So ok. I hate facebook. I hate facebook primarily because it takes up a LOT of my time, whereas in the 90′s the best part about being friends with people was actually hanging out with them.
That said, the EA Flash Deals page on FB is offering a drastic reduction on BC2 Vietnam (which is totally, absolutely worth full price, by the way) if they get a certain number of likes. Check it out:
http://www.facebook.com/eaflashdeals
Jan
Right now, Rockstar/2K are having a pretty good sale over on Xbox Live, and for once it’s not just for gold members! Most of the stuff on sale is DLC, but there are a lot of good bargains. I’m not going to bother linking them because the easiest way to browse them would be to turn on your 360, but here’s the highlights.
GTA IV: Lost & the Damned – 400 pts
GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony – 800 pts.
Most Borderlands DLC – 400 pts.
RDR: Undead Nightmare – 400 pts.
There’s more, but none of it is too exciting. P.B. Winterbottom is on sale for 400 pts. as well, but you probably got that for $.49 during the Steam sale.
Hey look, it’s Champions Online, and it’s free to play from today on! There is an optional item store where you can buy shiny and potentially useful things with imaginary Atari coins. I have no idea how much impact this has on the game balance, but hey, it’s free, let’s all just try it out. After all, that business model worked for DDO and Lord of the Rings Online (although it looks like you’re not able to obtain even the tiniest amount of virtual currency by completing ingame objectives. Boohoo). To celebrate the launch, everything in the C-Store is discounted by 20%.
While I’m still recovering from the wallet-trouncing I suffered over the new year, someone else may enjoy the sales up this weekend! Strongbad is a collection of episodic games from Telltale. I can attest to the Strongbadiness whole heartedly, and as a long time fan I approve!
Dark Athena is a bit of a different animal– It includes both Escape from Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena, while both games are very good, don’t expect to run around shooting everything. The only thing of note about Dark Athena is that it runs in OpenGL, and you may have to have your newest drivers for it to even load.
Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena – $19.99 — $5
Strongbad’s Cool Game for Attractive People Season 1 – $29.99 — $14.99
Remember, you can always play Trogdor for free!
Jan
Fatale is free for one day. I don’t know what the game is about, but it’s free. FREE!
Steam’s year-end sale is drawing to a close. Today’s daily specials are recaps from earlier in the sale, but all of the long-term deals along are still going. That includes all of the extremely good indie pack deals, the publisher-based deals, and hundreds upon hundreds of other random titles on special right now.
If there’s anything left you want to grab, you have until 10am PST on January 3 to get them. After that the sale ends and our wallets can breathe a sigh of relief and begin to recover from their currency-based bulimia.
The painfully addictive iOS game, Game Dev Story, is on sale right now for only $0.99.
The concept is that you run a game company. Decide who works on what, what jobs to take on, who to hire, and when to force feed them energy drinks. It’s a simple sim on the surface, but it’s the kind of game you start playing to kill a couple minutes, and then suddenly find yourself wondering where the sun went.
TouchArcade had the scoop on this deal.
Game Dev Story – $3.99 — $0.99
Prey, Human Head Studios’ techno-mystical first-person shooter, is on sale for 75% off over at GamersGate. Sale is on until Monday, January 3. Prey is on the list of games that can be registered to a Steam account, so you should be able to install it that way if you so choose. In fact, Steam ran out of Prey keys themselves quite a while back and removed it from their store. So if you want the Prey on your Steam account, you must buy it elsewhere anyway.
It’s an interesting game. The main gimmicks are the manipulation of gravity, and spirit-walking. It has some really clever ideas woven through it. Art Bell himself pops up via radios in the game, talking about a kooky UFO that people keep calling in to report. Of course, since you are currently onboard that UFO, it becomes a clever bit of storytelling. Your spirit-animal Hawk is also a nice trick, pointing the way for you and also acting as your translator for the alien language.
Not a perfect game, but it’s got enough unique ideas to definitely get my recommendation.
Prey – $9.95 — $2.50 / £1.24 / €?.??
I want to point out that the main character’s name is Domasi Tawodi. Everyone calls him ‘Tommy,’ as an anglicization of his actual first name. His last name is a Cherokee word, which translates to ‘Hawk.’ So our Cherokee hero’s name is actually a pun on Tomahawk. Yes, really.
Yes, it’s even worth the main character’s constant confusing whining.
“But Grandfather, I don’t believe in your foolish mystic Indian ways.”
Ok, dude, you were literally spirit-walking just 30 seconds ago.
“Belief in the old ways is foolish.”
But you have an actual magic bow in your inventory, that fires spirit arrows! You were just shooting spirit monsters with it!
“This spirit world you speak of is nonsense.”
What? You are IN the spirit world right now, talking to your dead Grandpa, and your own spirit animal led you there. You are arguing that you don’t believe in mystical spirits, with a mystical spirit, while standing in mystical spirit world. What the hell is wrong with you, Tommy?
While I know we usually stick to games, I can’t help but post this:
Amazon has the downloadable Season One of The Walking Dead for $4.99, today only! If you haven’t seen the show yet, you’re missing out. The Walking Dead is easily the best show I’ve seen this season.
The Walking Dead - $4.99
This past week alone has seen about a bajillion sales on games. Just about everyone has a sale on something. Not to be outdone in making us all poor the first week, remember Steam will continue the sales until January 2.
In the meantime, and while I clutch the few dollars I have left, I’ll be playing some of the games I picked up. Super Meat Boy and I are going to spend some time together, no matter how wrong that sounds…
I’ve also had the chance to absolutely shatter some time records on Burnout Paradise (really guys? 2 minutes for a half mile run?), and managed a play-through of just about all of the Tie Fighter Collector’s cd I picked up on ebay for a buck!
I love the holidays! What are you guys playing this week?
