#oneaday Day 23: Why The Steam Sale Is Less Fun Than It Used To Be

You know the cliché. Steam sale rolls around, everyone jokes about locking their credit cards up. Except I haven’t felt like that about a Steam sale for a very long time. And I think this stems from a broader and well-documented problem that Steam has today: the fact it has too much choice.

Having too much choice is pretty much the very definition of a “first world problem”, but at times like this it really does highlight how it’s something of an issue. What’s doubly sad is that this problem has come about at least partly as a result of attempting to sort out a completely different problem.

Years ago, Steam was still the leading PC digital storefront, but its catalogue was much smaller. This is because it was primarily the domain of big publishers. I don’t know the ins and outs of what it took to get a game on Steam back in those days, but I know that it was out of the question for a lot of smaller developers. The few “indie” titles that did make it onto the platform tended to be celebrated, because they were often doing something very different from the highly commercial publishers. It’s from those early indie titles that we got the first steps in the direction of the “art game” movement that is thriving today.

The Steam sale during those days was an exciting time, because more often than not it was an opportunity to pick up something you’d been thinking about for a long time at a knock-down price. And because the catalogue was still at a manageable size, it was easy to discover (or rediscover) games that you might want to grab. A simple browse of the homepage would almost always result in you picking up a virtual armful of games, then checking them all out for considerably less than the price of a single undiscounted new release.

Today, though? The front page is full of an overwhelming amount of choice, and clicking through to the various curated sections doesn’t help, because those are also full of an overwhelming amount of choice.

This is the result of Steam’s increasing permissiveness of small-scale and independent developers. It’s theoretically a good thing that now pretty much anyone can get their game on Steam rather than having to sell their work independently — which means getting eyes on their own independent website — but it also means that Steam’s catalogue is no longer at a manageable size, and hasn’t been for quite some time.

I say “theoretically” a good thing, because the problem with this is self-evident: if you flood the market with that much stuff, it becomes difficult to find anything but the most high-profile titles. And that’s got to be almost as bad for indies as not being able to publish on Steam at all.

And, as much as I was in favour of Steam allowing adults-only titles on the platform after many years of rather opaque policies in that regard — policies that developers, publishers and localisers still fall foul of at times, for reasons that often remain unexplained — it’s been disappointing to see the absolute torrent of low-effort porn games flooding the market. And with the advent of AI-generated art that will actually draw dicks and fannies, that’s only going to get worse.

It’s one of those situations where, like the obsession with following the trends I talked about yesterday, it’s difficult if not impossible to put the plug back in now the flood has happened. Steam now can’t just suddenly turn around and say “actually, we fucked up and inadvertently filled our entire store with garbage, please get out”. I mean, they can, but I feel like there would be significant challenges (and likely lawsuits) thrown their way if they were to do so.

This is one of the reasons I spend a lot more time browsing and using GOG.com these days. GOG.com arguably still has a bit of a curation problem, particularly since it stopped being about just “Good Old Games” (which is where it got its name from) but it’s nowhere near as bad as Steam is. In a GOG sale, I can usually find a few things that I’m interested in playing without too much difficulty, whereas when a Steam sale rolls around, I tend not to bother even looking unless there’s something specific I had in mind.

Just another example of the gradual enshittification of everything, I guess, and a reminder that the human race should probably never, ever have nice things.

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2532: Five Games You Should Get in the Steam Sale

Steam’s Winter Sale has rolled around again! As always, there’s a wealth of great games on offer. On the off-chance that you don’t already own some or all of these games, here are five of my favourites that you should check out.

Recettear (£2.59)

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I find it hard to imagine that anyone doesn’t have Recettear yet, but on the offchance you don’t, here’s the pitch.

Recette is a young girl saddled with an enormous debt. Fortunately, she has a shop with which she can attempt to clear said debt by selling items to the local community, as well as through making good use of the assistance of her fairy companion Tear (actually a representative of the bank keeping an eye on her finances) and the local adventurer’s guild.

