You absolutely MUST buy the new Humble Indie Bundle.

Not a bad set of games, but I might wait a little bit until the holidays arrive so that I had time to play them.

Plus I wanna see if they add more games. If they ever added Deponia I will buy it instantly.

I don't know when it happened, but four new games have been added: BIT.TRIP RUNNER, Gratuitous Space Battles, Jamestown and Wizorb. Of these, the only one I haven't heard of is the last, and BIT.TRIP RUNNER has actually been on my wishlist for a while.

New Humble Bundle out, and oh boy is it a big one. Cleverly titled "The Humble THQ Bundle", it's got Saints Row The Third, Darksiders, Metro 2033, Red Faction: Armageddon, and three Company of Heroes games.

Oh, by the way, it's still going by the "pay what you want" model.

This is kinda obviously THQ's response to their ongoing financial troubles, (for those of you who don't know, THQ is in a bit of financial trouble,) and this seems to me like it might be a good solution. Time will tell, I suppose.

I saw an article in where THQ's stocks went by something like 30% 40%, so yeah, it seems to be working out.

So I just recently heard that Metro 2033 is free right now! If you have facebook, go like their page and they'l give you a free key! I already got mine. :P Btw, it ends tomorrow.

Yeah, one of friends had a spare Metro 2033 key and he gave it to me. But I never actually knew where he got it from. :P

Aaaaand here comes the 7th Indie Bundle!

It's always worth it, even though I already have a couple of the games.

In my opinion this one's well worth it just for Binding of Isaac, Closure and Dungeon Defenders — the latter comes with all 24 pieces of DLC. There are some six and eight-player enabled maps in addition to the default four-player soirées that I'd love to try at full capacity with you guys.

I'm expecting there to be new games added on Christmas day — surely it's too good an opportunity for the organisers to pass up.

http://www.thefreebundle.com/

gais

gais look

free stuff

(I dunno bout you guys but Nitronic Rush looks MEGA dope)

I've played Nitronic Rush; it's short but exceptional. I saw their Kickstarter for the spiritual successor, Distance, a while back and didn't think it was going to be funded by the deadline, but apparently they managed it.

New bundle. I jumped right on this one.

Pull yourself together Eps. You already have half of the games there.

You've been saving money all this time. Don't waste it now.

You don't need it.

You definitely don't need it.


EDIT: I am weak.

guys they added even more games oh my god the value is burning me HELP

I'd figure it's worth it to anyone who was both interested in and capable of running such games, as the base price is $5.74, so $5.75 for 11 games averages to $0.52 USD per game. Even if you were to own half the games, it's still around a dollar a game plus some neat sound tracks.

And some of it goes to charity, too, so that's always nice. ^^

Okay, so I am wtf-ing pretty hard right now.

How in God's name is this happening?
Why are so many triple-A games going so cheap?
Is Dead Space 2 going to be added later?

WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT

I mean I already own two of the games, and half of the remaining ones don't even interest me, but still WHAAAAAT

Here's my theory on why this is happening:

EA is a company who likes to jump in on things that make money. For example, they created Origin to compete with Steam when they found out how popular that particular service was, they held the ever-so infamous "EA Indie Bundle", they created Star Wars: The Old Republic to try and pull people away from WoW, and they even try to reproduce Steam Sales on Origin (even after they attacked valve for having the sales in the first place). Although it may seem that they aren't making a lot of profit from this charity sale, look a little closer. The bundle includes Dead Space 1 and 3. Something is missing, yes? Everyone who went into kindergarten should know that there's a number between 1 and 3.

Now, let's back up a bit.
You know how Valve always seems to be putting it's best games on sale, and sometimes just gives them out for nothing? One of those games was Portal. Remember when Valve suddenly decided to give that game away for free to steam users? That would mean that quite a few people got to play it, yes? It's a very successful game. You know what else valve released that was very successful? Portal 2, which made truckloads in preorders since people were willing to pay for it after their experience the first game gave them. This could be what EA is trying to reproduce by putting their games on such a sale. Look at the selection of games on offer, and count how many of them either already have sequels, or have sequels announced. I'm sure that Drago can confirm that Mirror's Edge 2 is coming soon, and I've personally been seeing quite a lot of promotional propaganda for a 4th instalment of the Sims games. Basically, what EA is doing is they're trying to get people to play their games in hopes that they will attract more people who will buy their newer games. Now, this is not an evil "ERMAGERD EA IS CORRUPT!!" thing to do, as it's a decent business practice which aids both the consumer and the publisher. However, it's clear that EA isn't suddenly selling it's games in the bundle just for charity.

