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Transformice got linked on Kotaku.

Transformice is down.

Tried it before it died tho and seemed pretty fun/crazy/troll'd 

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/4587/ 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/06/24/laser-death-cat-punishes-team-fortress-2-grinders/ 

.. either the map author is a Doom3 fan, or it is czg :P 

EXTRA COPIES ARE NOT GIVEN IN MOST CASES. ONLY TITLES PURCHASED IN SPECIAL PROMOTIONS AS OUTLINED BELOW ARE ELIGIBLE FOR GIFTABLE EXTRA COPIES.

Sorry for asking Steam. It seems I am only a lowly customer, and the big DLC load that you feel necessary to deposit in my anus is what befits my status.

Does anyone else here prefer Impulse?
Or basically another other downloadable platform.

Since when has treating your customers like shit been a marketing strategy.

Sorry for posting this here. But getting onto the steam support forum shite is incredibly complicated. For good reason it seems.

I just had to vent. 

It was a beautiful dream,
But now they've gone all Microsoft on me. 

What did you buy a pack thinking you could gift the games you already had to other people? Apparently only Valve games do that, cause other publishers refuse.

I <3 Steam, so much good cheap games on it these days. 

Yeah, Valve can't control what limitations other publishers put on their games. They can only do what they're allowed to do. 

They do. Either way it's not a big deal, just irritating. 

In any case I'm buying licenses. What happened to the additional ones?

If I'd bought the games in physical form then I'd expect to have the additional copies in hand.

'Sorry sir but I can see from the sales history that you've already bought this game, so I can't give you this extra copy - company policy'.

Reading the terms and conditions its down to Steam - they can, but don't want to apart from for Valve games.

Maybe I'm being naive. 

I quite agree that there should at least be a clearer warning when buying duplicates, that you aren't getting any extra copies.

It's unfortunate they don't do it for all games, but to be honest, I'm not really surprised. Games are cheap enough on Steam already in my opinion, you can pretty much always wait a few months and get games at 50% off and stuff (except for a few specific publishers *cough*activision*cough*). 

I paid $50 for 19 games. I can't really complain too much. 

Companies are behaving like dicks. It needs to stop.

It wouldn't hurt if they were reigned in just a bit. Not fully socialized, but reigned in a bit. Meaning, slightly more rights for the consumer, and a couple slaps on the wrist of companies.

It's coming though. Slowly, but it is coming.

Let's start by giving every consumer the right to make up to 5 copies of something he bought, for personal, noncommercial use. Customers must also naturally have the right to resell their DVDs or whatever. This should naturally also go for electronic media, ie games on Steam. This must be enforced politically.

Finally, copy protection has to go; it is ridiculous that I can't legally watch a DVD on Linux, even after I paid for it. It is unjustified if something I bought is still somehow controlled by someone else. That is against the idea of the free market.

Naturally, it must be legally ensured that I am the sole owner of a DVD I bought. Not the copyright, but the right to do with this DVD what I want, ie sell it, make a normal amount of copies for personal uses, install those on my own computers etc.

We need to go back to a reasonable, relaxed, normal look at these things. And if someone thinks I'm a socialist or whatever, I beg your pardon, it is the companies who are acting like commies by taking away my freedom.

Monopolies are evil, mmkay. Trying to establish control over something that you have just *sold* is crazy.

In effect, they'd like you to give them money, but not get any say in what you do with the product you just bought. 

so it's half a year later and i haven't played dragon age yet.

can anyone who has chime in now that the dust has settled? is it worth playing and how does it hold up to other rpgs like neverwinter nights? 

I really couldn't get into it. I played a few hours, but there was just too much boring bla-bla, I didn't care for the characters at all, and the combat was uninteresting.
Lots of people love it though, so who knows. I much prefererd Mass Effect 2 myself. 

ME2 completely failed to make me want to play it and when dragon age finally came out, i had lost interest in it. :P

still, i've been replaying nwn1 and now on nwn2. i'm just in a fantasy mood lately, for some reason. :)

i remember reading one review of dragon age that was positively gushing all over the place. i think some of the spittle got on my keyboard. the author went so far as to say it was a modern day baldur's gate. nearly all the reviews i've read have been like this, so either this game is insanely good beyond realistic expectancies or everyone's a fanboy/girl. :P 

It might be for you then, cause I never really liked Baldur's Gate either. :) 

well, thanks anyway. :) 

Just when I didn't have enough DRM. Now I remember why I didn't buy DOW2 when it came out. 

