I thought we might like to have a Steam offers catch-all thread, and maybe even any general discussion about the service.

Like many of us here I have been using Steam since it first appeared with Half Life 2. Initially it seemed pointless and intrusive, but we put up with it because, well, we needed to play CS:S and HL2. Over the years I have found myself buying more and more from Steam and now I pretty much exclusively buy my games there. In fact Valve have so got their model sorted that I would pay a few dollars more for the ease of having it in my Steam collection rather than the hassle of hard copy install.

This is not really necessary though since these days if you wait around for offers you can end up owning more than you can ever play. I have Batman, Far Cry 2, Bioshock 2, Borderlands, Torchlight and much more just half played or not played at all. All of these have been purchased at a reduced rate.

Anyway rather than waffle on further the reason I started this thread is to point out

---> Left 4 Dead 2 is on half price offer until Thursday!!!

Left 4 Dead was my game of 2008 but I had enough other stuff to play and was a bit pissed off that they released 2 so quickly afterwards that I didn't buy it at full price. Now I am immediately picking it up. Sadly for you hardened players you can expect a wave of n00bs to arrive due to this deal.

That is all, feel free to add any good Steam offers as and when they appear to this thread and also to discuss the Steam service in general.

So long since I used Steam (about 2 years) as I don't have a gaming PC anymore, only my crappy laptop thus limiting me to console games.

My favourite games however were Counter Strike Source, Red Orchestra and the the incredible Garry's mod 10. If you have never played gmod then look at vids on youtube and get it, endless amounts of stuff you can build if you have the imagination and know-how. The best thing I ever managed to make was a flying car with a cannon and a bomb hatch. Damn I miss that game

The L4D2 four-pack is 50% off too, 4 copies for $75

I usually post most offers, nice to have a thread now

this thread became unused but there still might be some games that ppl want to buy

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/75...y-sale-665356/

Ah yes thanks for that, that holiday sale was a cunning plan by Valve to get us all into the habit of buying more games than we can possibly ever have time to play.

haha thats exactly what i did, have 8 or 9 games that i haven't touched yet

My steam games list sits at like 160+ games, probably 60% I've never played.

Any 3 others want to get Left 4 Dead 2 to play?

Just bought my brother L4D2 on steam and he's loving it. Anyone looking to play you can add me as KidKorrupt

i just bought assassins creed II. didnt play assassins creed I. i'll let you guys know if it's worth the $60

www.bgmod.com

FREE revolutionary war mod for HL2. One of my favorite games ever!

I bought it on Black Friday and have progressed to being decent at multiplayer in the limited time I have to play.

I'm Brown Trout, so feel free to look me up if I'm online.

For the noobs, a few tips for online multiplayer:

1) Play as a team when playing as a survivor - don't run around by yourself.
2) When playing as a special infected, try to coordinate attacks with your teammates as much as possible.
3) Be prepared to encounter pros who play all day, every day who love to team up and beat the **** out of lesser skilled players. Also, be prepared to have your teammates quit if you are on the weaker team.
4) If you end up on a team with really good players, be prepared to be kicked if they think you are even slightly below pro level. It's ridiculous how unforgiving players are if you make one mistake.

I'm an ok player now, but far from great. Just don't have the time to memorize every map and perfect every skill. I rarely vote to kick players. I'm cool with someone being bad - just always try to work with your teammates.

add me xxxreaperxxx to l4d1

Torchlight is 75% off for the weekend, I already have it from the last time it was super cheap but have failed to play it for any significant amount of time due to having so much else on the go. Initial impressions are good if you like that Diablo 2 style game.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/41500/
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/torchlight

Anyone ever play The Ship on steam? Such a tense, paranoia-inducing game - brilliant though!

I used to be one of those guys who swore they would never use steam, mainly because I like to have the actual feel of the game in my hands, I like having the box and an instruction manual to flip thru rather then a document on my computer.

In the lst 6 months all my purchases have been thru steam or direct to drive because of a few factors. Stores like EBgames have made the transition from 85% PC games and 15% console to 99% console and 1% PC. A lot of the big new games coming out require you to log in to an online account while playing even in single player mode. Factors like that and DRM have made the used PC game market dissapear as most of them are not sellable used, even EB games wont take PC games as trade in's anymore.

That being said the last purchases I made from steam were a few days ago, $19.99 got me Fallout 1, 2 and Fallout tactics and $19.99 got me the X-com pack.

Those are some classic games that will keep me busy for a long time

It's strange how this works, I remember when HL2: episode 1 came out and I preordered a hardcopy and installed it that way. I suppose seeing it just end up in my steam games list exactly the same as if I'd purchased online made me think twice about it and by the time ep2 came out I just purchased it on steam. I suppose that was the orange box though which was the deal of the century.

Speaking of which where the hell is episode 3?

I felt like the Episode games were a pretty big drop off from HL2, with the exception of the final sequence of Episode 2, which was awesome. I'll play Episode 3 if it comes along at some point but it's not something I'm dying for.

Somehow I had missed your post on Episode 2 gumpzilla. Frankly I agree with you, HL2 was such a huge ride with so many sections and incredible attention to detail that the following episodes felt either rushed or all too short - this is despite having taken them years to make. I actually preferred Ep1 to 2, they focused on the polish I expect from a HL game way more than they did in Ep2 which felt slightly rushed. The entire antlion caverns section was the work of some chimps in the level design department although the game did pick up somewhat afterwards.

My real hope is that Gabe has taken time from his third lunches to make sure they were developing HL3 in some form all this time as well. Perhaps a return to form at that point, who knows.

By the way Borderlands is 50% off for the weekend. It's buggy for some people and Gearbox have shown zero interest in fixing the problems and prefer to pump out DLC but overall it's quite a fun game.

Except manuals (and strategy guides) stopped being quality 15 years ago.

I think they stopped beeing produced 15 years ago.

It's been a while since I last saw a decent manual. And boxes don't exist anymore, unless you buy a collectors edition.

+1

They pretty much gave up on manuals with the advent of the CD, IIRC.

Trine is 75% off full price at the moment, $5. I got it on one of the earlier reductions and loved it, nice action platformer with some novel puzzles and good dynamic between the three characters. It looks decent as well.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/35700/

Oh and also there is a new DLC level available to those who already own it!
http://store.steampowered.com/news/3700/