Steam-punked

In the spirit of my rant supporting Steam, I thought I'd highlight some of my favorite games that are available through it, to illustrate just how cool it really is as a game distribution service.

Obviously, there's the classics: Half-Life, it's two expansions: Opposing Force and Blue Shift, and the revamped edition. Oh, and don't forget Counter-Strike, available in classic and spanky-new.

Half-Life 2 was just as good as its predecessor, too. And it has an expansion pack of its own (and another one on the way).

There's Dreamfall, the sequel to The Longest Journey that you may remember me ranting about when it came out last year.

I'm also excited about Jade Empire, which came out for the Xbox a few years ago but is now being released (in Special Edition form) for the PC.

I own, but am not too crazy about, X3: Reunion. It's a pretty cool game, with a lot of neat features, but in the end it's just too complicated for me.

Civilization IV is a game some of my friends can't stop talking about. Pretty cool world-building sim. It's predecessor, Civilization III, is also available.

Everyone was talking about Prey when it came out. I didn't think it was that great, but hey, it's available on Steam now!

Psychonauts was a great game that never got the attention that it deserved when it was on store shelves. Now you've got a second chance.

Dark Messiah: Might & Magic got decent reviews when it came out recently, and it's been available on Steam this whole time.

Medieval II: Total War is another recent crowd-pleaser.

Darwinia is a neat little game, with tons of replay value but not a whole lot of hardware requirements.

There are plenty more good and great games available on Steam. Some are new games, and some are old ones that you might have heard from. There's a good mix between big studio games and indie games, too. Do you have any favorites?