Although I purchased Fallout 3 when it first released in October of 2008, I made up my mind that I would wait until two conditions had been met before playing. First, I wanted to wait for the first three official add-ons to be released. Second, I wanted to play using a mature version of the DarNified UI, a Fallout 3 PC mod (of which there is also a version for Oblivion) that overhauls the game’s interface (HUD, Pip-Boy, etc.) to look and feel as if they were designed for PC controls and displays. I finally began playing in May of 2009, when both conditions had been met. I’ve since logged just over 56 hours of play; the main quest and a slew of side quests are now completed, and I have impressions and experiences to share.
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Nothing interesting happened this week. Seriously. There was a whole bunch of StarCraft 2 stuff, but I don’t need to talk about that here. Surely, you’ve already absorbed it all elsewhere! So…

I thought I’d call attention to a blog post made this week over at Schnauzer Studios. The funkdacious Rob Geboers (whose March of The Zombies was recently featured in Audiosurfing) shared what he remembers about his time making music with Amiga systems as a youth. He’s even posted a couple of his creations for us to hear, one of which is all about peanut butter. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

You can’t really have a list of cheap games without mentioning 3rd-party modifications, widely known as “mods” for short. A game not considered cheap might suddenly become a value proposition when combined with a strong mod community. Mods themselves are cheap, but they require the original game on which they’re built. In this case, you’ll need Portal.

Portal: Prelude is a full, lengthy campaign, set before the events in Portal. It was developed mostly by a small team of three living in Europe. It came as quite a surprise when it was announced shortly before its release, something very unusual in the mod community. The intent was to create a much more challenging Portal experience while retaining the atmosphere. This differs from other map packs in that those focus purely on the puzzles.
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