Quite simply: take advantage of the current fascination with cloud gaming! At least one company promises fantastic gaming on practically any platform, with servers that take care of all the complicated hardware stuff in exchange for a monthly fee. All the user needs is a reasonably fast internet connection to receive a visual feed and control the pre-processed gaming experience without any significant latency loss. User input is sent to the server running the game, which updates the visuals to reflect what’s happening within the gaming world.

More than one person finds the scale of such an undertaking scary. What if …read more

Since I’ve been having so much fun on Left 4 Dead lately, here’s a post simply containing info related to the game, and its upcoming sequel, Left 4 Dead 2 (duh):

You can become a Facebook fan of Left 4 Dead here.
…and for Left 4 Dead 2 here. To paraphrase one supporter: “screw the boycotters”
Hands-on previews of Left 4 Dead 2 are available here and here (includes video). Snippets:
“But on the evidence so far, it’s hard not to be thrilled all over again by the prospect of headsetting it up with chums and pounding through the new locations, with the new …read more

Part of Steam’s appeal must be its regular discounts and price drops. But with so many titles in the catalog, it can be easy to miss out on some of them.

Yet that should now be practically impossible, thanks to the efforts of Steam forum user sciss0rz, who’s taken it upon himself to update other forum members with information on—you guessed it—the latest discounts and price drops on Steam! The list (found here) also includes information on Steam game packs, compilations of multiple titles that are usually available at a lower total price (sciss0rz does not list packs that represent no …read more

Up for this weekend: 50% off on Assassin’s Creed for the PC, and 10% off the Freedom Force: Freedom Pack, for a total of just under 17 dollars! The Assassin’s Creed promo lasts over the weekend, while the Freedom Pack goes back to regular price by the end of June 5.

Why would you get those games? Well, Assassin’s Creed is probably the best 3D platformer I’ve played in quite a while (finished it on the PS3 last year). For some reason, dealing fatal counters to attacking enemies seemed very therapeutic.
The original Freedom Force, on the other hand, is a great …read more

If for some reason you haven’t played Team Fortress 2, today’s TF2-for-$10 promo leaves you with no excuses. That’s 50% off the regular price until the day ends, a promo coordinated with the addition of new features to the game. Sure, the Steam platform responsible for serving the game has some kinks that Valve really really really needs to work out, but no one can fault the software company’s games. But don’t take my word for it: TF2 is available to play for free until May 25.

Of course, you could’ve bought The Orange Box, a five-in-1 package featuring three Half-Life …read more

I’m not really sure how many Steam players are into achievements, but the team behind Valve’s gaming platform has decided to make the total aggregates publicly available. In other words, players get to see their achievement-based performance compared to other Steam members.

If we take Left 4 Dead (by far my most favorite Steam game), some of the trends made clear by the achievement tally make sense. For instance, only 0.5% of L4D players have achieved “Legendary Survivor”. Achieving that means holding off endless waves of zombies for at least 10 minutes—in five different situations while hoping your 3 teammates know …read more

How does paying $10 for five games from Valve sound? Head over to Steam to take advantage of the 2/3 price drop (The Orange Box regular price: $30), which lasts until today only.

To recap, The Orange Box is Valve’s award-winning bundle, which bundles the following games:

Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Portal
Team Fortress 2

…into one neat package. The Half-Life 2 series and Portal is great for solo-play, while Team Fortress 2 has won accolades for its enjoyable multiplayer gameplay and distinctive art direction.
Everything’s handled (purchasing, installation, and actual game playing) through the Steam platform. So you’ll need to buy …read more

Concurrent with an update announcement for Team Fortress 2 was Valve’s re-explanation of their Steam Hardware Survey. Perhaps noticing the privacy concerns raised regarding their data collection service (which has no opt-out), Valve decided to point out its benefits in their own special way.

“I got the game running (sic) on my small 10″ 1.6Ghz Intel Atom based laptop with GMA Intel 945 Chipset.”
Thus began the interesting—but unverified—account of Steam user “The Neighbor”, who describes the results of his tweaks as instructed by a Steam forum thread (which apparently details how to run games on the dreaded integrated Intel GPU).
More of an experiment rather than a desperate penny-pincher trying to get the popular multiplayer shooter running on his basic netbook, the tweaks hardly produce an optimum gaming experience. Neighbor warns that framerates drop to as low as 10 per in outdoor environments, and that …read more

The Steam Hardware Survey is a great tool, for PC video game developers and players alike. For the former, as Valve says: “The survey is incredibly helpful for us as game developers in that it ensures that we’re making good decisions about what kinds of technology investments to make.” Or in layman’s terms, its a great indicator for what the next games’ minimum requirements should be.