We love a good deal here at ButtonSmasher (we even have a ‘Bargain Bin’ series dedicated to cheap games) so imagine my jaw dropping to the floor and doing a little dance when I discovered that Steam currently has one of the best gaming deals I’ve ever seen.

2k Games is offering the “2K Huge Game Pack” right now on Steam. The pack includes games like Bioshock, five Civilization games, five X-Com games and nine others. The best part? It’s only £35.99!

Here’s the full list of the games in the pack:

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV
Sid Meier’s Civilization III Complete
Sid Meier’s Pirates!
Shattered Union
Prey
CivCity: Rome
Civilization IV: Warlords
Sid Meier’s Railroads!
Railroad Tycoon 3
Railroad Tycoon II Platinum
X-COM: Terror From the Deep
X-COM: Apocalypse
BioShock
X-COM: Interceptor
X-COM: UFO Defense
X-COM: Enforcer
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
Freedom Force
Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich
Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization

If you bought all those games individually it would empty your pockets of £141.80, which is a massive saving of £105.81. You can’t really go wrong with this deal, unless you have most or all of the games already.

The pack normally costs £39.99, but a 10% discount is in effect until July 7. This means the pack is now £35.99, so if you want to save £4 get it before Tuesday.

You can purchase the pack here. Alternatively you can just load the Steam program on your desktop and buy it through there.

If you’re looking for a bargain this weekend then look no further than Valve’s digital distribution platform Steam. The ‘multiple award winning’ World of Goo is now available for the low low price of £4.24 for this weekend only. After this weekend’s promotion the price will go back up to £16.99, so get it while it lasts.

If you’re not convinced enough to slap down what’s basically pocket money then you can also download the demo through Steam to give it a try. If you’ve got any sense then that should have you reaching for your credit card in no time at all. You’ll also be helping an independent developer.

If you’d rather not play it on the PC then the game is also available on Wiiware, where you can use your remote to build structures and solve puzzles using balls of goo.

Steam always has some rather good promotions on, and this weekend is no exception. If you’ve never bought a game through digital distribution then this is your chance to try it out, and I assure you that you won’t be disappointed.

I have always been fascinated with creating little societies and watching them grow. As a kid these societies would be created on paper, and all the growing that these towns and cities would undergo was due to my pencil and imagination; and even to this day I’ll draw maps that plan out futuristic cities, or maps that have the giant mountains and lush forests of a fantasy land. While my imagination can be incredibly vivid, eventually I wanted to be able to watch a virtual society grow on its own through the magic of another great hobby of mine; video games.

Thankfully I grew up on the likes of Populous and Powermonger. The aim of these two games was pretty different; the former had you manipulating the landscape so your little civilisation would grow and overcome an enemy force, while the latter already had the infrastructure in place and your objective was far more combat orientated. However, it was not the main objective of the two games that interested me, as I was far more interested in watching the little people move around the landscape. Powermonger was better at this, and I would often ignore my army altogether. Clicking on a person would allow you to see such things as their name, age, sex, hometown and more; and each person would also scurry around living their own lives. They would collect wood from a nearby forest, fish from the river, or shepherd the sheep on the fields. It was like having my own world inside my console, and I was their god. I was amazed that a game could do such a thing, and these were only the early days.

Since then there has been literally thousands of god-games. From the tycoon likes of Theme Park, to the virtual cities of SimCity, there is plenty there for the aspiring god in you. While playing these I’ve always found that the main thing I thought needed improvement was the AI. I would often get the feeling that the denizens of my creation were only responding to algorithms, and they would not take the initiative and do something without my say-so. Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile, and I think I’ve finally found a game that, at least, feels like I’m simply watching a society go about their daily lives. Of course, these tiny Egyptians need your guiding hand to build the infrastructure that they will live in, as they are not about to build the city on their own, but once it’s there you understand that Tilted Mill wanted this to be more about the people than the buildings they inhabit.

