computer games on Steam

Steam is of course the service from Valve (Half-life)...this seems to be working pretty well overall.

I snagged some of the game demos, which weren't too bad. I punted one or two right away for being too short, but others were ok.

There's this one series you can get all of for $15, and the demos are decent, called "Alien Shooter" in which have to eliminate aliens from an underground facility or two. Alien Shooter Revisited is the original with newer artwork, AS 2 has a bit more interesting "inventory" system, and Zombie Shooter is essentially the same game except with Zombies. How much better can a game get than whacking umpty-thousand zombies with nifty weapons?

however...Alien Shooter Revisited has flaws...one of which is disastrous...on level 5, near the end, there's this yellow forklift, and if you run to it, you can get math-locked onto it. No way off, which means there's a serious path-finding error combined with what is probably a 3D-model-positioning error, so that you go through a tiny little gap that the path-finding can't get out of. Has happened to me twice now, I've sent a msg to the devs, and I am done playing that one.

Had the same problem with AS 2, got math-trapped in an odd spot. I can't even allow a monster to kill me, their "AI" is too stupid to path-find closer to me.

Apparently AS 1 has a couple more expansion packs, and Zombie Shooter 2 is due out soon.