Dungeon Master Forum

Now that I have a decent computer that can actually play recent(ish) games, I thought I'd check out Steam.

Oh my! It's changed a bit since I last looked at in 2005! This is way too easy a manner in which to spend cash! I am currently downloading the Orange Box, all 15GB of it, and a total bargain at £17. Darn. This is going to be really bad for my health...

Hehe, there are some good games in there. It's not quite as good of a deal at this exact moment because Portal is currently completely free, but Portal is a good game so play it anyway. You'll have fun with the various episodes of Half Life 2 if you like single player shooter type action or Team Fortress 2 if you like goofy multiplayer games, though. The Orange Box was the first thing I went for when I built this computer, too.

I've got Steam because it was an auto-download thing when I installed Audiosurf, which uses Steam to run it or something. Love that game - the tagline is "Surf your music", and that's exactly what you do - pick a track, any track (.mp3, .wma, and a few other formats work fine), and the game turns it into a...well, a track. Umm, that is, a racetrack-looking-type thingy, which you ride along on a spaceship-type-thingy. The course of the track is determined by the music. So if you load in a slow-paced tune with only low, slow instruments playing, you'll get a slow ride uphill for the track. If you load in a fast song with loads of rapid drumbeats, you'll get a really fast downhill track with tons of blocks all over the place. Blocks are the things you collect in your spaceship thingy, which come along in time to the music. Match blocks of the same colour to score points, or play in Mono mode where all the blocks ae the same colour and you just have to hit as many as you can and avoid the grey blocks. I've surfed pretty much my entire music collection (over 30 hours of music) on there, and always surf any new tracks I get. Maybe if some people on here start playing it, I can maybe start up a friends list and start comparing my scores to people I actually know (as long as they surf the same tracks as me...hmm that could be a problem, lol).
Oh, and the game only costs about a fiver - bloody worth it, I reckon .
Ooh look, I'm almost spamming, here, aren't I? Whoops, lol.
But it is a blody fun game .

I've only ever bought two games off Steam... The Orange Box was the first!

I enjoyed Half Life 2 for a while but it is soooo linear that you have to take the game more as a film or book than an open world thing where you can control the events.

Team Fortress 2 is recommended, and I've yet to play Portal on my computer!

All in all a BARGAIN.

I love Audiosurf too, not played for a while but it is very adictive. My wife and I also played two player - just as much fun and a little competition

I have a few games on steam waiting to play - curse their sales and easy/fast downloads! Mirror's Edge, Bioshock, GTA4, all the Half Life 2 stuff (I bought it properly ages ago, got about a third through it, now restarted - I can gift anyone half life 2 if they want!)

Played portal to death, including starting the time/portal trials. Can't wait for portal 2!

Oh yeah, I've played Audiosurf two-player - I have a friend round sometimes whom I play it with. We just surf random tracks (as in, I close my eyes and randomly click on something - a "Random TracK" feature would be a fantastic addition to the game, I reckon) in DV mode and I usually mess up a lot 'cause I only get two lanes to play in when I'm used to three, plus I can't delete mistakes like I can in my current preferred mode, Eraser. I started off playing Mono but then ended up on Eraser 'cause I wanted a bit more of a challenge. Hey Money, what's your username on there? Maybe we can add each other to our friends list (well, so far my friends list has zero people on it) and if we happen to possess any tracks with the same name then maybe we can compare scores .

Oh my goodness. I'm so unprofessional. I stayed up all night playing Half Life 2! Had no sleep!

I did play it way back in '04 when it first came out, but it's nice to be doing it again on a bigger screen with better graphics. I saved money on my new PC by getting a motherboard with integrated low end Radeon chip -- so it can't handle games at 1920x1080 widescreen and lots of nice visuals. If I drop it down to something like 1280x800 it's pretty good though as the monitor scaling is fine. If I want to play something newer like Bioshock in full glory, I'll need a dedicated gfx card. Anyway, that's further down the line.

I never even took a look at steam, but Sophia is right - Portal is a fantastic game!

We're maybe risking playing portal up for Gambit. Just go into it with no expectations, and let the gentle humour, and slow and steady cool puzzle methodology build up until you love it too. Also check out the side areas for some nice little nods to Half-life and backstory beats.

