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STEAM announcements & updates 2012 Thread 2 - Bad Rats Daily Deal for next 6 months

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TGMIII

Member
Was there a Last Remnant Sale before?

Really interested, but still costs 30€ here on Steam for PC...

Last time it was on sale was the Winter sale so I'm sure it'll be on sale again during the summer sale.

Also the potato hat is nothing special, it looks pretty horrible.
 

Berto

Member
Is Velvet Assassin really, really bad or can it be fun due to some cool story or characters? Everyone hated on Hydrophobia, but I kinda liked it, same with a lot of other 60-70ish games.
It´s a LOT better than Hydrophobia IMO. Like i said, the atmosphere is pretty good, very dream-like. The stealth mechanics are a bit dated and if i remember correctly the save points were terrible.
 

Kelegacy

XBOX - RECORD ME LOVING DOWN MY WOMAN GOOD
Screw it, I bought it too. If it gives me a half hour of enjoyment it would be worth it.
 

Askani

Member
I just saw Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 is up for preorder for only $10. It seems like a good idea for me because I spent over 150 with the original. I would still be playing it off and on if it wasn't for Diablo III consuming almost all my time right now.

That being said, if it's buggy like the last one it's just going to piss me off to no end. I definitely like some of the new features like being able to choose what lands to tap, but I don't know if it's worth it yet. The 2012 interface sucks, the network communication is trash, the broken cards, etc. I just don't want to deal with any of that, and I said I wouldn't give them any more money, but my desire to play may override all that crap because I'm weak willed and it's $10. I've spent more money for stupider things before...but it's the principle this time! Maybe I'll give it a week or so and see what people say first, if I can.
 

Blizzard

Banned
I probably bought Velvat Assassin ages ago. I figure more games need female spy protagonists. One day I may even play it!
 
Spec Ops the line was the worst demo ever, started it up to an un-skippable helicopter turret section... then it gets even worse with terrible gunplay, then when I tried to rage out of the turd I had to watch a video before it would let me out.

Desert is pretty and the sweat on his face looks cool, otherwise avoid.
 

garath

Member
I am so upset I missed the Warlock sale. I forgot that was a Paradox title. I would have bought that in a second on sale :(

Maybe summer sale!
 

corn_fest

Member
I highly recommend the Potato Sack, even though it actually only contains 10 decent (hint: non-Dejobaan) games.
I seriously don't understand Valve's hard-on for Dejobaan. You hear about indie devs getting anticipated, well reviewed games rejected from Steam and then they put a piece of shit alpha product like 123 Kick It in a promotional bundle.
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Oh, I thought the Sword of Islam DLC will be released this month for CKII.

I highly recommend the Potato Sack, even though it actually only contains 10 decent (hint: non-Dejobaan) games.
I seriously don't understand Valve's hard-on for Dejobaan. You hear about indie devs getting anticipated, well reviewed games rejected from Steam and then they put a piece of shit alpha product like 123 Kick It in a promotional bundle.

Well, it's not surprising, since they have a shitty game which is in Steam only because it used a source engine, iirc
 

Zia

Member
How does one remotely DL via the iPhone app? I go to my community profile, games, click on the game and it takes me to the store page for said game. Ugh.
 

zulux21

Member
Was there a Last Remnant Sale before?

Really interested, but still costs 30€ here on Steam for PC...

Last Remnant has gone on sale at least 3 times in the last 2 years. (it might have been more, I stopped paying a ton of attention to it after I finally caved and bought it lol)

I think it was 66% off twice and 75% off once. Either way at this point it would just be best to hold off until the end of the month to buy any game that is 2 months old or older as the summer sale is coming.

And don't forget then even if Last Ramnant is discounted that you should only really buy front page sales games during the sale until the last day as there is a good chance that that discounted game will get an ever bigger discount.
 

zulux21

Member
I just saw Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 is up for preorder for only $10. It seems like a good idea for me because I spent over 150 with the original. I would still be playing it off and on if it wasn't for Diablo III consuming almost all my time right now.

That being said, if it's buggy like the last one it's just going to piss me off to no end. I definitely like some of the new features like being able to choose what lands to tap, but I don't know if it's worth it yet. The 2012 interface sucks, the network communication is trash, the broken cards, etc. I just don't want to deal with any of that, and I said I wouldn't give them any more money, but my desire to play may override all that crap because I'm weak willed and it's $10. I've spent more money for stupider things before...but it's the principle this time! Maybe I'll give it a week or so and see what people say first, if I can.

this article details the new stuff in more detail they sound like they were trying a lot harder this year, but alas we won't know for sure until next week.

Either way if you like unlocking cards for your deck DO NOT PREORDER Their great preorder idea was to force full deck unlocks (so that all of the unlockable cards are unlocked) for one of the decks as a preorder bonus, and another deck if you owned 2012. It's terrible as it knocks off about 5 hours of solo gameplay with each one(at least it does for me as the only time I will play solo is if I am unlocking cards). I will still get a ton of gameplay out of it, but really if you can sit down and thing "will anyone be mad if we give this to them for free" and the answer is yes.... you are doing something wrong @_@
 

Hixx

Member
Spec Ops the line was the worst demo ever, started it up to an un-skippable helicopter turret section... then it gets even worse with terrible gunplay, then when I tried to rage out of the turd I had to watch a video before it would let me out.

