With Steam, I'm pretty sure you can download and install a game as many times as you like, as long as you still have your (free) Steam account, even if you migrate to another computer entirely. And as far as I can tell, Prey and STALKER are available over Steam as well.

With Indigo Prophecy, I'm fairly sure that there isn't any major protection on it aside from a simple CD-check. Not sure about Jericho.

Well as far as STEAM is concerned there are STEAM emulators which will allow you to play and install the games without having to worry about going online. I've always heard about them but have never bothered trying them out. Thinking about picking up the Orange Box today and trying them. If I the STEAM emulatoes and GCF extractors don't work I can always find a co-worker I'll sell it to. 😀

Also if you don't want to go through all of that trouble then you can just buy the Orange Box, keep it in it's package and then just download the cracked versions online. The only issue there is that if you play multiplayer then you won't be able to play (unless you know what your doing...).

As far as checkpoints. That's what happens when you have dual Console/PC development. I really haven't seen alot more checkpoint games than usual though so I think we're safe here. I thought the patch for Farcry implemented save anywhere? Haven't played that game in forever though.

Well all of those games do not require activation. They all have retail versions you can buy with no activation. I think all of them are also online for people who like to use online distribution/activation.

Don't know anything about Jericho because it doesn't interest me that much.
Indigo Prophecy I heard was buggy when it came out but it may be alright now. Never played it.

Prey is a good FPS and has portals. But it's still just an FPS. Don't expect anything more than that.

STALKER is not as good as it could have been but if you like FPS games with a little more to them then it's great. You definetly need to install all of the patches, MODS and graphical enhancements to get any enjoyment out of it....oh and the game will still be buggy even after all of that. 😀 With that said it's definetly worth playing.

I can't comment on whether the games will be installable or playable in the future, but i'd trust the community or the pirate scene on that topic. There are already patches for all the games you've listed. It might be wise to buy physical versions, instead of downloads from Steam or a similar service.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
One of the best PC games i've played so far. Multiple Endings, great graphics, sound, story and gameplay. But it's not a FPS! It might look like one, but it's more like an action/adventure/RPG thingy with a first-person viewpoint (and guns. Lots of guns.). I was amazed by this game, and would recommend it to anyone.

Prey
I wouldn't buy that game. Rent or playtest if you can. At first, the "portal" idea is great, but the game is quite short, and the cool stuff gets boring very quickly - there's no real replay value. I'd rather buy the Orange Box, and play Portal/HL2 + episodes.

With Steam, I'm pretty sure you can download and install a game as many times as you like
That's part of the concern but it still leaves 10 years from now. Another thing is what if my internet connection is out from a storm or I'm in a rough spot and can't afford it. It's still a game I paid for and should be able to play whenever I want but the developers have decided I'm not allowed to.

there are STEAM emulators which will allow you to play and install the games without having to worry about going online.
I might look into that. I liked the original Half-Life game but haven't deemed it worth my money to buy anything made by Valve since.

It might be wise to buy physical versions, instead of downloads from Steam or a similar service.
I may have already hinted at this but there's no chance I would chose their digital distributions over a hard copy. With that you might run into the same concerns again.

In practice Online Activation and Digital Distribution might work great for the majority of people who use it but on principal these are conditions under which I wouldn't spend my money on something regardless of how much I might enjoy the game.

Forgot to add that I was also looking at Bioshock until I saw that it had online activation.

heh. There's a patch to remove the NOCD and authentication for BioShock. You don't even have to contact the internet.

I wouldn't have bought it if I wasn't certain that there would be a patch to do so. In fact Bioshock is what caused me to change my stance on not buying products that require Activation. Before it used to be that I'd buy no activation requiring products. Now I'll only buy them if I can install them without having to authenticate or download anything from the internet.

wildweasel wrote:

With Steam, I'm pretty sure you can download and install a game as many times as you like, as long as you still have your (free) Steam account, even if you migrate to another computer entirely.

True. Steam provides you with a utility that allows you to create backups of all of your games, and you can move/copy your installation as you please.

For a while, I had my steam install on a usb harddrive and would just plug it in to whatever p.c. I was using at the time.

Also Steam has an offline mode for playing with no internet connection, but you need to be connected to install games.

heh. There's a patch
Care to elaborate? I might reconsider the game. Or is it considered a non legitimate method?

It's definetly non legite.

The "patch" is actually the Bioshock executable with the CD check removed and something done to the Securom protection to make it not check. So when you apply it you copy the patched Bioshock executable into the game directory and run the .reg file that adds the securom registry entries. I found it the same week BioShock was released and I haven't kept up with the latest methods so it's possibly that the securom .reg isn't even required now.

STALKER made me yawn alot

boring game, bad execution, felt very lacking, overhyped.

And funny how it's forgotten suddenly nearly a month post-release.

STALKER is a great game with eccentricities and most of those stem from it's European heritage. The storyline isn't fundamentally compelling because it's never really explained properly but the game mechanics are otherwise superb. When you get your first glimpse of a Hind flying overhead while mutant dogs run in packs from the downdraft you do get a sense of a living, breathing world. The last major exterior battle is on a scale that very few 3D FPS games in general have even attempted and so that too impressed me more than I expected it would.

A month post release? I think you need to look at your calendar...

Well I bought the Orange Box, Installed it. It spent about 20 minutes on my cell modem updating and then I could play Portal....it then spent another 10 minutes updating because Valve sent out an update that day. Was pretty pissed off because it said it was 100% synced and then suddenly....it wasn't. Ridiculous.

Anyways I copied the entire STEAM folder to an external drive, took it to work and downloaded all of the games I had registered with STEAM (All of the previous half-life games, Prey, some of the free games that come with the purchases). I then took the STEAM folder back home and copied it to my computer. Portal still worked but HL2 wouldn't work in offline mode. Guess it wants to connect to STEAM the first time you fire it up wether your completed update or not. Well I said screw that, so I copied the steam emulator to the STEAM directory. Loaded up STEAM and played Half-Life 2. Woohoo!

So it looks like all of the games should work without an internet connection due to the STEAM emulator. I even loaded up Prey and that worked fine as well.

So, did you have to be connected at all to install them or could you have just gone from disc to emulator?

It might be possible, I'll have to try the install on another computer.

Problem is that I guess Valve doesn't do any Q&A on these games anymore relying on their users to do their beta testing for them so your going to have to update to play the games properly anyway.

When I bought the Orange Box and connected to Steam and updated all of the games and then tried them out I get errors opening the older HL based games because it's missing a .dll. Hopefully this is fixed in an update.

Well I tried to play HL2 Episode 2 today and Alyx didn't have a voice either! When I turned on subtitles then her speech appears but no voice at all. Turns out you have to switch the language in the menu to another language, restart the game, let Steam update and then switch it back to English. W...T...F...

Shoddy fucking development if you ask me.

I'm going to try updating again and see if it fixes these issues.

Update....Update.....Update again. Obviously for people who stay online 24/7 and don't mind updates updating things behinde their backs doing whoknowswhat this is not an issue.

The good news is that once you update you just go back to using the Steam emulator so you don't have to reconnect again, then if you want to update you just rename your steam.dll to the non-emulator version and update.

I don't believe Steam needs to be reinstalled either. If you just backup the entire Steam folder and copy it to another computer then that's all that needs to be done.