Topic: Help me decide on games!

[idolminds]

One of the users on IGN did a quiz for his 10,000th post. The person that got the most correct answers in first won $50 worth of Steam games. That person was me. Who said my vast game knowledge and expert Google skills wouldn't come in handy some day?

So I'm trying to pick out some games. Theres a few I know I want, but I'm going back and forth between a couple others. If I had a faster connection I might have simply gotten Assassins Creed, but I dread downloading all that. Instead I've decided to get several smaller/cheaper games. So far:

Everyday Shooter $10
Bullet Candy $4
Audiosurf $10

Those are the main games I want. Now for my alternate choices:

Garrys Mod $10: Garrys Mod was pretty cool, not just posing ragdolls but the lua scripting of new gametypes and stuff.
Lumines pack $15: Lumines is pretty cool. But I might be more tempted and likely to play it on PSP.
Darkstar One $10: I read some reviews and it sounds pretty neat. Lighter than the X series, but still spacey.
Xpand Rally $5: Its cheap and racing is fun.
Ghost Master $5: Its cheap and has surprisingly good reviews. Sort of a Dungeon Keeper with ghosts.
Arx Fatalis $10: One big underground dungeon crawl. Sounds great.
Peggle Deluxe $10: Peggle. DELUXE.

Any you would tell me to avoid? Or do you see something else on Steam I should look into?

[Quemaqua]

I can't speak of any you should avoid, but I'll definitely vouch for Ghost Master and Arx Fatalis.  I reviewed the latter for AOG back in the day, and if you like dungeons, you'll love it.  It's another one of those very rare games that takes a typical fantasy setting and does something different with it.  I thoroughly enjoyed the game and would recommend it to pretty much anybody.  The other is an odd game that's oddly compelling.  It's really a bit more of a puzzle game when you get down to it, but it's thoroughly entertaining and really makes you fall in love with its concept.

I would say for sure to avoid Lumines just because it's the most expensive thing on there and you're right, you're probably much more likely to play it on the PSP in all likelihood.  That combined with the cost just makes it seem like a bad idea.

[Xessive]

If you like space sims I'd highly recommend Darkstar One. It's very similar to Freelancer just widely expanded and a lot more options plus an upgradeable (almost evolving) ship!

Audiosurf is not bad, but I wouldn't spend $10 on it. It's kind of a mini-game in itself.

[scottws]

Yeah I thought the Audiosurf demo was a big let down.  I was expecting it to be a lot cooler and more fun than it really was.  Plus it crashed on me in the first two minutes though to be fair I was using a song that is stored on my file server.

Everyday Shooter is decent.  I got it for $8.  I like Geometry Wars/Gridwars a lot more though.

I'm not familiar with any of the others except Arx Fatalis, which I played for about five minutes.  I didn't quit because it was a bad game, but it was during a time when I tried out tons and tons of games all at the same time and this was just one of many that I touched but didn't stick to.

[MysterD]

Arx Fatalis is underrated. Go get that.

[Cobra951]

If you actually pay for casual games, Peggle is a fair diversion.

Ghost Master is an absolute steal at $5.  Arx Fatalis is a bargain as well.

[MysterD]

Ooooh -- yes, Ghost Master is a lot of fun!

[gpw11]

I haven't tried a lot of those, but I'll comment on the ones I have tried out:

-Bullet Candy:  The demo didn't do it for me, never bought it.

-Everyday Shooter:  Bought it for $8 and totally would have spent ten.  I probably haven't played it in a couple of weeks, but it's a really fun game and the unlockable system keeps you playing.  The one major criticism I have is that until you get to the point where you have enough points to unlock the shuffle mode and individual levels you're going to be playing the first three or four levels in the same order over and over and over again trying to farm enough points.

-Audiosurf: Played the hell out of the demo and have been meaning to buy it.  If you have a lot of mp3s this would be a great game to get considering all the different modes and such.  The only downside I can see for you is the 56k thing.  A lot of the fun seems to be trying out levels people tell you are awesome, and if it takes forever to get the mp3 for that, it might not be as good.

Lumines: If you have a PSP that'd be the version to get apparently.

[Quemaqua]

I have to be one of the Audiosurf detractors here.  It was fun, and a very cool idea for sure, but the thing is really pretty repetitive, and the whole "yer palying 2 yor music!" thing is totally bogus.  Fine, it might use that data to construct the level, but it may as well be random because even when you can tell that it built something based on a part of the song, it just isn't cohesive enough for it to actually be "cool".  It isn't a bad game by any means, and it's a fun diversion which may well satisfy some, I just don't think it deserves even half the accolades it's been getting.  It's a decent game with a little bit more depth than appears on the surface, but not as much as it tries to make you think you're getting.

