Big gaming sales

So, there's a theme right now I'm noticing - Steam, Amazon, Gamersgate, Good Old Games and Gamestop all have various sales going on for digitally downloaded games. I don't usually post sales like this, but I found a ton of great stuff out there and thought others might be interested too. Anything here catch your eye?

Some examples? Good Old Games has Interplay games for 50% off (think early Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics and more)

Gamestop has Fear 3 and Duke Nukem for $20 off. God of War 3 for the PS is listed as normally $30, and they have it for $15. There's a lot of others too.

Gamersgate has had some 2K sales this week. Today's big one? Civilization 5 for $17. That's $33 off. I may be picking this one up later tonight as I've been eying it for awhile...

Amazon has downloadable titles for up to 75% off. Two titles that caught my eye were Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition and Spore. Big discounts on those 2 titles, and plenty more. One thing to look out for is several of the shown titles don't work on Vista/Windows 7 so make sure to check the specs on those, but there are plenty of good prices there.

I know there's a few of you out there who haven't actually gotten into Steam and have talked about it for awhile (I'm looking at you Coffee with Games - who has a great gaming blog of his own) - and the Steam Summer Camp Sale is off to a quick start. They have some contests going right now, but plenty of games too through July 10th - and they started yesterday. This means that what's posted now may not be there for much longer. Ones I bought (hiding this from his wife: Borderlands Game of the Year Edition, Oblivion Game of the Year Edition Deluxe, Recettear, Bit Trip Beat Runner and an expansion for Spectromancer. In total I spent $26. The normal going rate on those would have run me $95.

If you're curious about the breakdown:

Oblivion: Normally $25, on sale for $8.50
Borderlands: Normally $30, on sale for $7.50
Bit.Trip Runner: Normally $10, on sale for $2.50
Spectromancer: Truth and Beauty: Normally $10, on sale for $2.50
Recettear: Normally $20, on sale for $5

There are all games I've eyed in the past, so it seemed like a pretty good time to pick them up :P That said, one thing to watch out for on Steam sales like this is that lots of other content is on sale. For example, I think everything from Epic is like 25 or 33% off. Several times individual titles will show up with steeper discounts on Steams daily sales, so those are usually what I focus on (they had something similar over Christmas. When I picked up King's Bounty, I had seen it listed for 25% off at one point and considered it, but then held off. Glad I did, because it was later offered for like 75% off as a one day sale).

Not all of the deals out there right now are specific to computer, however.

Digitally Downloaded (another really good blog) posted these titles earlier at half off on Xbox live:TMNT: Turtles in Time Reshelled -- was 800mspts, now 400
  • Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light -- was 1200mspts, now 600
  • X-Men Arcade -- was 800mspts, now 400
  • Comic Jumper -- was 800mspts, now 400
  • Hard Corps Uprising -- was 800mspts. now 400
Last but not least, there's some discounted games on PSN right now too:

  • Dead Space Ignition (PSN, Discount)
  • Deathspank (PSN, Discount)
  • Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue (PSN, Discount)
  • Funky Lab Rat (PSN, Discount)
  • Magic Orbz (PSN, Discount)
  • Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom (PSN, Discount)
  • MicroBot (PSN, Discount)
  • Shank (PSN, Discount)
  • Spare Parts (PSN, Discount)
  • Tetris (PSN, Discount)
  • The Fancy Pants Adventures (PSN, Discount)
I've been keeping a pretty good pace on reviews lately - about every 3 days. I am hoping to keep that going for awhile and would appreciate any comments about titles of interest - they're all over the place in terms of age, system, genre. And glancing up at the list above... I suspect I'll have plenty more incoming over the next couple of months. :)
Share:

34 comments:

  1. Big post there, I'm going to have to go re-read it when I have more time.

    I noticed the big steam summer sale yesterday and have been trying to hold off. I also noticed you purchased a number of titles today. :)

    Generally I try to hold off until a game is 50-75% off when it hits a 'deal of the day' vs a standard 30-50% general discount, but I don't always stick to that.

    I may go ahead and pick up Bit.Trip Runner as I thought the WiiWare demo was great, but who can beat $2.50? Plus, if my Wii is in storage soon it's going to be all about PC gaming.

    Man, only 30 more minutes on the steam sale today, I better get moving!!

    I'm also keeping my eye on my top 10 wishlist which includes Portal2. At 33% I think that's pretty decent, but not a must buy at this time.


