First of all, Team Fortress 2 (Free; Windows & Mac) is surprisingly fun — if you’re on a good team. It’s free, which is always a good thing, and it seems to not be completely flooded with trolls/griefers/hackers, which is another good thing. There’s really not a whole lot to say about it. If you’re into class based team FPSs you’ll probably enjoy it. If the cartoony look is not your thing and you prefer realism and strategy over fun, then maybe go have a look at Nuclear Dawn (€18; Windows & Mac). I haven’t gotten around to buying it myself, so I really can’t say much about it yet. Incidentally, the Team Fortress 2 Gift Grab 2011 achievement (the reason I installed and tried the game) earned me an additional copy of Portal 2. This was a triumph!

Bit.Trip Runner (€8; Windows & Mac) wasn’t actually part of the Steam Christmas event, but Bit.Trip Beat (€8; Windows & Mac) was, and that prompted me to try out Bit.Trip Runner. Bit.Trip Beat is basically Pong evolved. It’s pretty fun for 10–15 minutes, but that’s about it for me. Bit.Trip Runner however… That game is so hard, fast and annoying in every way possible that you just want to keep playing until you’ve beat it. For every level the rule is: Make one mistake and you start the level over. And you’re going to be making mistakes — lots of them. While running and dodging stuff at 200 billion mph you’re bound to fuck up even the simplest things at times, so after maybe 9 or 10 tries at a level, you’ll begin to get into the groove, have the level memorized and then you’ll have a shot at completing it. If it wasn’t because completing a level feels so good, I would’ve probably ragequit and hurled my controller at the screen.

PAYDAY: The Heist (€19; Windows only) is a co-op FPS where you finally get to play the bad guy(s) without some lame plot twist revealing that you’re actually good guys. You play one of a bunch of hardened criminals out to pull off some epic heists. During each heist you have to complete various sub-missions in order to get away with the big score in the end. Meanwhile the cops and the FBI are sending wave after wave of forces after you, each wave tougher than the last. One of the under-appreciated aspects of the game is that it’s not all too reliant on team work. Missions are definitely easier when playing as a team, but they’re also manageable alone, which is nice if you end up on a bad team online. Definitely a fun game if you’re not looking for something that “redefines the genre” or “completely changes your look on life”. If you want that, read the last description in this post.

Revenge of the Titans (€10; Windows & Mac) is sort of a retry-styled tower defense game, and the retry-style (both in looks and in music) is what really does it for me. I actually played this game a while ago when I bought it as part of a Humble Indie Bundle. Generally I find tower defense long-winded and downright boring, but this one is different. Not in gameplay really, but apparently style and delivery are hugely important factors for me, and Revenge of the Titans delivers on both accounts. If nothing else, you can always enjoy Dave S-B’s dramatic synth interpretation of Bach’s Fugue in D minor. It just works so well with the rest of the game. (Other classics like Bach’s Toccata to go with the Fugue, and Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra are also featured on the sound track.) Oh, and this game is hard. I mean, really, really, really hard. (Maybe because I don’t generally play tower defense games.)

Bastion (€14; Windows only through Steam, other OSs can run it in Chrome — read on). Literally the best game I’ve played in years — maybe ever. This game definitely deserves every word of praise it’s gotten. The gameplay is not unlike Diablo, in that you have a fixed isometric view of the world, but that’s about the only similarity you’ll find between the two. Bastion has a narrator who sounds just a little bit like The Stranger from The Big Lebowski. Incidentally the narrator of Bastion is referred to as The Stranger during the first part of the game. Now, I’m not usually a huge fan of narration in games, but in this case it works incredibly well, partly because the narrator has a great voice, and partly because the narration is dynamic. The narrator will react to your actions throughout the game, which gives the game great feeling of story telling. And then there are the graphics. Beautiful hand-drawn environments in lush, vivid colors, that give the game a completely unique look. Even the sound track is phenomenal. Like nothing I’ve heard for a game before — well maybe with the exception of a certain song about still being alive as sung by a certain passive-aggressive AI. Darren Korb has really made a great sound track that also deserves listening to outside of the game. It all comes together in a great story with plot twists, tough decisions, etc. I’ve said it a million times already, but do not miss this game! (Did I mention that it’s available in the Google Chrome Web Store? Well, it is — both as a free demo and as a full game for $15.)

