Weekly Steam News Update - Sept 15

[CSN NewsBot]

It's the end of the week and I'm bombed with homework. Hooray for the college lifestyle. Also of note, is the latest news update from Valve.

Prepurchase starts in a little over a week for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, one of the most anticipated new releases of the season. The countdown has begun.



The Steam catalogue continues to grow. DEFCON, the new game from the creators of Darwinia and Uplink, is available for pre-purchase immediately. Buy it now and save five dollars off the official release price. Learn more about the game at the official DEFCON website.



Majesco games, Bloodrayne, Bloodrayne 2, and Advent Risingalso appeared on Steam this week and are available for 10% off until September 28. Coming in early October, the critically acclaimed Psychonauts.



The team at Outerlight released a huge update to The Ship earlier this week, including two new maps, a tutorial mode, and a number of game balance changes. If you haven't fired up the game in a while, now would be a good time to check it out again.

So many games coming out, so little hard drive space. Dark Messiah is a given, but I'm also looking forward to Psychonauts and DEFCON. Here's a brief excerpt from IGN's review of DEFCON that I especially enjoyed.

Either way, whatever moment you choose to strike, there's only one result: death, and on a massive scale. When a nuke impacts on a city, there isn't a big, flashy explosion or booming sound effect, just a white blip accompanied by a pop-up box detailing the death toll: '1.6 million dead.' It's a very matter-of-fact approach that, at least to begin with, is very disconcerting. On the one hand players experience a feeling of euphoria when a missile hits its target but, on the other, there's real sense of guilt as Tokyo, London, Los Angeles - wherever - is nuked and millions have died.

How can you not like that?

[entRo]

Defcon looks kinda cool.



Dark Messiah, on the other hand, is really nothing more than a bag of assholes. I havn't gotten motion sick playing a game in a long while, but Dark Messiah brought that feeling rushing back. The controls are sloppy, the movement is sloppy, the character design is bland, everything about it just seems mediocre. Why play Dark Messiah if I can play Oblivion?

[washuplushie]

I'd love to see Steam phase out Fileplanet's Direct2Drive service. I'd much rather support Valve and independant developers than Gamespy and IGN. I hope they really make a go of this. :)

[rolla]

What, no Garry's Mod 10 news?

[Gpig]

I feel no guilt.

appended @ [time="1158374065"]

entRo wrote..

Dark Messiah, on the other hand, is really nothing more than a bag of assholes. I havn't gotten motion sick playing a game in a long while, but Dark Messiah brought that feeling rushing back. The controls are sloppy, the movement is sloppy, the character design is bland, everything about it just seems mediocre. Why play Dark Messiah if I can play Oblivion?

Because Oblivion has shitty combat. I'm not buying Dark Messiah, but I did buy Oblivion from the hype and I played the Dark Messiah demo. Oblivion is good, but it's definitely not the same game as Dark Messiah, Dark Messiah is a first person action game that uses mostly close range weapons along with spells and physics traps. Oblivion is huge with tons of missions but I hear they didn't put in combat until the week before release on a whim and up until then you would type, "attack rat with lightning" and it would say DING and then say, "rat was attacked with lightning successfully". The final combat that was put into the game is arguably a step up from that. Dark Messiah is a linear medieval action game with poor art design while Oblivion is an open ended free roaming RPG with poor art design and terrible writing.



I don't know why you would play either honestly.

appended @ [time="1158374190"]

Oh and Defcon is only 10 bucks if you preorder.

[DarkViper311]

Now, if Defcon actually let you SEE the civilians fleeing in terror and being blown into a fine mist, it may have been worth buying.



Alas, that's only a wet dream.



Much like all of those rizzuh fantasies... *sigh*

[DaRk-AnGeL]

I played the Dark Messiah demo and I have to say that the AI is on a par with games from 5 years ago.....



The combat feels very clunky and random in a bad way and offers very little variety.



Graphically, the game is sound, but gameplay wise there is nothing groundbreakingly new about it.



2.5 out of 5 stars.

[Gpig]

DaRk-AnGeL wrote..

I played the Dark Messiah demo and I have to say that the AI is on a par with games from 5 years ago.....

I agree with the combat/art, but AI from 5 years ago? 5 years ago we had Half-Life with it's AI. We also had Halo which people said had good AI (I wouldn't know, didn't play enoug Halo to tell). Now we have games like FEAR and HL2 where enemies don't really flank and try to flush you out, they just hide and use cover and then move forward. It's fine with me, but I would actually say that AI from 5 years ago was better than it is now.

[entRo]

HL2 AI was shitty and boring, but FEAR had pretty good stuff.

[shivstar]

hurry up cssource economy changes!

[DaRk-AnGeL]

Gpig wrote..

I would actually say that AI from 5 years ago was better than it is now.

I was going to say that, but I can only go so far before my comments get removed by the nice man in the suit :)

[Deletable_Man]

I dare say that 5 years ago the gaming world was less "GRAPHICS GRAPHICS LOOOOOL!!!!1", though I could just be saying that because the graphics were obviously less impressive then as they are now. Hm.

[DevgruSeal H.E]

Probably so..We didn't have the power to get such good graphics 5 years ago..

[InfectedSoul]

I think the point of that, was more 5 years ago graphics werent everything. These days thats all half the games are pushing, the same old shit with just a new pretty look. OH MY MUST HAVE IT!!!

[DevgruSeal H.E]

Games go through phases..80s was blocky squares moving across the screen, 90s was pixelated sprites (some without +lookup; +lookdown), 00s is physics and realistic graphics...