[idolminds]

I've decided against Audiosurf. I didnt think I'd find as many cheap things on Steam so I was like "Well, I'll probably end up with it anyway".

Gonna take Arx Fatalis, Everyday Shooter, and Darkstar One for sure. I watched a vid and read some reviews of Bullet Candy...already have Geometry Wars and it looks really similar. At least ES is a bit different.

[Xessive]

Nice! I hope you enjoy them man.

I remember I tried playing Arx Fatalis last year, and while it seemed like a great game it kept inexplicably crashing, preventing me from carrying on with it.

[gpw11]

I have to be one of the Audiosurf detractors here.  It was fun, and a very cool idea for sure, but the thing is really pretty repetitive, and the whole "yer palying 2 yor music!" thing is totally bogus.  Fine, it might use that data to construct the level, but it may as well be random because even when you can tell that it built something based on a part of the song, it just isn't cohesive enough for it to actually be "cool".  It isn't a bad game by any means, and it's a fun diversion which may well satisfy some, I just don't think it deserves even half the accolades it's been getting.  It's a decent game with a little bit more depth than appears on the surface, but not as much as it tries to make you think you're getting.

You're looking at it wrong; it's not playing to the music like with Guitar Hero or anything like that, the blocks or "cars" are rarely actually linked to the beats.  Rather, you're playing on the music, with the track and speed of the game altering according to the file. It works perfectly on 99% of songs, with a few slip ups here and there.  I will, however, agree that the puzzle mode sucks and mono is the only way to really play it if you're going to get a feel for how the song and music interact.

[Quemaqua]

How am I looking at it wrong?  You described exactly what I think it is, which is a fairly lame gimmick with no real depth tacked on to a fairly decent little falling blocks puzzle game (essentially).  That doesn't make it bad, and I wouldn't even say it's bad, but I think it's a total joke that this thing has been getting so much press.  It's a toy, and one that makes a pretty unimpressive show of its single claim to fame.  If changing the music actually altered the way the game played to any real degree that would be fine, but it basically doesn't.  I tried a ton of different songs from a ton of different genres in the demo, and was hard pressed to discern any significant difference between them other than the fact that some songs seemed to confuse it.

[gpw11]

4 songs before the demo locks out is a ton? There's a difference between tracks in the game just like there's a difference in any music based game: Where in Guitar Hero the order of the "blocks" changes to line up with the notes from track track, in Audiosurf the pitch, speed, and direction of the track itself changes along with the blocks (to a certain extent although there is an obvious technical limitation there).  It's a simple score based game like any other rhythm based game out there, and it's kind of hard to argue that changing the music doesn't change the track when it very obviously does.

[Quemaqua]

I also played songs on a friend's demo because I thought I must be missing something after playing mine.  "A ton" is hyperbole, I suppose, but all the songs we tried were very different.  But still, to call this a rhythm based game is completely bogus as rhythm plays absolutely no part in the gameplay at all, and while the music obviously changes the track in numerous ways, absolutely not a single element is at all significant enough to make it an interesting feature.  You may as well create an algorithm to make the track jump around a little for no apparent reason on occasion and you'd have almost exactly the same result minus some very, very weak and completely inconsequential ties to whatever music happens to be going on.  Any song that changes tempo comes across as very jarring in the game, as does any song that features very loud parts contrasted by softer sections, at least with the ones I tried.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the only time the dynamic track-building became at all apparent to me was when it was actively irritating because the song made it do something weird.

[gpw11]

Yeah, it's pretty hit or miss I guess and not really rhythm based at all . The vast majority of the songs I've played on work almost perfectly but I tried the Jet Set Radio soundtrack a little while ago and none of the tracks worked all that well.  I think the trick to it is to have a song with a fair amount of variety in it but isn't constantly busy.  When it works its fantastic but it is overrated to a certain point.  Nevertheless, I totally got the $9.99 out of it, especially when I let everyone else find the good songs for me first.

[Quemaqua]

It's easily a good enough game to be worth ten bucks to a lot of people.  I guess I just don't happen to be one of them.

[Cobra951]

It's completely unplayable on my old fossil.  Slide show.  What a bummer.  1.6 GHz CPU and 512 MB RAM, no problem.  I exceed both of those by a healthy margin.  It's probably shader-related.  I.e., my graphics card.