tbarak
Legionary
posted 21 June 2009 17:37
EDT (US)
2 / 7
Many game communities are split on their review of Steam, some loving it, others outright despising it. While you'll probably have no problem buying from Steam - it's owned by Valve, best known for the Half Life series - you may get all the "other stuff" that Steam brings.
For example Empire Total War uses Steam, and you have to have web connection going to play the game. This sucks for a lot of people. Also, when you deal with Steam - and I'm not sure whether this is the case if you just buy a game through Steam - but you'll have to put Steam on your system.
Steam is a stand alone content delivery system which among other things, sends you advertisements and runs all the time so it uses computer resources. Many people dislike it in the way it's sort of foisted on you. That is, when I bought Half Life I expected to get a game, not have a content delivery system installed on my computer. Sometimes you can't play your game if Steam is down and I really hate the advertising.
tbarak
Legionary
posted 22 June 2009 17:10
EDT (US)
4 / 7
Like I said, opinions on the value of Steam are split.
mikecz
Legionary
posted 23 June 2009 13:12
EDT (US)
5 / 7
Out here in the boonies I'm on dial-up Internet. A friend in town downloaded the demo for Empire TW & I burned it to a DVD on his machine & took it home to install on my computer. The install took hours because of having to wait for Flash files to load from Steam just to get to the signup & then every time I clicked on basically the "next" link to continue the registration/install.
The install finally completed & the first time I tried to run the game (forced to be online again - tying up the telephone again), it checked for & downloaded without asking me if I wanted to do it now a 30-some meg patch - another couple hours delay.
It took pretty much all day to install this DEMO! Knowing what I do now, am I gonna buy the game?... a resounding NO! It looks like I won't be buying any more Total War games - as long as they are tied up to Steam. I don't want our phone tied up whenever I'm playing (I'd get into WoW if I was willing to do that). Yeah, you can go offline after you start but why the hell do you have to go online to start a single player game at all?
Worse yet, one of these days there will be a multi-hundred megabyte patch for ETW. If I have to get it from Steam, from the computer the game is installed on, I'm screwed. It's just totally impractical for me to download files like that at home. Until & unless Sega & Creative Assembly get off their butts & do there own support for their games, including stand alone patches of Empire - I'm done with them. Steam sucks so bad that outer space has become a vacuum!
mrcash
Legionary
posted 23 June 2009 20:02
EDT (US)
7 / 7
This game is popular and recent enough to still be available from stores. If theres a local gamespot, EB Games, Best Buy or similar stores around your neighborhood, I would have to suggest going there instead. It might seem more convinient to buy on steam, but it really is just a big hassle with all the downloading and whatnot...
The exception to that is if you plan to use steam to buy other games. But for one time use, nah just buy the physical product.