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So the Steam Summer Getaway Sale 2013 has finally begun! With that said, there are so many games you can choose from. Yes, there are the deals on the front page which cycle out but they are hardly all there is. In fact, nearly a thousand games are on sale if you simply take the time to search them out. I just wanted to share a list of my favorite (primarily indie) games that are available at a minuscule price thanks to the sale.
Most likely, yes! Last year it started on July 12th (a Thursday). Tomorrow is July 11th (also a Thursday). Although we cannot know for sure, it does seem like a good time to start it anyway as it is a week after the Fourth of July. Then there’s the fact that no Weekly Steam Deals have gone live… although that was the case last week too. Perhaps the best bit of “proof” is that the Killing Floor sale also ends tomorrow but that could be meaningless as well.
In any case, I’m just really excited for the likely sale and ready to spend some money on games for myself and friends. If you’ve never weathered an infamous “Steam sale” yourself then be prepared for suddenly finding yourself wanting a ton of games!
If it does indeed begin tomorrow then I’ll make a post later showcasing my absolute favorite games that will currently have excellent discounts applied to them. There will be a lot considering Steam sales usually have 1,000 games and DLC on sale for the duration. Here’s hoping the Steam Summer Sale 2013 is right around the corner!
Recently I decided to finally try playing Harvester. Basically, it’s an adventure game which also makes use of FMV graphics. It came out in the mid-nineties and attempts to be a point and click title with real bite. Before playing it myself I had watched a few videos of the game and though it looked outrageously bad.
Playing it myself though I found it to actually be a very interesting, if definitely disturbed, adventure. Although I have only played a small segment of the game so far it seems like something I’m going to want to experience to completion. That is, unless future puzzles end up being intensely difficult. So far my gameplay has consisted of basically meeting the locals and coming to grips with the eerie American town.
What makes me like it after only playing for an hour or so? It’s all about the characters which inhabit the world. Each of them is in some way broken, disturbed, or at the very least unusual. Some are worse than others, with some having completely repellent attitudes and outlooks. All the same, I found them fascinating in their sickening selves and wanting to see how the story unfolded.
Again, I have barely played it, but so far I’m leaning toward the idea that Harvester is far better than people give it credit for. Here’s hoping that the puzzles don’t end up taking the tactic of having the “most implausible solution ever” like adventure games are sometimes apt to do. If so, then my excitement for it will definitely dissipate.
Developer: Interactive Girls Club
Publisher: Interactive Girls Club
Platform: PC (DOS)
Wow, what can I say about this game? First off, I’m not even sure if the name is “Vida” or “Interactive Girls Club: Vida” or what. We’re just going to rule under the good faith that this FMV game is titled Vida. And boy, if it isn’t the worst game I’ve played all year – old or new.
Developer: Sierra On-Line
Publisher: Sierra On-Line
Platform: PC (DOS)
When I was younger I was a big proponent of computer-based video games. Of course, at the time, a great deal of my games were so-called edutainment. Some were fun, some were not so fun, and some barely qualified as educational at all. One game that always felt like the latter to me was The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain. It basically featured a lot of minigames with a few mind-working puzzles at times.
Because of that game, I figured I should give another Dr. Brain game a chance sometime. That’s where Castle of Dr. Brain comes in which is in fact a much older game. Unlike the one I experienced however this was a far more challenging experience. Despite being an adult, I found myself stumped at more than one point within the copious puzzles.
The game is part of the Sierra Discovery Series which is certainly meant as a teaching tool. The only problem here is that a few of the puzzles seem way too intense for a child to solve. Either that, or I have really lost my way with logic puzzles. All the same, there was a great deal of variety between them that was much appreciated.
One of my favorite puzzles involved one that taught the basics of how binary octets turn into “numbers”. I’m always a big proponent of friendly methods of teaching children aspects of computer technology and language. Anyway, beyond that, there were some other neat brain teasers and relatively few pure minigames. Any child playing this today is probably a genius.
3 out of 5 alpacas
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito
Platform: Xbox 360 – XBLA
Arkanoid is not my favorite video game in the world but it is a powerful time waster. Semi-recently, we’ve even seen some really good revitalization brought to the classic formula with the likes of Shatter and Wizorb. Maybe it’s because of my time with those games that anything far more “retro” feels just plain dull.
