You can get Tales of Monkey Island for "free" (e-mail address) today: http://www.telltalegames.com/playlikeapirate 

I'm pretty sure Grim Fandango isn't on steam...
whatever, I'll figure it out. 

a flash platformer with a cool art style, and some quality learn-by-dying gameplay:

http://www.dampgnat.com/icycle

(it is finishable, i finished it) 

I've been wasting time with this:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/511754 

Getting a 403? 

seems to be getting slashdotted/metafiltered/something last few days. I couldn't get in on two days ago, but yesterday it worked. Might have to come back later. 

I didn't big that link up enough:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/511754

It's a shift style game but much better with a decent story, artwork and sound. Gameplay is the fairly standard puzzle / platformer, but hits the spot for the frustration to I'll just finish this level balence.

The user made levels are surprisingly good as well. 

have there been any good action rpg games lately? something played from third person and not a diablo click-fest? sp, ofc. 

Fallout3 maybe?

Risen is coming out next week (that's from the guys who made the Gothic games), wonder how that will turn out. 

Seriously, Fallout 3. Best RPG to come out in years. 

pirates of the caribbean(by bethesda), is very good rpg game, 

i wasn't very impressed with fallout 3. i just really hate the oblivion engine but i knew what i was getting into when i got it-- i just really wanted it for the post-ap theme.

i'll keep an eye out for risen, but i don't know if i'll be able to find pirates of the caribbean. 

I really liked Mass Effect. It had this cool 80s dark sci fi vibe. The music was bad ass. The story is also pretty good, and promises to weave a fairly complex tale when the 2nd and 3rd ones come out. 

was indeed very good! I would recommend it in a heartbeat if you have enjoyed any of Bioware's other games.

I still recommend Mount & Blade to anyone with a pulse, it might not be a fully fledged rpg, but its close enough, and the battles are just epic =) 

i've played ME, and yeah, it was quite good. :)

i see mount and blade has a trial version, so i'll take a look :) 

played a bit of mount and blade. it's ok, i guess, although i tend to like to play magic characters, it's still nice to see a game with no magic at all.

my beef with the game is that it's generic, but that's to be expected with a sandbox game. it's also pretty hard. that or i'm doing it wrong.

i took a quest to train up some dudes in a village. unfortunately, all the villagers i trained got killed in the ensuing battle and the village was sacked.
after that, i ran into a roaming group of dudes who kicked my ass and took me prisoner.
so after loosing my horse and some of my stuff, i did some crappy courier quests for a bit of dough and picked up a fast horse and a spear which seems to work a lot better than the axe i started with. it's still pretty hard to connect with enemies though. 

it is quite hard to start out in the game, the best advice I could give it put 2 or 3 points into leadership on your main character as fast as you can, so that you can get an average size army together, even if it is composed of villagers with butter-knives!

Once you have the numbers, the packs of bandits and deserters will stop attacking you, and will actually start running from you on the world map, this allows you to pick your battles and give you the edge.

Also, its worth finding some hero characters pretty quick. Check taverns in all the major cities, these characters level up like your character does, and you can equip them and assign skill points in the same way also.

You will want to find a good doctor hero, with points in the 3 "healing" skills. Another nice hero to find (or sculpt an existing hero to fit) is a trainer, if you have a hero with the training skill (higher is better!) then they will train anyone in your army and they will gain experience every day even if you don't engage in combat. 

is my favourite part of Mount&Blade! At the weekend I had to defend my castle against 800 Nord scumbags, with only 179 defenders.

It was a shooting gallery, my 85 max level Rhodok Sharpshooters took out most of the nords before they got to the top of the ladders, and then my Spearmen impaled anyone that dared reach the top =)

There was a brief period of panic when a Nord Lord appeared at the top of the wall in full plate and managed to carve a small hole through the spearmen defending it, thereby letting a small stream of Nord troops into the castle. They proceeded to take names from a fair few of my sharpshooters before my spearmen cleared them up.

At the end of the day, a raiding party of 8 Nord Lords was sent packing, and I kept my shiny castle for another day! 

yeah, i got the hang of it a little more. after i got about 20 guys with me i was pretty much left alone except for sea pirates everywhere on the coast areas.

i just dont think the game is for me though. the more guys i get, the less the battles are about me. eventually, i'd just let my guys attack and run around on my horse charging larger packs of enemies going after my guys to break them up a bit.

also, speaking of heroes, i picked up a doctor type and to my annoyance, i couldn't tell her to stay out of fights, so she'd end up knocked out after almost all the fights. :P if a party member is going to be a stat bag, give me the option to leave it on the side. :P 

Mount and Gayde looks kinda interesting from the trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTUVfmE2ViQ , might have to trial the trial. 

But I love it, its just *fun* to play.

The great thing about the trial is that its the full game, the only restriction is that you can only play until your character gets to level 8, then if you decide the buy the game you can just enter the key and keep playing with the same character. 

you must play http://www.knyttlevels.com/levels/UncleSporky%20-%20Don%27t%20Eat%20the%20Mushroom.knytt.bin 

 

If you enjoyed the Gothic games, it's more of the same (without any of the bugs of Gothic3, haven't had a single crash or stupid gameplay bug yet).
Oldschool combat and gameplay that isn't for everyone I guess, but great exploration, and very beautiful in it's own way. The characters are kind of bland, but the weather effects, day cycle, and general atmosphere feel really nice.
I recommend. 

Just finished Wolfenstein, and well, I think the best part was seeing Lunaran's name in the credits. Plus some other names of people I've heard about. The game itself wasn't disappointing, because I sort of expected it not to be really good, and it met my expectations. I would probably recommend FEAR 2 over this, if you had to choose a decent-but-not-amazing supernatural CoD clone.