The Steam Thread - Page 39

The sad tale of the adult gamer. Can buy all these games but no time to play them. Makes me sad, as I'm in this group

Even worse, be in my situation trying to find a new job, and having the time to play some, so I buy a bunch and then just keep playing Minecraft and PlanetSide 2... lol. At last check, 1/3 of the games I own on Steam I haven't even booted.

Or even yet, I wonder if I have even booted more than a 1/3 of the games I own on Steam.

1st World problems.

Yeah, I'm lucky if I have less than a hundred or two games that I haven't had time for. Damn sales.

I've been pretty good for a change a knocking out backlog. In the few weeks I completed Legend of Grimlock and most recently the Serious Sam 3 DLC (took 8+ game time hours).

I just started Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning after discovering a weblink to a "HeartCore" mod that makes the game significant tougher. Vanilla KoA is notorious for being super easy, even on Hard, so I stayed away from playing it for the last year or so until I found the mod. It really works because so far I've been dying a LOT and am forced to use careful battle strategies rather than mash away, even against "easy" mobs.

Even though the game is already a looker, I also added some cool graphic mods that really makes the visuals stand out. The God of War inspired fighting engine mixed with free roaming RPG goodness is a fun combination. I'll probably put 60+ hours into it ad from early impressions I highly recommend it.

I'm curious about pre-ordering games from Steam.

I'm coming from consoles, where I usually pre-ordered my must-play games (like the upcoming Tomb Raider) from Amazon to get them day 1. Amazon charges the lowest amount from the date ordered to delivery.

Will Steam charge less if there's a sale after the pre-order is placed? Also, they don't charge until it's released, correct?

Lastly, it's my understanding that physical or download PC games, like the ones bought on Amazon, can be activated on Steam. Is this correct, and how does this work?

Since I just mentioned it above, I'll use Kingdom of Amalur as my example in responding to you...

I bought the game as a pre-order on Steam because A} a deep RPG with an arcade battle engine sounded fantastic to me, and B} pre-ordering offered some unique Team Fortress 2 gear that caught my eye.

The pre-order cost was the same, full price as the PC retail release. While it might seem I wasted money since it sat on the shelf for a year before I started it this weeked, it turns out that Steam never has this game on sale for some reason, and it costs the same today as it did at launch.

KoA is not a Steamworks title. If it were, then Steam would be required to access and play it no matter how you acquired it. A digital purchase from anywhere other than Steam requires EA's Origin platform. Maybe the same is true for the retail version; I'm not sure.

I was able to download the game at 9:00 PM PST, which makes me think that 12:00 AM EST is the earliest a pre-order is available to dload. I don't know if I was charged at purchase; I used PayPal so I think it was deducted right away.

When you buy a digital game from Amazon or GreenManGaming, etc., if it is a Steam version they will send you a code for you to input into Steam (click "Add Title" to enter the code). You sometimes need to also input the code inside of the game to access some or all of the features. A Steam message will pop up to let you know when this is the case.

Also, even if a game isn't made to run on Steam, you can use the "Add Title" button to make it a part of your Steam library. It won't auto update patches, but you still have access to it from the Steam UI (you can even add your own graphics to the file in the menus). I did that for a free indie title called Streets of Rage Remake. This way you can have uniformity for launching all of your games.

I need to get this KoAR game.

It really is a ton of fun. Steam always has it at full price, but if you don't mind Origin on your computer a lot of places have it on sale as cheap as $10. If you do pick it up, I recommend the following mods:

FXAA Post Process Injector - even though it is made for Skyrim, it works with KoA. This makes the colors POP off the screen (I use the 3rd pack of files). Everything looks a lot richer with this mod.

Widescreen Fixer - The field of view is way to close for the kind of action it delivers. With this mod enabled, you can set the FoV to whatever you want (I use 70). Edit: I've read that this mod only works on the Steam version of the game, not the Origin version.

HeatCore Difficulty - It is very easy to over level and make this game a cake walk if you don't have this excellent mod. Beware though - the difficulty spikes up pretty high. If you can play Devil May Cry or God of War games on the hardest difficulties, then you have the patience to improve your offense and defense while dying with this mod enabled.
Edited by joeblow - 1/8/13 at 9:05am

Done. What's the beef with Origin?

It's just that some people prefer all of their games in Steam if possible. Origin is just another gaming UI to keep track of.

Oh. Yeah. Another. Account.

OK. Captain. Kirk.

I just read that the Widescreen Fixer tool seems to only work with the Steam version if the game, not the Origin version. I'll edit my post above.

It has the Origin version in a drop down. Tinkering now.

The info I read was posted back in February so maybe it's been updated. Still, I don't remember selecting a Steam version.

Another thing I should mention is that the widescreen mod and difficulty mod have to be manually activated each time you play. The mod for enhanced graphics stays on at all times, but can be toggled with the Pause/Break key.

It's all working but that 70 setting is very fish eyed on my rigg. 120 feels better.

The fish eye thing can be fixed if you activate the mod in-game like normal, exit to the main menu, and then re-load your save.

UPDATE: You can simply activate the Widescreen mod in the Main Menu before you launch the game and the fish eye effect will be gone when you launch your save.
Edited by joeblow - 1/9/13 at 2:43am

Bought Spec Ops The line that is on sale. What a POS of coding. Crashes every time after a cut scene. Tried a bunch of fixes and none help. I could prob finish the SP game in a day but because of the constant crashes/lock ups it's taking a long time to get thru.

Also picked up X-com Unknown Enemy...good game and tough.

I just ordered a new gpu for my PC, I am replacing a 9800 GT with an nvidia GTX 650 2 gb gddr5. I know this isn't the fastest card out there, it was on sale cheap, came with free assasins creed 3 and should work well with my older PSU. I haven't PC gamed much and am wondering what kind of leap this would be over old card? I have a quad cor q9550 2.83 with 8gigs of ram and windows 7 & windows 8 to game on. I am going to try to get into PC gaming but truthfully I am a consloe guy. I do like what steam is doing and I also have origin on my PC. will my setup be better then my PS3 or xbox360??? I know I should of upgraded my power supply and got a gtx 680, I may try and build my own rig in the near future. Just wondering if anybody could answer my questions or had any thoughts beyond that I should of upgrade PSU and buy a better card. Thank you.

Ditto that.

The 650 will give you a really nice bump over the 9800GT. Even if you get half the performance boost promised on paper, you'll be in good shape. Add to that the lower power consumption, video acceleration, 4K support, HD audio bitstreaming, and compute power options (if you use them), it's a solid upgrade.

I opted for the 650 Ti over the vanilla 650 on one of my media PCs because I caught a good sale ($110).

I was afraid the ti would use to much power, should of researched it better, oh well. will the 2gb of memory make any difference?

Ravaged is free this weekend. Looks really good. I think they might have uploaded an old version on accident as this one is buggy right now and i don't see any of those problems in this preview video by Sidestrafe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSWrj6AepVk

So far I am really liking this card, Assasin creed 3 looks a lot better then on the PS3 and I have mostly medium settings at 1080p. If the next xbox and ps4 are a dissapointment I may build a $1000 dollar gaming rig.

I will download fraps and let you know. I can't seem to find the adaptive V-sync on the control panel.