Steam Holiday Seal 2015 |OT| This isn't the account you're looking for

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LEGO related question:
When I interpret the store page right LEGO Indy 2 contains all 4 films while LEGO Indy 1 includes the first three. So are the levels from the first three films the same in Indy 2 (making the first game obsolete) or are they different?
 
Helznicht said:
Is Dark Souls still worth getting (only $5)?

I have never played it (dont hit me). I know this is a favorite round here, but from the read, the online part is pretty prominent. Is this still played online quite a bit?

Also how is LAN coop. If both me and a buddy get this can you play LAN or is it easy to find each other online. Will we get bombarded by high level peeps jumping into our games and griefing us?

Is it good out of the box on steam, or will this take lots of manual patches and mods to make it enjoyable.

Is it better just to get Dark Souls 2 if Coop LAN is the target?

Thanks.
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Dark Souls tends to keep around 4-5 thousand concurrent users at any period of time, which is healthy for any online community.

There are some mods you need to install, specifically DSFix to fix the rendering resolution, and another mod if you prefer M/K over controller, but they are fairly simple. The Souls games weren't designed with co-op in mind, but there used to be a mod to make it easier to match with your friends, I'm not sure if a derivative of this still exists with the Steamworks transition. Though you can still fairly easily co-op without it.

It's, unequivocally, one of the best games of all time, so you should find a way to play it, specifically this version as well.

Anno said:
I much prefer the non-dailies version of these sales, but I can't imagine it's as successful for Valve or publishers. Curious to see what they do next year now that they have comparison data and can do the usual Valve iteration.
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The change is really arbitrary for mainstream users, which make up the vast majority of Steam's userbase. There will still be featured games on the front page everyday, and the top 10% will still purchase with abandon.

Will have to see Steamspy analysis at the end.
 
Skipping over a few I'll recommend later, but DreadOut is another title I really liked and can copy my Steam review for. I do have a bit to add I'll put at the bottom of my impressions.



DreadOut - $3.74

DreadOut is an Indonesian survival-horror game that takes inspiration from the Fatal Frame franchise, and pulls a lot from Indonesian myths and folklore.

You play as a non-talkative protagonist known as Linda, who with a few friends is on a car trip, but they stumble upon a weird deserted city that isn't marked on their map. The friends go to investigate the town, and soon get wrapped up in some severe hauntings from the strange ghost that start coming out when night falls.

The game has a low-budget, and it shows. Graphically everything looks outdated, with low-res textures, odd character animations, and the like. There's also no real-time shadows. The game also has a few bugs. I didn't encounter anything game-breaking, but a few 'look through the wall with the camera', 'get stuck on an object for a moment', 'that character is levitating,' type of bugs, However, something I found interesting was that they didn't copy and paste many models. There were a lot of posters around town, and each one was legitimately different. Same with pictures, and just small details all about.Outside of a few chairs or piles of garbage, most of the models were unique to each other, and I was surprised the developers didn't take many shortcuts.

Mentioning this, something I noticed about the game is that there were a lot of secrets and original assets used for things that most players would probably not even end up finding or seeing. There's more I have to say on the topic, but I'll get back to this in a bit.

The game has legitimately great atmosphere. There are some fantastic scares, the feeling of unnerve that is caused by the game. It has an atmosphere to it that most horror games these days are missing from the days of old, sort of a combination of dread and excitement for what's going to come next. The atmosphere and scares are more akin to something like Fatal Frame or Kuon than Amnesia or Outlast, I should mention. Recommended at night and in darkness, with headphones.

This is backed by fantastic audio design. The music is great, the sounds are great. Voicing is okay, a bit cheesy but enjoyably so. However, with the music, how it is and how it's used in the game, is really effective, and also I can mention unique. The music is very different than any other horror game I have played, but very effective. And how the music transitions with events going on is very well-done. The audio is also unnerving, and sometimes hearing a weird sound, even without knowing its source or even without it leading to anything, raised the tension. It sometimes gets hard to tell if a sound you just heard is part of the music, or something in the environment, but I say this as a good thing.

