The best videogame sale of the year just started – the annual Steam Powered Christmas Sale. Even Black Friday, that post-Thanksgiving day where bloated Americans, bellies stretched and ripped, pore obsessively through retail shelves and websites devouring with their colored and striped plastic utensils, fails to offer videogame-related deals of this magnitude. And that’s considering all stores. Steam’s just one. It doesn’t have a street address, force limited installations of offered products, or eventually forget about consumer purchases unless slipped a fiver. It’s an exemplary digital distribution service, and now, for a limited time, offers staggering discounts on titles new and old across multiple genres. As a reminder, if you’re not one of the millions of financially strapped individuals, the world’s still drowning in a recession. When this sale ends on January 3, I predict we’ll all be in tears, myself included. Foregoing the luxury of food’s going to be rough…
Others might find staving off the cold, biting winds of consumerism a little more difficult than me. I’ve played many of the most recent released titles before, and I don’t often repurchase games on multiple platforms or pick them up on Steam “just to add them to my list.” I prefer the path not yet traveled. The titles I’m buying I either overlooked years ago, didn’t know about, or didn’t possess the platform on which they appeared (PC). But oh do I still feel that wind nip at my nose, and I think I like it.
Let’s embrace that chill and take a look at 20 of my top picks currently on sale as of Wednesday, December 23.
Braid
$9.99 $2.49
Designer Jonathan Blow’s masterpiece, and my personal favorite title of 2008. For three years, and using his own money, Blow carefully designed, developed, and tweaked Braid to represent his vision, and not some bottom-line pushing publisher’s. He even fought with the Xbox certification department, eventually convincing the otherwise never-compromising group to allow the circumvention of a traditional menu screen upon first play. The end result is a beautiful game impeccably rife with detail – where every object, sound, word, and piece of artwork reflects Blow’s own passionate dedication to quality.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
$19.99 $1.99
(at this price only until Thursday morning)
Americans don’t make games like this. Neither do the Japanese. GSC Game World’s first-person shooter set in the outskirts of Chernobyl, Ukraine features common shooter mechanics, and even a Diablo-style inventory management system, but operates like a beast all its own – often taunting players expecting a traditional experience. Winding corridors and murky terrain littered with powerful enemies rarely yield difficulty-related rewards. “That’s bad game design,” a traditional designer might say. “But that’s not how the environment exists in real life,” GSC might defensively respond. In their strive for realism, the team built S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s world as realistically as possible and populated it with their own creations – both mutant and human.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
$9.99 $4.99
Developed after Shadow of Chernobyl, this prequel distinguishes itself by taking most of what made the original title so unique (the eerie atmosphere, real map design, and a lack of modern-day handholding game design) and placing a slight focus on gunplay and combat. The change shouldn’t startle even the most diehard S.T.A.L.K.E.R. purists, but rather broaden the palatte established by its predecessor.
Action Indie Pack
$24.99-$20.00 = $4.99
Four titles for only five bucks – the Indie Action Pack features two top-down shooters, a penguin-themed arena title, and an old-school first-person tank shooter ripped from unseen cut Tron film. The quality’s spotty, but the price is reasonable. Besides, do you need that Tri-mocha strawberry-flavored heart-stopper EVERY day?
Puzzle Indie Pack
$14.99 – $12.00 = $2.99
Four titles for only $3. Buy the pack and support independent development or live a life of a big publisher-supporting tool.
Witcher Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut
$39.99 $13.59
I’ve written extensively about The Witcher before. Click HERE for more information. Everyone else, it’s a high-quality third-person RPG that capably competes with Bioware’s latest.
Indigo Prophecy (a.k.a. Fahrenheit)
$9.99 $3.39
Excited for Heavy Rain’s imminent release? Give Indigo Prophecy a try. The last-generation graphics might burn your eyes, the absurdity of the third act could send you into a coma, and Theory of a Deadman’s (thankfully) sparse audio contribution will inevitably reduce your IQ by 13 points, but playing as both the killer and detective offers unique storytelling devices only available in this medium, and the presentation’s part comic noir set in a (mostly) day-lit New York hit by a record-setting blizzard. The American version’s censored, but still worth your eight to ten hours.
Painkiller: Black Edition
$9.99 $4.99
The first-person shooter genre used to live by the “shoot first and ask questions never” motto before implementing elements like “plot” and “storytelling.” Once thought lost forever, Painkiller proved games can follow that basic design and still kick a whole lot of hiney. Here, I’ll turn it over to Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation. He can explain Painkiller’s brilliance much more eloquently through video.
Osmos
$9.99 $4.99
Like the Witcher, I previously wrote extensively about Osmos. Click HERE to check out the article. Everyone else, it’s a relaxing puzzle title more than deserving of its full price. Pass it up for the sale price and you’re not someone I’d like.
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 12:13AM 