    The various publisher and franchise packs are pretty tempting as well, but I'd say I have little chance of picking them up except for id's.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Robert - yeah, it was a much longer post than what I meant to put out there, but I kept seeing deal after deal. My wife's gonna kill me... lol

    Yeah, the big publisher packs are tough, I'm always tempted but inevitably hold off for individual games released for single-day sales.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You know, Steam ALMOST had me sign up for a free account just in the last 2 weeks when Team Fortress 2 went for free...

    I may have to do so though, as it may give me motivation to buy a new video card...which I could use now, because video editing can go slow sometimes!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeah - the team fortress thing has had my son glued to my steam account this week. LOL He's in love w/that game and completely abanonded the Orange box on my PS3 now.

    New video cards are good! so are loads o' new games. :P

    ReplyDelete
  5. @coffee:
    Ah, there's plenty on there that works with older cards too!

    @Chalgyr:

    lol, he asked if I wanted to join a TF2 game the other night. I didn't think it was you with so much TF2 and global agenda time. (especially during 'work' hours) :)

    I think during the 2010 summer sale I picked up 22 games and probably about the same during the winter one too.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Robert - yeah, that's definitely my son Chris. If you don't mind 12 year old kids, he prolly isn't too bad to play with on most games. In terms of shooters, it pains me to admit it, but I think he's getting as good if not better than me. But yeah, if you see someone playing my Steam account during work time, that's him. :P

    He lacks a cpu that can play actual games right now other than mine - their prior one died and I've had zilch luck getting a free/super cheap replacement.

    I would guess so far on these deals, I've picked up 8 or 9 games so far. Today's was a no-go; just nothing for me in my super-cheap price range I'm looking for right now. Though Defense Grid for $2.50 is a bargain if you don't have it and you like tower defense games.

    ReplyDelete
  7. My experience from CounterStrike (10 years ago) is 12 year olds screaming profanities and trash talk, but that could be the game and certain players. :) I'd be willing to be he's better than me these days. Now that TF2 is free I should probably download it and see if it will even run on this laptop.

    So far I haven't gone too wild with only picking up 4 games. Then again we've got nearly a week to go!!!

    My bounty so far:
    Bit.Trip runner
    Toki Tori
    Plants vs Zombies GOTY
    Defense Grid

    Can't beat that content for $9.62.

    I posted a question on your steam profile about Defense Grid, but then later saw your blog post. Mainly was posting there for the camp activity thing. One more and I can pick up the four Defense grid DLC packs for free. I know, saving a whopping $0.96.

    But yeah, nothing else on day 4 that I really wanted for the price. Tropico 3 is a good deal if I didn't already have it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I should add that I'm not a huge tower defense nut or anything, but I seem to be picking up more games of that genre.

    Revenge of the Titans
    PvZ
    now Defense Grid...

    ahh!

    ReplyDelete
  9. @robert - Yeah, I recall old says of kids hollering at me through headsets too - no fun. Luckily, my kid for all of his other hyper tendencies is pretty calm w/ video games and I don't even let him use my CPU headset (yet). He really wants me to start playing TF2 and to get their cpu set up/replaced. Told him it'll wait a bit. considering getting my wife a cpu for christmas so maybe they can have her old one. :P

    Plants vs zombies is good. wife's got it on her steam account and for the iPad

    I really like defense grid and no worries on the shout out - steam's making us all be 'social' to get those tix. I haven't really decided what to do w/ mine - hold out for a grand prize or pick something up along the way.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hm, I didn't know the ticket thing was either for prizes OR for the grand prize.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Here we go. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4577-WUSK-4280

    Q) Does using Tickets for prizes mean that I have less entries for the Grand Prize?

    A) No. You are entered into the Grand Prize Giveaway for each Steam Summer Camp Achievement you earn. Spending your Tickets does not change this.

    Good times, going to earn at least one more ticket to get the defense grid DLC. cha ching 0.96 in the bank!

    ...better get back to the bbq ribs and getting ready to leave.

    ReplyDelete
  12. @robert - ah cool. Had not seen that yet. That's good to know. I'll no doubt be earning several more tickets along the way, so looking forward to that - good find. :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. I can confirm that it works that way too. Got a 3rd ticket by uploading a screenshot then checked out the prize booth. I accidentally tapped (touchpad) on a ticket and it was redeemed while I still have 3 in the grand prize drawing.

    Luckily it was the Defense Grid DLC pack which is good as it's the only game I have with a prize. :)

    Back to TF2, you should give it a try. The original (TFC [classic]) was great fun especially if you were able to get together with some regulars or a clan that were interested in really playing cooperatively.

