I hope everyone had an awesome holiday weekend and got what they wanted. I thought I did pretty well myself, and had a really nice time with my family and my girlfriend over the last two days. Today however, the day I'm writing this, I have been relaxing at home with nothing really productive to do. That's where Steam has come in. For those who don't know, Steam is a website and a client that allows you to download vast library of PC games for the set prices. Steam also has a history with sales... Crazy sales... Unbelievable sales...
The most insane sales they usually do are in both the summer time and the winter time, so the winter one is still going on as we speak. Just to give an example of the insanity: Yesterday, Sonic Generations (the NEWEST Sonic game) was available for a day for $10.19. Still not crazy enough? How about Indie RPG Bastion (a $14.99 game) for $5.09? Honestly, I could go on and on, but that's not what I'm here to discuss this time. Today I'm talking about their holiday achievement system.
Not only did Steam create an achievement system similar to the Xbox 360 achievement system/PS3 trophy system, but during the times of their biggest sales like this one, they have more special achievements that you unlock by completing these in-game, and sometimes from doing some simple tasks on their website. Unlike regular achievements that don't actually do anything, these holiday achievements grant you either a gift or a piece of coal. The gifts can range from coupons to actual free games, or pieces of coal. If you collect 7 pieces of coal, you can also exchange them for another free gift. They also allow you to trade these with other users, or give games as gifts. Honestly, it's a perfect setup and a great way to encourage others to play games they might not have otherwise thought of trying. I'm also happy to say the achievements are all do-able (some are very easy, while others are annoying as frack).
So far, I've gotten the holiday achievements for the following:
- Bastion: Beating the first stage. Already had the achievement before they made it a holiday one.
- Jamestown: Beating a stage using the third unlocked ship. In order to unlock this I had to replay quite a few levels after stage 2 and get about $8,000 in game to purchase. Wasn't too hard, but not too easy either. Felt just right.
- Looking in my inventory simply gave me another one.
- Joining the community group forum gave me one more.
Next, I'm going to try the game Killing Floor, which I'm hearing is a lot like if Left 4 Dead had a smaller budget, but was still fun as hell. After that, I think I'll try getting the achievement for the game Sequence (it was $1.24 today...). It appears to be a mix of Rhythm and RPG, which sounds very interesting to me. After that, I think I'll try the achievements for some of the indie games I got not too long ago (Cave Story +, ... And Yet It Moves, etc.). If anyone else is messing around with this, feel free to friend me or trade items with me if you like.
Steam ID: JDOmnislash
store.steampowered.com/
To sum it up, this is an awesome idea they have going, and an awesome way to spend the afternoon when you have nothing to do for the day. Go Steam! Wallets around the world hate you, but everyone else loves you, so it's cool! Haha, thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment