Holiday Sale Survival Guide

I have no idea where this originated, but it's hilariously accurate.

It's not officially Christmas until I've been saddled with feelings of shame and guilt after adding a dozen games to my already gigantic backlog. Amazon, Valve - why must you tempt me so?

If you're at all concerned about being able to afford food in January, you might want to take a look at the following tips.

1. Use resources like /r/GameDeals and IsThereAnyDeal.com to find the best deals.

While Steam might be the "Granddaddy of Them All" when it comes to offering games at stupid prices during the holidays, there's a lot of other stuff going on elsewhere on the Internet. Sites like Amazon and Green Man Gaming have been offering deals on par with - and occasionally better than - those of Valve's service. Plus, with Origin and Uplay on the prowl, it's increasingly common (albeit somewhat annoying) to find games that simply aren't offered on Steam.

Bottom line - it pays to look around, and using some kind of deal aggregator makes everything super easy. Sites like the aforementioned IsThereAnyDeal.com and Cheapshark.com can also give you an idea of the pricing trends for a given game and whether or not it's been cheaper in the past.

Finally Took the Plunge

After going back and forth on a graphics card upgrade for several weeks now, I finally pulled the trigger on an XFX Double D HD 7950 from NCIX. With a $20 referral promo code and $30 rebate I'll be getting the card for ~$258 total. Pretty excited.

The battle more or less came down to three cards in the end: the HD 7870 GHz Edition, the GTX 660 Ti, and the HD 7950. Since we're nearing the end of the current graphics card generation I was reluctant to spend money on a 7870; it's definitely an upgrade over my current 560 Ti, but chances are it won't look so hot compared to the next-gen stuff. The 660 Ti looked like a worthy competitor (plus it has 2 DVI ports) but that 192-bit memory bus still makes me a little sad. In the end, the fact that you can overclock the shit out of the 7950 (on the order of 25% or so) combined with the fact that it'll (hopefully) hold its value the longest out of the bunch led me to choose the 7950.

The price didn't hurt, either.

I'll be sure to post some unboxing pics and benchmarks once I get everything up and running next week. Guess I better grab some numbers from my 560 Ti so I have something to compare the new card to.

Humble THQ Bundle

The Humble Bundle guys are at it again, this time offering the "Humble THQ Bundle" to the masses. You can pay whatever you want (as long as it's a minimum of $1) for the following titles:

• Darksiders
• Metro 2033
• Red Faction Armageddon
• Company of Heroes
• CoH: Opposing Fronts
• CoH: Tales of Valor
• Saints Row The Third*
(* if you beat the ~$5.50 average)

This deal is straight up ridiculous and probably has something to do with the financial dilemma that the publisher finds itself in. THQ has already laid off a bunch of people and delayed a few games; the future doesn't exactly look bright at this point.

Humble Bundles traditionally offer DRM-free downloads of games on Windows, OSX, and Linux for as little as 1 cent. This time around there's a minimum of $1 and all of the games are Windows-only and tied to Steam. Several people (see: Ars Technica, The Penny Arcade Report) have been making a lot of noise claiming that Humble Bundle has sold out and destroyed their reputation by partnering with a AAA publisher for this bundle. Ben Kuchera of The PA Report said that "[this] isn’t a Humble Bundle, it’s a Steam sale." This seems a little bit like grandstanding to me.

Black Friday Postmortem

The dust appears to have finally settled after an extended weekend filled with gravy and impulse buying. I managed to score the following:

• Knights of the Old Republic I + II ($2.49 each)
• Orcs Must Die! 2 Complete ($6.24)
• The Witcher Extended Edition Director's Cut ($2.49)
• Civilization 5 Gods and Kings ($7.49)
• L.A. Noire Complete ($7.49)
• Sleeping Dogs ($13.60)

That's a total of $42.29 if you're keeping score at home. I'm currently playing Sleeping Dogs and from what I've seen so far that game is worth $42 alone. I'm pretty content with my haul, though the backlog just got that much larger.

