Steam 2011 Holiday Sale is here!!

Tuf said:
Got Metro 2033 finally, I like PhysX games. I missed the Shogun 2 DLC sale yesterday and while it's not as cheap as that sale, this one comes pretty close. I keep thinking about Portal 2 but after not finishing the first one I just can't convince myself to buy the 2nd.
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you like physx games? lol, what? and Metro2033 has almost no hardware physx effects at all so you might not like it. :p

and I would certainly finish the first Portal before getting the second game.
 
Thanks for all the responses. I have a 6yr and a 2yr old, and want to be careful about what they end up viewing, even by accident. Our society has enough violence of it own; that is one reason we rarely if ever watch live TV; it is mostly on demand without ads.

I want my children to have a more nuanced introduction to the less pleasant aspects of human life. We had a workplace related shoot out the day Steve Jobs died and his school was in lock-down since the shooter was at large. While I have tried to mitigate what happened (some bad guy, and the police got him) but he has figured out that there were guns involved and some people died.

For the time-being my 6 yr old is going to be earning reward points (up to 10 a day) which will accumulate during the week, allowing him to spend that many minutes on my work-desk and play a driving game over the weekend.

So up to an hour of video game play is going to be his reward.

I have noticed though that most of the TV shows also have online games which he can play; well can't control them all but they at least are relatively age appropriate.

I will keep on looking for other games which may be of interest to me.That Tropico series looked interesting. Are there some battlefield sim games? I am talking more about strategy and tactics (war-gaming) then actually playing solider and pulling the trigger.

kinjo said:
Not sure if you are trolling but assuming you are not... the same could be said for the majority of movies and television. video games as a form of entertainment need to be compelling and interesting to hold peoples interest. And in order to be compelling generally there needs to be some sort of conflict or challenge.

Now let us look at these two concepts separately. Challenge would be anything difficult which one wishes to accomplish. a good example of a challenge might be solving a rubiks cube or running an eight minute mile; and there are indeed many "video games" that use challenges as a means to provide the necessary compelling element to make them entertaining. For example Angry birds or bejewled. although we refer to these as video games, a game by definition requires competition between two or more parties, an element which these "games" lack. As such they would more accurately be described as video puzzles and indeed the vast majority of them are non violent.

In comparison true Video games as stated previously employ competition or conflict between multiple parties as the principle device through which they provide compelling entertainment; and the reality is that in most cases the easiest (and from a narrative perspective most likely) way to express this notion of conflict if through violence. And if you look at other non video games that people play you will see that the same is true. Many sports such as rugby, American Football, and water polo are extremely violent and many board games such as chess and checkers involve the symbolic representation of violence.

When you really look at it video games are no different than most other games that we play or indeed most other forms of entertainment that we indulge in in regards to their use of violence to provide entertainment. although one could I suppose argue that video games in some ways offer a higher level of viscerality and interaction than some of the above examples that is as best simply a difference in degree but not in fundamental nature.
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Thanks. That helps.
 
aviat72 said:
I will keep on looking for other games which may be of interest to me.That Tropico series looked interesting. Are there some battlefield sim games? I am talking more about strategy and tactics (war-gaming) then actually playing solider and pulling the trigger.

Thanks. That helps.
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You probably will not find any non-violent battlefield type games. Any first person shooter is quite obviously violent, but the real time strategy games are often just as bad or worse (exaggerated blood and violence so you can see it from a birds-eye perspective)

Games like Company of Heroes are from a top down perspective, but you are still ordering tanks around to crush and shoot at soldiers... The Age of...(Empires, Mythology, etc) games are more fantasy than realism, but they all have blood. Red Alert and Command and Conquer games are also sci-fi/fantasy, but have a decent amount of violence and content that is questionable for younger children. One game that might be ok is Age of Empires Online. It's a cartoon version of an RTS, but check it out first, because it still involves killing people.

Really, if you want to avoid violence, you might have to stick to Peggle, kid oriented games, and possibly Sim City type games. They just don't make FPS/RTS games that aren't violent or have people dying.
 
aviat72 said:
Thanks for all the responses. I have a 6yr and a 2yr old, and want to be careful about what they end up viewing, even by accident. Our society has enough violence of it own; that is one reason we rarely if ever watch live TV; it is mostly on demand without ads.

I want my children to have a more nuanced introduction to the less pleasant aspects of human life. We had a workplace related shoot out the day Steve Jobs died and his school was in lock-down since the shooter was at large. While I have tried to mitigate what happened (some bad guy, and the police got him) but he has figured out that there were guns involved and some people died.

For the time-being my 6 yr old is going to be earning reward points (up to 10 a day) which will accumulate during the week, allowing him to spend that many minutes on my work-desk and play a driving game over the weekend.

So up to an hour of video game play is going to be his reward.

I have noticed though that most of the TV shows also have online games which he can play; well can't control them all but they at least are relatively age appropriate.

I will keep on looking for other games which may be of interest to me.That Tropico series looked interesting. Are there some battlefield sim games? I am talking more about strategy and tactics (war-gaming) then actually playing solider and pulling the trigger.