Recettear is split into two main components. Firstly, there’s running the shop, which involves putting out items for people to buy, correctly answering their requests and haggling over prices. Secondly, there’s a significant roguelike-esque action RPG component in which Recette can hire one of the local adventurer’s guild to go into one of the nearby dungeons to fight monsters and acquire items that she can subsequently craft into more interesting items or simply sell as-is.

The closest comparison is probably Gust’s Atelier series, though there’s much less of a focus on crafting in Recettear and more on the dungeon crawling and customer interaction side of things. It’s one of the most charming games ever created, with a stunning localisation from the original Japanese by Carpe Fulgur, and is well worth your time.

Steam page

Binary Domain (£2.74)

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An absolutely wonderful third-person shooter, Binary Domain takes Gears of War’s po-faced, joyless over the shoulder cover-based shooting and ramps up the adrenaline to make something with a bunch more personality and drama about it, albeit with (arguably) a few more clunky edges to it.

In Binary Domain you spend a lot of time shooting the shit out of robots, all of which shatter into pieces rather satisfyingly. There’s a variety of upgradeable weapons to acquire over the course of your adventure, and some truly entertaining setpieces. The story is good, too, featuring a cast who are all much more interesting than the walking military stereotypes found in shooters that take themselves a bit too seriously, and the whole thing feels like it’s been designed on the understanding that games are supposed to be fun.

Steam page

HuniePop (£1.74)

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One of the absolute best puzzle games to be released in the last few years — hell, one of the only puzzle games to be released in the last few years that isn’t a free-to-play mobile phone-based Bejeweled ripoff — and a game full of endearingly cheeky humour designed by a team who doesn’t give a fuck about political correctness.

HuniePop is ostensibly a dating sim in that you build up your stats in order to attempt to woo the various girls on the cast, but the twist is that in order to have successful dates (or “intimate” encounters) you need to indulge in some mind-bending, highly strategic puzzle-solving using a combination of your pattern-spotting skills and the items you collect throughout the dating sim gameplay.

HuniePop is beautifully presented, highly playable, shamelessly lewd and an absolute pleasure to play.

Steam page

VA-11 HALL-A (£9.34)

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VA-11 HALL-A is a brilliant visual novel-cum-bartending sim in which you take on the role of Jill, a rather ordinary young woman who lives in a cyberpunk future and tends bar in the titular drinking establishment.

VA-11 HALL-A tells its story rather wonderfully through what it doesn’t show you — since the majority of the action unfolds from Jill’s perspective behind the bar, you tend to see the immediate prelude to and aftermath of important events in the game world rather than the events themselves, which allows you to develop a much more personal attachment to them by hearing firsthand accounts from people who were there.

There’s a wonderful cast of characters — effortlessly “diverse”, I might add, and without making a big song and dance about it at any point, unlike its spiritual predecessor Read Only Memories, which very much wanted you to know how progressive it was at every opportunity — and a compelling story to enjoy here, all beautifully presented in the style of an old PC-98-era visual novel from Japan. Except this masterpiece was put together by a couple of dudes from Venezuela over the course of the last couple of years.

Steam page

Assault Android Cactus (£5.49)

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One of the best shoot ’em ups I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing, Assault Android Cactus channels a variety of influences ranging from bullet hell shooters to Rare’s Jet Force Gemini to create a marvelously entertaining and meticulously designed twin-stick shooter for up to four players simultaneously.

Unfolding across some beautiful-looking dynamic levels, Cactus will challenge your shooter skills to the limit if you want to attain the best scores and grades, but the game also remains accessible to newcomers who just want to blast their way through to the end to say they’ve beaten it.

The whole package is capped off with an amazing soundtrack and some brilliant old-school Sega-style “EX options” that can completely change the way the game plays, and is an absolutely essential purchase for anyone who enjoys a bit of quality arcade action.