Let’s look at a typical level from the game. You will often start off with nothing more than a few peasant villages on the banks of the Nile. These peasants don’t belong to your city, but you will soon be drawing them in to help set up your basic infrastructure. Firstly, a palace is in order, as the peasants won’t really be much impressed if their Pharaoh lives in the woods. Once this is done you should build a couple of noble estates. These estates are the key to building a prosperous city, as the more estates you have the more farmers you can support, and you will soon discover that farmers are the lifeblood of your empire. Once you’ve got a number of farms built you can watch as they scurry out to the mud banks and start planting fields. The fascinating thing is that each of these farms supports a family. The man of the house will do the planting and harvesting, while the women will go out and shop for wares (which you will need to build as soon as possible, or your farmers won’t stick around for long). The kid will help out wherever is possible, and eventually will be the one who moves out into his/her own job (and often up the ladder too). There are increasing levels of society, and each one needs the level below it in order to support it. Getting complicated, right?

While you place the infrastructure, the people will go out and use it on their own. They all have their own desires that need to be fulfilled, and they will often take it into their own hands if it’s not readily available. For example, if you’re lacking in food (an amount of which is distributed to your workers and estates; plus you, the Pharaoh, of course) then farmers may go out and forage for their own. Be aware though, as this will take valuable time away from other key tasks they should be doing, and if they can’t fulfil these tasks then they’ll start to complain. As you will soon see, the life of a Pharaoh is tough and pleasing everyone is nigh on impossible, but you can at least try. Every decision you make you have a positive effect on one part of society, while a negative effect will hit the other. All this can make the game quite a head scratcher, which should be fun for those of us who like complex city builders.

Eventually you will have a massive support network around your city. Priests will man hospitals, mortuary’s, temples and teach children at schools. People will go to these hospitals for cures, worship at a temple when the need strikes them, arrange a funeral at the mortuary (they will even carry the coffin through the streets) and children will go to school to be the priests of the future, or whatever educated job you assign to them. They will complain if these aren’t available, but when it all works it’s absolutely fascinating to see the city move under its own flow. Servants will follow noblewomen as they go shopping, shopkeepers will look for resources on their own, soldiers will patrol the streets and labourers will quarry limestone before dragging the large blocks to create a pyramid. It’s a whole living breathing ancient society inside your PC!

All this life is beautifully presented in a nice graphical display. While the graphics aren’t top notch by today’s standards, you’d be wrong if you called them ugly. You can zoom out to survey your city and the ants scurrying around in it, and then zoom in right down to the face of a farmer pulling lettuce from a field. The buildings are also incredibly detailed, improving themselves overtime (such as a noble home building a granary). The fact is all this people watching you’ll be doing won’t be ugly. It might be somewhat annoying though, as sound-wise your subjects often have little conversations that, while interesting at first, can often be grating when you’ve heard them repeat for the hundredth time.

I will say that the game is pretty slow-paced, but that can be both a positive and a negative depending on who you are. I like my god games long and drawn out, and I usually find plenty to do while I’m waiting for something else to be completed. For example, if you’re building a large pyramid outside the city you can set-up a labour camp. Labourers will drag stones from nearby quarries, but they’ll also drag stones you’ve gained from trades halfway across the map if you’ve placed cargo-drop off points in a location easily accessible to your main city. The same goes for bricklayers, even if you place more near your building sites the rest from other parts of the map will join in, meaning you have to wait for them to arrive too. It doesn’t bother me though, as I just enjoy watching the people carry out their jobs, and there’s always something else that can be done elsewhere. If you don’t have patience though, then you’ll probably hate it. Then again, if you don’t have patience then maybe the whole city-building genre just isn’t for you.

For its price (£6.93!) Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile has plenty to offer the aspiring god. Maybe I lied when I said it was perfect, but it’s surely one of the best society simulators out there at the moment. Its complexity may turn some away, but if you enjoy sitting down for a good few hours; building a great city and watching it finally work like clockwork then this game is worth every single penny. Plus, you’ll have plenty left over to buy another game, or two.

This is part of the Bargain Bin series, which is dedicated to bringing you excellent games for mere peanuts. Got a bargain you know of? Hit me an email!

