Direct2Drive is having another sale, this time offering various games for $6 to celebrate the site’s sixth anniversary. Now when the cost of entry is $6, it’s kind of hard to argue ‘value’ here. I mean I’ve spend more than that on a single League of Legends skin, so the real question is “would I actually play this?”
I’ve always had a strange fascination with Titan Quest, if for no other reason than it being a really great Diablo-like game that for one reason or another, I just never picked up (played and enjoyed the demo a while back though). The thing holding me back now is the fact that it’s 2010, and while Titan Quest looked good when it was released, it won’t blow anyone away today. Then there is the consideration of how well the gameplay has aged. What was fun back in the D2 days might not be nearly as fun today. Or maybe it will be. Choices…
The other title of interest for me is Tropico 3. I’ve always enjoyed Sim City-style games, and I’ve never played a Tropico title, so for $6 this seems like a good time to give it a shot. It’s not a really old game, so graphically it should still be more than fine, and from what I’ve read the gameplay is very solid. The nice thing about such games is that they are easy to jump in and out of during a gaming lull, and if a few hours get filled for $6, well mission accomplished.
The other big thing holding me back is my hard drive. At 160gb, it fills up fast, and nothing is more annoying than playing “download and install” monthly to make room, especially for games that require a decent amount of patching (any MMO). I’ll be damned if I don’t get a stupid big hard drive in my next comp (although those fast SSD drives sure do look nice… damnit!), but for now, I’ve got to make due.
Anyway, if you are looking for some gaming on a discount, this is a great opportunity to pick up some titles, and it seems every Wednesday D2D will be adding (or changing?) what is available.
Chuck-o-the-day: Chuck Norris turned God into an atheist.
Hardcore Casual 
6 bucks for Tropico 3 is a STEAL.
I picked it up from Steam during the summer sale for around 12 I think, and I love it. Hope you enjoy!
160 gig HD? WTF are you gonna do with that toy? I drop deuces bigger than 160 GB.
Raptor drive peasant.
Why do you have just one hard drive?
I appreciate the super-fast Raptor thing, but do you need that speed of access for everything?
I’ve got about six I think, though obviously I don’t use them all at once.
Well that comp is only for gaming, so having a second, slower drive would somewhat defeat the purpose, although for games that don’t really need the speed it would work. And considering a 1tb drive is like $100 now, it might be time to pick one up.
Best setup, for gaming or otherwise, is a superfast drive as your system drive, then a second+ drive as bulk storage.
You can get reasonably fast large drives too; so a good option is picking up a pair of high performance 1tb or so drives and running them in RAID.
Having a single drive does not make a good gaming rig. You don’t want to be installing your games to the system drive, or – fast or not – you’re looking at issues where your OS needs to read/write at the same time as your game does.
So, just pick up a second drive. Their very cheap, and easy to install. Or get two and run em in RAID for more badassedness.
I run raided SSDs for my OS, main programs, and select games with everything else on 2TB drives.
Hard drive prices have fallen quite a bit from when you purchased your last system and the price/gb for mechanical hard drives is now in the single cents. Check out these deals for example: http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail/Aug-0-2010/labordayL34E/index-landing.html?nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL083110&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL083110-_-EMC-083110-Index-_-E0D-_-Keyboard#PER.
If you got the space and spare change, I would definitely recommend adding one.
Good stuff, thanks for the link. Picked up a 1.5gb WD drive.
I picked up Mount&Blade Warband last week for $10 on Steam, was really worth it.
I already buy stuff from Steam, Impulse, Gamersgate and GoG and I already hav etoo many passwords and log in s to remember. I am somewhat reluctant to go to yet another digital download service. What sort of drm do Direc2Drive use is it a client (like steam) or is it a special version of the game (like Gamersgate?
Another vote for a decent 1Tb hard drive. Assuming that your computer has a sensible amount of Ram (anything over 4Gb really) then having a fast hard drive doesn’t improve your gameplay at all because you are running from ram almost all the time.
D2D is nice because the only DRM they have is a code when you first install the game (that they email to you, or that can always be found in your account page). A few games in the past have had D2D-specific version, but they seem to have stopped doing that.
I second what Slurms said: Tropico 3 for $6 is a STEAL. I’ve put dozens of hours into Tropico 3 and its expansion. It’s a very addictive game, while being extremely casual. It’s easy to just be chilling, building up your island… and all of the sudden you realize you’ve been playing for hours.
As I’m still playing TQ to this day, I can say it has aged quite well :). Far better than, say, Torchlight…