Steam is hosting a Square Enix publisher sale this weekend, discounting games in the Hitman, Just Cause, Legacy of Kain and Deus Ex series, among others. On now until Monday, March 31 at 1:00 p.m. EDT, the Director's Cut edition of Deus Ex: Human Revolution ($4.99), the Just Cause Collection ($7.49), the Sleeping Dogs Collection ($9.99) and the Hitman Collection ($11.24) are each 75 percent off. Individual games and DLC packs in each bundle are either 75 or 76 percent off as well, for those that already own pieces of the collections.
The sale also includes the Dungeon Siege Complete Pack and Legacy of Kain Collection, both 60 percent off ($7.99 each). Additionally, The Last Remnant and Mini Ninjas are both discounted to $3.99 for the weekend, 60 percent off their previous prices. The Steam sale overlaps Square Enix's other sale on the Humble Store, which ends tomorrow and features Tomb Raider's Game of the Year edition for $12.
[Image: Square Enix]
The Absolutely Great Square Pack from Amazon offers seven games and one piece of DLC in digital form, all of which would normally cost $165, for just $10: Deus Ex: Human Revolution Augmented Edition and The Missing Link DLC, Hitman: Blood Money, Just Cause 2, Just Cause, Quantum Conundrum, Supreme Commander 2, and The Last Remnant.
That's a savings of 94 percent, in case it wasn't clear how absolutely great this sale is. Buying the pack also grants $5 toward a pre-order of Hitman: Absolution. These deals run through October 20 at 11:59 p.m. PST. Don't be a square and miss out on this sale.
#rumor
Nor is it Dragon Quest. As mentioned in an upcoming issue of Famitsu, the Tokyo-based game company is working on a new action role-playing game. The game currently does not have a title. More »
The Last Remnant represented a major experiment for Square Enix. Not only was it one of the company's first Xbox 360 games, it utilized the Unreal Engine, a first for the Japanese publisher. Unfortunately, the experiment wasn't quite successful, with critics calling it "a technical mess." Thankfully, the company isn't simply ignoring its mistakes, with Square Enix's new chief technology officer explaining how the misuse of the Unreal Engine led to such disappointing results. "One of the traps with middleware (like Unreal) is that some game teams believe that, because they got this middleware, maybe they need less programmers on their team, or maybe they don't need that many skilled programmers," Julien Merceron told Gamasutra.
By relying too much on middleware, teams face precarious situations when issues arise that can't be solved internally. "You don't have anyone that is able to solve the problem on your team," Merceron explained. In the case of The Last Remnant, the "problem" happened to be a wildly inconsistent framerate.
Merceron isn't advising against using middleware, noting "it won't be possible anymore to work without middleware because of time, talent, and cost reasons." Hopefully, under the new guidance of Merceron, Square Enix won't repeat the same mistakes it made with The Last Remnant.
