Valve and Electronic Arts have announced that Crysis and Crysis Warhead will be available for purchase from digital download software, Steam.
While EA have previously ignored the PC distribution giant, in favour of their own download service, this could mark a future of Electronic Arts products on Steam. Right now, however, Crysis will suffice.
The games are available for pre-purchase right now, with Crysis at $49.99 and Warhead at $29.99, or a complete package for $79.98. The games will be unlocked and ready to play on September 18th, one day earlier than the game’s retail release.
Warhead, a shorter side story to Crysis, has been receiving incredible scores with a 9/10 from Eurogamer and a 9.4 from IGN.
Posted in News | Also tagged Crysis, Crysis: Warhead |
When you grab a new graphics card and reinstall windows; what’s the first thing you do? Install Bonzai Buddy? Unlikely. Make British Gaming Blog your homepage? Not a chance. Install Steam and copy your entire games collection to your new OS; definitely.
But, the issue comes with save games; you have to back them up manually; a pain, especially when you’re running Steam on multiple computers. Steam’s upcoming feature, Steam Cloud, is set to fix this problem.
Speaking with Valve, Next-Gen.biz writes “But perhaps the most compelling new feature, as far as convenience is concerned, will be the upcoming ability for users to access not only their Steam games from any PC (which they can do already), but also game-generated data such as saves and configurations, which will be stored transparently in Steam’s back-end. This feature, dubbed Steam Cloud, will first be rolled out in existing titles, and will be available for free to both developers and gamers”.
Plenty more additions are in the pipeline including automatic driver updates, system requirement assistants, community calendars and “official” communities.
On the payment side, Steam will feature a shopping cart, more payment methods and the prices will be shown in localised currencies.
Next-Gen.biz – Valve: No PC Gaming “Crisis” »
Posted in News | Tagged Steam |
Holy jumping mother o’ God in a side-car with chocolate jimmies and a lobster bib! Valve has added a boat load of new releases to Steam in one fell digital-swoop.
First up, Telltale’s complete second season of Sam and Max’s point and click revival. Featuring all five episodes (that’s Ice Station Santa, Moai Better Blues, Night of the Raving Dead, Chariots of the Dogs and What’s New Beelzebub?), you can grab them in a package and save 14 bucks when you’re at it.
You can also now grab the following titles from Steam:
Iron Man (Sega)
Soldier of Fortune: Payback (Activision)
Monster Jam (Activision)
History Channel: Battle for the Pacific (Activision)
Cabela’s Trophy Bucks (Activision)
Too bad they’re all trash, but the more the merrier!
A few days ago (January 15th, to be exact), Garry’s Mod, the popular sandbox editor for the Half Life engine, was updated to include models, NPCs and other good stuff from The Orange Box.
This amazingly creative and addictive playground can now be used to send a balloon-hoisted bathtub to the sky with G-Man, a Counterstrike Scientist, a Day of Defeat Soldier, an Antlion Grub, Heavy Weapons Guy and the Weighted Companion Cube as the crew.
If you have Garry’s Mod (10, that is), Steam will automatically update to the latest version.
If you don’t have Garry’s Mod – why the heck not? It’s the perfect companion (cube) to any of the Source games that let you run it (full list here). With the poor dollar rate, Garry’s Mod 10 can be available to you for about £5, directly from Steam.
Steam – Garry’s Mod »
Steam – Garry’s Mod 9 (Free – No Orange Box Support) »
Facepunch Forum – Scout Picture Credit »
Valve has rolled out a bunch of new updates and fixes to Team Fortress 2 on PC. No need to worry about patches and what not, Steam will automatically update the title before you play.
You can read all 34 points over at Steam’s website, but I’ll list the most important below.
Sudden Death mode is now a server option and defaults to OFF
This no-respawn brawl that happens at the end of stalemate matches will have to be turned on by the server if they want to include it. I implore server admins to think of creative and super fun mods on the theme, such as all Heavies, only allowed to punch each other.
The Medic’s Medigun now charges at an increased rate during Setup time, to remove the need for self-damage grinding
If you’ve ever been waiting for the gates to open and wonder why a soldier is blasting away at the floor, he’s not bored and he’s not insane; he’s helping medics build up a uber charge for when the gate opens. No need anymore, Medic uber charges are greatly increased when the gates are shut.
Added effects to players when they earn an achievement, visible to other players nearby
You now see a little trophy above their head, and the name of the achievement down in the message box!
Fixed gaps in stage gates that allowed snipers to kill defenders during setup
In two of the three Dustbowl maps, snipers could poke their little gun between cracks in the wall and pick off exposed defenders. These gaps have now been closed off with polygons and cement.
The patch isn’t perfect with players still being able to go underground near Gravel Pit’s C point or put a teleporter exit in a tiny gap behind a fence on Dustbowl Map 1. If people can annoy others when playing a game, they’ll do it and they won’t stop looking until they find a way. Nevertheless, some good updates to a frighteningly addictive game.
Whether you were aware or not, Valve was tracking your every footstep as you played through Gordan Freeman’s latest adventure (on PC, at least) and have coughed up the statistics for those with joint passions of detailed graphs and strider-inflicted death.
Like the above “Death Map”, that shows that the number of turret operators who fell to the hands of rushing Antlions is eerily similar to the number of people who threw themselves off the cliff at the very beginning of the game.
How about that although the average complete time is just over 6 hours, nearly 100 speed runners finished Episode 2 in just over 2 and a half hours. Or that the second toughest achievement in the game, asking you to take a gnome from one end of the game to the other, had over 5000 collectors.
The most shocking however, is that only 40% of players actually completed the six hour Half Life 2: Episode 2
Half Life 2: Episode 1 – Statistics »
Half Life 2: Episode 2 – Statistics »
