlocked the Team Fortress 2 crew for me to use and removed the ads from the iOS app.  I like it enough so far that I'm considering the purchase of the rest of the teams should they go on sale again, just to give myself some more variety.

I also made a little bit more progress in Torchlight II.  I had been holding the game off a bit since that friend I mentioned earlier is interested in playing co-op, but is a Mac gamer and that port isn't finished yet.  For some reason I thought the Mac port would have been ready by now, but considering that the initial launch on the PC overshot its original release date by about a year, that was some wishful thinking on my part.

Lastly, I found myself playing Dr. Wario.  No, not Dr. Mario, Wario, as in the "knock-off" version found in WarioWare, Inc. on my 3DS (thanks to the Ambassador program.)  Now if there was only a regular game on the 3DS that could hold my interest. 

Damage Report

The Steam summer sale is coming to a close, and once again Valve has stolen graciously accepted my money.  While I didn't spend as much as last year, I was still addicted to checking the store everyday for the new deals.  The addition of flash sales and community votes just made my addiction worse.  Here's my final* damage report:

• Assassin's Creed Revelations - The Lost Archive DLC - $3.39
• Batman Arkham City - $10.19
• Bioshock - $4.99
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - $2.49
• Tales of Monkey Island Complete - $8.74
• Trine 2 - $3.74

*final, as long as I don't decide to pull the trigger on some flash sale

This year I found a was able to restrain myself a little bit more.  I figure that's due to a number of factors, namely that last year I bought a new computer right before the sale and this was my first time owning a PC capable of playing newly released games.  Another factor would be that my library of Steam games is starting to get ridiculous in that I'm not sure if I'll ever get through all of them (especially the various indie bundles, and even with those I've been more selective as of late).

Well, now that the sale is over, I'll post an actual article next week instead of "Hey, look what I spent my money on!" like I did these last two weeks.

Christmas in July

It's the most wonderful time of the year... if you're a PC gamer.  That's right, Steam's summer sale is underway again, which means it's the time where I see deep discounts on games, spend more than I want to, and games inevitably go unplayed until it's time for next year's sale!

So far my wallet damage is thus:

• Trine 2 - $3.74
• Assassin's Creed Revelations: The Lost Archive DLC - $3.39
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - $2.49
• Toki Tori (gift) - $1.24
• Batman: Arkham City - $10.19

So as of day four of this 12-day sale, I'm at about half of what I spent for the duration of last year's sale.  I enjoyed Trine, so I thought I'd give the sequel a try.  I'm mostly interested in the Vlad the Impaler mission in the ACR DLC, even though it isn't the focus of this pack. KOTOR is another one of those games where I heard lots of praise for it, so when it hit a cheap price I figured I'll give it a go.  And perhaps I'll start Arkham City this week to mentally prepare myself for this weekend's release of The Dark Knight Rises in theaters.

I also want to draw attention to a nice little website called Steam Gifts. Here gamers run giveaways for games.  As long as your Steam account has $100 worth of games in it, you can sign up and start entering the giveaways.  While most giveaways are open to everyone, some are restricted to contributors (of which I am one now thanks to my Toki Tori giveaway) and to certain groups.  So if you want a chance at free games, sign up!  If you have an extra copy of a game in your inventory that you don't know what to do with, give it to someone who will appreciate it!

Game on!

How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Achievement

No, seriously, you can earn an achievement for anything.

When I was first introduced to the Xbox 360, one of the first things I noticed (aside from the jump in graphics quality and the sheer size of the console) was the weird pop-up that would blare across the screen telling me that I completed some menial task:

"Okay, let me start this game.  Where's the start button? Oh, here it is..."
*DING* "Achievement unlocked! You pressed start to play!
"What was that? Ok, I guess I'll watch this intro video here..."
*DING* "Achievement unlocked! You watched the intro movie!"
"Really? Ok, now let me figure out these controls on this massive controller.  Oh, cool, pop-ups with instructions.  Press A to..."
*DING* "Achievement unlocked! You jumped!"
"What the hell!?" *throws controller against wall*
*DING* "Achievement unlocked! You broke a..."
*smashes the Xbox 360*

Perhaps it didn't quite go like that, but that's how it felt.  I didn't see a necessity for these achievements, and I failed to understand why people would try to earn as many of these as possible.  I recall message board threads listing games with easily unlockable achievements and the amount of Gamerscore points up for grabs.  Why anyone would buy or rent a terrible game just to get 1,000G in two minutes was beyond my understanding of the current state of the video game industry.

That was, until I became one of those people.

Once I finally bought a PC powerful enough to play newly released games, one of the first things I did was install Steam.  I wasn't long until I went crazy during their summer sale (which should be coming up again very soon) and bought some cheap games.  Alongside both the summer and winter sales, Steam also ran a contest where you could gain additional entries by earning certain achievements in games.  While I never bought a game outright just to earn an achievement, I found myself finally installing some of the games from the various indie bundles so I could get the associated achievement.  Most of those games I haven't played since, but at least it game me a reason to try them out.  (And depending on the difficulty/length of time required to get the achievement, I didn't bother to get some of them if I didn't particularly like the game so far.)

