I'm definitely gonna be keeping an eye on this one. Game demos are powerful, they sway my purchasing decisions more than any other form of advertisement.

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I gotta wonder exactly how they are achieving the enemy sprites. The sprites seem to obey scene lighting to a degree that I have a hard time believing they are pre-rendered, and the amount of viewing angles on them is just insane.
I really can't tell what's going on in these videos, I think I'd have to play the game to really be able to discern what's going on graphically.

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I've been playing nothing, for the past few days I've just been reading a bunch of public domain e-books on my jailbroken Kindle. I've come to appreciate the fact that most fiction is terrible and for most my life my reading experience had been heavily curated by others.

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Goodness, I only just realized that Steam can entirely replace x360ce, and now they're aiming to essentially replace Hamachi? At this rate it seems Steam is well on its way to replacing every video game related utility you'll ever need.

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Quoting: kaimanDepends where in the world you live, I guess. Here in Germany, physical releases were still relatively common until recently, and the majority of those require Steam. So likely anything sold past 2010 is tied to Steam.

I've been on the fence about physical vs. DRM for a while, but right now I'd rather have my stuff DRM free on GOG than a box with nice feelies that requires Steam. How cool was Thimbleweed Park in that regard: big box, feelies and a GOG key! (That had been a U.S. import, though)

I heard that physical PC games were still pretty prominent in Germany before, pretty neat but obviously has its own issues.

You can sort of have the best of both worlds in some cases. On one occasion already I've knowingly bought a physical copy of a game for extremely cheap that I knew wouldn't work due to DRM, then filled the DVD case with burnt DVDs containing my GOG copy of the game. I mean, GOG gives you those DRM free copies for a reason, so you might as well take advantage of it. I wouldn't do this for most games, just ones that have good feelies like soundtracks and thick colored manuals.

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Quoting: CyrilEven if you don't see a Steam logo, there is none Borderlands 2 boxed edition without Steam, it doesn't exist.
You can check for example on pcgamingwiki.com for that stuff.
There are exceptions, but "98%" of PC games need Steam since many years, unfortunately.

Perhaps the way I shop for games is a bit old fashion, but generally I don't research my games before buying them, it's almost always a spur of the moment thing where I see the box in the store, maybe I heard the game's title before elsewhere but otherwise know virtually nothing about the game, I look it over, then purchase it if I like what I see. Thinking about it, this is how I purchase most things in my life.
I've had a lot of luck with the used PC game market, I've bought maybe 30 boxed PC games from the mid to late 2000s and I've only been burned by Stream requirements twice, and one of those times was undeniably my fault. I'd go as far as saying that 95% of the time a used PC game being stocked on a shelf absolutely is safe to buy.
At least that's been my experience. Steam basically killed physical PC game releases so finding a used PC game old enough to have a physical release floating around while simultaneously new enough to require Steam is pretty difficult.

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Quoting: CyrilSorry but for me it's obvious that this game was using Steam, all boxed versions need it. I hope you know perfectly well that Steam have the monopoly now on all boxed PC games. There was no way this used copy have worked. Of course the code was already going to be used.

My general rule is to not touch any used PC game that obviously requires Steam, in this particular case it wasn't as obvious as it usually is for me as all Steam reliant DVD games I bought prior had a Steam logo somewhere on the case, this one did not. I also tend to skim over system requirements on older PC games for perhaps obvious reasons, though I guess I oughta keep an eye on that now. I bought other 2K published games such as Bioshock and Borderlands 1 recently and those relied on SecuROM rather than Steam for DRM, so I wrongly assumed Borderlands 2 would be the same.


I think the store is ultimately at fault here, they did not inform me of the no return policy on PC games and refused to take the game back for store credit. The cashier I was talking to when trying to return the game was also the manager so... well, I'll have to take my complaints elsewhere. Though I'm not certain how much of a fuss I'm willing to stir over $8.

On the plus side on the same visit I also bought a copy of Witcher 2, and while the DRM servers for that were down I was able to redeem the CD key over at GOG. I was thinking of throwing out the now useless DVD to prevent it from re-entering the second hand market and then maybe filling it the case with a burnt copy of the GOG release.

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Some irrelevant local news: I recently purchased a used DVD copy of Borderlands 2 for $8, the only place it mentioned needing Steam was in tiny font in the system requirements, as such it was a dud since the cd key had already been used, and the cherry on top: the place I bought it from has a no return policy on PC games. Now I sit here contemplating whether or not pirating the game is morally justified at this point or if this is all really my fault for expecting anything different.

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I've been excited about this one. I perhaps have a slightly unhealthy obsession with the early Fallout games, and anything that even slightly resembles such immediately has my attention.

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On my current internet provider by the time I finish downloading Kingdom Come: Deliverance the free weekend will be over.

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