Ah-ha-ha, my corny puns will make you wither! Anyway, The Banner Saga is a sprawling epic strategy game from Stoic that’s won some big awards and garnered plenty of praise for its story and lovely stylized visuals. You can (and SHOULD) grab this one before this Humble Daily Sale‘s over, I say. Meanwhile, the Humble Weekly Sale is all about indie platforms of recent vintage, all solid and fun as heck to play through multiple times. Get it too and watch those two charities (Child’s Play and the American Red Cross) make bundles from those bundles! Yeah, you know you want to grab both deals and I can’t stop you at all…
So, Bionic Dues ($4.99) and CLARC ($5.99) are two nifty-looking games now up on gog.com and I say you should buy one or both. Why? ROBOTS, that’s why! BD is a strategy-based rogue-like game with you going up against a bunch of functioning and malfunctioning robots, while CLARC is a puzzle game that allegedly features drunken robots (which are most likely malfunctioning thanks to inebriation).
You know you need one or more of these games in your life because that Roomba you bought or got as a gift last Christmas is boring you to tears because it doesn’t so anything other than clean (and not too well, at that). Now, you COULD try and reverse engineer it to have some sort of beer can delivery abilities or perhaps a death ray of some sort (the ULTIMATE bug zapper). But that would likely mean you blowing yourself when you poke that screwdriver into the wrong hole and that robot gets its revenge. don’t so that – play a game instead!
While today’s Humble Daily Bundle deal is a mere three games, each one looks like it’ll be deeper than it looks and well worth checking out. I’ve yet to play X3 Terran Conflict, I’ve played the other games in this deep space simulation lite series and while they’re not perfect, there’s a LOT to do and plenty to see as you planet-hop. I’ve never played the other two games in this bundle, but the two words Universe and Sandbox mean nothing but a HUGE game. Or at least it SOUNDS like one. Heck, it BETTER be after all that build up, huh? Anyway, Kinetic Void is an Early Access game, so it’s a work in progress… but a great looking one and yes, also looks quite peachy.
Now, you may NEVER get your ass to Mars or anywhere higher than your average airliner flies, but for ten bucks, these three are worth the trip. Well, whatever the distance from your mouse to monitor is, as these are digital games. Anyway, check these out on the Humble site and do your thing with the wallet or purse if you like what you see.
Wow. I missed this big sale last time on a fantastic bundle of Deep Silver games and as I just walked in the door about twenty minutes ago and see it’s on again, I’m kicking myself hard because I’m too busy to play this lot even if I did jump on it and buy it up. But still, WOW. Pay a buck or so for four massive games, bump that up to $6.16 and add FIVE more games (that’s nine), but go for not broke and get TEN games for nine dollars flat? THAT’S the way to go here, considering the games in question and how much content you’re getting. All the Saint’s Row games are outrageous, stupid fun, Dead Island and Dead Island Riptide will appeal to your undead killing,get me the hell off this “vacation paradise” gone to hell in a hand basket side, Risen 2: Dark Waters sets you out as a pirate type in a big fantasy world, Sacred 2 Gold is an even larger and more fantasy world with some incredible replay value (and even more incredible difficulty if you try to run around like you’re the boss of everything), Sacred Citadel is a goofy throwback to arcade brawling/hack ‘n slash games of the past and finally, Metro 2033 is a bleak, unsettling, freakish and deadly trip to a future Russia where radiation, mutants and not enough survival supplies test your skills.
All that and yes, some of what you pay goes to the Child’s Play and American Red cross charities. So yep, you NEED this bundle even though I won’t be buying it. THIS time (again). Now, I’m wanting to see the next 13 days of sales as I eyeball my hard drives and probably dump a few older games for some nice new-ish ones. Just like you, too. Anyway, I’ll be back every day of this sale with an update (and hopefully earlier, at that!)…
Yes, I’ve been watching The Graduate (again!), this time for an upcoming blogathon, but that doesn’t means this week’s Indiegala Monday sale isn’t batting its eyelashes and hiking its skirt up to show some ankle. Trying to tempt me to drop a mere $1.49 on a set of indie Steam titles including the recent Greenlight candidate Ocean City Racing (made by three people using Epic’s Unreal tech and zero budget):
Okay, I already bought that game on Desura a while back, but everything else I’d not heard of or want to take for a spin. At under two bucks, it’s tough to pass up and as that sale only lasts for under 24 hours until the price jumps up tomorrow. Bat and flash away, you tease! I’ll do the usual nonsense of flipping an invisible coin and deciding based on where it lands. Given that it’s a two-headed coin, I think I know what I’ll be doing later…
Wow. Three great epic role-playing games, four horror-themed adventures (including one based on a great, gloomy Harlan Ellison story), a sci-fi/horror hybrid first-person shooter still seen as one of the best games ever made and while not quite a classic, a dark and disturbing action/shooter that’s worth a play just to see how bizarre it gets? Sounds like a buy if you ask me. Anyway, Wizardry 6, 7 and 8 plus System Shock 2 are more than worth the price it takes to unlock them and everything else is just the gravy on that cake. I actually liking this bundle because of Harvester, a supremely twisted point & click adventure game that doesn’t shy away from the David Lynch-like weirdness and some mildly to pretty shocking gore effects (which are cheap looking even by 1996 standards, but still effective):
Amusingly enough, the charities this bundle supports are Child’s Play and The American Red Cross (ha and ha, ha). Anyway, this one’s only available for a limited time (6 days, 19 hours as I type this), so GRAB IT before it’s gone!