Lost finally returns to our screens this week, and no doubt you’re just as confused as I am with where the plot is going. Thankfully you can now fill in some holes, or just make yourself more confused than ever, by playing through Lost: Via Domus.

The game casts you as an entirely new character, Elliot, a photojournalist and yet another miraculous survivor of the doomed Flight 815. This allows the developers to make up an entirely new story without messing around too much with the stories of the TV programme’s main characters. Elliot also happens to have developed amnesia, which is always a convenient crutch for lazy writers. Yes, you guessed it; the objective of the game is to figure out why you’re on the island through various objectives and the series favourite flashbacks.

When it comes to the TV programme’s main characters they’re all here – including Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, Hurley, Sayid and Ben to name a few – but strangely enough most of them aren’t voiced by the real actors. You’d have thought that since Ubisoft managed to secure rights to make games out of Lost (which was most likely a bit of a bidding war) they’d have thrown down a little more cash to secure the real actors. It’s slightly annoying for diehard fans of the series, and you’ll probably never get used to it.

Apart from the dodgy voices you’ve got a story made up of various episodes. This is an attempt to make the game feel like a real season of Lost (complete with “previously on Lost” introductions) and it works pretty well. Flashbacks will occur throughout the episodes, which is where Elliot’s career as a photojournalist comes into play. The start of a flashback offers a glimpse of a torn-up photograph and it is your task to figure out the rest of the photograph as a sequence plays out. The sequence then loops while you focus the picture, zoom in and frame your subject. Once you’ve taken the correct photograph the sequence is played out in full and offers yet another piece of the puzzle to Elliot’s back-story. It’s a unique twist in an otherwise fairly unoriginal game. I say this because; while there are puzzles they’re pretty repetitive and get extremely dull after the first few times. That would probably be because there’s only one type, and that involves the incredibly exciting task of fixing a fuse box! Oh yes, there’s also two chase sequences that don’t do much but add a little more drama to the proceedings.

If you’re not a Lost fan then there’s no real point to picking up this game, even at the low price of £9.76. In the end it’s little more than an interactive story and one giant big Easter egg for Lost fans, albeit a fairly interesting one. Anyone else would find the game extremely confusing, and, yes, I know the fans of the series are just as confused. The difference is they like the series and will lap up anything connected to it, devoted fans as they are. Even for Lost fans the game is extremely short – clocking in at around five hours – but we’re not talking about full price here. This kind of game should always be released at less than £20, even if only the fans of the franchise will pick it up.

The short nature of the game makes me wonder if it could be considered a ‘bargain’, as there’s not much on offer here, but £9.76 for a current generation game that isn’t actually that old has to be some sort of steal; just don’t ask me why.

This is part of the Bargain Bin series, which is dedicated to bringing you excellent games for mere peanuts. Got a bargain you know of? Hit me an email!

Prince of Persia has only been out since December 5th and it’s already been vastly reduced in price. The state of the economy has led many retail outlets to drastically lower the prices of products that usually wouldn’t be so cheap. Furthermore, the January sales will now contribute to a further reduction in prices. All these sales mean that it’s now the time to pick up that relatively new game that you’ve been wanting but couldn’t afford and, while you’re at it, why not make the new Prince of Persia game one of those purchases?

Once again you take on the role of the Prince (although, sadly, he has now been Americanised) who comes across a girl named Elika whilst looking for his donkey. Elika’s father than releases the God Ahriman, and so begins the journey of the Prince and Elika to try and imprison Ahriman again. You’ll do this by travelling around beautiful cell-shaded environments in order to heal fertile grounds that have become corrupted following Ahriman’s escape. This means that the dark tendrils of corruption will always be near, snapping at your heals as you carry out death defying leaps.

