Get nine Star Wars PC games for $12
This amazing collection includes everything from Dark Forces to The Force Unleashed II. May the bundle be with you.
Fwing! Fwing!
Sorry, that's just me pretending to wield a lightsaber, which in my mind looks like this but in reality looks more like this.
The reason for all this fwing-ing? Because Star Wars, of course, specifically a new game deal: the Star Wars Humble Bundle gives you nine games for $12, with a portion of the proceeds going to charity.
Like all Humble Bundles, this one has a couple tiers, starting with name-your-own price for three older games, beat-the-average for three more, and pay-at-least-$12 for the whole enchilada. To me this is a no-brainer: order the enchilada. The current average is $11.32 -- a couch cushion-dive away from the $12 mark -- and the older games, while fun, aren't the standouts here.
Actually, let me amend that statement. Star Wars: Dark Forces was among the better first-person shooters of the 90s (the game is 20 years old, which makes me -- well, sad), and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy is widely regarded as one of the best Star Wars games ever. They just look a little dated, is all.
Make no mistake, though, there's something here for everyone: RPG, real-time strategy, squad-based tactical action, third-person running and gunning (make that running and fwing-ing), and so on.
My favorites: the two Force Unleashed games. Solid storylines, tons of lightsaber combat, and the best implementation of Force powers to date. Oh, and they cost $20 apiece on Steam. Your $12, or more if you're feeling generous, buys you both, plus seven other games -- and the promise of at least one more. (My money's on Dark Forces II.)
A user-selected portion of your payment goes to Star Wars: Force for Change and Unicef, two fantastic charities. So this is a win all around.
When you buy the bundle, you get codes to redeem on Steam. All the games are Windows-compatible; only a handful have Mac versions as well. (Even so, Mac users currently make up about 10 percent of buyers. Impressive. Most impressive.)
You in?
Bonus deal: Is there such a thing as too much storage? Not if you shoot and edit a lot of video, or use your PC as a home-theater server, or plan to install lots of Star Wars games. For you folks, Newegg (via eBay for some reason) has the Samsung D3 Station 4TB USB 3.0 hard drive for $99.99 shipped. Let me just spell that out: four terabytes. Reviews are mixed, as they are for virtually all external drives, but it does come with a three-year warranty.