Smiley's Life

EA Week has reached Day Five, and with it, three games have been discounted:

• Mirror’s Edge is 75% off, meaning this beautiful game will cost you only 5 measly bucks. I personally recommend this game and consider it to be one of the most fun, beautiful and innovative games EA have to offer.
• Dead Space is 50% off. I’ve heard Dead Space is a great, survival-horror game and for $15 it may just be worth it. I’m considering it myself.
• Spore and all of its expansions (Creepy & Cute Parts Pack and Galactic Adventures) are 33% off. I liked Spore, and I was considering repurchasing it on Steam to have a SecuROM-less copy, but at $26.79 I don’t think it’s worth it. The discount is too low, not to mention the fact Spore’s current (pre-sale) $39.99 price tag is too high considering its reviews and content.

I highly recommend you to pick up Mirror’s Edge. At $5, it’s a steal.

This week, there are various discounts on EA games on Steam. Each day, a different game or game series goes on sale. The first game series is Crysis, making Crysis and Crysis: Warhead available for 50% off.

Apparently, Valve already uploaded the banners for the next days, so we can know the (awesome) lineup of discounted games for EA Week:

Tuesday is “Military Day”, and judging by the background, we can tell Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is going to be on sale.

Wednesday is “Command & Conquer Day”, so obviously, Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight will be on sale with, most probably, the other Command & Conquer games.

Thursday is “Racing Day”, so I assume Need for Speed games would be on sale and maybe even Burnout Paradise.

Friday is “Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space & Spore” day! You can guess what will be on sale. If Dead Space is discounted enough I may get it. If EA magically lower Spore’s price to $5 or under, I may repurchase it for Steam. (Got it on disc with a SecuROM license from release day.)

Saturday is “Mass Effect Day”, and judging by the name and background image it’s very likely EA will discount Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2! The former may even be discounted to $5, like in Steam’s last holiday sale. I hope it will, I missed the last Mass Effect sale and from what I heard it’s a great game. Now, if Mass Effect 2 was also discounted for, say, 75%… That would be a lovely surprise.

And last, but not least, Sunday is “Dragon Age Day”! Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Awakening will most probably be on sale.

EDIT: Valve just made the Orange Box on sale for 30% off! If you have yet to get Portal or if you’re interested in Team Fortress 2, I recommend you to get the entire Orange Box package for $20.99. If you get the three Half-Life 2 games separately, it comes down to $18.17. So it’s your call: “Should I pay an extra $2.72 or shouldn’t I?”

Good news! Half-Life 2 and the two episodic sequels: Half-Life 2: Episode One & Half-Life 2: Episode Two have just been released on Mac with brand new Steam Achievements for Half-Life 2 & Episode One and Steam Cloud support for all three! Start your game on one platform and continue it on the other! In addition, all there are sold for 30% off their original price for a limited time! That means: $6.99 for Half-Life 2 and $5.59 for Episode One and Episode Two each.

I recommend you to buy all three installments right now. Half-Life 2 is a very, very good game and so are Episode One and Episode Two.

In fact, 4 games out of 5 in Valve’s Orange Box package have been ported to Mac so far. Now all that’s left is Team Fortress 2.

See Steam’s Early Holiday Sale page, containing each day’s deals.

Steam, Valve’s great content delivery system for games, is having a five-day sale of games for the holidays. Every day 6-8 other games are discounted for 25%, 50%, or even 80%. I personally adore Steam (I’ll write my opinion blog post in the coming days) for its ease-of-use and great prices, since games are usually sold for 150% their U.S. cost here in Israel, and because Steam has great weekend and midweek deals. Today’s deals are Left 4 Dead for a mere $7.49 instead of $29.99, Resident Evil 5 for $24.99 instead of $49.99, SPORE for $19.99 instead of $39.99, Ghostbusters: The Videogame for only $9.99 instead of $19.99, Trine for just $9.99 instead of $19.99, Borderlands for $33.49 instead of $49.99, Order of War for just $9.99 instead of $39.99.

Of the above, I personally recommend Left 4 Dead (4.5 stars), Trine (4 stars) and SPORE (4 stars). I’ve played those three and can definitely say they’re great games: Get Left 4 Dead if you like action-packed shooters that unlike the other 80% don’t take place in a military environment. Get Trine if you like puzzle platforming games, and have a thing for retro sidescrollers. (It’s a beautiful ”3D sidescroller”.) Get SPORE if you like smart simulation games.

(This post has been redone from a link with a description, since my theme apparently does not support link descriptions. I’ll add it in myself later. >.>)