One quickly learns that, in the world of PC gaming, if you don't like Steam then you can go right to hell. I have accepted Valve's digital distribution and DRM device as a necessary part of my life now, and soon we'll be stuck in a loveless marriage with six kids and no way out other than death. Or I could buy a Playstation 3.

With that out of the way I can talk about Steam's daily deal from now on without having to flaggelate myself afterward.

For today and today only Mirror's Edge is available for $5.00. That's 75% off the regular price of $19.99, which is far too much to charge for a game that was described by critics and players as "sort of good." Five bucks seems like just the right price for this one, don't you think? Don't leave a comment if you agree with me. Oh, would you look at that. Everyone agrees.

Buy Mirror's Edge for $5.00 on Steam

Hey, remember how much you thought Duke Nukem Forever sucked? There's a cure for that. It's called replaying Duke Nukem 3D, which is pretty much the only Duke Nukem game anyone remembers. That's the full, clinical name for it. Freaking windbag doctors and their latin, am I right?

This weekend Duke Nukem 3D is available for $2.99 at GOG.com—as are the rest of the Apogee games in the GOG catalogue, but no one really cares about those—so now would be a great time to remind yourself why you ever cared about Duke in the first place. DN3D was like Doom but with fewer morals. Actually, it was exactly like Duke Nukem Forever: puerile, sexist and technologically behind the times. It just goes to show that critics are fucking idiots. Yes, I'm talking about you, Ars Technica's Ben Kuchera.

Buy Duke Nukem 3D for $2.99 at GOG.com

Operation Rainfall, rather than the subtitle to yet another Final Fantasy spinoff, is an organized attempt to bring three Wii RPGs—Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower—to North America. Up until now Nintendo has refused to do because apparently they're still pissed about that whole World War II thing. It's not our fault! How were we supposed to know that they're allergic to radiation poisoning?

The Rainfall guys have already organized a letter campaign whereby fans sent some presumably large number of letters directly to Nintendo of America asking that they publish the games over here. Since that didn't work (Nintendo thanked the people for their letters and then turned on the lawn sprinklers until everyone left), the new plan is to ask that people show their support for Japanese RPGs by buying the original Final Fantasy en masse via the Wii Virtual Console on August 19th—the same date as the European launch of Xenoblade.

I'd really like to play Xenoblade and The Last Story in English (fuck Pandora's Tower) but the Virtual Console is a bullshit place to buy your games from, so I can't with good conscience recommend that anyone support this plan. I still want to show my support, though, so what if every time I see an asian I stop pulling the corners of my eyes to the sides and saying "Oooooh, me rike Jackie Chan! Sucky sucky five dorrah!"?

• Operation Rainfall - Phase 2 official press release

This is the deal I've been waiting for before promoting the Humble Indie Bundle #3. From now until the end of the sale, when you pay more than the average amount for the bundle (currently $5.15), you'll also receive the five games from last year's bundle. So the entire package now includes Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVVV, Hammerfight, And Yet it Moves, Steel Storm, Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos and Revenge of the Titans, plus a free trial of Minecraft that lasts until August 14th. That's a great deal on a lot of awesome games, especially considering how many of you spend $60 on yearly updates to Call of Duty. (I hear that Modern Warfare 3 will feature original commentary by John Madden.)

If you don't know what the Humble Indie Bundle is, it's a collection of independent games that you get to name your price on, and then decide how much of your money will go to the developers and how much goes to things like the Child's Play charity and supporting the Humble Bundle itself. You can spend as little as one cent on the entire package (though, that won't net you the HIB2 games) or as much as your entire life's savings and first born son. King Ramses will be pleased.

The Humble Indie Bundle #3 is only on sale for five more days, so hurry and prove you're not a dick by giving more than a penny to support indie developers and charity.

• The Humble Indie Bundle #3

I'm always tempted to use this game's development title, Oddworld: Stranger, because it sounds a lot better than the shitty final title that's the obvious production of P. R. idiots. I just can't trust you idiots to know what I'm talking about if I strip away a word and the possessive case. That's how low of an opinion I have of people.

Anyway, The Wrath of Stranger is now available on GOG for the very reasonable fee of nine dollars ninety-nine. I've seen that commercial for the replica royal wedding ring, like, a thousand times and I think it's so cool how the British say their prices, so that's how I'm going to do it from now on. "Blowjobs! Get your blowjobs! Only six dollars ninety!"

I never played the original Planetside, but from what I hear it was all right for an MMOFPSRPG. You'd be forgiven for thinking that this trailer for Planetside 2 look a lot like Tribes: Ascend, though, albeit without jetpacks and therefore without fun. The new Tribes will also be free to play, which means there's a 60% chance that I might actually be able to afford it. The press release for Planetside 2 doesn't mention anything about a subscription fee, but it also doesn't say the word "free" anywhere except in reference to its "free-form class-based system," and that just means it's like Team Fortress 2 with skill trees.

Planetside 2 is being published by Sony Online Entertainment, which you may remember as the company that dropped the ball with Star Wars Galaxies, thereby losing the Star Wars license to EA and Bioware. Sony has unintentionally fucked up a lot lately and SOE is their internal division explicitly assigned to fucking things up. But, hey, if you're still looking forward to Planetside 2 here are some screenshots that look like an early Xbox 360 game to cheer you up.

Free-to-play is the new hip thing, it seems, as more and more games are shedding their robes made from ethereal sixty-dollar bills and letting players ogle them in their undergarments free of charge. If you want to see what's beneath that bra or man-thong, though, you're gonna have to spring for some downloadable content. I hear that if you buy World of Warcraft a diamond ring of +20 to agility, she'll let you go all the way.

That's all I have for today: one paragraph comparing games to shallow, slutty people. Maybe I should go back to school to become a teacher, because I'm really bad at this whole writing thing.