Elika herself plays a key part in the gameplay, as it’s technically impossible to die. While the Prince is able to perform a variety of acrobatic moves (as per usual) - such as climbing walls, wall running and jumping from wall to wall - he will need Elika to provide acrobatic support. For example, if there’s a platform that the player wants to reach but it is too far away to jump then Elika can provide a boost to help you leap further. If you still manage to fall then Elika will always jump down and save you, regardless of how far you fell or how impossible a rescue situation looks. While it does make the game easier it’s also a little disappointing that Ubisoft took away the ability to reverse time, something that I felt was a great feature. It’s not like they’ve replaced it with something more innovating either, but at least you’re going to have a less frustrating time with the game.

Prince of Persia is far less of a puzzle and more of a simple platformer than previous iterations, but it does have it’s moments. It makes you wonder if the future of games is always going to be about making them easier for the casual crowd, and it makes it even more frustrating for fans of an already well established series. Still, this doesn’t make it a bad game at all, it just means that you’re probably not going to get as many hours of it as you might have with one of the other instalments in the series. When you can get it for less than £20 though - only a few weeks after release - then you’ve got a decent enough game that is fun while it lasts, even if it’s not that terribly long (which is a bit like Fable II).

This is part of the Bargain Bin series, which is dedicated to bringing you excellent games for mere peanuts. Got a bargain you know of? Hit me an email!

The sales are already in full swing, so I’ve lined up a few games that you can pick up for cheap right now. Some are new games that have slashed prices, while others are older games that are so good and so cheap that you really have no excuse not to own them.

First up is de Blog, an extremely original Wii game that I included in my Wii Christmas Buying Guide. It is often said that the Wii doesn’t have enough original games that would interest the ‘core’ gamer, as shovelware seems to be the aim of the game with most Wii developers. Blue Tongue’s game, however, will interest both crowds. It’s easy enough for anyone to pick up and play, plus you’ll have a tonne of fun while playing it.

Admittedly there’s not a lot of variety to the game, as it mostly consists of moving de Blob around the level and painting everything in sight. However, there are missions to complete (such as painting a building a certain colour) and hazards to deal with. The main draw I found playing it is the addictive quality of the painting, as you tend to try and paint everything you can see (you only need a certain score to proceed to the next level, but it’s hard to leave things unpainted). So, in that sense, it’s a completists dream.

de Blob is the kind of game that you know will achieve cult status, and it certainly deserves it due to the incredible passion and attention to detail that the developers have poured into it. It’s literally a gem in the rough, as there’s so many poor games out there for the Wii that anything as original as de Blob is literally a god send for bored Wii gamers.

According to PriceGrabber you can pick it up for as low as £17.91 - and I heartily recommend you do so!

This is part of the Bargain Bin series, which is dedicated to bringing you excellent games for mere peanuts. Got a bargain you know of? Hit me an email!

Bargain Bin is a semi-regular guide to playing quality games on a limited budget.

Zombies and video games, two things that are pretty much impossible not to love. When you combine the two you’d expect to get something of epic proportions but, while Capcom’s (the developer of Dead Rising) immensely popular Resident Evil series has brought us some stellar video games, this doesn’t always go to plan. Part of my disappointment with a lot of zombie games is the lack of, um, zombies. Many zombie movies (such as Dawn of the Dead, which bears such a striking resemblance to Dead Rising that a notice saying the game was ‘not endorsed by George A Romero’ is printed on its cover) have hordes of zombies present on the screen, which makes Resident Evil’s tiny groups pretty lack lustre in comparison. This is where Dead Rising differs from the rest, presenting hundreds of zombies packed into a mall and giving the player free reign to gleefully cut through these hordes.

The story has you as Frank West, a photojournalist who’s keen to get the story of his career by investigating a mysterious incident in the town of Willamette. After dropping into Park View Mall from a helicopter the player is given 72 hours (in game time, not real time) to investigate why the residents have started eating each other. This investigation has you completing a series of ‘case files’ (basically story chapters) that take place at specific times of the day. While these are compulsory if you want to see the end of the story (the helicopter still comes if you choose to ignore them, although you’re locked out from continuing the storyline. Only your death actually ends the game) there’s also a whole series of optional side missions that give you far more gameplay and further information relevant to the storyline.

