Green Man Gaming (Steam) Deals: 25% Off Hitman

So has anyone gotten any GMG credit from the Playfire shenanigans yet? Been over a week now and Playfire shows a total and says "We're gonna give you the credit! Honest!" but nothin' doin' so far. On top of that it's also incredibly fidgety and hasn't given me credit/confirmation on a fair number of their quests but I can't be assed to pester support about it. Like giving me credit for a single Tomb Raider achievement but not giving me credit for actually launching the game, etc.
My second to last lot of credit took about a week to transfer across, and around half of the rewards I should have received haven't been recorded. I've been waiting on a reply to my ticket for almost two weeks now.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I've been getting every appropriate reward except for the "played for the first time" credits. I've got .70 coming to me from those, and only one of them showed up (yesterday.) I'm in a conversation with a guy from Playfire now to get that resolved. I just hope he doesn't figure out I've been using SAM... :)

 
To be honest it's fairly simple to detect usage of SAM, using real data gathered on unlocks (how long, order, etc).

If you play for minute and unlock (only) all reward achievements, I'd say they'd have pretty good reason to suspect you. :p

 
Yeah. There's no rules against it as far as I can see, though. And it is beta. I suspect they don't care about that at this point so much as whether the data is correctly being gathered by Playfire.

 
N.B: We encourage all users to report any bugs or exploits they discover to our Customer Support team. Any user caught exploiting the Playfire Rewards BETA or using tools to falsify their Steam activity for personal gain will be banned from Playfire and reported to Valve. This may also incur additional repercussions on your Green Man Gaming account. We encourage any suspicious activity to be reported directly to our Customer Support team. For more details please visit our Knowledge Base.

But I don't think Valve cares about SAM-users anyway :p

 
N.B: We encourage all users to report any bugs or exploits they discover to our Customer Support team. Any user caught exploiting the Playfire Rewards BETA or using tools to falsify their Steam activity for personal gain will be banned from Playfire and reported to Valve. This may also incur additional repercussions on your Green Man Gaming account. We encourage any suspicious activity to be reported directly to our Customer Support team. For more details please visit our Knowledge Base.

But I don't think Valve cares about SAM-users anyway :p
Huh. Not sure how I missed that.

(I'm lying. I didn't look. Ignorance is bliss!)

 
I use this site to search for Blu-rays deals, you can change the country to UK and look at the Top 10 Bargains at the right.
Yeah, Blu-Ray.com is pretty much the best site for anything like that... I really enjoy their reviews for BR transfers and whatnot on slightly older films. They've saved me allot of money/frustration buy not getting stuck with sucky transfers. (Most recently with the new transfer of Robocop... The original was trash... Same with Total Recall too.)

 
Sometimes I try to play the first 15-30 minutes of games with cards to see if it's worth playing or if I should idle the rest.

Most turn out to be crap, but a few games I've been pleasantly surprised by (and probably would've overlooked if it wasn't for cardz).

 
Nice @ the extra GMG Credit.

Got it recently when Amazon DVG had it for $7.49 during EC Sale.

So, quick thoughts - or, at least, as quick as I can make them...

Anyways, The Bureau's combat feels and plays like Mass Effect 2+3 - duck-and-cover shooter where you have a few party members w/ you that you can have at least some control over.

You and your characters can level-up and learn new skills. Also, when you recruit agents - they can have classes and specializations. Up to you - you have control over their classes, recruit, looks, outfits, name, and all of that stuff. And if you're lazy like I often am sometimes - sure, just let the game randomize their looks, name, and some of that stuff for you. Or, hell - randomize - and then edit the rest of it yourself a bit. All up to you.

When in combat, It has way more strategy hands-on needed to play when compared w/ Mass Effect - i.e. I'm playing on Squaddie difficulty here (2nd difficulty out of the 4 - and the game even wants to recommend you start on the 3rd). And even here on Squaddie difficulty, if I ain't moving and ordering my guys around, I will either die (game over if you die and team-mates can't get to you to revive you in time); or one of my teammates will get knocked-down and/or eventually maybe wind-up dying from bleeding-out. This game is NOT easy, even on Squaddie. When squad members bleed-out and die, it's perma-death for them. You will absolutely need to use the tactical "Slow-motion" (it's not a tactical pause here) to give orders. If you don't like micro-managing and tactical shooting - this game ain't for you. If you wanted combat to be more tactical than Mass Effect and you liked the combat aspect of Mass Effect - you might like this game. This is certainly one of the things I indeed do like about this game.

I absolutely love the art design here, as it nails the look and feel of that era. This stuff looks really good, in DX11 Mode. Though, on DX11 Mode w/ a lot of stuff on high, some on medium, and some stuff off - had to cap it at 30 FPS max to keep it smooth and solid on my desktop PC (i7 950; 1 GB of GF GTX 560 Ti; 8 GB RAM; Win 7 64-bit) b/c the frames where often anywhere b/t 25 frames to 60, at the drop of a hat. Had stutters and all of that, from such wild-drops and wild-rises for frame-rate spikes. Since the 30 FPS cap - game's been much smoother at around 25-30 frames on the regular.

The story and character depth is certainly lacking early on here, from my 1st impressions. This certainly ain't a BioWare game, in that regard. Since you're creating most of your party members, do not expect them to come w/ Loyalty missions, back-stories, and stuff like that. This story and character stuff is certainly nothing special here, IMHO. If you're looking for that stuff - you're playing the wrong game here.

Doesn't seem like there's much decision-making - and if there is, I'm not sure how much of it will or will not matter here. There was a choice early on - but, I've not really seen if it'll cause rifts or anything. Of course, I don't expect this to be as jaw-dropping as Mass Effect series was constantly, in that regard.

