Steam - Top 24 Games

Although I did donk off a few dollars last night, after I managed to claw my bankroll up to $5.8K, I'm not really "steaming" as the title of this post suggests. No, this post is about my other little addiction that takes hold of me every once in a while and that is researching and playing computer games. It's not necessarily the case that I spend a huge amount of time playing a lot of games, it's the fact that I spend more time researching, reading reviews and watching the youtube clips of games rather than actually playing them! Yesterday, during my day off work I researched loads and downloaded seven!!

The trouble is these games are just a short download away and there is a site called Steam which will have you playing these games right there on your PC often well within half an hour - and that's even without requiring you to get up out of your chair. It's just too convenient, all too damn convenient. Furthermore, because I personally tend to go for the "indie" or "casual" game, they are not only relatively small files and download quickly but are very reasonably priced as well. I reckon if you dig around on the net you could probably download them for even cheaper, but Steam is just convenient and keeps them all nicely together.

All in all, I have downloaded 97 games from Steam and I have all the thumbnails nicely laid out in my library. I think I should probably stop at 100 but I know I won't. The trouble is, a lot of them really are very good value and just offer fantastic entertainment. Most of my "Top 24" (which I will post below) were picked up for less than a tenner and a few more were less than a fiver. I do play other more well-known titles from the big name companies as well, of course, but I'm just flagging this up as an "alternative" way to go about gaming. Here are my "Top 24" in alphabetical order and in an upcoming post I intend to do a quick review of each. Be warned though, they are certainly NOT everyone's cup of tea.

Portal, by the way, made by Valve, was created by the same makers as the Half-Life 2 series and Team Fortress 2 (all of which I bought, ages ago, over the counter as one package called The Orange Box). I include Portal here because it's a one-of-a-kind thinking man's first-person computer game that isn't a shoot 'em up. In other words it's one of the few of this kind that doesn't involve any killing but does involve a fair amount of logical thinking and figuring out - it's smashing!