And the game does not lie on its laurels. By this I mean a lot happens, and the game never throws the same thing at you twice. I was honestly surprised by the number of ghosts there are in this game, there were a lot more than I was anticipating. Some great enemy variety, and you fight each ghost really only once or twice, there was not a single ghost I think the game threw at you a third time. And the 'events' that happen, like scares or atmospheric additions, were all incredibly varied too. This definitely helped to raise the intrigue as you never knew what might be coming next, and some of what happens really goes into the unexpected.

Combat is similar to Fatal Frame, but a bit more simplistic. There isn't a charge rate like Fatal Frame, or a point system, but the closer enemies are, the more you damage them when you take a shot. And if you attack them right before they attack you, you deliver additional damage.

Even the puzzles are well done and intelligent. Figuring out what to do is fun, and they do a good job at laying out clues to what you need to do to help piece it all together. They have clever hints and details, while not being extremely obvious either. However, it should be mentioned that those with less patience and less of a desire to figure out cryptic clues may not like how they're handled. But if you loved puzzles from horror games in the 90s (which have been notably absent in recent years), then you'll likely be quite happy to see some return to form here.

One of the game's biggest draws is some absolutely memorable moments. Several of the ghost encounters are absolutely fantastically handled and designed, the pacing of the game is wonderful for the most part (though may some end up stuck in the school for a while), and there's good variety with all of it. Some of the moments, such as the sit-down with Ira or the whole Mansion location, are absolutely stellar, and strike me as quality horror moments, something that has been missing from so many horror games, the sort of intrigue, weirdness, and execution that leads these moment to be gripping and chilling.

What they have here is fantastic, it legitimately is one of the best classic-styled survival-horror games to release in the last few years, and I think genre enthusiast who like certain elements of horror games that have been absent since the days of old will really appreciate the game. It's well-paced, well-executed, and well realized. It's low-budget, but those who enjoy the genre likely won't be bothered by this, some absolutely fantastic horror games over the years have been decidedly low-budget. The developers only had $26k to make the game, but they have managed to with that make a very confident horror game, and honestly some of the most fun I've had in a horror game in a while.

The weird thing is the secrets I mentioned earlier. There are complete sections of the game you could miss if you don't do some exploration. There are ghosts you won't fight unless you go off the beaten path. A tip to the wise is when it turns night-time and before you enter the school, don't enter the school like the game suggests and instead head back towards the town you just came from. There are different types of ghosts if you head backwards at this point that you'll never encounter in the main game. And little hidden areas and easter eggs to uncover all about. So on that front, there is some really cool optional content to explore in the game.

There's also a few cool unlockables. Once you complete the game, you unlock additional outfits, all of which are actually pretty well designed, and can be used on a second and later playthrough.

There's also a few side areas you can explore right now that don't really lead to anything, which I can only guess are there right now for the possible future Free Roam Mode (a lot of buildings and side-areas off the beaten-path are currently inaccessible or kind of barren right now, and I assume will be open in the free-roam mode the developers are working on). 

I want DreadOut to succeed. I really liked what was here, I'd even go as far to say this is the best attempt at making a 'classic' style horror game to release in the last few years, really having an understanding of those gripping elements that made those games enjoyable (a deeper level of meaning and not just superficially being classic styled with fixed camera angles and tank controls). The whole game will probably take someone 4 - 9 hours, depending on how much they explore and find hidden areas and how long they take on puzzles.

DreadOut is completely worth experiencing. It's tense, sometimes terrifying, has the right amount of weirdness to it, some absolutely stellar moments, and is actually a lot of fun. Its low budget shows, especially in the graphics department, but through clever design, good execution, and variety at hand, manages to be a fun and memorable experience.

---

I also will add there's a spin-off game for DreadOut coming early 2016 known as DreadOut: Keepers of the Dark, which is stand-alone and open world, but owners of DreadOut get an additional discount on buying it. This game (the original DreadOut) is low-budget, but one of my favorite old-school type horror games to come from the indie scene.

Some screens:


Again, hope it's helpfuk to some. More coming in a bit, mobile makes this slow for me, but might go for breakfast first.
 
the thing I noticed, more games have no discounts of any sort than usual, not only discounts aren't as good.
All usual suspects as Lumines, Cladun X2 and alike still have no discounts of course, but there are a lot of games that had discounts before without any, even symbolic. There are 13K apps on steam now, including dlcs and movies, 10K are discounted, according to steam, but according to db only 6326 have any actual discounts. Just thought I'll share
 
Anno said:
I much prefer the non-dailies version of these sales, but I can't imagine it's as successful for Valve or publishers. Curious to see what they do next year now that they have comparison data and can do the usual Valve iteration.
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I'm actually not 100% sure about this.

I know some more "casual" Steam users (you know, those that make up probably >80% of the game sales), and they don't even notice much of a change.

During a sale, they look at the front page from time to time, and if something catches their eye at a price they like they'll buy it. I don't believe the whole concept of "dailies" and "flash deals" ever deeply concerned them.

There are still rotating games on sale featured every day on the front page, so will their behavior really be affected?

It's too bad we only started havign SteamSpy data this year, so there isn't any historical data to compare to to do a statistical analysis. Well, Valve can of course, so if they go back to dailies we know it didn't work well!
 
You know how Nuuvem was giving away The Blue Flamingo earlier?

It seemed like it was region restricted before. But now it's not. I got a "Something has changed about something in your basket" message just now and I could checkout with it.

Free game. It's a SHMUP made with hand made models. Looks neat.
 
Durante said:
I'm actually not 100% sure about this.

I know some more "casual" Steam users (you know, those that make up probably >80% of the game sales), and they don't even notice much of a change.

During a sale, they look at the front page from time to time, and if something catches their eye at a price they like they'll buy it. I don't believe the whole concept of "dailies" and "flash deals" ever deeply concerned them.

There are still rotating games on sale featured every day on the front page, so will their behavior really be affected?

It's too bad we only started havign SteamSpy data this year, so there isn't any historical data to compare to to do a statistical analysis. Well, Valve can of course, so if they go back to dailies we know it didn't work well!
Click to expand...

I agree, but I think the more hardcore people that enjoyed playing the sale more than the games and just like scoring super good deals might be enough of a loss to be noticeable. The casual group should be similar to any other sale.

The thing that might even it out is the sales that'll happen immediately now rather than going on a wishlist waiting for a daily then forgotten.
 
Durante said:
I'm actually not 100% sure about this.

I know some more "casual" Steam users (you know, those that make up probably >80% of the game sales), and they don't even notice much of a change.

During a sale, they look at the front page from time to time, and if something catches their eye at a price they like they'll buy it. I don't believe the whole concept of "dailies" and "flash deals" ever deeply concerned them.

There are still rotating games on sale featured every day on the front page, so will their behavior really be affected?

It's too bad we only started havign SteamSpy data this year, so there isn't any historical data to compare to to do a statistical analysis. Well, Valve can of course, so if they go back to dailies we know it didn't work well!
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but doesn't your post contradict what we know (thanks steamspy for that) about steam sales? not casuals make most of steam sales, it's the other way around.
I always believed as you, but apparently that's not the case, dunno about other platforms but steam sales totally depend on dedicated users.
 
I bought a Steam Link and controller for myself for my girls (6 and 9) and I'm looking for good kid games. I have some games already that should be fine but I want to pick up some other more kid specific ones as well since the sale is on. I'm grabbing Lego Star Wars Complete, Lego Star Wars III as well as Lego Marvel Super Heroes today. Any suggestions of things on sale I might not be thinking of that would be great.

Quick Edit:

Is Space Engineers appropriate for that age? I kind of wanted it for myself awhile ago, and they love Minecraft. If the game is navigable for them and their age I may get it.
 
Anno said:
I much prefer the non-dailies version of these sales, but I can't imagine it's as successful for Valve or publishers. Curious to see what they do next year now that they have comparison data and can do the usual Valve iteration.
Click to expand...

Agree 100%.

I've spent FAR less money over the past two sales in large part because I've felt no pressure to pull the trigger on a Daily or Flash.

Having the luxury of taking my time and mulling over my Wishlist makes me realize that I just don't have time to play a dozen or more games all at once, even if the deals are fantastic. So I simply pick a few that I know I want to play right NOW, and I'm all set.

We'll never get the sales data, but I'd be curious as heck to see the trends since Daily/Flash has been dropped. My gut says they can't be as good when considering both overall discovery and high-pressure impulse buying windows.

I bet they bring 'em back, though I'd be more content if they didn't.
 
I think if Valve are going to keep no dailies going forward they need to shorten the sale (hear me out).

