Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale. Recettear is better than Skyrim. There, I’ve said it. And you can pick up Recettear for $5 on Steam today.

After having played it through (twice), I can safely say I’m a fan of Recettear. First off, it is an Indie game. Not some AAA hotshot title that everyone talks about incessantly. It is budget-friendly. While not a AAA title, it is still a lot of fun. It doesn’t have a ESRB rating, but if it did, it would probably be E10+ – due to some mild innuendo, cartoon violence, and a few drinking/alcohol references. It has a better Metacritic user rating than Skyrim. There is no cussing or other foul language. There is no gore/blood. The story – it has an actual story – is charming, entertaining, and will touch your heart. It is a different type of RPG: You play from the perspective of an item shop owner in a RPG where you open an item shop to pay off a debt your father left behind (probably deceased). And it offers an actual challenge to players. When was the last time a RPG actually forced you to put on your thinking cap? Plus, Recettear has educational value in critical-thinking skills in regards to finances – but that is secondary to the fun you’ll have learning those lessons.

Now that I’ve got all the Skyrim fanboys riled up, onto today’s Steam deals worth getting:

Recettear (seriously – go get this game right now)
Half-Life Complete (or Orange Box)
LEGO Batman (or just get the WB Complete Pack)
Chantelise (older game by the same authors as Recettear, actual RPG though)
Costume Quest (Wrong holiday…LOL – but it supposedly has magical unicorns with rainbows – nothing can possibly go wrong with that, right?)

I don’t visit Reddit very often mostly because the readers put useless junk on the homepage. But today I did visit that site and some crazy person put together a list of the Steam sales. Steam, that wonderful DRM platform, has some good deals going on today. Plus there are tickets to be had at the prize booth. While Reddit just puts everything on one page and expects you to figure out what is good, here are my recommendations:

Fallout 3 GOTY (FINALLY a decent price)
The Last Remnant
Mass Effect 2 (Franchise sale!)
Splinter Cell Franchise

For strategy fans:

Emipre & Napoleon: Total War GOTY

For the uber-cheap indie game fans:

Osmos
Shatter
Zen Bound 2
The Wonderful End of the World
Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood
Flight Control HD
Penny Arcade Adventures: Precipice of Darkness Pack
VVVVVV

Uber-cheap other games/mods:

The Longest Journey
NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits
Garry’s Mod

And what would this be without free tickets? That’s right – two tickets today are freebies! Build out a wishlist of 10 items…that’s easy to do! And post your own video to Steam by linking a YouTube account to Steam and setting one video to public and embeddable. That one’s harder to do.

The Treasure Hunt on Steam continues today. While I’m not sure why it is considered a treasure hunt, I am glad for the deals on video games. This time Steam has two freebies, a couple of deals, and one I guess someone expects us to pay full price for:

• Friends with Benefits – Have 10 friends on your friends list (free)
• What Happens in Vegas – Complete Ol’ Buddy Ol’ Pal achievement in Fallout: New Vegas (no deals here!)
• Terminal Velocity – Set a leaderboard score of at least 22,600 on the level ‘Mash Face Against Mountain’ in AaAaAA!!! ($2.50)
• Go To Your Happy Place – Play the demo or game The UnderGarden (free or $4.99)

I was wondering how I would get all 10 without paying a dime. Now I know – Steam will use demos to pad out the remaining entries. Get ten friends on your friends list in your Steam account and fire up the demo of the freebie game and then exit it. While I haven’t tried it, that seems to be about all that has to be done. Although some people might find getting 10 friends to be a difficult task…feel free to cry for those people – I’m one of them. There are several threads on the Steam forums with people who post that they want friend requests, get inundated within minutes, and then edit their post a few moments later saying, “Yikes!”

It looks like the objectives are able to be completed even after the current 48 hour period passes. Good for those who are just joining in and want to have a chance of getting in on the grand prize or have lives outside of playing video games and simply don’t have the time.

This is also the second time that someone at Valve has misspelled “leaderboard”. Copy and paste in action!