EvaUnit02 on 30/12/2009 at 19:45

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Today's deals:-
Osmos - $2 USD - 80% off
Call of Duty: World at War - $25 - 50% off
FIFA Manager 10 - $33.49 - 33% off
Civilisation 4 - $6.79 - 66% off (I'd honestly just opt for the Complete Edition bundle with all the expansions for $13.60)
Left 4 Dead 1 - $7.50 - 50% off

Nothing there that I want today. I already own Civ4 Euro Complete on disc + (Colonisation 2 from Gamersgate), CoD:WaW and L4D1.

Shadowcat on 30/12/2009 at 21:20

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I don't want to start anything up again, but there is one significant advantage to using Steam's backup facility -- you end up with just a handful of files per game, not the thousands that is so common (I wish that more companies would realise that Id's approach is very sensible, and mimic it).

I was copying my Steam games to an external drive the other day, and the overhead in opening and closing all those thousands of files is really significant. Copying a handful of big files is much faster.

It also seems to do a bit of compression, which improves things even more (but the file count is still a big factor).

steamapps: ~52,000 files, 31.5 GB
backup: 120 files, 27.7 GB

Nothing wrong with just copying the whole thing, but this is the main reason I'm now using the built-in backup system.

edit: In fact the compression is better than that. That backup includes at least 8GB of (compressed) data for games that I subsequently uninstalled from my primary drive, so I think the ratio would actually be more than 3:2 in my case.

SubJeff on 31/12/2009 at 10:16

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I hear you.

gunsmoke on 31/12/2009 at 15:26

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Wow, L4D for $7? I have never played it before. Maybe this will get me in the door.
I don't play many multiplayer games these days, though. I used to be one of the best in the world in FarCry multiplayer, spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours on S.W.A.T. 4, and was godly at Soldier of Fortune 2 multiplayer. I semi-'retired' in early 2006, and haven't found a new game that really grabbed me and the style of online play I enjoy.

That said, L4D has piqued my interest since its release, and had I owned a computer that wouldn't reboot every time I launched a SOURCE game I would have bought it day 1. I would love to get in on it, possibly with some fellow TTLG'ers, but I have one concern; should I just go ahead and get the sequel, L4D2? They have demos of both games, right? Hopefully they do. I will sample the goods.

june gloom on 31/12/2009 at 20:40

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I'm not buying L4D2 unless one of two things happen- they improve the bot code and/or the price drops below $20. It's nothing to do with the boycott though.