I feel many games aren't at their "best discount" this sale, my wishlist has a lot of games at <=30% off. My theory is this is because publishers don't want a game being sold at a large discount for 2 weeks. If the season is shortened, the time a game is discounted is as well, which would hopefully lead to better sales.
 
Aaron D. said:
....

We'll never get the sales data, but I'd be curious as heck to see the trends since Daily/Flash has been dropped. My gut says they can't be as good when considering both overall discovery and high-pressure impulse buying windows.

I bet they bring 'em back, though I'd be more content if they didn't.
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what do you mean we'll never get sales data? now, thanks to steamspy, we get reliable data all the time.
 
Arthea said:
what do you mean we'll never get sales data? now, thanks to steamspy, we get reliable data all the time.
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But we'll never have data about a Steam winter sale with dailies. (Unless they reintroduce them, and then we already know the new strategy wasn't successful)
 
Went to pick up Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, but it seems my waiting has not paid off as it is $10, above it's lowest Steam sale price of $8.
 
Do Steam gift card codes work cross-country? For example, if a Canadian bought a gift card code, then emailed the code to an American, would it work and they'd get the Steam wallet amount (with the exchange rate of course?) And vice-versa? Or is it all region-locked?

I bought a Steam Link and controller for myself for my girls (6 and 9) and I'm looking for good kid games. I have some games already that should be fine but I want to pick up some other more kid specific ones as well since the sale is on. I'm grabbing Lego Star Wars Complete, Lego Star Wars III as well as Lego Marvel Super Heroes today. Any suggestions of things on sale I might not be thinking of that would be great.
Click to expand...

The Lego games are great. This isn't Steam, and I know people thumb their noses at browser games, but I've seen girls that age go nuts for Prodigy (prodigygame dot com) - it's like an MMORPG where you make a chibi avatar and answer math questions to attack, and collect pets to fight alongside you. So it's educational and apparently fun. And if you want to be gifty about it, you can buy membership for them since it's f2p.
 
Askani said:
I bought a Steam Link and controller for myself for my girls (6 and 9) and I'm looking for good kid games. I have some games already that should be fine but I want to pick up some other more kid specific ones as well since the sale is on. I'm grabbing Lego Star Wars Complete, Lego Star Wars III as well as Lego Marvel Super Heroes today. Any suggestions of things on sale I might not be thinking of that would be great.

Quick Edit:

Is Space Engineers appropriate for that age? I kind of wanted it for myself awhile ago, and they love Minecraft. If the game is navigable for them and their age I may get it.
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Buy them KSP. Great for both adults and kids.
 
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t1450899977z1.png
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.
 
Askani said:
I bought a Steam Link and controller for myself for my girls (6 and 9) and I'm looking for good kid games. I have some games already that should be fine but I want to pick up some other more kid specific ones as well since the sale is on. I'm grabbing Lego Star Wars Complete, Lego Star Wars III as well as Lego Marvel Super Heroes today. Any suggestions of things on sale I might not be thinking of that would be great.

Quick Edit:

Is Space Engineers appropriate for that age? I kind of wanted it for myself awhile ago, and they love Minecraft. If the game is navigable for them and their age I may get it.
Click to expand...

Scribblenauts perhaps?

Lol while looking through family games I found they have freddi Fish games from when I was a kid back in the 90's.
 
Helznicht said:
Is Dark Souls still worth getting (only $5)?

I have never played it (dont hit me). I know this is a favorite round here, but from the read, the online part is pretty prominent. Is this still played online quite a bit?

Also how is LAN coop. If both me and a buddy get this can you play LAN or is it easy to find each other online. Will we get bombarded by high level peeps jumping into our games and griefing us?

Is it good out of the box on steam, or will this take lots of manual patches and mods to make it enjoyable.

Is it better just to get Dark Souls 2 if Coop LAN is the target?

Thanks.
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It's a must buy. get it. srsly. Online part is only necessary as you want it, playing offline is perfectly fine too, you only miss out on messages from other players, being invaded by other players and co-op. A real man Solo's the whole game ;) . No LAN, however you could leave a summon sign in a hidden area, and your buddy could then summon you, also, y'all can play over Skype for voice chat. Only thing necessary to get it looking perfect is to use DSfix made by Durante. It's very easy and quick to do. Enjoy this godly game :>
 
Fireblend said:
How would you guys re-introduce dailies, now that refunds are a thing? I imagine that's the main reason they are gone.
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Don't know at all what to do with refunds, but if they were introduced, I would hope that they repeated the same games over and over again. It became a bit ridiculous when there were just more and more games on Steam, but the same games were repeated more then five times with highlights, dailies, community deals, encores and what not. And especially when it was games that had been discounted every sale since they were added to Steam.
 