Steam page

2175: Nail’d It

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My good friend Mr Alex Connolly was kind enough to donate me a copy of Nail’d on Steam over the Christmas period. This is a game he’s mentioned to me before, but I’d never gotten around to trying it. Now I’m regretting not checking it out sooner!

Nail’d is an offroad racing game from Techland and Deep Silver, the developer-publisher combo perhaps best known in recent years for the Dead Island series and its not-really-but-sort-of follow-up Dying Light. It’s an unshamed arcade racer experience, with no pretensions towards having a plot or any reason for existing beyond simply being fun — nor, it must be said, is it making any attempt whatsoever to be the slightest bit realistic.

Nail’d is ridiculous. There’s no other word for it, really. From the moment you squeeze the accelerator and you immediately ramp up to approximately three thousand miles per hour in less than a tenth of a second, it’s clear that this is not a game intended to be taken seriously. This feeling is further cemented when you take your first jump and spend a good ten seconds airborne before landing with no ill effects, and set in diamond when you crash for the first time and your quad-bike explodes into fragments, while your driver goes spinning off into the distance with exaggerated ragdoll physics.

Taking part in a race in Nail’d is a rollercoaster ride. There’s dips and undulations, huge jumps, banked corners, environmental hazards, narrow gaps to traverse and stunts to perform. Pleasingly, there are multiple routes through each track, too, bringing the races a feel somewhat akin to EA’s classic SSX series back in its heyday, particularly as many of Nail’d‘s races are downhill point-to-point affairs rather than circuit races.

I hadn’t previously been particularly interested in motocross or ATV racing games before, and I don’t know how many of them are like Nail’d. But I do feel I’ve been missing out on some crazy offroad fun with this game, at least; it’s an absolute pleasure to play, it’s a challenge while keeping its mechanics extremely simple, and it’s one of the most thrilling, exciting racers I’ve come across, ever. It’s just a pity that the multiplayer servers are no longer active, so it’s not currently possible to share the ridiculousness of a Nail’d race with other people, except by doing some jiggery-pokery with the LAN mode and external software.

My arcade racing renaissance continues, then; Nail’d has been a delight to discover, and it’s inspiring me to check out some other racers I haven’t spent all that much time with — or haven’t tried at all — with a mind to doing a full roundup at some point in the future, either here on the blog or in video format, or perhaps even both!

Now I think I’ll go hurl myself off a few cliffs before bedtime…

1976: The Sonic Game That Never Was

I’ve been pretty restrained with the current Steam sale, but one game I did pick up today was Freedom Planet, an homage to ’90s mascot platformers and particularly to Sonic the Hedgehog-style speedy platformers. And I’ve only played three levels so far, but I’m already gobsmacked by quite how good it is.

Freedom Planet tells the tale of the Kingdom Stone, a powerful artifact that is stolen by a horrible alien dude, and the quest of a plucky band of heroes to rescue it. The playable cast includes Lilac, a purple dragon that looks like a tsundere female Sonic; a green cat called Carol; and an overexcitable dog-like thing called Milla. There’s also an alien who thinks disguising himself as a duck is the best way to blend in — although on a planet of furries, that’s probably not all that unfair an assumption.

You can play the game in two ways: Adventure mode punctuates the levels with some lengthy, fully voiced cutscenes that tell the unfolding story, while Classic Mode allows you to play it in authentically old-school fashion without having to worry about narrative. When you’re in the platforming segments, you control your chosen character as they run, jump, climb, bounce and kick the shit out of enemies in their way. Each character handles noticeably differently and forces you to approach the levels in a different way, and some hugely enjoyable but challenging boss fights force you to play methodically rather than just mashing the attack button randomly.

It’s an absolutely beautiful game. Deliberately taking a low-resolution pixel art aesthetic but running in high definition for some beautifully sharp corners, each and every character is packed full of a ton of visual personality, with lots of different and unique animations for different situations. During the cutscenes, the characters make appropriate poses and animations according to the things they’re saying rather than just flapping their heads, and the whole thing is just so full of character that you can’t help but be drawn into the rather silly (yet surprisingly dark at times) plot.