Things were a little less exciting on the hardware side. There were some tempting SSD deals to be had - Amazon, Newegg, and TigerDirect all offered a 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K for $60 at various times throughout the weekend - but I held back hoping for a deal on an HD7950. That deal never materialized.

Instead, there were several 660 Ti's available for ~$230-260 after rebate. I'm assuming AMD has been killing it with the whole Never Settle Bundle thing and that retailers used Black Friday to move some of their Nvidia inventory. There's nothing wrong with the 660 Ti per se, but that 192-bit memory bus still worries me. If I'm going to put down money for a new card this late into a generation I don't want to make any compromises. AMD's HD8000-series cards should be making an appearance in the next couple of months and I don't want to regret my purchase.

On the bright side, my wallet made it through the weekend without taking too much of a hit. With Steam's Holiday Sale supposedly starting December 20th, that's probably a good thing.

Thanksgiving Deal Overload

It's been a busy week thus far - so much so that I haven't posted in a couple of days - and things are only going to get busier from here. It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year as far as PC gaming is concerned. Hopefully you and your wallet have prepared appropriately.

Deal-watching is going to be kind of a big thing for the next five weeks or so, and reddit's /r/GameDeals and sites like IsThereAnyDeal.com and CheapShark.com are going to be your best friend. Time to shovel another 6 or 7 games onto the backlog pile.

I've already picked up Civilization V Gods and Kings for $7.49 (Amazon), Sleeping Dogs for $13.60 (Green Man Gaming, no longer valid), and KOTOR I and II for $2.49 each (Steam). On the hardware side of things, Newegg has a Gigabyte 660 Ti for $250 after $20 rebate, with Assassin's Creed III and Borderlands 2 included at no cost. There's also a Galaxy 660 Ti for $225 AR, sans Borderlands 2. I'm debating whether to jump on a card this week, pick up a cheap 128GB SSD, or just hold off on everything till the next generation.

Should be an exciting week regardless. Happy hunting.

Possible Deal of the Year from Amazon

Amazon is offering a pretty sick THQ bundle this weekend: six games for ten bucks, plus a $5 coupon code. Ridiculous.

Should you take advantage of this deal you'll score copies of Homefront, Metro 2033, Red Faction Armageddon and Red Faction Guerrilla, STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl, and Warhammer 40K Space Marine. To make the deal that much sweeter, Amazon includes a promo code good for $5 off of an "Editor's Choice" game during the month of January. Amazon ran a similar promotion last year and games like Assassin's Creed (1 and 2) and The Witcher were available on the cheap. Some eligible games were on sale for 5 bucks, meaning they were effectively free with a promo code.

This deal might not last through the weekend, so act quickly if you're interested.

Tantalizing THQ Medley [Amazon]

Battle.net World Championship

Quick heads up - the Battle.net World Championship kicks off tomorrow in Shanghai, China, featuring both World of Warcraft Arena and Starcraft II competitions. The event will feature a "free, six-channel HD broadcast" via the BWC website.

I'm kinda looking forward to watching this thing; other than the last GSL finals, I feel like I haven't watched a major SC2 tournament in a year. The festivities kick off tomorrow night and run from 9pm-ish Friday until 8am-ish Sunday morning. Check out the full schedule for more details.

SC2: Heart of the Swarm Release, Preorder Info

Blizzard finally announced a definitive release date for Heart of the Swarm earlier today. The expansion pack hits on March 12, 2013 for $39.99.

Additionally, there are Digital Deluxe and Collector's Edition versions available for $60 and $80, respectively. The Digital Deluxe version adds a handful of skins and portraits for use in SC2 along with a pet for your World of Warcraft characters and zerg-like wings and a banner for Diablo III. The Collector's Edition includes all of that stuff plus a behind-the-scenes DVD, the game's soundtrack, an art book, and a mousepad. I could maybe see buying these if I still played WoW or D3, but then again I'm a cheap bastard.

The best preorder deal seems to belong to Amazon right now. While you don't get a price break, you do score access to the HotS beta. The game's Amazon page states that they'll email you a code "within 4 business days" so that you can get your frag on early. Pretty tempting.

