Massive Steam Christmas Sale

[Darksider]

is IL-2: 1946 any good? I remember playing an older game in the series, but I haven't tried the newer ones.

[Vympel]

It's virtually the same game. Well worth the price.

[Darksider]

It's virtually the same game. Well worth the price.

Well the add says it's five games in one, and Five WWII flight sims for 4.99 sounds like a good deal, so i'll pick it up.

[Edward Yee]

You can mod Steam versions of games.

How extensive does this allow for, beyond just the games with mod support already built into Steam, or games that I were in the process of transferring or trying to have patched? For example, trying to use ACE2 with the notorious ArmA 2 while trying to keep them both up to date. Waiting til the latter gets a price drop again... shoulda just bought when it was $24.99...

You get the full game on your account. It acts as a sort of DRM, albeit non-intrusive: Your account can only be logged in one place at once, so it makes it difficult to run more than one copy of the same game at the same time.

Any particular ways to circumvent this without violating the Steam rules or VAC?

[Ace Pace]

Any particular ways to circumvent this without violating the Steam rules or VAC?

My steam runs in "Offline mode", This does not give me access to patches,friends list or the Steam Browser (though Online play works). This has let me run multiple computers with the same account at the same time.

[TC Pilot]

Empire: Total War's on sale for $25. Is it still a buggy mess, or is it worth getting?

[Commander 598]

You can mod Steam versions of games.

How extensive does this allow for, beyond just the games with mod support already built into Steam, or games that I were in the process of transferring or trying to have patched? For example, trying to use ACE2 with the notorious ArmA 2 while trying to keep them both up to date.

Turn off automatic updates?

[Uraniun235]

Company of Heroes for Steam is pretty much just Steam over Company of Hero's intrusive DRM. As one of the first third party games they made some serious missteps so for example every time patch day hits you can't play the game because they won't let Steam run the patch services. This is not true of their standalone add ons and their later games.

How intrusive are we talking?

Turn off automatic updates?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can tell Steam not to automatically update specific games.

[Mr Bean]

Company of Heroes for Steam is pretty much just Steam over Company of Hero's intrusive DRM. As one of the first third party games they made some serious missteps so for example every time patch day hits you can't play the game because they won't let Steam run the patch services. This is not true of their standalone add ons and their later games.

How intrusive are we talking?

You must log onto Company of Heroes own service to run Company of Heroes. If it's down you can't play the game, and it goes down every time they patch the game because only they hold the patch servers and don't let Steam host any. Also sometimes it goes down because they feel like it, or it's raining. However as I said, Company of Heroes suffers from the same issue.

Here's a Steam rule of thumb
If it suffers from intrusive DRM if you buy it from the store, Steam copies will suffer the same issue
If it has moderate to no DRM, Steam will handle everything
Most games that offer mod support work with the Steam versions fine. Steam Unreal and retail Unreal are identical in file structure, once you get pass /steamapps/game it is installed the same was as off a CD.

[Commander 598]

Turn off automatic updates?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can tell Steam not to automatically update specific games.

Spoiler

You have no idea just how many people are unaware of this "feature" in both Steam and Windows.

[Edward Yee]

My steam runs in "Offline mode", This does not give me access to patches,friends list or the Steam Browser (though Online play works). This has let me run multiple computers with the same account at the same time.

Ahh, awesome. So only one "instance" of the client-and-account can be in online mode at the same time, but all instances of the client with the same account can be active at once and even play online at once?

As for the automatic updates thing... yeah, I wasn't aware.

By the way... which is better between Silent Hunter III or IV (Wolves of the Pacific), or should I just get the 3-pack (both + U-Boat Missions for WotP)? I'm mainly sticking to their simulations section.

[Commander 598]

I would get the 3-pack. There's some divide about whether SH3's hand held easily exhausted crewmen and hard to sink ships are better or not than SH4's better graphics as that's basically the only real difference I saw. Well, that and 3 is set in the Atlantic/Mediterranean while 4 is set in the Pacific. Also as far as I can tell 4 has more mods while 3 has like two big ones.

[Sea Skimmer]

You can easily download mods to change the ease of ship sinking in both games anyway. The Natural Sinking Mechanics mod for SH4 is pretty cool, it simulates a series of watertight compartments on each ship, so you have to actually score hits along the length of a ship to sink it rather then sinking being purely hit point based. This does make the game a bit harder, but also much more satisfying vs. three or four water splashes at the exact same point sinking something.

The overall gameplay is really the same thing in every Silent Hunter game.

If you get SH4 you should get it with the U-Boat Missions pack, because a fair number of mods for SH4 will only work with the pack installed.

[Thanas]

Yeah, that is true. Too bad that the U-boat missions pack pretty much ruined the game for me.

[adam_grif]

I'm here to sing praises about Company of Heroes. Freakin' lurve that game.

[Gramzamber]

The steam sale appears to be working too well at the moment, I have one game downloading at a pathetic 100kb/s and get "server too busy" messages if I try any more.

[Samuel]

The steam sale appears to be working too well at the moment, I have one game downloading at a pathetic 100kb/s and get "server too busy" messages if I try any more.

Same with me-Universe at War is still downloading and I started yesterday.

[adam_grif]

I caved and bought Dead Space for 10 bucks. Great game.

[Stark]

Same with me-Universe at War is still downloading and I started yesterday.

Shit... you're in for an unpleasant surprise. But it's the time of year for surprises!

[weemadando]

I picked it up when it was on sale last time and was amazed at how shoddy and broken it was. If only Steam allowed you to "re-gift" a license to someone else.

[Edward Yee]

Any word on whether the 360 version suffers from the same issues?

Also... any benefit to getting ArmA: Combat Operations if I already have the ArmA Gold retail box, other than being able to reinstall without a physical disc and CD key?

Most likely going for ArmA 2 to be discounted again... hopefully before ArmA 3 is announced! Hehe... I really should have taken the leap and bought it at $24.99, bugs and all... it's now my Moby Dick, the way Brock Lesnar is Frank Mir's.

My first-ever Steam buy: The Complete Naval Combat Pack (post-Cold War surface warfare and submarine command sims? Yeah), the Silent Hunter Connection, and Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood (what happens when the LEGO series' "cutesy" meets bloody over-the-shoulder third-person shooter, minus the LEGO).

[Mr Bean]

And I don't know if people are noticing this but the Holiday sale is on pretty much every game and lasts until the third. Each five or six of the already on sale games are getting marked down even more. Torchlight for example was on sale for 9.99$ but went on sale yesterday for 24 hours only for 4.99$ Deadspace is in the same boat, 19.99$ all week but 10.19$ today.

In essence, hold fire if there's a game you want to pick up. If you don't see it hit the daily double discount group then by all means buy up everything on the Jan 2nd.

[weemadando]

Yup. I got burned 5 on Killing Floor which is 4.99 today.

[Sea Skimmer]

Most likely going for ArmA 2 to be discounted again... hopefully before ArmA 3 is announced! Hehe... I really should have taken the leap and bought it at $24.99, bugs and all... it's now my Moby Dick, the way Brock Lesnar is Frank Mir's.

Arma 2 is really not buggy anymore, and half the (hundreds of) bugs stemmed from people trying to play it with computers that cooked under the graphics load. I never saw anything like 99% of the bugs people were reporting. An expansion called Operation Arrowhead was announced like 1 month after the game released. It will work standalone, but also be able to integrate with Arma 2 content directly. Plus the shear number of additional units and weapons and game modes people have already added basically amount to a squeal in content. It’s absurdly more stuff then Infinity ward saw fit to add into MW2 that’s for sure.