Desert is pretty and the sweat on his face looks cool, otherwise avoid.

I thought it was fine but it's a bog standard TPS, packed to the brim with cliched military-game "banter". Looks nice and ran as you'd expect an UE3 game to do. Incredibly easy, though.
 

ezodagrom

Member
About Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing and framerate hiccups in AMD/ATI graphics cards:

ezodagrom said:
S0L said:
Due to the way the old engine worked, it would create and compile each new shader effect as it encountered this and then cache it for future use. This was better for the art team, as they could go wild with all manner of funky shaders, but it did mean that we couldn't pre-cache shaders for everything on every hardware configuration.

What *should* happen (providing the drivers are sensible) is it will cache the compiled shaders up. It might need to do this again for split-screen since the level assets were different there. Basically a run through each track should eventually build up a sensible cache and the problem should go away. It did work back with the drivers that were out back then - can't promise they've not changed things as PC hardware and drivers change all the time. It's a real headache...

Now... The new engine works differently. We have a stock set of shaders that artist can use, but they're all pre-compiled. So we get a huge performance gain - and hopefully much better cross hardware compatibility. The shaders are still configurable by the artists and are created on demand, so we're not sacrificing visuals. If anything, it works better for the art team this way around as they don't need to be quite so technical.

You live and learn is the short answer here...!
I've been making some testing, these are the results I've gotten:

- Phenom II X4 955, Radeon HD6850, June 2012 Beta drivers (Catalyst 12.6 Beta):
Stage "Icicle Valley" in time trial, there's sudden framerate drops in certain locations, like the cave shortcut near the beginning, when entering the second cave close to the end, and a few other places. The framerate drops happen mostly in the first lap and get alot less frequent in the following laps, but exiting to the menu and entering the stage again (with the same character), the framerate drops are back to how they were at first.

- Pentium Dual-Core E5200, Radeon HD4850, January 2012 drivers (Catalyst 12.1):
Same situation as the Phenom II X4/Radeon HD6850 PC.

- Pentium Dual-Core E5200, Radeon HD4850, March 2010 drivers (drivers released in the month after the game was released, Catalyst 10.3):
With these the framerate drops happen in the same locations, when exiting to the menu and entering the stage again, the framerate drops are back to how they were at first as well, but the framerate drops are alot less sudden with these older drivers.

After this I started trying a bunch of different drivers, until I found the first driver where the framerate drops became more sudden, which is the March 2011 Catalyst 11.3 driver.
I tried a few drivers before this one, like February 2011 (11.2), January 2011 (11.1), December 2010 (10.12), they all worked like the March 2010 (10.3) drivers, there were framerate drops, but they were not as sudden as the newer drivers.
I also tried a few drivers after the March 2011 (11.3) driver, like June 2011 (11.6) and December 2011 (11.12), these all have the sudden framerate drops like the March 2011 (11.3) and the January/June 2012 drivers (12.1 and 12.6).

I guess I'll try sending feedback about this to AMD's driver feedback page, but I doubt they'll do anything about this...

Oh well, can't wait for All Stars Racing Transformed. :p
http://board.sonicstadium.org/topic...racing-transformed/page__st__1160#entry498866

Well, at least Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed (the sequel to All Stars Racing) won't have the same problem.
 
Just sent my resume into Valve for their community management position.

Maybe someday soon I'll be posting in this thread as the official word on sales and upcoming things :eek:
 

TGMIII

Member
So is Velvet Assassin worth playing at all? I know it's super cheap but even at that price if it's not worth playing I could do without another game on the backlog.
 
I always wondered why we are not hearing more of Valve workers on GAF.

I actually noted this in my cover letter, that NeoGaf was a large community I was already an established member of, so I'd be a valuable asset in that regard if they wanted to branch out and begin to get more of their staff involved on gaming message boards.
 

Adnor

Banned
Wait, Noam Chomsky is in L4D2!? What did I miss?

And in Half-Life 2 Ep: 2!

Fxwxs.jpg



Just sent my resume into Valve for their community management position.

Maybe someday soon I'll be posting in this thread as the official word on sales and upcoming things :eek:

Good luck :D
 

Blizzard

Banned
Valve presumably has super strong NDA's. Even Gabe was afraid of mentioning certain things in interviews since he said that other guy would get mad at him, I think.
 
D

Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
Alright, first thoughts on Velvet Assassin:

I finished the semi-first and first mission (the Bunker), and I gotta say, this game as a heavy Thief vibe. I actually kinda like it. The stealth is really basic though, and - again - reminds me a lot of Thief 1 and 2, so does the semi-open environment with the objective-based gameplay within Levels (and the crappy AI :) ).

The level design so far is really nice for what it is, and the Germans actually speak proper german, I think I even recognize a few voices here and there. Yeah, I expected WAY worse. The graphics aren't too bad either, and I feel the story might turn out pretty interesting later on.
 
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