Loved both ME2 (beat it in a weekend basically) and Dragon Age, but yeah the combat in Dragon Age got stale and repetitive really quickly. ME2 had the bonus of being a shooter as well as rpg, but it took me about 2x as long to beat Dragon Age as it did to beat ME2. Enjoyed both of them quite a bit, but both were pretty different from each other. 

Except I have not completed Dragon Age yet, where-as ive beaten mass effect twice and am on my 3rd play through atm! ME2 just suits my tastes better than DA, but Dragon age certainly has its epic moments.

I'm really looking forwards to bioware's MMO :o 

(I played the xbox version but since people have already talked about it in here, posting here.)

So I just finished Dead Space. Game clock time: about 11.5 hours (I don't think this includes the times where I died.) It's a pretty cool game overall, with solid core mechanics, and while it's certainly full of horror and sci-fi game cliches as Lunaran complained previously, I think the good execution (and the fact that it's actually fun) makes up for that.

Pros:

* Suspense is good, the tensest rooms/hallways were the ones where nothing actually happens because there's always a sense that something could happen. They set up early on for example, that a certain type of ventilation panel is often a place where monsters bust through. And then they put these panels in practically every room, so you are always nervous around them. I don't think i was ever really "shocked" by an attack, but since the NPCs are dangerous I was certainly nervous about being attacked.

* Combat works well, it's survival horror so you don't have a lot of ammo, the enemies are generally pretty lethal, and the damage system gives you something tactical to do while you're shooting at enemies -- since limbs (and occasionally other body parts) are the vulnerable bits, you spend your time trying to take careful, effective shots rather than just unloading into the guy's chest. Kind of like going for a headshot in most games, but with more variety. And the limbs are always moving in weird ways. Enemies that lose limbs keep coming but with alternate animations.

* Flashlight on gun, so you can actually see what you're shooting (and can't see when you're reloading, for extra tension)

* No on-screen UI; all UI was integrated into the world (ammo count on gun, player health displayed on character's suit, etc.)

* Zero-g gameplay is cool, you can't fly, so instead you leap from walkable surface to walkable surface (your magnetic boots grab on when you land) The maze-like layouts they create for some of these areas is pretty cool. And nice and disorienting.

* "Stasis" and "telekinesis" powers were used well, they build some nice puzzles and environmental obstacles around them, plus they are integrated into combat well.

* Boss fights were well-built and challenging, but not frustrating (there were only like 2 or 3, but they worked.)

* Enemy design was good, they're all pretty different in terms of appearance and function. And some of them are pretty creepy.

* Great environment art execution, really does a good job of creating the standard scifi/horror setting with a high level of detail and polish (mostly.)

* Sound/music was pretty cinematic and effective.

Cons:

* Too many NPCs sending me on constant small errands. I'd like fewer objectives that take longer to complete. Later in the game it gets better, though.

* A couple of annoying sections where you have to shoot asteroids and other stuff using a giant space canon. Not really bad, but didn't feel like it fit into the game that well, and it wasn't easy. I think if you put something that different into a game, you should make it sort of easy since it doesn't use the standard game skillset.

* Store mechanic where you buy ammo/health at specific kiosks throughout the game -- while it works as a game mechanic, it doesn't really fit the fiction of "i'm the last one alive in a disaster area." But it did serve the goal of giving the player a chance to get what resources they need.

* The storyline didn't really connect with me; they had plenty of twists and revelations, but for some reason i didn't get into the main emotional hook of the game, which was supposed to be the main character trying to locate his girlfriend among the few survivors of the ship.

* Weapons -- there were only a few weapons that really felt good, most of the others felt kind of weak. Of course it's survival horror, but in fact the plasma cutter (the starting pistol) was one of the good weapons because you could tell how to be effective with it. It was the "bigger" weapons like the pulse rifle which just felt ineffective and useless. Probably due to player expectations about how devastating those weapons should be.

* Text logs and some other UI was pretty much unreadable on my SDTV. I guess developers just assume that all xbox owners have an HDTV? Humbug! 

just got this game, started to play on my shitty tiny 10 year old tv. just got into it and i'm liking it a lot so far, but yeah, i have to get REALLY close to the screen to read anything. 

Project Offset has been canceled.

http://kotaku.com/5577979/intels-project-offset-game-cancelled

Now we'll never get to play with its editor.