TR Forums

Gah, I need to check the daily sales more often.

So far, I picked up Bully: Scholarship Edition, the Splinter Cell pack, Shank and Fallout 3 (yes!).

New Vegas ate my weekend after I bought it.

I bought Bad Company 2 yesterdayfor $6.80. Maybe I'll even play it sometime! Curse you, World of Warcraft!

Is Sim City 4 any good? Last one I played was Sim City 3000.

Yeah, I think SimCity 4 is fantastic - It's a bit of a system resource hog when your cities start to fill out (or you fill-up each map on the region view), but as it's on the daily deals for 24 hours, you might as well. It's a dam site cheaper than I paid for it, but i've had it for 3+ years now. The version on Steam includes the Rush Hour add-on pack too, so is excellent value IMO.

Cities XL 2011 is the latest city builder (which I got last week), and I still go back to SimCity 4 as it just feels better.

We also have all Crysis games 75% off, Dirt 2 (excellent racer) and the complete Doom Pack today. Might have to have a dabble in that last one myself.

Good! Purchased! Though I don't think I'll be trying to play it on my laptop (which can't run SC2 very well on anything but low settings), but I think I'll enjoy it on my desktop.

Has anyone else noticed that most Steam games seem to have a secondary install process? I've been waiting for about 10 minutes for Dirt 2 "Performing first time setup..." I'm becoming suspicious that Valve has decided to have users download installers, then install the games locally.

I don't think so - most of that is installing DirectX stuff and other assorted nonsense like GFWL. You could verify it because the Steamapps/Common folder should have a Dirt2 folder that would have had either an installer or the game. Most likely it's just periphery but I wouldn't complain if it was installers; it'd save bandwidth.

if you are using windows 7 'make sure' the game is not waiting on 'you' to give the game admin privileges to install
look down at your task bar or press alt tab

dirt 2 has 'two' extra installers I believe
some games require these such as when they use proprietary licensed physx functions and other C++ things they need

After waiting about 15 minutes I finally figured out that there was some sort of pop-up box that I needed to install something with. But what's with the "installing DirectX" every time I play a game for the first time?

TurtlePerson2 wrote:

After waiting about 15 minutes I finally figured out that there was some sort of pop-up box that I needed to install something with. But what's with the "installing DirectX" every time I play a game for the first time?

It prevents a lot of problems and generally causes no harm. Better it be installed every time than start complaining when you're missing one necessary dx package.

Still, you'd think that the installer writer'd be smart enough to say "ah, you've got the August 2010 DX 9.0c package installed, my version is from Feb '07, so I won't bother" instead of always installing.

Hehe yeah, that drives me crazy too. I remember the good ole days where the installers would determine if you had the latest and greatest and give you the option to skip the install when you did. Nowadays? Not so much.

bthylafh wrote:

Still, you'd think that the installer writer'd be smart enough to say "ah, you've got the August 2010 DX 9.0c package installed, my version is from Feb '07, so I won't bother" instead of always installing.

I believe the problem is that the newest ones don't contain every single old file, so you actually need that 07 installation because that's what they wrote the game with, and that's what it asks to use.

I've broken out one of the newer 9.0c distributions and it's full of CAB files that seem to correspond with each of the previous incremental updates, so I don't think it's that.

CampinCarl wrote:

Anyone played Wings of Prey? 78/100 on Metacritic. Sounds like it could be good; I've been looking for a good combat flight sim since TIE Fighter.

paulWTAMU wrote:

second that request: anyone??

I jumped on it and bought it as my X-mas gift to myself. Long time flight simmer here, dating back to F-119 (CGA !!), BoB, 1942, SWoTL, MS Combat Flight Sim .... I was basically starving for a quality flight sim. Its my own fault for not buying Il-2 and playing that.

Now, to start off with the obvious comparison, WoP is clearly an arcadey flight model compared to the Il-2 series, so I will not pretend to compare it thusly, but it does let me get in a quick flight without having to worry about total realism that Il-2 would provide. But what it DOES offer ... wow .. the GRAPHICS !!! I've always based my flight sim enjoyment on the immersion experience ... how much does it really FEEL like I am actually flying this crate ?? ... and WoP definitely makes a low altitude pass of a city feel quite impressive visually.

I have yet to play online as I working through the campaign currently. I'm actually going to pick up an MS Force Feedback 2 joystick and hope that it works 100% properly in Vista on my rig. I've read issues where it does not provide force feedback after its first use on a Vista or Win7 based PC. Also, the yuplay.com registration requirement and restrictive 3 use DRM policy is another story entirely, but even with this crap that nobody wants to either install or deal with, I went ahead and bought it, along with the Luftwaffe DLC.

Do your homework and know the good and especially the bad when it comes to this game. I was able to swallow my DRM pride and accept it, but many other gamers were not so fond of either problem and held onto their cash.

Got Fallout NV, Civ 4 Complete, Mount and Blade: Warband, Half life 1 anthology and some other stuff.
That was one of the longest running sales (tieing in with the thanksgiving sales). Too bad its over

i still haven't finished all the games I got during it O.o I've beat Fallout New Vegas and Battlefield. I'v eplayed a bit of AvP....haven't touched the others yet.

paulWTAMU wrote:

i still haven't finished all the games I got during it O.o I've beat Fallout New Vegas and Battlefield. I'v eplayed a bit of AvP....haven't touched the others yet.

I haven't even finished the games I bought in the 2009 sale

bthylafh wrote:

Still, you'd think that the installer writer'd be smart enough to say "ah, you've got the August 2010 DX 9.0c package installed, my version is from Feb '07, so I won't bother" instead of always installing.

That's what the DirectX installer does.

It doesn't seem to, does it? If it did a proper job, it'd do a quick check in the background and then not even bother you about installing DX9c.

Instead, it appears to install stuff /anyway/. It certainly takes a good long time to do whatever it's doing.