Yeah, I've been wanting to play portal for, like, ever! Giving it a bash now... I got to that massive bridge in half-life yesterday and running over the girders underneath it actually gives me vertigo and makes me feel a bit sick (!), so I need a break from it

It's nice we have visuals like that these days, not like when we were a lad

Woo, Portal is great. Great robotic voice over Have got to level 15 and now I'm stuck. Mind bending stuff!

You should be able to figure the levels out ok. It's funny to come back to them after doing some of the time trials.

And yes, the voice of GlaDOS is pretty funny. Best lines you must have heard - "speedy thing go in, speedy thing come out" and "weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

Yeah, that was brilliant

I loved the bit at the beggining "You must never ever......" *static*"

ahhhh, where do you all find the time to play these games??? at work? hehehe

Finally finished Portal, but I had to cheat on the last level: I simply couldn't get the jump right to get on the high up gantry that leads to Glados, and once I found her, I couldn't do that bit at all, my reactions simply aren't good enough any more! I watched a youtube walkthrough of it and tried to replicate the solution but found it impossible in the time limit.

The cake is a lie!

Congratulations Gambit. Now I really want to replay Portal, the game itself was highly innovative, and the setup, plot and atmosphere among the best I have ever seen.

I don't think any congrats are in order since I had to use a cheat Great game though, all very clever and as you say, beautifully constructed and executed.

Huh, you shouldn'#t need reactions for portal, you can create a portal on the ground and look down onto it to figure out exactly where the positioning is

The time trails, etc are the ones I can't get passed fully, but its still fun to superman into gun turrents in the last 'test' level

The problem I had is that I can't seem to use the mouse to change the player viewpoint during a fall without messing up the fall trajectory.

Anyway.....OOOOOOOOOOOOOO........some Portal 2 news, sounds great. I won't cope!!

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3179911

Yeah, you fall where you look...eh, just have some fun in some of the earlier levels again (once more, supermanning turrets is cool) and it might come smoother. I was surprised I could do things liek the jumping up and down puzzle near the end.

We have to work together...for science....you murderer...

Yeah, the new physics seems cool, not sure what to think about still being in the same installation (although it being different)

Holy sheet, this is one awesome deal. A definite buy if you don't already have many Valve games:

Valve Complete pack, special offer £24.99 (Usually £90, or more!)
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/7930/

Pity I have them all

And I love steam, it let me know I had internet again!

Some games accessible in Steam i cannot register with the registry key from the dvd.

I got Dead Space 2 as a birthday present and tried enetering the key in Steam so that i could ignore the dvd and just install it with Steam (especially handy to be sure you always have the latest patches), but it didn't recognize my key. I have a feelng EA is blockig it as they just launched their own Steam called Origin.

I dunno about Dead Space keys I'm afraid.

I did by Portal 2 this weekend though, and I'm nearly finished already. Absolutely bloody awesome. Steve Merchant is great

ferala, Steam only allows registration of certian Retail CD / DVD Keys. A complete list can be found here: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_art ... -wusf-3601

You should be able to register your CD key with Origin and download it from there, which will enable you to get the latest patches, however I think you still need the game disc to play.

Oh and Gambit, I loved every minute of Portal 2. It ranks up there as one of the best games I've played.

Judging from your posts Gambit, I've seen around you seem to really like Steam. I love Steam, the deals you can get are incredible (Valve complete pack for $75 right after Left for Dead 2's $50 release, wooooo!)

I wouldn't say I love Steam. It's just that it's convenient. I haven't bought a boxed game for over 6 years. Digital is the way to go, and ownership of physical products is overrated. I used to think that having the physical item was a good thing, but as I've got older I realised it's simply not: uses up precious resources, takes up dead space in the home and doesn't actually achieve anything.

The big advantage that digital totally kills is any used market. Granted, this is less of a deal for PC gaming, but that's only because the game publishers have been systematically destroying the idea of buying and selling used PC games for the past 10 years or so. However, it's still a factor on console games-- not that publishers aren't still making their efforts, and as usual, when there's jerking customers around to be done, EA is leading the way.

I also like that the availability of your game library isn't at the mercy of whoever controls the DRM in your digital copy. But, again, this got gutted for PC gaming years ago.