Holiday Steam Sale 2011 Is all kinds of Ridiculous

Steam SaleLeave it to Valve to organize a holiday sale that puts Black Fridays, Cyber Mondays, Koala Tuesdays and ever other kind of wacky sale days to shame. I’m not sure if someone pumped some kind of happy gas all throughout the Valve offices, or if Gabe Newell finally cracked under all the Half-Life 3 pressure, but nonetheless, things are looking good for the rest of us.

So what’s on sale? The better question is: what isn’t on sale? Here is a glimpse of just a few of the daily deals going on:

  • Fable series: 75% off
  • Entire 2K games pack: 86% off. This comes out to $75 for everything 2K has on Steam, including Borderlands, Civ V plus expansions, DNF, the Mafia series, NBA 2K series and MLB 2k series
  • Entire Id games pack: 83% off. That’s 24 items for $45
  • Portal 2: 75% off
  • Just Cause 2: 75% off

And that’s just for starters. On top of that, for every challenge you complete between now and the New Year, you will receive either a gift (to be used however you want) or a lump of coal. Don’t worry, though, lumps of coal can be horded like Pokemon and used for gifts as well. Better yet? You can trade all of these things with friends on Steam. Best yet? If you save all of your lumps of coal, each one earns you one entry into the big sweepstakes at the beginning of 2012 – where the grand prize is every game on Steam.

So, yeah. I don’t even know what to do with all of this information. Valve seriously just threw a wrench in all my Christmas gaming plans. I’ve always wanted to play games like Just Cause 2, and taking a stab at them for just $5 isn’t a bad entry point.

Are any of you guys buying stuff on Steam? Who else thinks this is madness? Go!

Source – Steam

Good And Evil In Games

 SPOILERS AHEAD

Choices involving good, evil and morality seem to be the latest trend in games. In the old days, the only choice you had was whether to use the boomerang or bomb as a secondary weapon in The Legend of Zelda. But times have changed.

At first, the choices were opaque: in Grand Theft Auto III, when not in a mission, you could run around and kill innocent bystanders for no reason. Or you could abide by the law (except traffic laws) and just stick to the straight and narrow. I wreaked as much havoc as possible because that world is a virtual playground and I wanna play! It wasn’t a choice in the way we usually think of them, but it was there for you to decide.

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Fable II Creator Helps Reviewers

Peter Molyneux is a nice guy. He created The Movies, Black & White and Fable after all. And those were nice games. Molyneux is so nice, in point of fact, that he has saved game reviewers the time and effort required to review his upcoming game Fable II by reviewing it himself.

How utterly generous. And what was the score of the self review? 9/10. Ridiculous block quote to follow.

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