I’ll be glad when the word “save,” as a verb, is no longer used when speaking of PC gaming. While not without its problems, the platform is no longer in danger. Regardless, Brad Wardell is making some valuable observations here.

Speaking of Stardock and digital distribution, Impulse Phase IV has just launched. The new website design is much easier to navigate, and I appreciate being able to filter by price. Ready To Play appears to be Stardock’s answer to Steam Community; I’m interested to see if Impulse will capitalize on what I think is a unique opportunity to one-up Steam on community features.

On a related note, EA has just partnered with, and added several games to, Impulse. Among them is Dragon Age: Origins (pre-order), The Sims 3, and Red Alert 3 along with its expansion, Uprising, which was previously exclusive to EA’s own digital distribution service.

Although Peter Moore’s view is probably limited to consoles, technically, the PC platform should be credited with having “laid the ground” for online multiplayer, communication, and content distribution.

News of this acquisition came as a relief to me because, due to 3D Realms’ tenuous existence, I’ve had concerns about Prey 2′s status. There is no telling if Human Head is still developing it, but the Prey IP should be in good hands now, at any rate.

This is nearly 30 minues of Jeff Gerstmann and Tim Schafer walking around at PAX while talking and letting their humor play off each other. Also, nerds.

Cheap Games Database

This is a list of all of the cheap games we’ve featured in the blog. Every game is under $10 — many are even free! Here they are in order of price (low to high):

Prey is often maligned after it’s long development cycle left people disappointing themselves and their high expectations. The game can actually be quite enjoyable for fans of classic HL-era FPS (with some twists). The narrative appropriately sets the tone and drives the gameplay, like in the best of games. The protagonist is a Native American named Tommy who feels disconnected from his heritage, one that will end up being crucial to his survival. The action is a blast with many perspective shifts that keep it a unique experience. The weapons are enjoyable, thankfully, as that often tends to be crucial to my enjoyment of FPS games as a whole. They feel nice. That long development time surely wasn’t wasted here.

I think my only complaint was how you couldn’t lose. Similar to the chambers in Bioshock, but with added effort, you can revive yourself where you left off after you “die”. It runs on the Doom III engine (2004) to give you an idea of how well it will run on your system. It still looks great, as you can see in the screenshot.

Sokkratez and I have both played through the game and we both highly recommend it. You can probably find it for under $10, but it’s selling for $20 sold out on Steam as of this moment. (don’t ask me how) Luckily you can add any retail Prey cd-key to the Steam service.