Borderlands and Recettear 75% off? What a damn steal.

Alternate Title: Steam, you so crazy! (Day 1)

Quick introduction before the page break regarding these two games. If you read my last entry and are reading this entry you're probably figuring "I can just check Steam for the daily deals, why check here? Are you just trying to promote them or some crap?" Yeah sure, you can check, but basically I'm just using this as an outlet and inspiration for what I should talk about. And sure, I am somewhat promoting Steam but it's only because I love them for making some games more affordable, if only for a day or two.

As for today's deals, I'd like to focus on Borderlands and Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale!

Side note/Disclaimer: For now I'll just be doing short summary/reviews with pictures for the games I'm pointing out. Do be sure to actually go to the steam webpage if you're looking for certain games, 'cause there's plenty more that I'm NOT mentioning in my posts!

Borderlands

Now I'm not a HUUUUGE fan of first person shooters, but along with Left4Dead I've grown very fond of Borderlands. It's a fun action Role-Playing game that you can play alone or with 3 other friends. The equipment and skill system is one of those where it seems confusing as hell when you first learn about it, but seems so simple afterwards that you just want to smack yourself in the face for thinking it was hard in the first place. There's only 4 classes but each one allows for very different play styles with the use of the skill tree. For each level past level 5 you get a skill point that you can put into different bonuses that fit your play style or what you're aiming to achieve. If you don't like what you have you can reset your skills and start over again. You can choose from a variety of weapons, shields and grenades to wield. While this is is all very interesting to me, it's not what really stands out when I think of this game.

What really stands out to me in this game is just the humor of it. The game itself is hilarious, the plot line, the characters, even the one liners when you kill things. The extra downloadable content is pretty freakin' hilarious too.And don't even get me started on the fun shenanigans that happen when you're playing with friends. Pissing each other off by entering menus while trying to switch areas comes to mind...

NOOOOO...... I MEAN BUCCCCAWWWWW

Now it's important to note that the 75% off deal on Borderlands today also covers the Downloadable content. All of these are just as funny as the original game, if not funnier. At the very least, General Knoxx is a must have of the DLC. And if you have to go without one.... well Mad Moxxi is out without a doubt. Overall, pretty amazing deal, especially if you want to get the 4 pack to have some amazingly hilarious adventures with friends like I have. I could continue, but for the sake of time, I'd like to jump into the next game now.



Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

This game is just absolutely adorable on so many levels. This is a cute little indie RPG about a young girl, Recette, who's found herself having to repay a huge debt that her father ran away from. As you may have gathered from the title, to pay back the debt,you run an item shop, selling items that you buy from the market or other people, items that you create, or items that you find in a dungeon while exploring with an adventurer. And if you fail to pay it back... well...

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO HER ;_;

Instead of being the hero that buys an item only to sell it back later at a ridiculously low price, you get to play the merchant who buys cheap and marks up the value tenfold. Maybe I'm just weird but I get a weird sort of satisfaction from doing this. The process is pretty straight forward, you display things, people buy them, you haggle the price with them, and hopefully they don't storm off because you priced it too high. Oh, and sometimes they'll sell you things and place orders too.

I am no good at interior design. Don't judge me.

What was that about dungeons and adventurers? You pay a ludicrously small fee to hire them to risk their lives for you and you get all the loot. Sounds fair right? Well no complaints here, we're not the ones on the short end of the deal after all. This part of the game is fairly simple but fun. Each adventurer has different movement speed and different weapons/attacks so you're sure to like one style... hopefully. If you actually die though, there's no game over here, but you only get to bring back one of your spoils instead of a whole bag of them. :(

And what game is complete without tentacle monsters?

I also love the humor in this game. The interaction between characters is hilarious, and just the random dialogue that comes with random purchases is always entertaining as well. The only thing that sucks is that there's no English voice acting, due to lack of funding, but supposedly if they manage to generate enough revenue they will be added! And even without it, I still can't hate on the game, sound effects are still cute!

I think this one speaks for itself.

The only downside I can possibly see is that the game itself is fairly short, easily beatable in a few hours if you don't do too much dungeon crawling and just profit from buying/selling. Despite this, there is a lot of playability in this game with survival and endless mode. There's a decent amount of content in endless mode that, even with 84 hours played, I still haven't gotten to yet.  Regardless, I feel it's definitely worth at the very least the $5 if you're even remotely interested.


WHEW. That was a lot longer than I originally wanted it to be and still didn't include things I would have liked to. Feel free to ask questions if you have any!