Alien Breed: Impact

6/10

A good third person shooter horror game with hostile aliens.

Good:

• Upgradable guns!
• Sci-fi Horror setting.
• Secret areas
• A few boss battles..

Bad:

• Few alien types.
• Repetitive sometimes
• The character takes for ever to pickup items or login in computers. (its part of the horror setting but its annoying after 5 minutes into the game)
• The controls to trow grenades could have been better.

The game is not remarkable but it was ok fun while it lasted. The campaign was just 7 hours (and I was slow, maybe someone else would finish it in a few hours on the first try). No regret there as I would have been bored of the same mechanics if it lasted any longer. Also the game was bought very cheap on Steam.

Thoughts on Steam OS

We are at a crossroad in the history of gaming. Valve recently made announcements about new 3 exiting technologies/products.

One is an amazing controller. I have no idea if it will work but its good to see a company taking risks and try to innovate.

The second is an open source operating system for gaming (Steam OS) and the third is that multiple companies will be able to compete and sell "Steam Machines", pre-built PCs for the living room which run Steam OS.

If Steam OS fails, it might scar open source gaming for ever. But if it can only survive long enough, it might become a very solid alternative to consoles. Here I will weight the pros and cons try to hightlight their implications.

The Are Few Games For Steam OS

This is true for any new console which do not have backward compatibility with its previous iteration (like Xbox One, which is actually the third generation Xbox ...). If there isn't any big title for the platform it might seriously hurt the platform's market. It needs some big titles, some exclusive titles if possible.

Kids And Ordinary People Might Be More Attracted To Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft

These are big company with established brands and marketing. Chances most people will not know what steam machines are and will be scared away by their diversity and complexity.

No More Generations

Generally, backward compatibility works great on PC. I can still play Diablo 1 if I want. That's why I feel better building my collection of games on steam rather than on some consoles.

Heartstone Beta is lots of fun

8/10

Right now I play arena casually. My long term plan is to play arena until I have all the expert cards which are not legendary and then salvage my goldens cards and see if I can get the most usefull legendaries.

Get it now.

Watch live heartstone games online.

Amazing plays

Starbound is lots of fun

This place has a dungeon with a  matter generator next to the spawn, in the alpha sector.

Saints Row: The Third

7/10

This over the top third person shooter, disorganized crime simulator and sandbox game delivers suitable doses of entertainment, provided that you can forget anything you know about morality (spoiler: its pretty hard to go from point A to point B without any collateral damage, you might as well enjoy it!).

Lots of customization, lots of crazy challenges, the campaign is completely insane. I did not play a Grand Theft Auto (GTA) game since GTA3,  but these games seem tame and boring in comparison to SR3.

Crazy, unbridled,  fun ... and lots of virtual murder and damage to private property. Don't let your kids play this! But its okay to enjoy in private if you are open minded and know the difference between fiction and reality.

 

 

DLC Quest

5/10

So this game was for sale at 75 cents on Steam so I gave it a shot. The game is not bad for this price, but there is probably an other game that you should be playing instead.

 This game parodies downloadable content (DLC) in video games. It is a basic platformer with jokes. You collect coins which you use to buy DLC  There were a few good jokes. Sometimes DLC allows you to advance into the game, some other times is completely useless. I got stuck at the end of the game because I bought to many useless DLC. 

Everything is brown because of a useless DLC

Nope, not fine, I'm done! Bye game.

I did buy those because I thought I was stuck and that some DLC would allow me to progress, but then I found a gate which can only be opened for many more coins than what I have and I don't feel like going back and collecting them. The game lasts less than one hour on the first play through.

Magic the Gathering - Duels of the planeswalker (+ 2012 and 2013 editions)

7.5/10

If you did not know MTG is collectible card game where you play as a wizard who can summon creatures and cast spells. Your goal is to kill your opponent (also a wizard), usually by reducing his hit points to 0. Its a fun game with a lots of strategy and tactics, however its one hell of a pay to win game. For people who realized this, there are usually modes where players don't come with pre-made decks. But they still make  a lot of money by having players buy new random cards for each tournament.

It exists in physical form (go to the store, buy real card) and in digital form (Magic Online which is very old and looks like shit, where you pay the same price for virtual cards!).

Still its been the most played, most complex and interesting card game out there for a long time. So without any major competition, Wizzard, the company behind MTG, has been sitting on its ass for a long time and selling its physical and virtual cards at a ridiculously high prices. Which has always been a turn off form me.

But at some point they released Duels of the planeswalker on steam and Xbox live, where players only play with somewhat balanced pre-made decks (you can swap a few card in and out for each decks). So you don't pay for the card in those games,  you pay once for each of those games (and their expansions) and then you can play against other player with relatively balanced decks. And it can be a lot of fun.

At least the challenges and campaigns are fun. The multiplayer is a bit buggy sometimes, when there a bugged game at the top of the match making list and you always get match to a game where you can't connect. Also since you can only play with premade decks, players cannot do everything they want and play all the modes they play with physical cards (like drafting). But there are new competitors on the tablet and PC markets now and they announced much more features for the planeswalker version of 2014, that's why I'm reviewing these games now.

Also its more fun if you don't buy the card unlocks downloadable content and instead unlock the cards as you play the campaign, it makes the campaign more interesting. So buy the game and expansions but not the unlocks.

Buy Magic 2013 Gold Game Bundle

Buy Magic 2012 Gold Game Bundle

I can't find the original (pre 2012 edition) on steam, they probably removed it because there were too many bugs and they did not want to fix them).

2020 edit: Since then I've a played the other planeswalker games, Magic Duels and Magic arena. Magic Arena is probably better maintained (and they will maintain the game instead of releasing a different game each year). But its also different, gone are the pre-built decks and you can now buy cards and virtual currency to play the game. I'm sure that it is very popular and that they are making a lot more money that way ... but it could not retain my attention. I don't feel like spending so much money on virtual cards and games and grinding free to play is also unappealing for me. Things I hated: Losing (or winning) because of mana flood, mana screw, or better cards. The difference between common and rarer cards in magic is too great in my opinion. There are lots of digital card games these days, many of which don't have these problem. See my other CCG game reviews.