It’s time to hit the road with this week’s Every Monday Bundle from IndieGala. Every game here has some sort of vehicle as your means of locomotion, so expect some realistic racing at its finest, some future flying taxi action, kart racing with allegedly cute characters and even a bit of blowing up stuff in a tank. You know the drill here: pay a LOW price for the first day, then the price jumps up a bit to a STILL affordable (but higher) point. Two bucks for six games is insane, especially as the aforementioned realistic racer (Race Injection) gives you three games and three expansions worth a heck of a LOT more than two bucks and is a pretty decent simulation racer if you happen to swing that way. Okay, let me shut up and let you get to the buying and playing and worrying about when you’ll get to playing everything you just bought. “Everything in moderation, nothing in excess” doesn’t exactly work with a big backlog, that’s for sure…
Yet another great IndieGala sale for charity? Cool! This time up, it’s a mix of JRPG-inspired goodness, a crazy (not for the kiddies!) shooter some will find oddly… comforting if they have lousy jobs and twisted revenge on their minds but aren’t the violent type, some puzzle games to keep you playing ’til the wee, wee hours and even a few tough as nails (or “old-school”) style action platformers. As usual, the price is a total STEAL (well, in a “I took your stuff, but left you what I thought was cool kind of way), you need a working Steam account and probably a time machine once you grab this deal so you can actually PLAY all these games at some point. Yeah, you know you want it, so go get it!
(thanks, AlexWhite525!)
Back on sale at gog.com in case you missed them the last time are a bunch of great Ubisoft published titles, so get your fill and then some at 60% off. I have a bunch of these already in the backlog, but I’m sorely tempted to pick up the heroic, mighty and magical Heroes of Might and Magic II Gold Edition just because it’s called by some folks the greatest fantasy strategy game ever made. Well, also because I played some of the original back in the day, but lost all my files when my computer blew up and never actually completed the game. That was probably a very good thing, as it was consuming a GREAT deal of my free time and I was getting maybe an hour or two of sleep per night and yep, even pulled a few all-nighters and was out and about working on nothing but caffeine and adrenaline fumes. Ah, those were the days (I think)…
Anyway, you know what to do, right? I’ll leave you to it, then!
Konami has finally gotten digital versions of the two Silent Hill PSP games, Silent Hill Origins and Silent Hill Shattered Memories up on PSN and both come highly recommended to horror fans looking to take some portable scares on the go. As you can also see, there’s a cry for fans to submit videos to that little gathering the company is planning so they can show off everyone basically saying the same things, ha ha. Okay, I’m joking, but there are a number of KEY moments in the original Silent Hill through Silent Hill 4: The Room that everyone who’s played them has jumped out of their seat over. Granted, that clip seen in the video above (that cuts off before the scare, thankfully) is probably THE moment I recall people talking about the most when I was working in an indie game shop (and yeah, it got me good the first time I experienced it).
My other favorite scare was late in the first game when you’re in those sewers and that radio you’d been relying on to screech out static when a monster was nearby… STOPS WORKING. This moment is a freak out because you get no warning the radio is ineffective and the stage starts off with something moving slowly towards you out of the darkness. Is it harmless? Nope, not at all and worse, you have to make it though the entire are with ZERO warning as to what’s coming your way. I recall I had a review to write and only a dozen hours to finish the game, so this section was tough, but I pushed through it and survived without poor Harry Mason dying (but I think I had a few gray hairs afterwards). Anyway, enough reminiscing on such a wet and cold evening- I’m starting to give myself the creeps!
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 