The day I purchased AudioSurf was the first day that I even saw Steam (Content Delivery), sure I had heard lots of people talk about it, many people praising its loveliness and many more complaining that it was evil.

I had never had the need to install it, I owned Half Life (Video Game) (never finished it) and had played a bit of Counter Strike 1.6 in my time, but I had never felt the need to take it any further and buy Half Life 2.

While I was downloading AudioSurf, I noticed that there was 9 hours remaining of a free trial of Team Fortress 2 so I set that to download while I messed about else where. Now, I think Team Fortress is great, fun for a quick session blatting away at a couple of foes, that wasn’t what hooked me onto Steam, no it was the ease of it all.

I simply double clicked “Team Fortress” in My Games and it told me about the offer and guided me through downloading it (which was pressing “next” three times), when it was finished downloading I double clicked it again and it launched Team Fortress. I have been dreaming of software like this for years, so simple yet so effective.

Steam has a huge library of games, including some great packs such as The Orange Box, there is also a nifty “gift” system which allows you to pass on games you have two copies of, for example if you bought Half Life 2, then The Orange Box you would have two copies of Half Life 2 one of which you can pass on to a friend.

In summary, I think Valve Corporation has done a top job on Steam, without falling into the DRM traps that so many publishers seem to be dropping themselves into. I will post back when I have played the games a bit more, for the time being pleased with my discovery.

Essentially you feed in an audio track in one of several popular formats, AudioSurf then analyzes the music and generates a racetrack. On this racetrack ride several coloured blocks. These blocks can be collected in a grid, in much the same way as Connect 4. Once you have collected three or more of these blocks of the same colour in a connecting pattern you will score points based upon the number of blocks and the colour.

There are variations on the theme giving your character special abilities such as pushing the blocks to the side to create more complex patterns, or “mono” mode in which you only have one colour to collect and one to avoid.

Because the track is generated from music the number of tracks available is only limited to your music collection, equally two people can compete on the same track by feeding in the same music.

If you get a chance and have $10 sitting in your PayPal account, it is available on Steam. My current favourite track is Fire Fall Down by Hillsong United.

Everyone who contributes to a project puts something in, even if their product is not explicitly included in the final complete product they are part of the process. Not including someone’s name in the credits of anything be it a game, a film or a TV show is a giant slap in the face. As a programmer I would be gutted to think that I had been excluded from the credits having put years of work into and then moved on to better things a few months before launch.

Open source manages it just fine, huge sweeping lists of credits for relativly minor utilities. Why can a game? Its not like anyone is forced to watch it or read it. Put it as a file in the install directory, or a page on a website.

The multiplayer is great fun too. I had some initial issues connecting in the first place due to PunkBuster connect issues, resolved them by updating PunkBuster manualy with PBSetup.exe then running the game as Administrator under Vista 64.

All in all, great game – well worth the spend, and brought a lot of enjoyment to my Christmas.