And it plays as good as it looks, too; wonderfully tight, responsive controls mean that you never feel like you’re battling against the game, and the characters are always doing what you want them to do. Some tweaks have been made to Sonic’s basic formula, too; characters can run up walls and even along certain ceilings without too much difficulty, a double-jump special move makes traversal a little more straightforward, and each character has their own unique super-special abilities that help them get around as well as kill things.

I’ve only played a few levels so far but I like it a whole lot, and am looking forward to exploring it further. That will probably have to wait, however, because tomorrow is Heavensward day, and I’ve finished my work for the week, so I know exactly what I’m doing all day tomorrow…

1279: Hauling Ass (and Wood, Propane and Other Exciting Things)

I picked up Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the Steam Sale the other day on a bit of a whim. This is one of those simulator games that, like Farming Simulator, was roundly mocked upon its original release, but promptly turned out to be a rather good game.

I haven’t spent a huge amount of time with it so far and I don’t know how much time I will spend with it in the long term, but early impressions are that it is basically a game that I’ve thought should exist for a long time — that is to say, it’s Elite, but on the roads instead of in space.

Okay, that’s perhaps not quite accurate; you’re not really “trading” stuff, you’re simply taking jobs and hauling shit (sometimes literally) from one place to another, and there’s certainly no “combat” besides any accidents you deliberately cause yourself, but the idea of fusing a management/business game with a vehicle simulator is a sound one, and it has always surprised me somewhat that we’ve only ever seen it happen in space, really.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is an odd experience. It’s a driving game, but without all the jostling for position and chaos that normally accompanies driving games that focus on racing. It’s an open-world game, but without anything to really “do” besides seek out truck dealerships, try and visit every road in the game and sightsee. I haven’t got far enough into the game to look at the business sim side of things yet, but I assume that will add an element of light strategy to the mix, particularly once you start hiring other drivers, too.

It’s a peculiarly relaxing experience to play. Once your truck is out on the open road, you don’t really have to do a lot besides ensure you don’t hit anything, and try not to get caught by speed cameras. But it’s pleasingly chilled out to just trundle along at 50mph down some convincingly-realised (if geographically-inaccurate) roads that go to real, actual places with recognisable landmarks. It also implements another feature that I’ve always thought should be in open-world driving games — the ability to stream Internet radio stations as the soundtrack to your drive. I was listening to some pleasingly mellow German jazz while I drove from Southampton to Dover earlier.

I say it’s a relaxing experience to play. Well, that’s only mostly true: it’s relaxing until you reach your destination and have to reverse the fucking thing into a parking space. Parking a truck is horrendously difficult and I have new-found respect for anyone who is able to do it successfully, particularly in a yard that doesn’t have very much space available. I don’t really understand how to make it go the correct way when I’m reversing it yet, but I’m sure it’s something that comes with practice.

Anyway, I guess what I’m saying in a roundabout way is that if you’ve seen Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the Steam sale and are mildly curious about it, do yourself a favour and download it. You might just find yourself enjoying the experience. It’s just a shame there isn’t multiplayer; hauling stuff around Europe with a friend would be a lot of fun, I feel.

#oneaday Day 547: Bully Boy

After the recent Steam sale, I’ve started playing Bully again. Or specifically, I’m playing the PC version of the Scholarship Edition for the first time — I originally played the game on PS2.

Bully remains my favourite Rockstar game. There are plenty of reasons for this, not least of which is the fact that I like things that are set in schools. I’m not sure why this is, but so far as settings go, high schools are one of my favourites. It’s why I enjoy Persona, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and any number of terrible teen coming of age movies. (Mean Girls represent.)

