Zeno Clash - One Day Only Sale!
Posted by Xander Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:51:00 GMT
See, what did I just say? One day sale.
Zeno Clash , an FPS with splashes of shooting and melee action (and IGF Finalist!) will be released sometime in April, and to celebrate the developers are having a sale on Steam where the game will be half off for a single day. That makes the current price $9.99, or £7.49 or even €7.99 depending on just where in the world you hail from, which is a huge saving.
So TIG, is it a big enough saving for you to want to put down money on something which doesn’t have a playable demo, or does the IGF Finalist status give you more confidence in putting down the money early?
(Update: Sale is over, but the discount will remain at 25% off until release on April 21st!)
The trailer looks interesting enough to warrant a $10 gamble. Also, I watched some videos on their website and the developer’s accents are just too cute (they are from Chile?)
I hope the combat doesn’t get old after the first five minutes.
Might do Xander.
It looks a little like Oblivion merged with a J-RPG. Pretty swell looking though.
…Do I spend a few days days worth of food money on it though? Thats the big question!
The developers’ cute accents did it for me. BOUGHT.
looks sweet but i need to try a demo first =/
Yeah, the game looks good but an original art style and somewhat interesting looking combat system isn’t enough to warrant a pre-purchase for the game.
Just look at Eternity’s Child, great art direction, somewhat interesting looking gameplay but just wasn’t as great as people thought it would be when it was released.
I’m a gamblin’ man!
Wow! I didn’t notice how many indie games Steam put up just today: Caster, Space Giraffe, Obulis, Larva Mortis… and is Dyson getting a retail release?!
You can count me in amongst those who pre-ordered.
It will be worth it entirely just so see more of those elephant-giraffe things in the trailer.
I’m apparently not a gamblin’ man.
My debit card has been declined.
Which is quite odd, because my bank statement yesterday told me that I clearly have far more than ten dollars.
hangs head in shame.
Everyone else, I command you buy this game and possibly enjoy it for me!
hmm, I am slightly tempted Smithy, slightly tempted…..
Without a demo im not interested. Sorry to say but this goes with most any obscure title. I need a RL second opinion or a taste before investing in anything.
Nope, no demo is a deal breaker, at least for something like this which could easily end up not running/running horribly.
Aha! Tried again, it worked this time.
I’m a gamblin’ man!
Bought that mess.
Nah, I don’t want to risk a repeat of Eternity’s Child.
Lots of indie games out on Steam this week…
I just foolishly impulse bought it without any idea of how this game plays or handles!
As with Smithy, we are both gamblin’ men!
I am going to wait until this is full priced again and then I am going to pre order it.
Indeed I am the true gambling man.
I just impulse bought this and I dont really know why help
How about some fiber?
Bought it, no hesitation
Do Steam ask the developers before discounting stuff like this? Or do the developers get the same cut either way?
It’s getting to the point where nobody will ever pay full price for anything anymore. Not good.
For those of you hesitant about buying this or not, I should say that this uses the Source engine so it will probably run on a rock.
Bah, why do so many indie developers try to lock players into Steam? If the only way to get it is some horrible DRM, I couldn’t be bothered to get it for free.
Horrible DRM = being online.
Fight the power, dawg!
what? steam drm is completely unobtrusive providing you actually bought the game
none what the hell are you saying? you can play steam games offline too
Steam DRM for a singleplayer game is a no-buy for me. Aside from the fact that A), my internet connection has pretty much all ports blocked (thus no steam), the concept that somewhere down the track all my games that I bought will become useless scares me too much.
That said, I’m still playing my copy of DoD, CS, etc :P :D
Yeah, I have to say I find that a strange concept. I understand Steam isn’t going anywhere any time soon, but after pulling out my old copy of ‘Planescape:Torment’ last month and just playing through it again like it was 199X it seems crazy that in twenty years time I might not be able to play a game I technically ‘own’.
I suppose eventually all online related DRM will mean people will need to use the internet and their own morality to decide what they still own to let them aquire things they can’t get through their old legal means.
And yeah, I was horribly stung by the cheapness of Eternal Daughter. If you make a game people can feel ripped off for when it’s that cheap, you have accomplished something sir..
Xander: Valve have, again and again, reiterated that if for whatever reason they had to shut the entire company down (which is hilariously unlikely, as they’re probably the single most stable entity in the PC games industry right now), they’d release a patch to cut out the verification/DRM layer from Steam, and people would still be able to play their games.
Anyway, I put my money down for this. The artstyle looks funky, the story sounds delightfully insane, and the gameplay looks fun in a very retro Final Fight-ish kinda way. Then again, I liked Action Doom 2 as well.