ARKANOID Live! is unfortunately one game that doesn’t do enough with Arkanoid to keep it compelling for a modern audience. Most strikingly it seems like the kind of game that could almost come out on the original Xbox Live, when the focus was on very simple ports of known games.
Basically, you go through two episodes of destroying blocks with a ball and paddle. The longer you survive, the more complex the block patterns get, such as surrounding breakable blocks by unbreakable ones. There are also enemies, which can be turned on or off, but don’t offer any extra challenge to the game.
The biggest feature of the game is probably multiplayer but I didn’t test that out. They tried to make ARKANOID Live! more interesting with neat music and 3D moving backgrounds, but really, it just isn’t enough.
1/2 out of 5 alpacas
Today is day “zero” of E3 2013. Sony and Microsoft have both given their annual press conferences and, as expected, the focus was on the next generation of hardware. Both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were given a great deal of attention via new and previously announced titles.
But who did it better? It’s safe to say that Sony’s conference was more entertaining overall, it wasn’t as perfect as some are now holding it up to be. In regards to new games, I felt like Microsoft tried a bit harder although I personally am not enamored with most of what they showcased. They brought a handful of new IPs that were not previously announced. This is always a neat thing because we are seeing new ideas come into play.
Sony revealed very few new games. Almost everything from the indies to Square Enix’s showcase were previously announced. Sure, many have probably never heard of the games they discussed for Vita or PS4 but I did and the showing felt very lackluster in that regard. Yes, it was great to see Final Fantasy come back (albeit renamed) as well as Kingdom Hearts III, but these are titles that have been on the back burner for years. We knew they would arrive sometime – 2013 just happened to be the year they came back.
What Sony did right was to address the controversy surrounding Xbox One and prove themselves to offer superior solutions. Aka – they didn’t change much of anything from the PS3. Used games work as we expect them to as does online “check ins” not existing. The only con here is that PS4 may require PS Plus to play online multiplayer games.
When it comes right down to it, both had good points, but everyone can’t help but be bothered by Microsoft’s corporate-minded rules. Consumers should be wary of this but overall I think both conferences work. Of course, I’d be lying if I didn’t have more fun overall with Sony’s.
Chances are, you may have never heard of the websites I’m about to write about. This is not due to intense obscurity of subject matter but that they worked very hard to stay out of the public eye. However, on the internet it is impossible to be truly anonymous and the stresses of their efforts to create some of the most amazing gaming communities everywhere had taken a toll. Now, just during the year 2013, three sites are gone – presumably for good.
Although I know I will never sift through my ever-growing backlog, I still find it fun to try and beat games more often than I used to before joining Backloggery. Before then, I probably beat one game a month – if that. These days I’m doing my best to beat many more although tons of games still annoy me suddenly impossible spikes in difficulty right before the end.
Anyway, these are the games (in the order I beat them) between the last two months:
If you’ve been checking out this site at all then you’ll recognize almost half of these titles were reviewed here too. It’s been a lot of fun to recognize that there really is time for me to play games outside of my reviewer requirements. Of course, it’s still not as much time as I had before, but far better than nothing.
Of all the games, my favorites were Surgeon Simulator 2013 and The Yawhg, but Dysfunctional Systems, Slender: The Arrival, The Starship Damrey were close as well. That’s 11 games down and hopefully many more will be beaten before the year comes to a close!
Developer: Murudai
Publisher: Murudai
Platform: PC
When thinking about video games dealing with space, I usually picture a 4X strategy title. That, or the Space Quest series. What I don’t tend to imagine is the player taking control of a star and growing into a planet or solar system. Of course, that’s exactly what Solar 2 is about.
Having never heard of the first Solar, this was a pretty big shock. By collecting asteroids or other planets, you can grow larger. Planets even gain their own defenses once you have grown large enough to sustain life. There are a lot of dangers out in space though, such as aliens and other solar systems attempting to expand.
I think the game is pretty fun for a while as you wander about trying to expand. It gets a bit hard with the missions though as they are not really locked out by difficulty. That means you might be a tiny little planet trying to handle a massive swarm of aliens. At the very least, the mission text has a snide sense of humor that was enjoyable.
If the game were easier I’d enjoy it more, but as it stands it’s a simple but creative title that some many really end up loving.
2 1/2 out of 5 alpacas
July 15th, 2013 