The problem with getting to places at a specific time is hampered by the incredibly inefficient save system. You’re only allowed one save per storage device, which means most of us are pretty much screwed. If you save (and you can only save in specific places around the mall) without having enough time to get to the next storyline location the game is effectively over for you. Capcom has provided a remedy for this by allowing your skills and levels (a basic RPG style system, you’re given more points for taking unique photos) to carry over to a new game. This means that you can get through the missions much easier than before, and if you’ve completed the story already it also allows you to complete those side missions you missed the first time around (and subsequently get the achievements), as it’s nigh-on impossible to complete them all in the first play-through. It’s frustrating but it doesn’t mean you should stay away from the game. If you use your head and save when you know you have plenty of time left until the next story mission then you shouldn’t have a problem, but part of this does mean dying in a story mission may mean you’ll have to play a small chunk again.

Thankfully you’ll forget any frustrations when you cut your first zombie in half with a katana. There’s so much variety to the way you can dispatch of the walking dead that it hardly ever gets old. A wide variety of shops present in the mall means a wide variety of weapons are available to Frank. Step into a sports outlet and pick up a baseball bat or a golf club, while a hardware store gives you access to the awesome smashing power of the sledgehammer or the raging blood-fest of the chainsaw. Even the toy shop provides you with weapons, and there’s nothing more fun than throwing a Frisbee at a zombie wearing a Lego head. Aside from weapons you can even clothe Frank in kids clothes…um…if that’s your thing. While there are also guns you can’t really beat splatting a zombie in the face with a cream pie, and you know that when playing Resident Evil you’ll wish you can use one of Frank’s many melee moves (as seen in the screenshot above).

Since dispatching zombies is so easy (yet so fun) you’d be forgiven for thinking that they can become a minor annoyance compared to some of the ‘psychopath’ boss characters that you have to deal with. Since they can be hundreds of zombies on screen at once (when you get into the maintenance tunnels you’ll see the awesome amounts of zombies that the engine can render) they can easily block your way from one section of the mall into another. Weapons don’t last forever so you’ll have to make intelligent use of the item slots available to you (thankfully they do increase with Frank’s level) if you don’t want to get stuck in the middle of a horde with little health and only Frank’s hands. The zombies become even more of a hindrance when you consider the side missions that have you escorting survivors around. While you can arm some survivors with weapons others need to be held by the had (literally) and the injured have to be carried. When you’re escorting one it isn’t that hard, but with a group of survivors you can quickly lose track when you’re mobbed by hordes of zombies. To be honest sometimes I just wanted to leave them as a snack for the zombies, in the coming zombie apocalypse it’s every man for himself isn’t it?

None of these things matter as there’s so much fun to be had, and so much content to have this fun in. Even after you’ve completed the storyline you’ve still got all the side missions you couldn’t get the first time around, you’ve got the overtime mode that gives you two extra hours of storyline, and you’ve also got the infinite mode that strips all storyline elements but tasks you with surviving in the mall with your health slowly draining. On top of all this there’s also the leaderboards and the normal achievements for you to get. There’s a lot of fun to be had chopping up zombies in a shopping mall, so you can easily forgive things that are only niggling annoyances in the end. Now that the game is as low as £14.99 (although I saw it for £12.99 on Amazon Marketplace) there’s easily enough content for your money, and far more after that. It’s one of those games that you need to own for the Xbox 360 as it really emphasises just what the console can accomplish - and you can whack a zombie in the head with a frying pan!

For those of you who own a Wii a version of Dead Rising (Chop Till You Drop) is currently in development. For me it pains me to see this as the whole ‘hundreds of zombies on screen’ thing has to be severely reduced due to the lower power of the Wii when compared to the 360.  The photo aspect has also been dropped (WHAT???), as has the 72 hour time limit. However, for sheer zombie killing it should be good enough for people who only own a Wii, but if you also own a 360 it’s pretty obvious which version you should go for.

This is part of the Bargain Bin series, which is dedicated to bringing you excellent games for mere peanuts. Got a bargain you know of? Hit me an email!