It is not news that the next big thing in the whole e-commerce arena is digital distribution. Specifically for games. Why? Because it’s just not sexy to download Photoshop or porn after paying for it online. And because music was the first big thing. Obviously games are a perfect fit because industry executives think that fat people play games, and fat people don’t like to move around, so why not bring the games to them? (I’m not fat.)

I’ve only used four or five of these magical services that promise to deliver this interactive electronic software to my squirrel-powered computer, but there are many more that exist, but I haven’t tried. And it wouldn’t be good journalism if I rated the ones I haven’t (and never plan to) used.

For the uninitiated (I’ve always wanted to say that) the idea is simple. Choose game(s), punch in your credit/debit card or other payment method, and download. There’s much more to it than that, such as download speeds, whether or not the companies want you as a customer (more on that later), and of course, the games they have on there.

One of the biggest problems is the regional restriction. Once used to stop Cubans from buying capitalist music online, it is now the reason why anyone living anywhere but North America cannot buy Grand Theft Auto 4. Or Street Fighter 4. Or Space Siege (not that you want to). Find me a game that is restricted to the US, Canada and sometimes Mexico and I will bring you Jesus Christ himself. The reason for this is not entirely known but publishers always like to pin it on licensing issues. Right. And I’m going to marry Jennifer Morrison.

Without further ado, I bring you my somewhat biased rundown of digital distribution outlets (that I have used, and not in any particular order):

1. Steam

Steam, created by the boys in Washington (state) by Valve, of Half Life fame, was originally used to serve customers generous helpings of Half Life 2 in 2004, when it was finally out of beta. It didn’t go too well, though. People in Europe felt annoyed when they tried to play their games (Europeans are still annoyed today) and it didn’t work. All in all, it was a major fiasco.

These days, it’s known for not sucking too much and cheap games and regular deals. And lots of games. Mostly mainstream titles, but there are indie games as well as some old games.

Steam’s community is a shitpile. Go to the forums and you will wish you never did. Fanboys are all over the place, attacking anything from your mother to your gender to your favorite kind of steak just because you said Steam likes to rip Non-Americans off. Which is entirely true. Europeans and Brits suffer the wrath of non US dollar pricing, which is bad enough but gets worse when you realize it’s a $49.99 game in the US but 49.99 Euros in France. Maybe one day someone will tell Gabe “I eat babies for lunch” Newell that Euros aren’t the same as US dollars.

Download speeds are hit/miss, depending if there are content servers near you (Settings and look for the Downloads tab). Generally it’s around 100kb/s to 1MB/s. I know, vague much? Steam’s got a good friends feature so you can see what your friends (if you have any) are playing and you can chat, and engage in the measuring of the e-peen via the use of achievements. But don’t get me started on those insane SSAs and those idiots claiming you don’t actually own your games. All in all, a good service if not for one or two huge problems.

2. Impulse

Impulse has some good ideas. That said, I’ve only used it for Stardock exclusives (of which I own three) and while I give them props for the GOO DRM which while sounds yucky is a good idea in giving more power to the customer while showing who’s boss. You can sell your games back to the publisher (but no game seems to have that feature, which says an awful lot, doesn’t it?) and the lack of a need to sign into Impulse and connect to the Internet (unlike Steam) is a plus, but since you’re almost always connected to the Internet (unless you’re in a Turkish prison), it doesn’t really matter. Download speeds are quite good,and the interface is very good, if not using a liberal amount of Calibri.

Regional restrictions are terrible here, with games that are blocked for purchase available internationally on Steam. Given this and the very bad community features I cannot recommend this for anything but Stardock games. I say give it another iteration or two and it will be a worthy contender to Steam.

3. Gamersgate

I like to think of Gamersgate as the cousin to Steam that never was. Instead of focusing on games like The Sims 3 or Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (which are both on Gamersgate, incidentally), they sell more of the underdogs, the lesser known games that you otherwise wouldn’t have tried. Most of them come from Europe, and a LOT of them are bad, but once in a while you’ll find that special game that you will play over and over. I’ve only got two games, and something has to be done about their downloads. Their speeds are very bad for anywhere but Europe (and even then, only a very small part of it) but they claim this will be fixed soon with more servers. DRM isn’t a problem because they tell you if there’s DRM or not. If you’re still unsure, send an email to support. Speaking of support…

Their support is nothing short of stellar. They answer quickly, they go above and beyond, and they treat you like family (paying family). Nothing but good words to say about them, except maybe more mainstream titles and ditching the download program, which you download every time you download a game (!), in favor of a unified downloader like Steam, Impulse, or…

4. Good Old Games

To be honest I don’t think this should count. It’s a rather niche market, old games, and even more so when we’re talking about good ones. But whatever, it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want.

The games are cheap. Criminally cheap. So cheap you’ll think you can afford “one more” and one week later you’re out of a home and a car. $5.99 or $9.99, no restrictions, and definitely no DRM for such classics like Myst to the lesser classics like Sensible Soccer 2006, and on rare occasions, pure and utter shit like Driver: Parallel Lines ($9.99, don’t bother).

Support is decent, sometimes they take a little nudging (like when I asked for a Far Cry multiplayer key and I had to keep pestering them), and the community is truly a far cry from the Steam forums, where people are (usually) nice and can help you out. Support is a last resort when it comes to these admittedly old games, so you’ll be spending a lot of time on the game specific forums if you’re stuck on something or other.