New Releases: Week of November 12th

Here's a look at what's new this week.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II. That's basically all you need to know about this week. The only games brave enough to go toe-to-toe with the yearly sales juggernaut are a couple of MMOs and titles like The Sims and LEGO Lord of the Rings, which likely don't have the same playerbase as the military shooter. Your wallet shouldn't face any tough decisions this week as your stance on these franchises is probably well-established at this point.

Skip to:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• RIFT: Storm Legion
• Other Noteworthy Releases

Backlog Review: Homefront

Like Call of Duty, but less entertaining and with more Koreans.

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Homefront
THQ, Kaos Studios, Digital Extremes
March 15th, 2011

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Since its release in early 2011, Homefront has been known as "that mediocre shooter with the really short campaign." Hearing this over and over again made me a sad panda.

The game originally piqued my interest after I saw the trailer depicting a "future history" (albeit an unlikely one) that served as a backdrop for the title. Given that this was early 2011, with Call of Duty becoming stale (and alienating PC gamers) and Battlefield 3 not yet having seen the light of day, I was ready for something new and exciting to come along. Homefront was supposed to be that breath of fresh air.

Indie Bundles + Free Bioshock

Quick note on some deals happening right now:

• Humble Android Bundle 4: Here's yet another pay-what-you-want bundle from the Humble Bundle guys. This one includes Spice, Eufloria, Waking Mars, Swords and Sworcery EP, Crayon Physics Deluxe, and Machinarium. Despite this being an Android bundle, all games are available on Windows too (with individual Steam keys, minus Waking Mars). They usually add games to the bundle halfway through, so if you buy now you'll get those for free regardless of what you paid.

• Indie Royale Harvest Bundle: More indie stuff here. This one is also pay-what-you-want, but there's a minimum price involved (~$5.50 as of this post). The bundle includes Mutant Mudds, Pineapple Smash Crew, Spirits, Avernum: The Great Trials Trilogy, and Basketbelle.

• Free Bioshock @ Gamefly: To celebrate the GameFly Client leaving the beta tag behind, GameFly is giving everyone Bioshock 1 for free. A client download is required and I think you need to enter a credit card despite it costing $0.00, but hey, free is free. As far as I can tell this doesn't redeem on Steam.

Pro Tip: Trick Out Your Desktop with Rainmeter

I was introduced to Rainmeter via this excellent Lifehacker article last year. Raimeter is a powerful desktop customization tool that lets you style your desktop to your heart's content. There are hundreds of modules and themes out there for you to choose from, and best of all, everything is completely free.

Rainmeter's usefulness immediately became apparent when I made the jump to a dual-monitor setup. Each skin suite includes a selection of widgets that can range from email and RSS readers to system monitoring tools and app launchers. Personally, I find Rainmeter useful for displaying system temps and monitoring CPU and GPU usage while gaming, a task which was previously relegated to the tiny LCD screen on my old Logitech G15 keyboard.

New Releases: Week of November 5th

Here's a look at what's new this week.

This week's crop of new releases is looking incredibly thin, probably due to the fact that the rest of the world will be playing Halo 4 on Tuesday. Consequently, it might be a good opportunity to play through a couple of games from your backlog.

Skip to:

• Mass Effect Trilogy
• Angry Birds Star Wars
• Sine Mora
• Other Noteworthy Releases

Weekend Deals: November 2nd

This weekend is a little thin on savings since the middle of the week was filled with Halloween promotions. In addition, stores are undoubtedly gearing up for mega deals later in the month and into December.

With that being said, there are still a handful of games available on the cheap:

• Amazon: Kingdoms of Amalur Complete for $11.99
• GOG: Classic EA Sale
• Steam: CS: Global Offensive Free Weekend and 33% Off
• Steam: Tomb Raider 15th Anniversary Sale
• GetGames: Assassin's Creed Sale

AC3 for $38.49 is pretty tempting, but I should probably focus on playing through AC2/Brotherhood/Revelations first.

