Steam II: Hell on Wallets

It's that time of the year again! No, the other time, the one where Steam has those big sales. As is the norm, id Software is taking part, whacking a ridiculous 84% off the id Complete Pack, 33% off Rage, and 50% off pretty much all things id. Give the gift of Doom to your bratty Call of Duty-playing nephews!

Well, that news title is misleading.

yeah I was just thinking that. I appreciate the Doom-related gesture but it doesn't really get the point across. I was really expecting more of a "Steam is now charging users a monthly fee" type thing.

Whoa, cheaper to re-buy the Id pack than purchase rage by itself.

Edit: ok, id 'complete' pack. I've previously bought the super pack. Although the only difference appears to be quake4 & rage being included.

Are both Quake mission packs worth owning? Scourge of Armagon gets a lot of love, but I don't know about the other one.

"The demons came and the marines died". Wow. Did they hire Peter Chimaera to write that line?

I find it funny how Activision and Bethesda are only offering 25% off most of their titles. Even EA is more generous with a 33% off. (Source: publisher deals section) Er... well, EA boosted up to 50% off and Bethesda to 25-50% today I guess.

And whoa, RAGE is already down to $30 standard price? That tanked in price faster than Duke Nukem Forever, I think. Maybe not, but still, that's a pretty fast price slash.

Can't say I'm seeing anything enticing to me at the moment that I don't already own. Witcher 2, maybe, but why get it here when I can get it from GOG?
Red Orchestra 2, still out of my terrible price range.
Singularity perhaps? Actual health system looks promising but I'm not too interested in yet another console port without any FOV adjustability.
Dead Island? Too pricey even in the sale at the moment for my horrible budget, and I'm not sure if there are any proper fixes for its issues yet.

Xeros612 said:

And whoa, RAGE is already down to $30 standard price? That tanked in price faster than Duke Nukem Forever, I think. Maybe not, but still, that's a pretty fast price slash.

DNF is down to $5...

Xtife said:

Well, that news title is misleading.

Not really. "Wow! That game that didn't really interest me is just $15 instead of $60! I think I'll take it even if I would never have bought it at its normal price."

Gez said:

DNF is down to $5...

... In this sale. DNF is $20 standard price.

Well, RAGE finally hits the magic $20 mark. *nabs*

RAGE was worth full price. I got a LOT of play time out of it and the mechanics and better than any modern FPS I've ever played and the visuals are breathtaking. I actually don't know how people were even capable of beating this game in anything less than 20 hours.

The package price for the complete pack is weird. It's higher than the individual price. It's also even higher than the sum of the individual full prices.
http://i.imgur.com/I6ePm.png
Is Master Levels really worth 14.99€?

For some reason, when Steam does a sale, the "individual price" takes into account the discounts on the individual items in the package while the "package price" does not.

Yeah but if you compare with the older Super Pack (which is now a less interesting offer but that's beyond the point) or the Doom Pack, you'll notice these ones do have actual package prices independent of the components.

Besides, what I found weird is that the package price is more than the sum of each individual price listed.

david_a said:

Are both Quake mission packs worth owning? Scourge of Armagon gets a lot of love, but I don't know about the other one.

I found both of them equally awesome. The difference is that Scourge is a bit shinier and has more gimmicks, while Dissolution is more uniformly evil. I found some of latter's monsters oddly similar to Heretic's disciples... Both mission packs give you a good sense of progression. Way better than vanilla Quake. I also found the latter mission pack's final boss so tough it felt impossible to defeat.

Armagon is really tough. He's pretty much a Quake version of the Cyberdemon: tough, fast, and lethal. After many, many tries, I had to savescum to win.

The Dragon boss, on the other hand, was ridiculously easy.

I wasn't playing with the mouse, however, and I think the frame rate wasn't the best in the world back then. Not to mention that I just wasn't used to fighting airborne bosses, and most of the time I was cowering in the start cave.

You can win from there. It's possible to just pop in, shoot at it a bit, then get back behind cover.

Armagon deprives you of such a boringly easy tactics. He can go wherever you can go. No cowering in a start cave with him. You can hide behind pillars but he'll just turn around and rocket your face, so you've got to keep moving.

Scuba Steve said:

RAGE was worth full price. I got a LOT of play time out of it and the mechanics and better than any modern FPS I've ever played and the visuals are breathtaking.

I'm only a few hours in (well, like 5 or 6 or so) and I'm already inclined to agree. It's a lot deeper than expected, coming from the guys who did Doom 3. May have restored my new-id faith a bit. :P

Gez said:

The package price for the complete pack is weird. It's higher than the individual price. It's also even higher than the sum of the individual full prices.
http://i.imgur.com/I6ePm.png
Is Master Levels really worth 14.99€?

Back in October I noticed that the Master Levels were listed at $69.99 and $34.99, before package discounts. More importantly, however, they were unavailable except as part of package deals. Now, looking at the packages, they are listed as having an individual price of N/A (though appearing at $34.99 / discounted to $17.49 on a search). I have no idea what's going on with that.

So apparently I can't buy the Quake mission packs because Steam doesn't think I own Quake. Quake, of course, is not on the list of games that can be activated from a retail copy (not that mine had a CD code or anything anyway). Oh well; thanks for saving me money Valve!