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It's Christmas Day, about half past four in the morning, and I feel betrayed by chocolate. It's my own fault, obviously - a stocking full of Smarties and cheap coins in now-scattered golden foil, some biscuits Santa had turned down, a bit of cake to help pass the time between pretending to go to sleep and everyone else getting up, all stirred and churned and now not tasting anything like as good. It's an explosion; a floor-splattering chunderpocalypse, the kind that leaves but one happy thought in the mind - that one day, all things die. And for some reason, this is not treated as a reason for sympathy. Not even a little bit. Just a pointed, bleary-eyed reminder that when people say you can have too much of a good thing, this... exactly this... is what they're thinking of.Don't know why I suddenly thought of that. Anyhoo, what was I due to talk about today? Ah, yes, Steam sales. By Grabthar's hammer, what a savings! At the time of writing, Dishonored for £2.50, Dark Souls for a fiver, Batman: Arkham Origins for only a little more! I'm sure this weekend's will be even better, if only because it wouldn't be a Steam sale if everything you bought didn't ultimately end up in a 99.9999999% off flash sale so that Gabe can drink of the delicious tears of frustration. Those Half-Life 3 cocktails have been so watered down lately.
Ignoring that though, there's no arguing that these sales are a great thing - if not more game per pound than ever before, then certainly more good games than those old Spectrum cassettes in WH Smith or their successors, the cheaply produced compilation discs with names like 1001 Games We Pulled Out Of Our Arses. Really, to start picking holes in it all, you'd have to be the most whining, cynical, ungrateful jerk on the planet. Luckily, that's what it says on my business card, so lets! Starting with that whole 'too much of a good thing' part, because while having too many new games at once may not make you sick, it can certainly lead to a deep sense of queasy emptiness when you realise you've just bombed through a whole year's greatest hits, worlds of beauty and imagination and depth and secrets carefully designed by the finest pixel artisans in the world, and barely remember any of them. Assassin's Creed is the one with the chick who picks locks, right?
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