I'm in favor of achievements in games where completing a certain task can earn you bragging rights.  Sure, back when the original Final Fantasy was released on the NES you could easily tell your friends that you defeated Warmech, but aside from your friends witnessing it firsthand or you recording it, you had no proof of your achievement.  Later games in the series had the superbosses drop an exclusive item as a trophy, so the achievement can be seen as a successor to that system.

Another area where I see the benefit of achievements is in open-ended games like Skyrim.  In looking at a player's profile, you can see a summary of that person's play style and their journey through the game.  Here's what my list of Skyrim achievements say about how I played the game:

• I decided to join the Companions, College of Winterhold, and Thieves Guild, but thought I was too good for the Dark Brotherhood.
• I took a side in the Civil War instead of remaining neutral.
• I never completed the main quest line and instead opted for side quests and miscellaneous objectives.
• I bought a house and eloped with an NPC.
• I ransacked 50 dungeons and filled in 100 locations on my map.
• I read 50 skill books and got at least one of my skills up to level 100.
• I fell under the influence of the Daedric Princes and acquired some of their artifacts.
• I Fus Ro Dah'ed at least 20 dragons and absorbed their souls.
• I put enough hours into the game where I reached level 50.
• I never had to escape from jail and I don't hoard all of my gold.

While I started out as an opponent to the idea of earning achievements, in the past year I've grown to embrace it.  From showing that I finally completed "Odyssey" in BIT.TRIP RUNNER to successfully getting that basketball in the hoop for a secret achievement in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, achievements offer that little extra goal to reach in a game beyond simply defeating the final boss, regardless of the points it adds to your Gamerscore.

Image template credit to Timon1771 at Deviant Art.

Giving Intellectual Property a Chance

The cast of Humble Indie Bundle V

Last week, EA's Senior Vice President of Global Ecommerce David DeMartini attacked rival Valve's Steam digital distribution service for its frequent sales and deep discounts on games, saying that it "cheapens intellectual property."

Yes, it is disappointing to developers when a game they spent years working on sits on store shelves at full price and fails to sell enough to fund a sequel or even another game. Given that many consumers can only afford or even justify a few game purchases a year at $60 a pop, people will tend to stick with franchises that they recognize instead of plunking down three Andrew Jacksons on something unknown to them.

But does that mean the value of a popular franchise, such as Call of Duty, is much greater than a game that didn't find a wide audience, like Beyond Good & Evil?  My answer: it depends on the person.

Many gamers fall into the category of only playing (and paying for) games that they know are popular, are already familiar with, or received a personal recommendation.  For the most part, they will not be willing to take a chance on a random game on the store shelf at full price.

The keyword here is "full price."  Now, if that same random game had a very steep discount and that same gamer looked at the back of the box, read the description and looked at the screenshots, there's a possibility that they would end up buying the game.  "Hey, it's only $7.49, I'll give it a shot.  It's not like I paid $60 and traded it in to Gamestop two weeks later for five bucks."

Looking back to last year's Steam Summer Sale, I purchased 16 games for about $50 total.  The most I paid for any of those was Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition at $10.  (Though I didn't play it yet... someday!)  Now I'm going to quote my article from last year regarding those purchases:

So checking my playtime so far of these titles, I've installed and played five of them and put in about 15 hours, which I imagine there were some $50 games that I didn't put that much time into.  So at least when you purchase a game on the cheap, if it turns out to be a dud, at least it wasn't a $50 dud.  Though now I am less likely to buy any game at full price, the pricing of games during this sale made me more willing to take a chance on a game.

Which I suppose is the point I'm trying to make with this article.  Prior to the sale, I was not interested in those games at full price, or even at all.  But if the game is presented at a fine price, I am more willing to take a chance on it.  And for every Indie Bundle I buy, there is usually at least one surprise in the pack that I never would have had the pleasure to enjoy were it not for buying it in the bundle.

Happy Halloweekend!

Instead of blogging, I've been partaking in the Team Fortress 2 "Scream Fortress" activities in celebration of Halloween.  I just have one thing to say: human players are very annoying.  It may only be one person, but when everyone else is shooting at the boss and That_One_Guy decides he's going to kill everyone on your team, he instantly becomes everyone's target once the boss goes away unharmed.

The Gateway Drug (Going Camping Part 2)

First off, wow!  Three weeks since my last post.  It sure didn't seem like it was that long.  Well, now that I've finished up a major project that I've been working on, it's time to go and play some games!  Continuing from my previous post, the Steam Summer Sale came to a close and I tallied up my damage report.  While the average cost of a game I bought came to just over $3 (only one was above $10), the total damage to my wallet wasn't apparent until the very end of the sale.

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?