I don’t think we’ll end up with another Eternity’s Child, which as the result of an egotistical artist slapping his doodles onto an incredibly poorly designed platformer. Zeno Clash has been in interative development on and off for ages, and they’ve been slowly building up a formula for ages.
It might not be great, but I don’t think it’ll be bad.
Eternal Daughter != Eternity’s Child
Eh, my logic is that if I’ve bought something I’ve bought something. I frequently have to use cracks and the like to get games I own working these days anyway. Plus, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to play awesome games on my EeePC anyway
Also, these days (call me cynical), but I think it’s probably more common to be burnt by a game or have a grossly misrepresentive trailer than it is to actually be happy with it, no matter how trustworthy the people in charge are. Afterall, just look at spore.
Never heard of the game, but bought it because the videos looked cool. Wow, low pricing really works, eh?
Back to the game, and has anyone actually played it enough to decide whether or not it’s any good?
The art direction in the video clips looks absolutely stunning, and the bits I’ve read on the plot are intriguing. However, the melee combat looks clumsy and there isn’t much visibility of how well the “traditional” FPS elements (i.e. shooting people) work.
I’d really prefer a hands-on to see how well the controls handle before splashing out any cash!
From what I know, based on their blog and interviews etc, the developers are at least somewhat trustworthy; the developer of Eternity’s Child on the other hand didn’t leave me a good impression at all.
With that said, while the price is right and the art direction is a breath of fresh air, my reservations about the clumsiness of the combat system, the depth of the gameplay, the quality of the voiceacting and the cinematics made me decide to wait it out a little. Besides, Steam does price drops very often, I’m certain I’ll be able to get it at a reduced price in a few months at most.
Also, I too noticed that a lot of indie games were added to Steam. Even ‘Between’! :O
The problem is that should anything ever happen to Valve, it’s entirely possible that they won’t release a crack.
Afterall, when you’ve just lost your job and hate everything about the company, would you spend the time releasing a crack? Especially since, 10 years down the track, nobody except for a small group of dedicated fans actually care?
Besides, we’ve already had a few examples of people losing content when servers were taken out.
Ezuku: You do know that companies just don’t dissapear, right? A fissure isn’t going to open up and swallow the entirety of their staff.
A huge developer/publisher like that would undergo a long period of gradual decline before closing down, and they’d almost certainly have plans in place to remove DRM if they can see the end in sight.
Regardless of if they release a crack or not, the problem I would have is that I don’t have all the games on Steam that I own installed on my hard-drive. So whilst I could crack what I still had downloaded, what could I do to download the games that I own on Steam?
I guess they would have to have it entirely peer-to-peer maybe?
While I’m aware that it’s unlikely for a company to become completely swallowed up (although it happens), this has happened in the past with DRM servers being taken offline many many years after the intial product was sold, rending the product unusable. The issue is that while they’re all happy saying it now, there’s no legal reason they actually have to release an addition patch which disables the DRM in the event of the server going offline.
Offhand I seem to recall that Yahoo music did this, and I seem to remember reading about Gears of War for the PC having a similar problem (although I think that was more disorganisation based as opposed to them cutting things down.
Ezuku is right. When a situation comes, where the DRM servers have to shut down, it won’t be because everything is nice and fluffy. People will have other problems to care about. Not to mention that if Valve should get sold, a new owner will hardly agree to give away power over content, even if he decides to discontinue the service. Who knows, maybe contracts with publisher even forbid them to do so.
If you really believe what Valve says, I wonder where you live, that you can trust big companies. Must be one hell of a sunshine happy place :)
The DRM-removal patch is already written. It takes, essentially, one button press at Valve to enact it.
A healthy cynicism is one thing, but assuming that Big Companies will automatically do the most evil possible thing because they’re OMG BIG COMPANIES is silly. What does Valve have to gain by lying about this? What is Valve’s historical record on customer awareness/service? Think about it before you assume the worst.
Took a gamble on this one. Not sure if the melee combat is going to hold up over the entire game but the art style is very impressive and it looks so completely bonkers that it can’t fail to be fun.
I have complete faith in the team behind this game. They previously made Batman Doom for Doom 2 and The Dark Conjunction for Quake 3 - both incredible mods (especially since The Dark Conjunction is one of the very few singleplayer mods for Q3).
My credit card was empty at that day, but i’ll buy it once it becomes available. I’m following this game since months now and i practically devoted my monthly column’s space for next month’s issue in a Greek magazine i write about FPS games to this game.