5. EA Store

I’m not a big fan of game publishers selling me games directly because it obviously means less choice, but EA has finally nailed it. The stores vary by region, and I’m lucky I live in Hong Kong, where there literally is a shrine for EA here. The prices are very cheap, cheaper than Steam, and sometimes even cheaper than retail (in Hong Kong, that’s saying something), and the speeds are quite good. Since it’s region-specific for your EA Store, there are no region restrictions to speak of, unless you count having less games in your store than in the United States. Of course, we’re not dealing with EA, we’re dealing with Digital River, who really sucks. Some have reported on an evil thing called Extended Download, which is $5 or $6 US to extend your download expiry date. That’s not really EA’s fault, but it’s really annoying. Some users have reported no such thing, so read the fine print to see if you’re one of the (un)lucky few.

I’ve only gotten one game from them but I intend to use them more often in the near future.

There you have it. A list of services I use and recommend (or not).

Is it just me or does Battlefield: Bad Company 2 look like Modern Warfare 2? I know the devs at DICE are always saying how they’re going to kick Modern Warfare 2’s ass, but does this look like a game you already know?

I’ve never played the first Left 4 Dead (well, there was this one time two weeks ago for like, half an hour at a friend’s house), so I wasn’t sure what to expect other than killing lots of zombies infected humans, which I’m a fan of. That, and killing zombies, I guess.

So I loaded the demo up, and wow. I am really impressed. A lot of chatter on the Steam forums are saying that it’s nothing like the original, and it’s all mindless shooting rather than teamwork (nobody helped me up until I typed in chat, “help me up you morons”), but I don’t think that’s a bad thing, necessarily. I don’t really care that much, it’s just a game, after all. And there’s a lot of talk about not much change and it’s pathetic and it’s a ripoff. Then again, this is the Steam forums we’re talking about here.

So the campaign found in the demo is called The Parish, set in New Orleans (so they say, I’ve never actually been there). One of the chapters is The Park, or at least part of it is, and it’s mindblowing how much violence is to be found there. It’s basically parts here and there from the chapter, ranging from zombies infected humans in the park (didn’t see any of the so-called Hazmat infected though), to a part in the bus stop after going into a trailer and stocking up on weapons. It’s really cool to be this guy, decked out in sniper rifle gear and shooting the shit out of stuff that moves. I was on a laptop, so I couldn’t zoom, which sucked, so at first chance I grabbed an AK-47, which was awesome. Also picked up a frying pan, but more on the melee later.

After the bus stop chapter and getting in the safe room, I was treated to another part of the campaign which is located suspiciously like the French Quater in New Orleans. I decided to be somewhat of a jerk, and I simply ran like hell all over the place trying to avoid any confrontations with the zombies infected humans, and no, it didn’t work. But after going into a corner restaurant, I saw a few cars here and there, and a little warning saying something like, “DON’T SET THE CAR ALARMS OFF, IT ATTRACTS THE HORDE” or something like that. So guess what I did? Of course I aimed my Kalashnikov at the cars and fired.

I ran like hell, running into zombies infected people here and there, and I used my melee weapon, the frying pan, and whacked the shit out of everyone. Now that’s something I liked to do. After doing good to the world, I happened across the safe room, and that’s where my adventures with the Left 4 Dead demo and killing zombies infected humans ended. What do I think about the game? I think it’s great and I can’t wait to download the full game. Those whiny bastards who were all about boycotting the game, shut it. This game is proof that Valve, despite its many faults, knows how to make a good game.

Demigod finally came out. Or, it came out yesterday when Gamestop decided to sell it a day early. Those bastards.

Anyway, I just took a look at the system requirements for the first time. WOW. There’s no way that’s running on my laptop. Oh well, new computer next month, so dual-core = bliss. It does cost a lot of coin, which is why preordering makes a ton of sense. I saw a weird post in LARGE WORDS that was some dude who wanted Demigod to be launched in India on the forums, but I do know there’s Impulse and therefore, Demigod here in Hong Kong. So suck it, Mr. Delhi.

I’ve been meaning to play with my friends with that, but we’re one of those people who says, “I’m fucking getting this on launch day. I mean it.” And we don’t.

In other news about me, I’m still doing revision for my exams. Thank god I do listen and I have notes I took for many subjects. I still regret a little for not doing shit in English though. I didn’t really understand the educational merits to reading Touching the Void.

Also, Memepool hasn’t been updated in a year. Kudos.

Bear with me here. It’s like Line Rider, only you can make sounds (and in turn, make music) by drawing lines to allow the ball to bounce off. In fact, after a while a new ball will show up, like a virtual juggling performance or something. Very fun. Try it here, and you can download it for free on Windows, Mac OS X, etc. here. If you want it on mobile, you’ll have to pay for it here. Very fun stuff.

After my previous light-hearted rant on Ghost Recon and the credit card, I discovered it was actually a lot cheaper on Amazon UK.

Amazon proper doesn’t sell cheaply, unlike Amazon’s counterpart across the pond. I found two games I had my eyes on for a while. One was Operation Flashpoint, and the other was, of course, Ghost Recon.

I did the math (well, Google did) on the prices and conversion. Thanks to the crumbling economy, £5.66 only amounts to about $64 or so. It used to be £1 = $15, but not anymore. I decided to look for another game, one that Steam didn’t even carry (or even GOG, for that matter). Operation Flashpoint. It’s not even a game, it’s as real as a simulator can get. Also about $64. Throw in some shipping and barely hits $130 or so. Sure, the downside is that you don’t get much in the way of extras, or you can’t see your stats on Steam, but do you really care? It’s just a game, after all. If you really want people to see how many hours you’ve racked up playing Ghost Recon when you bought it off Steam, you’ve got some ego issues. Throw in some comments: What’s your best deal on a game?