Steam Sale/Auction - Winter 2014

In addition to the usual, unbelievably-cheap games for a Steam sale, this year they introduced a system for converting certain unwanted digital goods they provide into "gems", which normally can be used primarily for buying "trading card packs" on their site... but, for the launch, they also ran a gem-priced auction on many of their games.  So, this list also includes a number of effectively-free games that I received from that system... thanks, Steam!

AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity - Yeah, there should be some more As in that name, but since Steam was willing to truncate it, so am I.  The basic premise here is pretty well unique... in a futuristic city of floating buildings, jump off the top of a high one and free-fall, scoring points for getting close to buildings, breaking through strategically-placed glass panes, and interacting with onlookers.  Finish your run by deploying something parachute-like, and land in a predefined landing zone, all without breaking any bones.  I rather enjoyed this one, during the jumps at least... the menu interface is simply strange, trying to link to the minimal backstory provided.  Worth a go, if fear of simulated heights isn't a problem for you.

Batman:  Arkham Origins - Third in a series, I had played the prior two on consoles and gotten various degrees of enjoyment out of them, so I went in with high hopes.  While the gameplay is similar to prior entries (what little I did of it), the overall quality went missing somewhere.  On the tutorial/introductory level, during the "boss fight" with Killer Croc, I lost all sound, and Croc glitched out visually ("ghosting" is how I would describe it).  Still managed to make it through, but that killed any interest I had in pursuing the storyline.  Give this one a pass... but definitely check out either of the prior games (Arkham Asylum and Arkham City) if you haven't already done so.

Bully:  Scholarship Edition - I've always been curious about this game, since back when it launched (on PlayStation 2, if memory serves)... a videogame where you play as a kid in school is certainly different, but could it actually be fun?  Turns out, yes, within limits... you're set up as a new, troubled kid transferring in to a boarding school for mostly-troubled kids, so things like fights happen routinely, so long as it's out of sight of the school's staff.  Classes look to be fun, too... score well in introductory Chemistry, for example (which is done as a rhythm mini-game), and you get the ability to make firecrackers in your dorm room.  Downsides exist, though... while many of the characters in the game are almost-unbelievable stereotypes, they're only almost unbelievable, and having that many packed in one place is a little horrifying.  That, and, being a product of game culture a couple of generations back, the game is LOUD... mainly with the "barks" of brainless thugs and sniveling geeks, which can get really annoying in short order.  Still and all, I could see myself going back to play this some more, time permitting.

Card City Nights - A "collectible" card game with the potentially-interesting hook of card positioning on the play field mattering... but in the end, it's all about playing "match 3" using icons on your cards, which I found to be an uninspired choice.  I'd pass, unless you're the sort of game geek that thrives on seeing different mechanics in play.

Cargo Commander - A platormer of sorts, set in the reaches of deep space, where you, as a lowly employee of a megacorp, gather lost cargo containers (by magnetically attracting them to your home/ship), then explore them for abandoned cargo, eliminating any aliens/mutants you run across.  Each container has its own definition of which way "down" is, so your frame of reference rotates with each area you enter... and of course, there's a time limit, after which a "wormhole" breaks apart the whole structure, so you have to get back to your home quickly or risk dying in the cold void of space.  It's a great concept, marred only by one factor:  the game reports back to a server for high-score purposes, and you can't unlock new levels unless you're connected to the server... and the game doesn't handle server outages (which I saw several of) quickly or gracefully.  I can't recommend the game in its current state, but there's potential there, if the game/server(s) can be patched for reliability.

Foul Play - Victorian-themed beat-em-up, presented as a stage performance of a demon-hunter recounting his exploits in Egypt... so, mechanically, the main difference between this and other such games is that, instead of a "health" meter, you get an "audience satisfaction" meter... the longer and more varied the combos you pull off the more thrilled the audience is, while if you're getting the snot beat out of you, it'll soon be curtains, literally.  I haven't played the last level yet (so yes, it's a bit short), but everything I've played to this point has been nothing short of charming.  It's definitely worth a look.

