Full Steam ahead

What's on Steam

While Steam might be the theoretical answer to everyone’s problems, it doesn’t supply any mainstream titles from other developers. This may eventually change, but for the time being, Valve is building up an eclectic portfolio of indie games and developers.

The first of these to appear was Codename Gordon by Nuclear Vision, a platform game which to whet the appetite of Steam subscribers. It’s a bizarre mix of platform game and first person shooter, which served to reacquaint gamers with Gordon and his crowbar, in 2D.

The next couple of third-party games to be released were also off the wall. Rag Doll Kung-Fu, a screaming declaration of graphics over gameplay, combines beautiful visuals, an impossible control system and a vertical learning curve. The game itself provides around the same level of enjoyment as eating a bowl of peanuts, with a pair of chopsticks, while a pissed mate chats rubbish at you.

In stark contrast, Darwinia is all game and no graphics. Looking more like a scene demo than a game, it combines simple mesh graphics and low-resolution sprites with honest to goodness compulsive gaming pie. If you haven't tried t, you should really give the trial version a go.

For a long time those three things were the only third-party titles being provided by Steam’s content delivery system. In October 2005, after swatting many bugs, Steam 3.0 was released. Along with the new layout came a decent shop, and a decent level of network stability.

Along with Steam 3.0 came the first port of a popular HL title, DoD: Source. If you’ve played DoD then you’ve played DoD: Source, as it’s a direct port of the original. The simple style of play is there, as are all of the original maps, so it’s just pick up and play.

Just released, The Ship is another example of an old HL game that’s been given the Source makeover. Since it’s about as much fun, in single player, as sticking your hand in a bag of angry stoats, you’re unlikely to see it in the shops. It’s only on a live server, against human opponents, that it starts to get interesting. While not every FPS junkie’s cup of tea it’s an engaging game, offering “Whodunnit?” gameplay, without the tiresome business of clues or investigation. It's generating a lot of buzz at the moment.

In the same vein comes the SiN series, which has just been reborn on Steam as a Source based game. Although only a single-player game, SiN Episodes Emergence (our review here) is about as straightforward a shooter as you’re going to see. If you buy Emergence, you get the original SiN bundled along with the multiplayer version of the original game.

If straightforward arcade FPS gameplay doesn’t get you excited, and you’re more interested in accurate portrayals of combat then Red Orchestra might be a little more stimulating. Originally a mod for UT2K3, it’s been steadily evolving for years: it’s also been getting progressively more complicated. It’s become very similar to America’s Army in that you can lie prone, lean and use iron-sights. It also adds complications with realistic vehicles and huge maps. While this allows experienced players to have massive tank and infantry battles, it leaves newer players running around exhausted until an encamped enemy picks them off.