Just a short post to say I’m top-hat deep in the Dragon Age & Mass Effect worlds/universe and loving (almost) every moment of it! 
Now if I can only get my ME2 Collector’s Edition to install without issues …
I just finished the demo for Defense Grid; that was yet another awesome game I’ve played lately. After playing beating the demo Friday night I bought it for $9.99 + shipping from Amazon. The demo was reason enough, but finding out the non-Steam copy doesn’t have DRM was a decision maker for me.
I should have known better, but I was hoping for a few turns of Galactic Civilizations 2 before I went to bed. 2+ hours later I’m feeling the physical regret of not heading straight to bed.
I’ll hate myself in the morning, but man was that fun.
From here.
This guy has to be in some kind of pain …
I had heard a lot of good things about Galactic Civilizations 2 in the past, but I put off giving it a test drive (demo link) as I heard it was turn based and not real time as many of my favorites are.
I should have thought back a little further and I would have remembered that they can still be a lot of fun. I played a Star Trek game years ago on Windows 3.11 that I enjoyed a lot, even though by today’s standards it probably wouldn’t be much to look at.
I got it installed, I picked my race, skills, bonuses, etc. and started up. I didn’t bother reading a manual of any kind as I expected to find the control intuitive. For the most part I did, but after several hours of play I still have to rummage around at times to find exactly what I’m looking for.
To keep this short, I enjoyed the game and plan on picking up a copy in the months ahead. For now I’ll play the demo and try to figure out the best ways to advance. For my first game I’m really concentrating on research and neglecting military/etc.
Of course, it helps that I put both my enemies on stupid and started one on friendly terms with me. I figure I’d rather learn at a slow pace then having them show up for my head before breakfast.
I logged onto Steam this morning to make good of the last few hours I would have left from the free weekend deal and was surprised to see that I had a gift waiting for me.
I’m new to Steam, and maybe I was still asleep, but I first thought the free gift was for three guest passes.
Odd.
I figured I must have read it wrong so I went to add TF2 to my cart and it told me I already owned the game. Yipee!
This is a case where I don’t have to decide whether I really want to get the game or not, it was sitting there waiting for me. 
It’s been an interesting enough week and I’m sure I could ramble about something half-way interesting, but I’m going to ramble on about Steam and other digital download options instead.
I’ve a friend at work who occasionally brings up Team Fortress 2 and part of me always cringes, as the requirement for me to play would mean that I would have to finally bite the bullet and get a Steam account. That or camp out as his house for weeks on end.
I think the former would work out better.
Steam in itself isn’t evil, and buying something off of Steam isn’t akin to throwing away your money, but it just hasn’t made a lot of sense to me to get an account and purchase any games from them.
As I mentioned back in Oct 2008, I’m a fan of hard media for games. This is/was for two reasons:
The last few months I’ve come across a lot of free music, much of it game soundtracks.
Yesterday it was the Dawn of War 2 soundtrack.
Others:
The Dawn of War 2 soundtrack is really good. The others I haven’t listened to enough to really given an opinion.
Lately I’ve had a lot of really good experiences regarding DRM, or should I say, the lack thereof.
In reverse order, I just got through playing Unreal Tournament 3 and had a blast. In the past I was used to installing Unreal Tournament 2004 (Amazon.com, GoG.com), installing the latest patch and I was good to go, no need to keep the cd around.
With 2008 being the year of DRM revival, I was a little worried that I would be hunting down another NO-CD just to play without having my disc in the drive.
But no, I was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn’t the case. I installed from disc, used the latest patch and added the Titan Pack. The first time I launched the game it wanted my key and after that, I was good to go; I haven’t been prompted since.
Then there are the digital downloads I’ve gotten myself into lately, Good Old Games and the Blizzard Store.
This Thursday I was waiting with baited breath to see what publisher Good Old Games was going to announce in their latest publisher lineup, and was surprised to see that it was Ubisoft.
I shouldn’t have been as they’ve been on a DRM-free streak lately:
This article sums up the recent Ubisoft releases on GoG.com and includes comments from some of the GoG.com staff.
When I refreshed the homepage for what was possibly the 20th time that day, I saw the news and immediately added Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Beyond Good and Evil (recommended by a friend) to my collection. I was psyched.
A month prior I bought Spellforce Platinum for myself and Simon the Sorcerer for the wife. Both have turned out to be good games and I’ve certainly not regretted purchasing them.
I had heard of downloading games from the Blizzard Store and had heard rumors that the games were DRM free, but I had yet to try it for myself. Well, last week I finally did so. While searching for information regarding Warcraft 2 Battle.net edition, I came upon a forum where someone was having trouble installing from an old disc of theirs. They got several suggestions that they use their cd code and register it on their Blizzard account. They could then download and install from the downloaded copy.
I did a test using my Starcraft cd and it was very painless. More importantly though I did not find any DRM nor any phone-home attempts from the digital copy. I even found mention in the EULA that I could still resell my game (there was a mention of a possible fee though), and the install package could be backed up (burned to media, etc) and installed without an Internet connection. I was floored. I immediately went and registered Diablo 2 + expansion, and Warcraft 3. I will be tempted to purchase Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 digitally on release from their store, but even if I don’t, I’ll be registering them ASAP.
Kudos to Blizzard for serving both their own interests (having the user register the game) and their customers (ability to redownload in the future, back it up to media and not require a net connection).
Last but not least I have Spellforce 2 Gold that arrived today and I’m about to install it. Scanning it with PROTECTiON iD shows just a simple serial check, so it looks like I have yet another DRM-free title in the collection.
Awesome is just too small a word for this.
I stumbled across Gravema while looking for the Unofficial Far Cry Patch. This in turn led me to the Global Game Jame site where they have a game entry browser.
I haven’t had a chance to browse through all of them yet, but there is likely to be something worth looking at.
Update:
Gravema is pretty cool game for hotseat play.
