They’ve been on sale a lot recently, but the new Amazon deals of the week are Hitman: Absolution for $7.49 and Sleeping Dogs for $9.99. Both unlock on Steam.
Reemul
1662
Yeah $5 is a good price for it, not a bad little game.
I got bored at the 3rd level and quit. Also the mouse controls are annoying. Its maybe worth 5$ but not the time spent IMHO.
Razgon
1664
The first Need for Speed to feature Police cars was the most awesome thing ever. I played that thing with a friend splitscreen for a year and it was the greatest game of all time. It had amazing maps where you could do more than just drive on the same road, but featured hidden passsageways to drive through. So much fun!
I didn’t like it all. It’s all based on a single idea that gets old pretty fast imho. good m + k could have helped, instead they flat out suck. oh, and unskippable cutscene, really an annoying game sadly.
Porsche Unleashed. Wow. It’s scary to think of how much time I spent on this game. I kept hoping they’d continue this direction with Ferrari Unleashed, etc but instead they went in the “Fast and the Furious” street racing direction.
I’ll throw in my two cents - it was quite enjoyable from an “arthouse” game perspective. There were some moments of dificulty spikes, but it was never impossible. One thing to keep in mind is that it’s not your typical “god game” experience like Black & White or other games of that ilk. I appreciated the game more because of that, but it could also make it seem like something is missing.
Finally, think back to your childhood and any time you spent on beaches. Did you build sandcastles? Did you enjoy shoring them up against the waves? Did you ever imagine how cool it would be if you were also fighting against miniature lava flows? What if there were tiny people trying to survive in that castle and create a society, depending upon your skill and efforts to make it through? If that sounds like fun, go for it. Now also keep in mind that you didn’t want to sit on the beach playing with sand all day, and plan your sessions with the game accordingly.
I was with you about the older titles, but what did you like about the latest Most Wanted from Criterion? To me it felt really, really boring. I thought the autolog wasn’t nearly as fun as it is in a more sim-my racing game like Forza 4 or Forza Horizon, since racing against your friends where seconds count is a lot more fun when there’s a more defined structure to each of the races, and a course you get to know better. The collision/takedown system felt like a water-down version of the Burnout games. Most Wanted just hit the opposite of a sweet spot for me, I guess I could call it no-man’s land. It wasn’t enough of a sim to engage me with that angle, and it wasn’t enough of an arcade game to engage me from that angle either. The perfect melding of the two (sim and arcade racing) for me is still the Project Gotham Racing games, and their successor, Forza Horizon.
Yes, it is a series of racing games. And I would hold that every game on that list has plenty of that kind of straight-forward racing. While it’s true that Most Wanted has some other aspects that don’t fit that description, the same could obviously be said of Porsche Unleashed which had plenty of “do a 360 and slalom these cones in this amount of time” and “deliver this car to the docks in this amount of time without scratching the paint”.
“I don’t know about the newer titles because I haven’t played any of them.”
Ah gotcha. That’s trouble with renaming your titles the same as before. Confusion abounds! I didn’t think of the first Most Wanted as an older title either, since that was released this generation (for the Xbox 360, for example).
My personal favorite in the series is still High Stakes. It was the kitchen sink of racing games. It had a campaign mode where you were trying to race a series of races while acquiring more cars and upgrading your cars. It had Hot pursuit events where you could be the pursuer or the pursued. And it had the upgrading aspect of a CaRPG. And it had damage modeling, so getting your engine damaged slowed your acceleration, body damage slowed down your top speed, and other damage messed up your steering, etc. I always felt like High Stakes was the most complete package.
In Porsche Unleashed, I could never get past the mission where you had to do a 360, and then a 180, and then another 360, and then get to the finish line within a time limit. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how, and the game never really teaches you. I could maybe do one 360 by mistake, but then doing a 180 and another 360 on the same run within a really restrictive time limit? Yeah, it felt impossible to me.
robc04
1672
I wouldn’t buy it. The idea was interesting but the execution poor. The controls sucked and the puzzles were generally pretty easy. I stuck with it longer than I should have and it never got better. Sure $5 isn’t much money, but you can never get that part of your life back.
DeepT
1673
The real problem with From Dust is that with that engine they certainly could have done an excellent populous type of game. To bad they went with something almost completely different. $5 might be a decent price for it. As robc04 said, none of the puzzles were really challenging and the controls left something to be desired.
I bought From Dust in a Steam sale last year ($5, $7, something like that) and I felt it was a good buy. All the criticism is true…it’s repetitive, short, and not particularly challenging for the most part. (And the parts that are challenging are pretty crazy hard, expect to retry several times.) Nonetheless, I had fun with it, and I recommend it as a good cheap buy.
Bethesda Weekend at Gamersgate, 50% off everything Bethesda. Since Skyrim’s price drop to $30, this makes the sale price $14.95! FINALLY reasonably priced (IMO)! I know exactly what I’ll be doing this weekend.
It’s kinda funny that that whole bundle accidentally went for $28, I believe, late last year.
From Dust was fun. I paid $7.50 and thought that was fine, $5 is good.
Reemul
1678
Dishonored is £7.49 on gamersgate uk, not sure about us. Keys are out but at that price im happy to wait a few days.
Finally a price at which I can buy.
Loved Morrowind, disliked Oblivion, let’s see how this goes.
Gunny
1680
@ Hef: Shouldn’t you wait for the Skyrim Legendary Ed. that is shipping next month? I know I am. If you even remotely like the core game, the DLCs are a must purchase anyway and will probably cost way more than just getting the Legendary Ed. which includes them all.