So many games; so little time - the very definition of a First World Problem.

Halloween PC Download Deals

It's Halloween, and just about every digital download service is having a sale to celebrate the occasion.

• Origin: Buy 1 Get 1
• GOG: 50% Off "Not Scary" Games
• GameFly: Halloween Sale
• Steam: Halloween Sale
• GamersGate: Halloween Sale
• GMG: Deals + New 25% Off Code

Most of these deals are pretty unremarkable - as one reddit user commented in reference to the Steam sale, "these deals are so mediocre they're scary!" With that being said, there are a couple of hidden gems like Orcs Must Die 2 for $7.49 and The Darkness II for $4.99.

Remember, Black Friday is just around the corner and the major holiday sales are less than 2 months away. It's not too late to pick up a second job for that extra disposable income.

New Releases: Week of October 29th

Here's a look at what's new this week.

This week's post comes a day late courtesy of the "Frankenstorm" that took a dump on the East Coast yesterday. Hopefully you've still got power, dear reader, as PC gaming tends to rely heavily on access to electricity.

While the console world is busy enjoying Assassin's Creed 3 this week, we're stuck waiting another 3 weeks for the PC release. Thankfully we've got some other decent-looking titles to distract us until then.

Skip to:

• Need For Speed: Most Wanted
• MechWarrior Online
• 007 Legends
• Other Noteworthy Releases

BBL Hurricane

It's been raining here all day, though somehow I still have power. I just did a speed test on Speedtest.net and managed to chart a download speed of 0.62 Mbps. Pretty fantastic.

Needless to say I won't be posting much for the next day or so.

Site News and Weekend Reading: October 27th

My previous approach to posting interesting stuff to read each weekend was pretty inefficient. I'd chuck links that I deemed worthy of posting into a folder in Firefox and at the end of the week I'd sift through them. After organizing them by category I'd manually type up a formatted list - with or without descriptions depending on my mood. Posting lists of bare links didn't feel like quality content, and bullshitting a description of two lines for each saying "I really enjoyed this article" didn't exactly feel any better.

Time to try something a little different.

Last week I created a Delicious account and grabbed a Firefox addon to facilitate link grabbing. Links can be found here:

http://delicious.com/maddogpcgb

I originally got the idea to pass on links from the Penny Arcade Report's "The Cut" section, so I'll probably integrate the link feed into the sidebar at some point. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that stuff.

This change helps to eliminate some filler content from the stream of posts I'll be making. My original intent was to post something daily, but I've been slowly drifting towards a 2-3 update per week schedule. Things should settle into a M/F/W-ish schedule with random posts about deals and other newsworthy happenings thrown in.

Thanks for reading!

Spooky Sales and Savings

Here's a sampling of the deals available this Halloween weekend. Highlights include Super Meat Boy for $3.49, Metro 2033 and Dead Space/2 for 5 bucks each, and Darksiders II for $22.49.

• GameStop: Halloween Sale
• GetGames: Halloween Sale
• GetGames: Darksiders II for $22.49
• Steam: L4D2 Free Weekend + Sale
• Steam: Rock of Ages Free Weekend + Sale
• GameFly: THQ Weekend
• Square Enix: Three Day Sale
• Amazon: Bioshock Dual Pack for $7.49

Also, you can head to StopZombieMouth.com and pick up vouchers for free copies of Plants vs. Zombies to give out to trick-or-treaters (or horde for yourself). Coupons are redeemable from October 30th to November 10th.

I just hope I still have power on October 30th.

My Take on the "Decline" of Starcraft II

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

What's the deal with Starcraft II lately?

League of Legends is the most popular game in the world. Korean SC2 team Slayers is disbanding and three of their players are switching to LoL. Event prize money is stagnant and stream viewer numbers are down. The game's popularity is even dwindling in South Korea, a Starcraft hotbed for more than 10 years; SC2 isn't even among the top 10 games played in the country's "PC bang" LAN centers.

Is SC2 on the way out, or are these just growing pains?