Yes, that's my wallet. Yes, it's almost empty. Friggin' Holiday Season, man. |
Christmas is coming, so let’s talk about Steam a little more. It really is a fantastic platform to discover games of all kinds. We had the Black Friday, which means there were major sales on Steam. I felt like my previous Steam Pack worked pretty well, so I decided to make another one. Once again, here’s a few games from my Steam collection, some free, some not… Either way, I hope these quick articles give you an opinion on each, and direct you on your decision to either download or not download any of them!
Audiosurf
If you’ve been anywhere near Steam or YouTube in the
past eight years, chances are you’ve seen videos of this game. Audiosurf is a
brilliant game that will create a level out of any single song in your entire
library. It will take into account the tempo – both increases and decreases in
speed – as well as the instrumentation and percussions (creating a more bumpy track if, say, the percussions are more present, as an example).
The most pleasant acid trip of all. |
And just in case it wasn’t already addictive enough,
the game comes with three difficulty settings and various modes. Some modes aren’t on
some difficulties, so you often have no choice but to play a song on a much
higher difficulty. All modes have the same basic concept: You collect the color
blocks, and must form chains of 3 on your three rows of 21, trying not to
overload them (as it causes you to lose your progress and start over collecting
blocks). The rows only disappear when chains of blocks of the same color are
made. These are the various modes:
-Mono, where you can only collect the color blocks and
avoid all the grays;
-Pointman, where you can catch blocks to use later and
form better chains;
-Double Vision, where you control two cars (or you
play with a friend);
-Vegas, which shuffles the board;
-Eraser, in which the goal is to delete a certain
color;
-And Pusher, which can push blocks left and right to
help form more chains.
This song is extremely long - and as a result, the path in Audiosurf goes up, and down, and that's what you're seeing in the background. It's so beautiful. |
I would say Audiosurf is a definitive must-have. You
should enjoy it. If it had only its own collection of tracks to use (which, granted,
it does come with a number of tracks from Valve games like Portal), it would be
pretty weak. But you have the world of your own song collection at your
fingertips. On six modes split over three difficulties. It's an awesome, awesome, awesome game.
Wow, I’m such a prog geek when it comes to music…
Price: 10.99$
Battle Ranch: Pigs VS Plants
Well, that looks simple enough... |
The evil pigs have set foot on the land, and the
vegetable population wants to stop them. Or rather, the farm animals are counting on you to
harvest the resources and place them on the field in order to fend off the
hordes of biker pirate knight porks. Yup, I just had to put these four words
together. These guys just can’t pick a theme and keep it.
Well, that looks somewhat more coimplex... |
Well that looks like it's too much. Guess I just don't care any longer. |
An interesting concept with alright graphics, but a
gameplay that ends up being rather meh. A very limited soundtrack that becomes
annoying after a while. There were some good ideas here, but this game
unfortunately falls into the category of games that are weaker clones of better
titles. The game does offer some pretty tough levels as it goes, though, so if
that’s something you might be interested in, do know that it only costs 1.00$
at the moment.
Brawlhalla
As I played more and more Steam games I have actually
paid for, I started to put away free-to-pay titles. I haven’t touched AdVenture
Capitalist in about two months. However, just because I’m not going into free
games anywhere as often, doesn't mean I've completely stopped. I still plan to review whichever ones I’ve kept. While
Brawlhalla contains a TON of content that you must pay for, the game still
contains enough in its base form to give you a fun time.
So much that you could have to pay for! |
Ah, I like the smell of freshly-begun battle in the morning! |
That’s the thing, though; if you are not willing to
pay for anything, you still have all of this… but only six characters to choose
from. There are 22 additional characters that can be unlocked by paying for
them. You can play a bit every day, and earn coins by completing daily
missions, and you can unlock the characters over time. That’s all fine and
good, but those characters are quite expensive, going from 2300 coins to 7200.
There are also various customization options that can be unlocked, though for
most of those you actually need to buy Mammoth Coins. Get your own, starting
with 140 for 6.59! You could buy Mammoth coins to unlock customization options.
You could also buy all the heroes for 16.49$, if you want. Chances are, though, that you’ll probably enjoy this game without ever buying anything from it – if
you don’t want customization and if you can actually wait and collect the coins
over time through daily missions, you can probably enjoy it just fine.
In a fighting game, it's like nobody can get along. No wonder the Subspace Emissary had everybody at each other's throats all the timeé |
Card Hunter
Hey guys! This is, like, a super new concept! It’s a
tabletop RPG… where everything is done with playing cards! …Yay? This is another
free-to-play game with bonuses you can pay real, dear money for, though I
likely won’t ever spend a cent on it. Thus is the reality of free-to-play games, including Card Hunter.
Try to keep track of everything on this screen alone; then, imagine for the whole game. |
That's a lot of cards for various purposes. Seems like a nice introduction to the complexity of actual tabletop RPGs... |
It’s a fun game, though I personally am not a fan of
the system used for it. I mean, cards and only one turn, really? Oh well. This
being a free-to-play game, a point will come where you’ll probably be told to
spend to unlock extra features. Obviously, don’t, unless you are absolutely
sure you want these features… I must admit though that it’s pretty enjoyable,
between the long-winded explanations of why the protagonists are in these
battles, and how every single adventure has its explicative sheet… all this,
mixed in with jokes about the social ineptitude of nerds playing tabletop RPGs. The tongue-in-cheek tone of the interactions, with a battle system that
you eventually get used to, lead to a game that can be quite enjoyable, with
very few things that you’d actually need to pay for. You mostly need to pay for a few extra quests. There's also a multiplayer mode.
So many campaigns to play through! So many curses to be tossed! Both by the wizards and the players! |
Carpe Diem
This free, very quick graphic novel has fairly limited
options. You can beat it in 5 minutes. It’s available in many languages, so
chances are you can pick your native tongue in the game’s parameters.
That's the only decision you'll ever have to take in this one. For the sequel that's apparently being worked on, however... |
The music could change more, as it’s the same quick
clip repeated as long as the story is going on. The very limited interactivity
may turn you off, though as I said, it’s only 5 minutes and in the end, it’s
more about telling a quick story. Stay until the end. You could even spoil the
end for you by pressing Crtl and rapidly skipping through the whole thing –
though stay, as it’s a rather surprising ending that says a lot. The developer
is apparently working on a more complex version of the game…
Alright, that’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed
reading about these suggestions!
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