1. Go to GomTV.net, log in and go to the ‘Go Live’ page.
2. Copy/paste the Javascript for either the SQ or HQ stream into the location bar in your browser while you’re at the ‘Go Live’ page and hit Enter. (Thanks to the /r/starcraft redditors ‘mnjmn’ and ‘Gudeldar’ who came up with those Javascript snippets!)
   This will give you a personalized URL to the stream. Copy that.
3. Now open a terminal and execute the following command:
   curl -A 'GomPlayer 2, 1, 28, 5039 (ENG)' '<stream URL>' | vlc -
   Of course, replace <stream URL> with the URL you copied in 2 (but keep the quotes!).

Voilà!

You can of course replace VLC with any player that supports reading a stream from stdin, and if your system doesn’t have curl installed, you can use:
wget -U 'GomPlayer 2, 1, 28, 5039 (ENG)' -O - '<stream URL>' | vlc -

Note re OS X: As redditor ‘thedz’ pointed out, another way of doing it would be to simply use curl or wget to save the stream to a file and then open that file with your favorite video player. That goes a little something like this:
curl -A 'GomPlayer 2, 1, 28, 5039 (ENG)' '<stream URL>' -o ~/gsl.ogm
That saves the stream to ~/gsl.ogm (~ is a short way of writing /home/username (Linux) and /Users/username (OS X)), which you can open in any video player supporting OGM.

Now, Starcraft 2 requires a pretty good graphics card, so if I want to stay on OS X, I’m going to have to go with at least a MacBook Pro 15″ — i.e. a 13.200 DKK computer ($2350 / €1770). Now, that’s a hell of a lot of money. Alternatively, if I choose not to care about OS X and just try to get value for my money, I can get an MSI FX600 with equal or better specs for 6.000 DKK ($1050 / €800).

A quick comparison of some key specs. (Specs and prices from http://edbpriser.dk)

Granted, GDDR3 RAM is a lot better than just DDR3 (the G makes all the difference), but it’s not 4 times better.

On top of that, I’ve lost absolutely all respect I had for Apple when I bought my MacBook back in 2007. The upcoming Mac App Store and shit like that is just downright retarded. Meanwhile Microsoft has actually been doing pretty much the same as they’ve always been doing, but compared to Steve Jobs’ insane world domination plot, Steve Ballmer is actually starting to look like the sane one of the two. And Windows 7 is getting rave reviews, so why not give that a try, now that OS X is going “Trumpets!”

Now I’m just left thinking, why would anyone (today) spend money on a Mac, when you can get the same specs in non-Apple computer for less than half the price? The MSI obviously doesn’t look as slick as a unibody MacBook, but it looks alright — I mean, it’s not downright ugly if you peel off all the stickers, and the day I pay 7.000 DKK ($1250 / €940) for just the design, is the day when someone ought to shoot me in the fucking head.

So will KEEP actually be written from scratch? Or will they simply bundle whatever Open Source software they find into one neat package? The project description doesn’t say anything about it. The first is stupid, because a lot of the Open Source emulators available are of high quality, are quite portable, have been developed for many years now and are still maintained. Some shiny new software is likely to be less stable and compatible, and the project description doesn’t give any promise of the software being maintained in the future. The latter is simply too expensive. €4.02 million for bundling some Open Source software?

Also, while preserving the games is all well and good, there’s more to preserving video game history than just preserving the software. Playing Super Mario Bros. on the Wii with the Wiimote is NOT the same as playing it with the good old, unhandy NES controller (even though the Wiimote is quite unhandy for that purpose).

In case you own a DS and is NOT playing Contact (which would be wrong — wrong, I tells ya!), check it out! I picked up a pre-owned copy for $30. It’s jam-packed with weird geeky references (like “I wish a base like this belonged to us.” and “It’s Rizo Island. Riiiiiizo Island!!!“) and on top of that it’s a great RPG with a perfect mix of retro-elements and completely new stuff. Go, go, go!