Kitty wrote:

Now, this is not an evil "ERMAGERD EA IS CORRUPT!!" thing to do, as it's a decent business practice which aids both the consumer and the publisher. However, it's clear that EA isn't suddenly selling it's games in the bundle just for charity.

Oh, absolutely. EA's been copping a lot of crap as of late (like accusations of being the worst company in the world) which isn't really fair considering that they're only making games with slightly unappealing qualities like release times, prices, or levels of completion.

Although your post could use a TL;DR section, since it doesn't take that long a paragraph to explain that EA wants to cash in on successful marketing strategies, it makes all the sense in the world. Valve released a good game for free and made a truckload from pre-orders for the sequel. Likewise, EA puts its games on bundles like these in the hope of generating similar interest in the sequels to the games they made.

But what doesn't make sense to me is that these games have already been released. Deadspace 1 through 3 has already been on the shelves and so it's available for people to buy. But that doesn't really cash in on the idea of getting people interested in newer games because DS3 is the newer game. What interest are they generating by putting it on the bundle? If they put DS1 and 2 on the bundle during the lead up to DS3, then that would have made sense because they would have generated interest for the third instalment. Sure, it might generate interest for games that they have not yet made, but in terms of existing game lines it's a bit of a dud.

Now, it's been a long time since I was in kindergarten so my memories of my early education are a bit hazy, but I do vaguely remember learning of the mysterious integer between 1 and 3. Where were you going with this point? Deadspace 1 and 3 are available, but 2 is not, so what? Keeping in mind I haven't played any of these games, was DS2 particularly bad, so they're leaving it off the bundle? Or were they hoping to generate interest in DS2 by offering 1 and 3? I just don't know where you were going with the issue of the missing Deadspace instalment.

Potatrobot wrote:

But what doesn't make sense to me is that these games have already been released. Deadspace 1 through 3 has already been on the shelves and so it's available for people to buy.

Why pay 60+$ when you can get it for $0.01?
Many people have their own opinions on the price of games. Some of them may be very unfair, but people will only pay what they think something is worth. That's pretty much why the Steam Summer Sale is so successful every year.

Potatrobot wrote:

But that doesn't really cash in on the idea of getting people interested in newer games because DS3 is the newer game. What interest are they generating by putting it on the bundle? If they put DS1 and 2 on the bundle during the lead up to DS3, then that would have made sense because they would have generated interest for the third instalment. Sure, it might generate interest for games that they have not yet made, but in terms of existing game lines it's a bit of a dud.

Keep in mind that this is the Humble Bundle we're talking about. People are always excited to see the latest deal they can dish out for charity help the sick children, and somehow I think EA could use all the positive press they can get at this point.

Potatrobot wrote:

Now, it's been a long time since I was in kindergarten so my memories of my early education are a bit hazy, but I do vaguely remember learning of the mysterious integer between 1 and 3. Where were you going with this point? Deadspace 1 and 3 are available, but 2 is not, so what? Keeping in mind I haven't played any of these games, was DS2 particularly bad, so they're leaving it off the bundle? Or were they hoping to generate interest in DS2 by offering 1 and 3? I just don't know where you were going with the issue of the missing Deadspace instalment.

Say you bought the newest pokemon game on the market, without any previous experience in the series, and LOVED it. But when you're looking up some strategies for your beloved  Smeargle + Magikarp combo, you suddenly read that there are OTHER pokemon games available to purchase, with new stories, areas and potentially different pokemon to catch? You'd be pretty interested in that, wouldn't you?

The point I was making is that if you liked the games, chances are you'd be much more interested in the series. As for why they decided to sell the 3rd one in place of the second one, the 3rd one is much more recent and therefore is seen by the ignorant as """"next gen""" and I think Yahtzee's opinion of the Dead Space 2 can probably give you an idea why they want you to buy that one last.