    I'm not sure how I feel about the in-game micro-transactions and all the hat-related stuff, but if the game is half as good (and funny) as the character intro videos, it's a winner.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I did the same - got a few things with my tickets (earned like 10 so far) and still have plenty in my 'jar' so that seems to work just fine. problem is, I have more tickets than crap to spend it on. Sort of hope they vary up the prizes this week, but I doubt it'll happen.

    My son has been loving TF 2 - he says it's a lot of fun. Won't see him online this week though - he's staying at my brother-in-law's for the week.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I think you're right on the prizes, they're probably going to stay the same. Looks like there's a few more easy ticket grabs, but I've been working on Toki tori's sun tan one. Got it down to the last two sunbeams and for the life of me can't get them.

    Debating a bit tonight on a few deals as I'm trying not to get caught up in the sale-storm and go overboard. It's so easy to do. :)

    Looking at the Killing Floor, FARCRY Complete and the GTA IV: Complete bundles. More than likely will go with killing floor as I stand a good chance playing it within 6 months (before the winter sale) and it just looks cool.

    ReplyDelete
  16. @Robert - Gawd, I was playing Hoard for hours last night. Picked it up when it was cheap. Kind of funny too - I got Trine awhile back as part of the Frozen Bundle package and finally just played it to unlock one of the ticket achievements - found I really liked the game and am about halfway through it now. :)

    Still can't get the Hoard one though - that achievement's kicking my butt.

    I did finally get the toki tori one, but I will confess I finally cheated on the last couple myself and glanced at a Youtube walkthrough - I like the game well enough, but I've played it quite a bit already.

    Killing Floor's pretty cool - my son's played it more than I have (He really likes his shooters, in case you hadn't guessed). He thought it was better than Left 4 Dead if that's any help.

    I cashed in tickets on things like map packs for defense grid, killing floor, guardians of graxia and got the sunglasses for team fortress. I only own like 1 other game on their giveaways list and I'm back up to 2 tickets. Once I buy that, I don't know what else I'd spend my tickets on.

    ReplyDelete
  17. lol, thought I saw you on Hoard quite a bit.

    On Trine, I played a level or two and thought it was cool then never got back to it. Man, my list of uncompleted games is getting HUGE!!

    Going to try the Toki tori levels a bit more, though I suspect I may need to cheat as well. (not that I really need more tickets, there's not much for me to get)

    That's cool on killing floor, and yes, it was pretty clear he's into FPS's. :) Finished the download this morning and am going to try and check it out soon. I do have L4D and L4D2 and tried them a bit, but couldn't get into them for some reason.

    Now it's just time to wait a little over 2 hours for the next sale. What else can I buy that I wont play!!

    ReplyDelete
  18. @Robert - ROFL; I know that sentiment at the end there well. Though today? I might be holding off. Mind you, Risen's a game i've been eying for a while, either on PC or 360, but haven't grabbed it yet. Might pass for now though, and if so - that would mean nothing today for me since I own several of the others.

    Yeah I had a tough time getting into Left 4 Dead when I picked it up really cheap for my 360, but my son absolutely loves it (hence the reason it LOOKS like I play it a lot on my 360 - I have a gold account, he doesn't, so he uses mine).

    How sad am I though? I've been at work waiting for 1pm to get here so I could see what was next? Now all I have to look forward to is the end of my work day so I can go home and play something else.

    As for the backlog? I probably have you topped at the moment, even with some of my recently played and beaten games too. I'm actually doing sort of a system shuffle, going from one game to another on my consoles. Last 3 were Castlevania: LoS on my 360, then I beat the snot out of Magic 2012 on my PS3 and the other night from start to finish, played through Dead Space: extraction on my Wii. Guess that means a 360 game is up again?

    ReplyDelete
  19. Man, how many comments can we leave on this post? :)

    Pretty sad waiting until 1p, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't doing the same. Over the last two sales I would even browse and purchase via my phone since some really good deals only happened within the first 30 minutes or so. (or maybe they were glitches)

    Got some good games up today, but nothing that can't be purchased some other time. I'll be passing as well.

    It does sound like the 360 is up next. At some point I'll have to calculate my game-to-completion ratio. Has to be pretty low with only two games actually completed from 2010-present.

    I fired up KF for about 20 minutes today, cough taking a "break" cough, and may try to hit it harder tonight. So far the lack of cross hairs is throwing me off and I'm fiddling with some of the settings. But nevertheless seems cool.