Askani said:
I bought a Steam Link and controller for myself for my girls (6 and 9) and I'm looking for good kid games. I have some games already that should be fine but I want to pick up some other more kid specific ones as well since the sale is on. I'm grabbing Lego Star Wars Complete, Lego Star Wars III as well as Lego Marvel Super Heroes today. Any suggestions of things on sale I might not be thinking of that would be great.

Quick Edit:

Is Space Engineers appropriate for that age? I kind of wanted it for myself awhile ago, and they love Minecraft. If the game is navigable for them and their age I may get it.
Click to expand...

The Rayman games are incredibly good, and they can play coop. The first two Trine games are also nice. Maybe Magicka, Audiosurf, or the Sonic Racing one?
 
Another personal trend that I noticed since the format change is that when we see all the deals engraved in stone on Day One, it's easier to compare/contrast the full spectrum of our Wishlist and cherry-pick the best options.

Like, if I see Divinity: OS land in a Flash sale on Day Two, I might be inclined to just go for it as a fan of the genre. But then Pillars of Eternity shows up a few days later at a killer price, and that's the one I wanted most anyway so I pick that up as well.

But the way things are now, I can immediately see the rock-bottom price of both titles and I can make an informed decision from there (PoE for those keeping score). The new format allows for more intelligent comparison shopping and imo, this leads to lower sales per individual.
 
CecilRousso said:
Don't know at all what to do with refunds, but if they were introduced, I would hope that they repeated the same games over and over again. It became a bit ridiculous when there were just more and more games on Steam, but the same games were repeated more then five times with highlights, dailies, community deals, encores and what not. And especially when it was games that had been discounted every sale since they were added to Steam.
Click to expand...

Refunds are likely one of the main reasons this change was pushed through. When you have this many financial institutions and consumer laws in place, you can't have massive refunds clogging up the financial system due to ignorant purchases during a sales period.

The reality is, the old system would be impossible under the refund umbrella.

Big picture thinking is one of the harder parts of these types of discussions.


someguyinahat said:
"This game is non-refundable until Jan. 4th at 10am PST."
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Technically illegal due to certain consumer laws.
 
Askani said:
I bought a Steam Link and controller for myself for my girls (6 and 9) and I'm looking for good kid games. I have some games already that should be fine but I want to pick up some other more kid specific ones as well since the sale is on. I'm grabbing Lego Star Wars Complete, Lego Star Wars III as well as Lego Marvel Super Heroes today. Any suggestions of things on sale I might not be thinking of that would be great.

Quick Edit:

Is Space Engineers appropriate for that age? I kind of wanted it for myself awhile ago, and they love Minecraft. If the game is navigable for them and their age I may get it.
Click to expand...

Kerbal is the way to go. And play it with them.
 
someguyinahat said:
"This game is non-refundable until Jan. 4th at 10am PST."
Click to expand...
  • Buy game when it's on a daily deal, store in inventory
  • Refund purchase after Jan 4th
  • Activate game from inventory
  • ...
  • Profit!
It's a tricky proposition.
 
someguyinahat said:
Do Steam gift card codes work cross-country? For example, if a Canadian bought a gift card code, then emailed the code to an American, would it work and they'd get the Steam wallet amount (with the exchange rate of course?) And vice-versa? Or is it all region-locked?
Click to expand...

Yes, not locked.
 
Grief.exe said:
Refunds are likely one of the main reasons this change was pushed through. When you have this many financial institutions and consumer laws in place, you can't have massive refunds clogging up the financial system due to ignorant purchases during a sales period.

Big picture thinking is one of the harder parts of these types of discussions.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I started to realize that after initial posting, where I just had to went my frustration with the dailies/flash during the last two sales :).

I felt that they at least for me had played out their role when they were repeated as much, and I definitely value the refund opportunity much more then dailies now.
 
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