rome-total-war posts

While the launch of the Mac client for Steam and its free Portal deal is certainly something to crow about, one of Steam's main rivals Direct2Drive has a rather nice sale of its own. From now until May 19 you can purchase and download Rome: Total War Gold Edition for a mere $2.50, a 75 percent saving from its normal price.

The historical RTS game from developer The Creative Assembly was first released in 2004 by its former publisher Activision (Sega now owns the developer and the entire Total War game franchise). The Gold Edition contains the original game and its expansion pack The Barbarian Invasions and is considered to be one of the best, if not the best, games in the series.

Valve's Steam service starts their price cuts a little earlier than usual this week with the announcement that nearly all of the Total War games on their service are on sale from now until next Monday. The historical RTS game series from developer The Creative Assembly is composed of several games and three of them (Rome: Total War, Medieval II: Total War and Empire Total War) are a part of the Steam sale this week.

Those games as well as the Rome and Medieval II expansion packs are all 66 percent off for the entire week and the Total War Mega Pack which has all five games is 66 percent of as well. In additional, the downloadable extras for Empire Total War are all 10 percent off this week. This sale does not include Napoleon: Total War which is available for pre-order before its release later this month.

We looked and looked and looked some more. And what do you know? We found some more PC game download sales to report about this weekend:

• Steam has gathered five racing games from 1C Company into a bundle and cut the price on it by 25 percent. You can get all five titles (4x4 Hummer, Death Track Resurrection, Streets of Moscow, A.I.M. Racing, and Classic Car Racing) for just $14.99 until January 29. Also the newly released puzzle game Buy Bob Came in Pieces is on sale for 25 percent for the next week.
• Direct2Drive has a $5 discount off of Torchlight this weekend if you use the code 5OFFTORCH2 at checkout. Also, they have put the RTS game Rome Total War on sale for just $4.95 for the next week.
  

UK based Feral Interactive has been doing a good job of bringing several older PC games to the native Mac platform in the past year or so. Today the company announced that their latest Mac port will be for Rome: Total War, the historical RTS game from developer The Creative Assembly.

The game was first released via Activision in the fall of 2004 (the developer is now owned by Sega). Feral's Mac port will be of the Gold Edition of the game which will include both the original and the Barbarian Wars expansion pack. Feral will release the game this March for $29.99. Of course, the developers' latest game, Empire: Total War, will be released for the PC this March as well.

We still have a few months before Empire: Total War is released but folks who use Valve's Steam client can go ahead and pre-purchase the upcoming historical RTS game now. Pre-purchasing the Creative Assembly-Sega game via Steam also allows the user to download and play one of the previous games in the series, Rome Total War Gold, for free immediately.

That's not all. Both the downloadable and retail copies of the game will support Valve's Steamworks platform which will add things like friends list, achievements, and support for things like downloadable content and game updates. Steamworks wil also serve as the game's basis for its server browsing and multiplayer matchmaking with more details on these features to be announced later.