Thanks. That helps.
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Whats an excellent friendly worldbuilding RTS game is Settlers

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_4_4__12&term=settlers

Me and my Wife just started playing the Free Online Settlers. They recently changed the named and relaunched it in November.

http://www.castleempireonline.com/en

I just recently started but my wife has been playing for years and I've yet to see any violence.

You should maybe avoid tropico. It's cute on the outside but themes are pretty dark. I started playing recently and at the beginning you choose your dictator. Obviously the kid that I am I immediately ran to go look all the dictators up on wikipedia. I think only one of the 30 or is fake the rest are some pretty evil folks. All of the things in the game discussed are mature material. I don't means vulgarity just not things I would not discuss with kids. I think you have the option to be a good guy if you want but I havent gotten that far.
 
cannondale06 said:
you like physx games? lol, what? and Metro2033 has almost no hardware physx effects at all so you might not like it. :p

and I would certainly finish the first Portal before getting the second game.
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Yeah, yeah, I know :rolleyes:I have Batman AA and AC and Mafia 2 and like the effects ... /shrug. I'll play metro either way, it's not why I bought it (the $5 price tag is). It's just nice when it's there but if it's crap in a particular game I'll turn it off for better FR.

Portal was kind of tedious and the P2 ads have had a certain cutesy flavor to them that don't interest me. I did not even re-download Portal when I built a new system last year. I just keep seeing such high praise for the game.
 
Tuf said:
Yeah, yeah, I know :rolleyes:I have Batman AA and AC and Mafia 2 and like the effects ... /shrug. I'll play metro either way, it's not why I bought it (the $5 price tag is). It's just nice when it's there but if it's crap in a particular game I'll turn it off for better FR.

Portal was kind of tedious and the P2 ads have had a certain cutesy flavor to them that don't interest me. I did not even re-download Portal when I built a new system last year. I just keep seeing such high praise for the game.
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Dont let the ads change your opinion about Portal 2. The game is great. The co-op involves those robots and they are actually real cool for robot NPC. With it being on sale, it almost seems a no brainer.
 
WarriorX said:
Dont let the ads change your opinion about Portal 2. The game is great. The co-op involves those robots and they are actually real cool for robot NPC. With it being on sale, it almost seems a no brainer.
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well if he cant even force himself to finish the first game then I doubt the second game will be much better for him.
 
Agreed. Portal 2 is truly one of the most accomplished games of the year for the PC. The production values, acting, humor, are really standard-setting.

A nice new feature in Steam is that now one can hold on to the gift to deliver at a later date.
 
SubtleOne said:
Agreed. Portal 2 is truly one of the most accomplished games of the year for the PC. The production values, acting, humor, are really standard-setting.

A nice new feature in Steam is that now one can hold on to the gift to deliver at a later date.
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I bought it today but I feel like I will be missing out on the full game since single player is all I will play.

btw, 1.296 for just 4.2 seems WAY to high. my chip is not even a great overclocker but only needs 1.23 for 4.2. ;)
 
The only two deals I want are RE5 for $5 and Assasins Creed games for cheap.

I'm so tired of RE5 always selling for $10 during these big sales.
 
AmberClad said:
Take a look at the screenshot that OP posted -- at the top of the Steam store, if you click "The Great Gift Pile" link, it shows you some info about how you can win free stuff for getting achievements in certain games, and it also tells you that it just gave you a coupon for 33% off any Valve game, which you can find in your Steam inventory (the thing where your TF2 hats and junk are stored, but a different tab).
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Only good after Jan 2nd. Also my brother got a 50% off one.
 
so.. i finished a Santa's Challenge but i dont have a gift. not even coal. are they given out immediately? or the next day or something?
 
illli said:
so.. i finished a Santa's Challenge but i dont have a gift. not even coal. are they given out immediately? or the next day or something?
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same here, I've got 3 coal but no gift....

Bit on Fable: TLC for $2.49
 
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illli said:
so.. i finished a Santa's Challenge but i dont have a gift. not even coal. are they given out immediately? or the next day or something?
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I didn't finish it, but I did the first thing (just check my inventory...) ended up with Risen, and a 50% off valve coupon...I'm not too sure about Risen... If anyone is interested, and wants to trade for anything else, shoot me a pm.,.
 
Okay end of first day, LOL; Metro 2033, Orcs Must Die and DLC and Portal 2
 
Negative Decibel said:
I didn't finish it, but I did the first thing (just check my inventory...) ended up with Risen, and a 50% off valve coupon...I'm not too sure about Risen... If anyone is interested, and wants to trade for anything else, shoot me a pm.,.
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Your lucky

I got a 25% off coupon, didnt get any other gift after for checking, rediculous!
 
I got 30% off a valve game. How do you use/apply it? I'm not seeing a coupon code or link to click to use it.
 
Igthorn said:
Fix for missing inventory items. i.e. if you only have 1 item after completing the first achievement when you're supposed to have 2.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2305280

Spiral Knight fix worked for me and it's the smallest download. Got my second item after the spiral knights tab showed up.
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Awesome, thanks for the link, worked just as advertised (used TF2 to do it). Two lumps of coal received though :mad:.
 
