Steam Calculator – So Cool, So Demoralizing

Hoarding games on Steam is extremely easy.  There are sales literally every day.  Sometimes you can’t find any good games on sale, but most of the time you can find one or two.  Over time, these games pile up and you end up sitting on a bunch of games that you’ve never played.

Enter the Steam Calculator.

This handy little page will calculate the current value of the games you have in your Steam library.  It will also show you the value of your games based on their full retail price.  Those are scary numbers to look at.  They knew it would be when they made it because the button that calculates the totals says, “Get disappointed in your life.”

The website also lists every game that you own and how long you’ve played each one.  Of course, it’s also very easy to see which ones haven’t played as well . . .

Then, at the bottom, it gives you this nice little summary that you can display on forums and other places (though you might have to tidy up the code a bit depending on where you post it):

**My Steam Profile**

• Worth: $1484 ($397 with sales)
• Games owned: 125
• Games not played: 92 (74%)
• Hours on record: 798.9 h

But that’s not all you can do from that page.  Along the top there are some drop-down menus.  One of the coolest parts of the website is that you can click on the “Sales” tab and it will pull up every sale that Steam has going on.  You can then sort them far easier than you can in the Steam store.  The default sort method lists games that are the most discounted first.

I just thought I should share this tool because it certainly opened my eyes.  How many games do you own that you’ve yet to play?  What are your games worth?  Feel free to paste your results in the comments!

DayZ – Friendly Encounter

First, I’ve gotta say this game has devoured pretty much all of my free time the past week.  When I was signing out a few minutes ago I had logged 30 hours so far.  I like the game so much that I actually made Heather buy a copy too.  We’ve been playing together quite a bit in the regular servers and have geared up quite nicely.  Today however, I’ve been playing on a hardcore server (first-person only) and it was proving very difficult until I met Phil.

After an hour or so of running around looking for supplies, my guy was coming very close to starving to death.  I think the most recent update must’ve made food spawn less often because it’s way harder to find now (in my brief experience anyway).  I made it to a town that looked promising and I found nothing but rotten fruit, two hats, a hacksaw, and a bat.   The bat came in handy fighting off several very aggressive zombeis, but I wasn’t about to try the fruit.

After finally vanquishing the zombies I started to head out of town in search of food and water and that’s when I saw Phil.  He was just standing in the middle of the street, much like the zombies tend to do.  I was hesitant about approaching him after all the stories I’ve read online about people killing each other on sight.  DayZ’s reddit page is full of stories like that if you spend any time over there.  I decided to risk it and ran up about 20 yards from him.  Phil was friendly and since he still had no equipment I gave him the hacksaw, a hat, and half my rotten fruit.  Neither of us were in any better or worse shape, but I felt better having shared my junk.

We headed out and eventually found some food and water.  We picked up a few weapons (Phil was lucky enough to find a Mosin in a random house) and found some more equipment along the way.  We chatted as we traveled and I learned this was the first he’d played the game at all.  Before we parted ways I gave him my axe and some rags and wished him good luck.  He thanked me and headed off to loot another house.

I really enjoyed my first human interaction in DayZ and I hope I was able to give Phil a positive first experience with the game.  Even though so many people report negative results when meeting other people, I like to think there are other good players out there.

What have your encounters been like?  Have you been shot on sight every time?  Axed to death?  Or did a fully geared player greet you and offer to share their supplies?  Let me know in the comments; I really enjoy reading DayZ stories.

Half-Life – First Thoughts

For a long time I’ve heard nothing but positive things about Half-Life.  I mean, it has a metascore of 96!  Its the highest scored game that I own on the PC.  So I figured it was about time I bust it out and give it a go.

With just over 2 hours completed, I’m not really sure I’m feeling the same things that other gamers have felt.  I know its early and there’s still a lot of game to go, but at this point I’m left with one really big question: “Where is the story?” Aside from the occasional interaction with one of the many scientist doppelgangers, there has been no story progression.  I know the name of my character and his profession.  And I know that whatever happened during that experiment released crazy monsters into the facility.  That’s it.  I really want to know more.  I want to be immersed in the story and really care about what’s going on, but I don’t.

I know I’m probably being overly harsh on the game, but I can’t help it.  The game is nothing more, at this point, than a shooting game that features some puzzles.  I know the game is old (1998), but so is GoldenEye 007 (1997), a game which featured a good story and great gameplay.  Both games have a Metacritic score of 96, so apparently someone thinks the games are on the same level.  Besides, I love playing old games.  I think they’re awesome.  I’m not judging the graphics or mechanics (I mean, it was 1998.  3D was still a new thing), or anything like that when I say its sub-par, I’m judging the gameplay and story.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on the game.  I’m enjoying the shooting aspect of it, I just can’t see what the fuss is about.  That said, I do plan to finish the game.  Maybe it gets better and I’ll have to come back and apologize for speaking such blasphemy, but maybe not.  We all experience games differently, and we all have different reasons for playing games.

So what do you think?  Am I crazy for not thinking the game is awesome from the start?  Or does it just take a while to get into it?  Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments below.

Recovering My Childhood

When I was a teenager, I wasn’t very smart.  I was one of the nicest people you could ever meet, a very loyal friend, and a really hard worker, but I made some very stupid decisions.  One of the biggest was choosing to sell my N64 along with around 25-30 games on ebay for less than $75.  Included in the sale:

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
• Duke Nukem 64
• Starfox 64
• Super Mario 64
• Smash Bros.
• Pokemon Stadium 1 & 2
• Pokemon Snap
• Hey You, Pikachu (along with the mic)
• Yoshi’s Story
• Banjo Kazooie
• Many Other Games
• 2 Controllers
• Expansion Pack
• Rumble Pack
• 2 Memory Cards (Controller Paks)
• And of Course, the System Itself

I’ve never forgiven myself for selling that stuff.  The N64 was the first system I was addicted to.  Games like Ocarina of Time, Starfox, and Duke Nukem were responsible for getting me hooked on gaming.  It feels like I sold a huge part of my childhood.  Many nights when I’m retro-gaming with one of our old consoles, the N64 pops into my head and I think of all the great games I could be playing.  We have an N64 but only a few games, so there isn’t really much to do with it.

So I’ve decided to go on a quest.  I’m going to reclaim the pieces of my childhood, one game at a time!  The most important games are: Ocarina of Time, Starfox, and Duke Nukem.  As I said, these games were the ones that got me hooked and the ones that I spent the most time on.  They’re the ones that I want back most.  Once I find copies of those for my collection, I’ll slowly work my way through the rest until the hole in my childhood is filled once again.

Its time for me to get serious.  Gathering all these games will require some dedication.  To quote Mr. Nukem himself, “Hmmm, don’t have time to play with myself.”