    ReplyDelete
  20. @Robert - woo-hoo! my first post to hit 20. Sure, it's been like... almost all us, but I'm good w/ it.

    360 may very well have to be next - my primary PS3 died (yes, yes, I know there's likely little to no sympathy for someone who has a 'primary' ps3) - but the one in my bedroom doesn't get nearly as much use by me - mostly my wife.

    Well, it's not DEAD-dead... but it's no longer reading discs. I have a pretty solid collection of downloaded games that will likely get use for now, but it does leave me in a bit of a quandary over weather or not to get a new one in the near future since we did use it for tons of disc games and blurays (hmm.... guessing that's why it's dead now, lol)

    ReplyDelete
  21. Well, today's Steam sales were interesting. They were all big title games, and I've mostly been trying to pick up smaller things that don't break the wallet (especially since I seem to be saving up for a new PS3 now). That said, the universe sandbox title looked interesting, if only because I could see some application for that in making 'movies' for game creation and such.

    Hmm. most of the rest of the titles are either of no interest to me, or like the Mass Effect series - I have and have played heavily (I really should review those soon as they are 2 of my favorite all-time games)

    ReplyDelete
  22. I looked again and pretty sure it's a zero-purchase day too. I have Amnesia: Dark Descent and Universal Sandbox is on my wishlist, but will pass at 50% off.

    With you mentioning trine the other day I decided to install it last night and start a new game. I didn't get to the water achievement part and am not concerned with that much right now. Still a very nice looking game and interesting concept.

    I hear Trine 2 may be out around August and am looking forward to seeing what they do with it.

    You think they'll discount Portal 2 more than 33% during the sale? I'm optimistic, but kind of feel that they won't as they may want to stretch out the lifespan at a higher dollar price point.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Morning Robert.

    I'll be honest, I don't think they'll lower Portal two any more than that. The lowest I've seen it anywhere has been $20 off - or about 33% since its release. Seems like last year's winter sale did have some crazy price drops on the last day, so I'd hold out until then to see.

    I did get the water achievement in Trine - I had to get to the 3rd or 4th level to reach it though, and then the trick is to switch characters. Each char can be under water for about 20 seconds before taking damage, so sit about until your timer's nearly gone, switch, and then once you get the achievement switch again and hop out of the water using your third character, but I didn't run into any real water until an underground caverns area.

    Curious to see what 1pm brings today. Like you, I was hoping for more like 75% off of the universe game

    ReplyDelete
  24. @Robert - I stand corrected - they don't have it on the main page of games, but they do have it for 50% off right now I see (if you look at the daily rewards page). I'll email you too so you can see it, though that makes me wonder if it'll be cheaper yet again and get put on their main 'splash' page tomorrow?

    ReplyDelete
  25. Very surprising to see P2 hit 50% after almost exactly 3 months of release. I didn't expect to see that until a bit later and/or the winter sale.

    Will be interesting to see what's there tomorrow and if are an encore sale.

    I went ahead and bit the bullet for $25. I certainly have enough to keep me busy, but the p2 bug was biting me. Now if it could only download. The servers seem kind of sporatic right now so maybe tomorrow I'll be ready. :)

    ReplyDelete
  26. Let me know what you think - I've been enjoying it in small bursts on my den 360 (borrowing from a friend, did not buy it) - glad you were able to get it at a good price tho. Very curious to see what's up for grabs tomorrow. Hopefully something fun - after an early buying spree, I've been purchase-less for about 3 or 4 days now. I think Hoard was my last grab.

    ReplyDelete
  27. ah, encore day and P2 is there again. :) I could see myself going for GTAIV (though it's reported to run terribly on PC), Borderlands, Fallout NV, and maybe Just Cause 2, but not now.

    Only got 7 this time which wasn't so bad as compared to summer 2010.

    Fired up P2 for about 45 min today and got through a few of the training chambers. Pretty cool and funny so far. It also looked good too even on medium with lowered resolution.

    I'd say we should try some co-op at some point, but your den 360 isn't online, right?

    ReplyDelete
  28. Correct - unfortunately. The 360 had additional limitations too though - the PS3 was the only console version to actually sync up with the Steam servers. The 360 one only links up to Microsoft Xbox Live servers.

    It is funny - cleverly written, I'd agree. I've heard it doesn't take a real long time to beat, but my friend who loaned it to me says it's completely worth it - and he paid $60 for his copy.

    I wound up with about 7 or 8 purchases I think myself - including Borderlands. Thing is, this is my first full Steam sale I've been through. I got my PC about halfway through the winter one, and was completely new to steam and pc games. Now, it would be awesome to win one of the grand prizes - but I won't exactly hold my breath, but I've got a handful of tickets so we'll see. :)

    Thanks for joining me on this thread - easily my best-running discussion since starting the blog, and it was fun to go through the daily deals w/ someone other than my son (who has the 'buy it all dad!' approach)

    ReplyDelete
  29. Several minutes after I sent the post I saw that only PS3's could do cross platform with PC's. It's a bummer.

    I'd agree with your friend. The first one is even shorter and maybe took me 5 hours as I was going slow and poking around. [[ie: really savoring it]] Although I'm not surprised at him saying it's worth the $60. I absolutely loved the original and thought it was such a great idea and really captivated me to keep playing. As you can see from my steam stats I've logged 16 hours and plan to continue to finish up on some of the advanced chambers.

    I feel a bit guilty as I've not paid much, but yet I'm going to get a ton of good gameplay from P2. Even worse I got Portal for free when they first released it for the mac in May'2010... Maybe I should buy another copy or some swag from their merchandise store?

    Winning the 10 would be pretty cool considering the millions of steam accounts. I suppose I should go look at my wishlist to rank and add more. My list contains fairly low-dollar games right now as it's more based on fun than cool games I have no chance at running. :)

    Yeah, it's been a fun 10 days for me as well checking out the deals and throwing around some thoughts. Of course there are the steam forums, but honestly it gets too crazy and immature over there at times.

    "buy it all approach"

    LOL, that's great. There's certainly an addicting nature about the steam mega sales that I've succumbed to at times. Keeping yourself at 7 or 8 is pretty good. I think I'm going to do a quick blog post on the final damage as compared to previous sales.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Yeah - one of my co-workers estimates he's dropped a couple of thousand or so bucks into his Steam account games. Just made me shiver at the notion. Even I have limits.

    My wishlist is made up of mostly more expensive titles of games I do want to play, just for the contest's sake. Not exactly holding my breath, but 100 winners is a decent pool so we'll see how it all turns out. :)

    ReplyDelete
  31. Wow, that is getting crazy. I have a spreadsheet of most of my gaming costs and will have to look at it soon. Just need to add some of the early stuff in there like HL/HL2.

    Sounds like your co-worker has TONS of games and/or doesn't sit back and snipe the mega sales very much.

    For contest's sake I plopped a few more on my list and moved them to the top 10.

    (yeah, broke the 30 post mark!)

    ReplyDelete
  32. Yeah, he's a pretty die-hard gamer - but does MOST of his gaming on the PC (seems like he has a DS and maybe a 360 as well).

    And wow - 30+ did not realize that. Very cool. Definitely an all-time high for this site :) Thanks!

    And good move on the wishlist. when I mentioned the contest to my wife, she even had me quickly assemble her a top 10 wishlist (she likes contests - which is funny since she hardly ever plays games anymore)

    ReplyDelete
  33. Hardcore indeed. I used to be and at times am moving back in that direction even though I don't want to buy and keep upgrading a good gaming PC.

    Good idea on the wife's wishlist. I thought about setting up an account for mine, but am still not convinced she would use it. (and steam accounts without purchased games get removed)

    33 and counting!!

    It's also kind of sad the sale is over today. At times it's almost more fun checking out the sale, games and the hunt than actually playing some of them.... (and I think alot of people on steam are more addicted to collecting games than anything) or maybe I just get bored too easily...

    Portal2 is the exception though. :P Put in another 45 minutes or so last night and started from the beginning as I missed some of the commentary. Awesome stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  34. ROFL - glad to hear you're having such a blast with portal. Even more glad you were able to snag it at such a nice discount!

    And I concur about how some people just 'collect' the games. Hell, I nearly fall into that category. I dunno off-hand around how many games I have, but it's a lot. I'm proud to say I got them all at half price or less, because I've never purchased a game at full price from Steam, but still...

    And my wife does have um... 2, or maybe 3 games on her Steam account. She just doesn't use it much, but she has Plants vs Zombies, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and a Simcity game. Not exactly a huge collection, but deletion-protected at least.

    ReplyDelete

Random posts

Our Streamers

Susan "Jagtress" N.


S.M. Carrière

Louis aka Esefine

Aldren



Affiliates

JenEricDesigns – Coffee that ships to the US and Canada

JenEricDesigns – Coffee that ships to the US and Canada
Light, Medium and Dark Roast Coffee available.

Blog Archive

Labels