But there’s plenty of other reasons to like Bully, too, chief among which for me is the fact that there are no guns anywhere to be seen. The Grand Theft Auto series is great, for sure, but we all get tired of guns once in a while. Bully’s arsenal — made as it is of boxes of eggs, firecrackers, stink bombs and a slingshot — captures the slightly absurd nature of high school conflicts and pranks nicely while still fulfilling the necessary “weaponry” function in the game.

Then there’s the fact that amidst all the drama and silliness of the storyline, you’re still a schoolkid and are expected to not get into trouble and to attend class. You can break both of those rules, of course — this is a Rockstar game, after all — but it’s actually to your advantage to attend the classes in the school, as they unlock various special abilities through fun little mini-games. They also provide a means to get to know the characters of the teachers, who actually play a relatively minor role in the story but are still there in the background — discovering the art teacher’s insistence on painting her in increasingly slutty poses, for example, is an entertaining moment.

My absolute favourite thing about Bully, though, is the scale of it. It’s not that it’s huge — it really isn’t. It’s probably smaller than Grand Theft Auto III. But in that scaling down, you get a lot more density. There’s a lot more to do in a much smaller area, meaning you’re rarely left wandering aimlessly in the desert like in Red Dead Redemption (a game which really didn’t resonate with me for some reason — perhaps I’ll give it another shot if it ever gets a PC release) unless you specifically choose to wander aimlessly in pursuit of the inevitable hidden goodies.

Bully found itself on the receiving end of controversy from People Who Didn’t Understand It when it was originally released. Such was the fuss kicked up by people judging it purely by its name that the UK version ended up being renamed Canis Canem Edit (“Dog Eat Dog”) — later, thankfully, renamed back to Bully for the Scholarship Edition. Yes, it’s quite violent considering schoolkids are involved — but there are consequences for your actions, even if it’s just “you have to run away and hide in a bin for a bit.” And you’re punished more severely for hitting little kids or girls — not to mention the fact that indulging in acts of random violence really doesn’t achieve anything, unlike in Grand Theft Auto, where it can sometimes net you cash or other goodies. There’s no blood in Bully, either — all combat is of the “playground brawl” variety, usually ending with one party or the other suffering a wedgie or a palmful of spit to the face rather than, you know, death. Really, there’s nothing in the game that you wouldn’t see if you dared to walk through the gates of any comprehensive school in the UK.

Having only intended to boot it up to see what the Scholarship Edition was all about, I find myself wanting to replay the whole thing in depth. So I’m going to do just that, and I’m off to do so right now.

#oneaday Day 539: Rogue Agent

I mentioned a few days ago that I’d started playing Alpha Protocol, one of a number of low-cost acquisitions from the recent Steam Sale, now sadly (or perhaps not so sadly — everyone’s credit cards likely want a bit of a rest) over. I’ve spent a bit more time with it now, so I’d like to share some further thoughts on it.

Roundly panned on its release for its dodgy AI, “crap” combat, bugs and gameplay flaws, Alpha Protocol is a game that many people passed by — and unfortunately, due to its mediocre review scores and poor sales that resulted from said review scores, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a sequel. And that’s a real shame, as look past the few flaws there are and there’s actually a very good game.

Things start well, with a sequence that introduces you to the main game mechanics, including shooting, sneaking, gadgets and conversation. It’s pretty early on that you’re faced with the game’s distinctive conversation system, somewhere between Mass Effect and Fahrenheit in its execution. Possible approaches or “moods” of conversation fill a Mass Effect-style wheel in the middle of the screen, so you’re not quite sure exactly what protagonist Michael Thorton is going to say, but you have an idea of the general gist. The twist is that there’s a pretty tight time limit to decide what to say next, cutting out any of the usual agonising over decision-making in morality-driven RPGs — here you have to think on your feet, take what you feel is the most appropriate approach and then deal with the consequences, which could range from someone liking you a bit more to subsequent missions being markedly different.