These gifts for me are a waste, 50% of of all Valve games sorry, already have all these I want. The Witcher ultimate edition sorry already have it and so do all my gaming friends. So Steam's generosity = 0.
 
Hard Reset is up for $9.99. I'm trying to decide if it's likely that will be one of the daily deal games for ~$5 at some point or if I should just pick it up now.
 
Cajunheat said:
These gifts for me are a waste, 50% of of all Valve games sorry, already have all these I want. The Witcher ultimate edition sorry already have it and so do all my gaming friends. So Steam's generosity = 0.
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Apparently people will bitch about everything. :rolleyes: I got Portal 2 and a discount on Shadowgrounds. I own both, but I'm not whining about it.
 
Cajunheat said:
These gifts for me are a waste, 50% of of all Valve games sorry, already have all these I want. The Witcher ultimate edition sorry already have it and so do all my gaming friends. So Steam's generosity = 0.
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You sound like a spoiled little brat.
 
IceDigger said:
You sound like a spoiled little brat.
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Seriously, I can't imagine someone doing that in real life (telling off a friend who gave you a present consisting of something you already owned -- at worst, you'd just tell them "thanks for the thought"). They could have just as easily done a boring old sale, then people wouldn't have anything to complain about.
 
AmberClad said:
Seriously, I can't imagine someone doing that in real life (telling off a friend who gave you a present consisting of something you already owned -- at worst, you'd just tell them "thanks for the thought"). They could have just as easily done a boring old sale, then people wouldn't have anything to complain about.
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No they would just bitch about the sales "sucking" because god forbid Valve didn't tailor the sales to their interests.
 
Btw, I just took a closer look at Just Cause 2.

Overlooked it at first because I remember JC1 being mediocre, but this one sounds like it's actually pretty good? Lot of my friends own it at least. Looks kind of similar to Far Cry 1. Hmm...

And why does Steam have Fable 1 and 3, but not 2?
 
AmberClad said:
Btw, I just took a closer look at Just Cause 2.

Overlooked it at first because I remember JC1 being mediocre, but this one sounds like it's actually pretty good? Lot of my friends own it at least. Looks kind of similar to Far Cry 1. Hmm...

And why does Steam have Fable 1 and 3, but not 2?
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JC2 is really fun. The story sucks and the voice acting is beyond bad (pretty sure its intentional), but it is a lot of fun. It's better than the first game in every possible way. There is a good mod community for it too.

Fable 2 was never released on the PC.
 
Well I got these:
Max Payne Bundle
Metro 2033
Just Cause
Just Cause 2 + DLC

I guess it could be worse...5 games for 1/3 of the money I spent to be able to play Skyrim on day one. </end shameless rationalizing>

Skipped on the Fable games - Fable III's base price will come down in time, and I played the Fable 1 demo a long time ago and wasn't really drawn in.
 
AmberClad said:
Awesome, thanks for the link, worked just as advertised (used TF2 to do it). Two lumps of coal received though :mad:.
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The lumps of coal are actually the better gift tho right? They can be combined together to pick out a game you want or used as entry to the grand prize?
 
aviat72 said:
Thanks for all the responses. I have a 6yr and a 2yr old, and want to be careful about what they end up viewing, even by accident. Our society has enough violence of it own; that is one reason we rarely if ever watch live TV; it is mostly on demand without ads.

I want my children to have a more nuanced introduction to the less pleasant aspects of human life. We had a workplace related shoot out the day Steve Jobs died and his school was in lock-down since the shooter was at large. While I have tried to mitigate what happened (some bad guy, and the police got him) but he has figured out that there were guns involved and some people died.

For the time-being my 6 yr old is going to be earning reward points (up to 10 a day) which will accumulate during the week, allowing him to spend that many minutes on my work-desk and play a driving game over the weekend.

So up to an hour of video game play is going to be his reward.

I have noticed though that most of the TV shows also have online games which he can play; well can't control them all but they at least are relatively age appropriate.

I will keep on looking for other games which may be of interest to me.That Tropico series looked interesting. Are there some battlefield sim games? I am talking more about strategy and tactics (war-gaming) then actually playing solider and pulling the trigger.



Thanks. That helps.
Click to expand...


Take a look at the Civilization games -- those were some of the first games I played (plus flight simulator 95), and I loved them. Strategy, technology, history, all rolled up into one addictive package. Because of Civ I at least knew of many of the major sites/cities of the world before many of my friends and, in my case, that has developed into a facsination with history.
 
Cajunheat said:
These gifts for me are a waste, 50% of of all Valve games sorry, already have all these I want. The Witcher ultimate edition sorry already have it and so do all my gaming friends. So Steam's generosity = 0.
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LOL well he's actually right in a way...I was thinking the same thing. Valve has actually only developed a few games over the last 10 years. HL2 games, Portal 1/2, L4D1/2, TF2, CS:S..and these are always on sale during the Steam sales anyway-far cheaper than 50% savings.
 
Is there a place where people are trading discounts? I have one that is game specific. Since they go into effect Jan 2, I guess there's no rush.
 
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