Papo & Yo - A third-person puzzle-platformer, where... hm, honestly, I'm not sure how to describe this both accurately and tonally.  I mean, the game starts with you as an abused child, hiding in the closet from your dad, who's stomping around outside... but you escape into a sort of dream-slum with its own set of rules and malleability, where you eventually meet back up with "Monster", who's an analogue of your dad, who you end up using to help you through sections of the game.  I mean, it's not a depressing thing to play... it's not terribly challenging, but it's entertaining, and definitely has that "viewpoint of a child" thing going for it that I see missed so often in games where children are the supposed protagonists.  Even if it's just when it's "on the cheap", I'd say snag this, to see the wonderful job they did with the world.

Portal 2 - Yes, I already got this for XBox360 back in the day, and I got it again on Steam anyways, it's just that good.  I'd still say to check the original Portal out, if the graphics don't hold you back, since it fleshes out the story you encounter in Portal 2.  Either way, I say, get this game.

Skullgirls - A wonderful little 2D fighting game... truly original character designs (I came for the 1920s-cartoon-style character, but the zombie catgirl has to be my favorite so far), tight controls, and an extensive tutorial really make this a keeper in my book.  Pity I don't have the reflexes/timing to do a game like this justice any longer... if you do, by all means, check it out.

Talisman:  Digital Edition - I'll admit, this was as much a nostalgia purchase as much as anything.  Talisman is a boardgame that's been around since at least the '80s, where each player takes a character out adventuring in the world, with the ultimate goal of collecting a Talisman (hence the name of the game) to let them enter the Valley of Fire, which stands between them and the Crown of Command, with which they can knock off all the other players and become king/queen of the world.  It's a very random game, with limited player interaction (players can basically beat each other up for their stuff, and occasionally use spells to tweak them)... frankly, as a game, it mostly fails, especially with games like Munchkin being out on the market, taking over the D&D/boardgame crossover market that it once held mostly solo.  I won't recommend it to you, but, if you're ever thinking about picking up the actual boardgame, you might give this a go first... and, as is the unfortunate norm in videogames these days, there's plenty of DLC you can get, if the base game strikes a chord with you.

New OS on an old Mac Mini

For anybody that didn't know, I'm really pretty damn cheap... easy evidence of that can be found in things like the list of sale games I got last summer (and of course, another one of those is on the way for my winter Steam sale acquisitions, shortly).  So, when I got myself a new Mac Mini to replace the one I got way back in 2007, I wasn't about to just toss the old one, for all its specs are pretty puny.  Apple stopped supporting it a while back, so it wasn't much use as a "real" computer... but it would still be good enough to store some files, if I could get another operating system on it.

Turns out, over the years, there's been enough demand for this retrofit that it should be relatively easy... should being the operative word.  Me, I got carried away with getting clever, so I've wasted most of this day on this project already... still, I did work out one thing that might be of help to some other poor soul out there who's stuck, trying to get the process going, without anything more than 5-year-old posts to start from.

The biggest hurdle I hit was actually just getting the install process started.  In theory, you should be able to reboot your Mac, hold down the Option key (or Alt, if you're on a PC keyboard), and get a list of boot options.  In my case, whether it's the odd PC keyboard I'm using, or the KVM switch it's being fed through, or something else, it simply didn't work.  The way I found around the problem is to install a little boot manager called rEFInd (a fork of the long-abandoned rEFIt tool mentioned so often in those years-old posts).  With that, you can reboot your computer, and, after a few seconds to let the optical drive spin up and recognize the contents, refresh the boot screen to select the install disc to boot from.

Past that... well, I won't go into all the trials and tribulations I went through trying to re-partition the drive to basically use OS X/rEFInd as a glorified, bloated boot loader.  However, at the end of the day, I did finally say "to heck with it", and let my installer of choice just use the whole disk instead... and it works like a charm, although that first 20-30 second boot process left me wondering if I had run into another dead end.  So, for the record, and for any poor Google searchers out there who might be wondering, OpenBSD 5.6 (i386) installs, boots, and runs just fine on a MacMini2,1 machine, once you can get the install disc to boot.