Does that help answer your questions, or do you want me to explain my idea a bit more?

Kitty wrote:

Say you bought the newest pokemon game on the market, without any previous experience in the series, and LOVED it. But when you're looking up some strategies for your beloved  Smeargle + Magikarp combo, you suddenly read that there are OTHER pokemon games available to purchase, with new stories, areas and potentially different pokemon to catch? You'd be pretty interested in that, wouldn't you?

The point I was making is that if you liked the games, chances are you'd be much more interested in the series. As for why they decided to sell the 3rd one in place of the second one, the 3rd one is much more recent and therefore is seen by ignorant as """"next gen""" and I think Yahtzee's opinion of the Dead Space 2 can probably give you an idea why they want you to buy that one last.

Does that help answer your questions, or do you want me to explain my idea a bit more?

Pretty much everything but the quoted section gets a solid 'Yup, that does help, thank you for elaborating.'

As for the quoted section, I don't have any issues with that, I'm just a bit perplexed. It might just be in my nature but I always thought people would want to play games in the order of their release (and I'm the kind of guy who's so late to most games that by the time I get into them, all the instalments are available, so I could play them out of order if I wanted). In addition to the common fact that the story has obviously developed from the previous instalments (which is common not only for games, but books, movies, comics, etc), there's also to consider that the gameplay has often developed as well.

In the case of Pokemon, the story part is null since they've only just now started wheeling out more complex and thoughtful plots, but the gameplay is a big factor. I've never been too keen to step down from what's currently 'new' to play an 8-or-so-bit game with barely a fraction of the content available in the new games, nostalgia aside.

Now this point about the gameplay isn't as drastic with the Deadspace series because it's not like there's a 15 year gap in the game technology between first and third, but one might be disappointed to find that maybe some things you liked about DS3 are not in its predecessors, because those hypothetical things would have been improvements made over the older games. In contrast to Pokemon, the gameplay isn't a massive issue while the plot may well be. I wouldn't want to leave it to myself to spoil the plot of the series, but rather I'd prefer to experience the plot as it develops. Again, this isn't so much a problem you can count on as it is probably just my nature in general.

And it's true, if you like the games, you'll probably like the series. The key word there is 'probably' because as demonstrated by Deadspace 2 (and my own experiences of Resistance 2 and Killzone 2), some sequels tend to bugger up a good first game.

So yes, that does help, thank you for elaborating.

Personally I think they're holding back DS 2 for midway through the bundle — if they were trying to market other games in the series by giving us all but one, to me it would make more sense to have put 1 and 2 up instead of 1 and 3 — getting people invested in the story, characters and franchise strikes me as a better marketing strategy than leaving a big hole in the saga and expecting people's curiosity or compulsion to complete the set to make them fill it. Besides, DS3 is more expensive.

Incidentally I looked up the series on metacritic, and according to that site Dead Space 2 is actually the highest-rated in the series (87 to the first game's 86), and 3 by far the lowest (78).


Apart from the oddities with the Dead Space franchise, I agree that it's a good marketing strategy for franchises that are looking at getting new instalments in the next generation — and also a good way to get people using Origin, which we'd otherwise avoid at all costs because filthy steam ripoff capitalist pigs.

There's also the DLC angle — I notice DS3 has a bunch of DLC packs (as well as in-game microtransactions) that its predecessors lack, and The Sims 3 is well known for having boatloads of DLC. I guess EA's still going to make money from this bundle.

Delta wrote:

the oddities with the Dead Space franchise

I see what you did there.

Personally I think they just want to get more people using their service, so that having to install Origin won't feel like a reason for people to not buy their games anymore.

I thought the reason they held back DS2 was because of the irreversible DRM restrictions. Hell, I even lost my physical copy of DS2 because of the terrible DRM system.

So

HiB9

Trine 2 Mark of the Ninja Eets Munchies Brutal Legend FTL Fez

Thoughts?

I already own Trine 2 and FTL — both are pretty great — and I've heard nothing but praise for Mark of the Ninja. I'll be waiting for more games to be added until I seriously consider buying it, however, I'm wary of filling my library with games I'm unlikely to play.