I Need a New Game - The Results

Remember, Blogs go in reverse chronological order, so for this post to make sense, you may want to check out the previous post if you haven't read it already.

Anyway, I now have several new games that should hopefully keep me busy for quite some time. I ended up taking advantage of the insane deals available through Valve's "Steam" system. Steam is a program that you download and install, and it was originally developed by Valve so they could sell games like Half-Life 2 directly over the Internet, without having to give a cut of the profits to retailers. They also included some multiplayer functionality to let you find servers to play their games online, and at some point they apparently became an online merchant for other game developers, too. They now sell a wide variety of games, all as digital media (ie. downloads only - no CDs or boxes), through Steam. And for the last few weeks, they've been having a massive sale on games, some of which were released quite recently. I ended up buying:

Torchlight (Runic Games) - released October 27th, 2009. Sale Price: $4.99
Ghostbusters: The Videogame (Atari) - released June 16th, 2009. Sale Price: $6.79
Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition (Ubisoft) - released April 9th, 2008. Sale Price: $9.99
BioShock (2K Games) - released August 21st, 2007. Sale Price: $4.99
Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death (Rebellion) - released Feb 28th, 2005. Sale Price: $1.59

I've had Ghostbusters sitting in my Amazon cart for months, and it's still $20 there for the retail game. I've seen some mixed reviews which is part of why I never pulled the trigger on it, but for less than $7 I said what the hell.


Torchlight, Assassin's Creed, and Bioshock have all gotten pretty decent reviews and were recommended to me at an online community I regularly visit, and at the price they were no-brainers, too. Heck if all five of these games add up to no more than the entertainment value of a single game, I still came out ahead as most PC games cost well over $30 and I got this whole batch (including the Judge Dredd one which I fully expect to suck - but for a buck fifty I couldn't not buy it) for $28.

Dragon Age: Origins is still a strong likelihood at some point, but it was the same price on Steam and at Best Buy, so I'll go to BB and use my gift cards (a birthday gift from my in-laws - Thanks Mom & Dad!!) on that one at some point. If I'm paying full price, I definitely want the box on my shelf.

So there you have it - mission accomplished. They're even installed and ready to play. I suppose once I play each of them I may as well review them here. It will be a while before I get to them, however. The sale ended Sunday so I had to buy them then, but I just fired up Diablo II and will probably play through that before I start anything new. I may even install it on the kids' PC (if there's space for it) and introduce my son to it.