There’s a pleasing variety of ways through missions, too, with experimentation being rewarded with Achievement-like Perks which bestow specific bonuses on Thorton throughout the game. In some cases it’s possible to talk your way around a firefight, even getting potential enemies on your side as allies at times. In others, it’s possible to create noisy distractions and then use the ensuing chaos to sneak round. And it’s also possible to go in guns blazing if that’s your approach too.

The combat may not be the best in the world — the sticky cover system is a bit cumbersome when enemies move into close-quarters range, for example — but it’s certainly not as bad as some reviews I’ve seen have made out. The problem, I think, is in people assuming it’s a third-person shooter when in fact it’s executed like an action RPG. In many ways, as it happens, it reminds me of titles such as Deus Ex and even older late-90s titles such as Mission: Impossible on the N64.

In fact, the whole game has the feeling of a late-90s stealth-action-adventure game, albeit one with Unreal Engine 3-powered graphimications. This isn’t a bad thing, as I’m of the firm belief that gaming — particularly PC gaming — in the late 90s and very early 20th century — was my favourite era of games. And to play something that seems to capture the feel of those games while bringing the visuals and cinematic presentation up to date? Well, that’s pretty much all I can ask for from a game.

I realise, of course, that the reasons I like Alpha Protocol may, in fact, be the same reasons why some hate it. Some may say gameplay mechanics should move on and learn from games that do the whole shooter-RPG combo “correctly”, like Mass Effect 2. And they’re probably right — Mass Effect 2 is, after all, excellent. But I’ve beaten Mass Effect 2 before, and I’ve never beaten Alpha Protocol — never played it before this last week, in fact. And while it lasts, I’m enjoying it a great deal.

So there.

#oneaday Day 531: Steam-Powered Sales

One of the best things about a Steam sale is not the fact that you can get packs of high-profile triple-A titles for ludicrous prices (although that’s welcome too) but the fact that you can afford to take risks on obscure indie titles that you may not have thought to investigate in the past.

This has paid off on a number of separate occasions for me in the past, with some real gems coming to my attention purely by virtue of the fact that they were either dirt cheap or bundled with some other titles which had piqued my interest. Some of these have become a little more well known since I first picked them up, others haven’t.

Let’s take a peek at a few of them.

Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

This utterly charming JRPG-cum-light management game is oozing with charm and character, not least from the protagonist Recette and her money-loving fairy companion Tear. The writing (or rather, localisation) of the game is probably the best thing about this game, but it helps that it’s a solid (if slightly repetitive) game. The repetition ceases to matter, though, when the incidental scenes featuring well-defined and well-written characters are so entertaining, and happen just often enough to break up the curious combination of loot-whoring dungeon crawling and shop management.

BIT.TRIP BEAT

I’d never played a BIT.TRIP game prior to this one but was dimly aware of their existence. BEAT is, in simple terms, one-player pong but combined with a rhythm game and the sort of things you’d see if an Atari 2600 took too much LSD. It’s a strange, hypnotic game that turns into you fusing with your mouse in an intricate dance, bouncing back the huge pixels in time with the music and going slightly dizzy in the process.

Hacker Evolution

If you’ve played Uplink, you’d be forgiven for thinking Hacker Evolution was something similar — but it’s actually a bit different. Where Uplink was most akin to something like Elite, only you were travelling around the world’s computer networks rather than the galaxy, Hacker Evolution is more tightly-focused and level-based. It’s also quite unforgiving, and from my experiences so far it appears that there’s relatively few “correct” ways to complete a level — but that gives it something of a puzzle game feeling which isn’t entirely unwelcome. The fact that you interact with the game by typing authentic-looking commands into a text-based console helps with the whole immersion thing, too.

Altitude

If you’ve often thought that Team Fortress 2 would be better if everyone was in aeroplanes and it was in 2D, then Altitude is the game for you. Featuring a wide selection of aircraft, each with special CoD-style perks — unlockable via CoD-style levelling up — and a decent mix of game types and levels, this is a fun multiplayer title, even if you’re shite at it, which I am.

I’d write more but I appear to have developed an absolutely screaming headache. Night all!