So far, even despite my complaints (lack of character and story-telling depth; and some performance issues) - so far, I like it. I just don't think it's spectacular or anything of that sort so far, though.

So, there you go - my thoughts so far on The Bureau.

EDIT -> 2nd Impressions on Feb. 8, 2014:
So, I'm around 8 hours or so into this game. To make matters more interesting, once you get a bit more into it, the game introduces a new mechanic that fans of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood might find familiar - dispatching your created / recruited agents onto "dispatch" missions. These missions take place, while you're doing a mission of your own (whether minor or major). Depending on how many issues and their skill level and what the dispatch mission's level is - you could fail or succeed.

And once you return from your mission, they'll return from theirs - and you'll find out the results from their missions. If they're successful, those agents can level-up; find new gears + equipment; and other things. This way - if you lose an agent on your mission, you don't have to worry about other agents possibly being a low-level b/c you've dispatched them on "dispatch missions" - especially true, if you're taking the same agents w/ you on your own missions.

Given how hard and tough this game can be even on the Squaddie difficulty (2nd level of difficulty of 4) when compared to other games, this mechanic seems not only important to utilize, but very necessary and essential.

Very cool.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here's the 25% off code from taking the yogscast survey YOGCST-BESTYT-EVERRR
~$4.12 for The Bureau? Yes ple...

OBiFN5I.jpg


:censored: you too 2K.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for the mini-review MysterD.  I'm a bit tempted, but unfortunately it looks like no voucher is applicable to this game.  I'll probably just wait until it's $5.

 
I would rather (and do) download an 8GB game to idle for $0.08 cards than use SAM. :speaktothehand:
You can edit the appid.txt file of some games to fake that you're running something else. I did that with McPixel (piece of crap game got more use this way than the actual gameplay. And it was more fun, too.) Perfectly within Steam's TOS.

 
How slow is Bureau's gameplay/story? Don't mind picking it up as long as things move along swiftly.
I don't think the problem w/ the story is swiftness. It's just...the story ain't really adding-up to anything deep, spectacular, or extraordinary for a game doing the "alien invades" story, cliches, & tropes. It just - really ain't standing out there. And given how well 2K Marin did w/ making Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den DLC on making that DLC so good on the story, the characters, and made it all so personal - this part for me is very disappointing. Even if you read the notes or listen to in-game audio here - it still just ain't adding up to a lot here. It helps immerse you more into the excellent setting and its excellent art direction - but, that's it. If you want amazing and deep story + characters - wrong game; this ain't it. It's basically enough to get you to the next mission + its combat.

One of the best things about the game is its tactical combat. So if you like the combat-style and feel of Mass Effect 2+3 - but you wanted something more tactical + w/ more party micro-management, this is for you. As you level-up your guys and have more skills, combat certainly gets more interesting & more tactical.

On Squaddie (difficulty setting #2), the game's not easy at all, IMHO. And I'm someone who plays LOTS + LOTS of games. I do wonder though how tough this game might be on its default setting, the 3rd and recommended difficulty it sets + points you to when you start the game. I think the reason it might've reviewed bad might be, "This game's too hard on default setting."

(Probably one of the problem's people had w/ STALKER games - it's just hard on its default setting, when compared to other games w/ their default recommended difficulty).

Granted, I ain't tried difficulty #3 for The Bureau - but, I'm not having the easiest time here on Squaddie. It ain't easy by any means. On Squaddie, I might reload a last checkpoint b/c I die and bleed-out a few times on a mission; or I might finish a mission where I lose a squad member in battle on a mission so they wind-up w/ perma-dead. Once someone's perma-dead, I'll need someone else to recruit and/or replace them.

While I do like this game for its combat, art-direction, and setting...

...I really wish the story + character development was A LOT better, deeper, and more interesting than what the hell's here.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
That's interesting. :shock:
Yeah it is... Just watched a video on it. Simple enough it seems... but it won't let me do what I was hoping it would... Which is let me play a game I actually want to play while earning the cards for games I don't want to play. (Downloading large files don't really bug me... Its fast enough for me but I know that's not a luxury for all.)

 
All we need you to do is link your existing Steam account with your Playfire Account, and a copy of Post Apocalyptic Mayhem will be yours!
https://freegame.greenmangaming.com/

Your Steam account is linked to another Playfire account
Please login again with the Playfire account you linked previously to your Steam account and you can claim your free game!

Good luck!

:( Must be because that email thing again. fuck GMG.
 
All we need you to do is link your existing Steam account with your Playfire Account, and a copy of Post Apocalyptic Mayhem will be yours!

https://freegame.greenmangaming.com/

Your Steam account is linked to another Playfire account
Please login again with the Playfire account you linked previously to your Steam account and you can claim your free game!

Good luck!

:( Must be because that email thing again. fuck GMG.
Thanks, I had no issues getting my key.

 
not working for me. getting either "username already used" or "there was a problem with your email address". it seems to be a glitch from using the same username for GMG and playfire but different emails. 

 
All we need you to do is link your existing Steam account with your Playfire Account, and a copy of Post Apocalyptic Mayhem will be yours!

https://freegame.greenmangaming.com/

Your Steam account is linked to another Playfire account
Please login again with the Playfire account you linked previously to your Steam account and you can claim your free game!

Good luck!

:( Must be because that email thing again. fuck GMG.
Username already in use....?

Of course its in fucking use you wanted me to use my GMG username... fucking morons.

 
bread's done
Back
Top