Of Steam-Powered PS2s And 3s

This is to be a gaming post, consisting of three parts.

Part The First: The World Will Be Saved By Steam?
I'm thinking about getting a Steam account. They seem to have lots of interesting stuff to buy and/or download.
"Painkiller: Gold Edition" for $9.95 is especially appealing. And they take PayPal!
Do any of you lot have a Steam account? What is your experience? Is there a monthly fee?
I have broadband, so I fear not long downloads. Any feedback is appreciated.

Part The Second: PS2 Woes Resolved
Last Saturday, I decided to take care of my broken PlayStation 2.
I did some shopping around, looking into eBay, Craigslist, local game stores, and repair services.
I concluded that the cheapest fastest way to end my torment was to go to EB/Game Stop and purchase a used PS2.
$79.99 plus tax bought me a used "brick" PS2 with one controller, power cord and composite cable.
An additional $10 bought me a full year's warranty upon said used brickS2.
I paid for it, then went to Chipotle with the Sibling for lunch, then went home and set it up.
It worked very well and the Brother selflessly donated his time to playtest it and ensure that it would not fail during
marathon sessions of "Need For Speed: Underground" and ":Most Wanted", along with "SSX" 1 through 3 plus "On Tour".
Which is another way of saying that Pascal has logged about 10 times more flight hours on the system than me.
And to think he had originally tried to dissuade me from purchasing the unit. Typical... :)
Meanwhile, I'm selling my defective PS2 on eBay and I'm hoping someone will scoop it up to fix and resell.

Part The Third: MotorStorm + PS3 = OMFG
I stayed at work afterhours tonight to play "MotorStorm" on one of the PS3s.
I will probably do the same tomorrow night. I'll stay later and catch the last bus out of there!
In a nutshell, "MotorStorm" is an off-road racing set game in Monument Valley, and the game setting is like Burning Man
meets the Dakar Rally and Lolapalooza. It's a rock festival/desert rave/multi-class off-road racing competition.
The game is the ultimate product of its genre. The physics are insane, the graphics are unsane, the action is off the hook!
Cars and bikes and trucks collide with rocks or each other and cartwheel, spraying shrapnel in every direction.
Vehicles can take a set amount of punishment before the game engine declares them dead and makes them disintegrate.
So you can roll over a few times and resume racing, or take a few good whacks and keep going.
I've learned that mud is not good for buggies and it really slows them down. Better use a rally car instead.
The mud, by the way, has depth and really does slow you down. You sink into it, leave tracks. It feels like real mud.

I was only able to play for about an hour, with no sound (no speakers on the test monitors), but I was blown away.
Races seem to involve at least 15 other vehicles. There may be more in other races. Some races are vehicle-specific.
Some races are open to all vehicles. This how I learned that buggy + mud = forget it! After finishing 10th again, I picked
a rally car and won the race! And this was the very first race too! The rally car, by the way, was a fun hot rod called
the "Patriot Surger" and looked exactly like a jacked-up '69 Dodge Charger with larger tires. It hauls!
It comes in three paintjobs: black w/flames, black-and-white copmobile, and green with Air Force markings and sharkteeth
(which duplicates the paintjob of a Hot Wheels Dodge Charger Daytona that I bought 3-4 years ago. How weird!)
Vehicle classes include dirt bikes, ATVs, buggies, trucks, rally cars, rigs (big trucks, like in the Dakar Rally).
The vehicles are really well-detailed, with individual bits that move. And they damage and deform in realistic ways.
Tires bend, paint chips, metal bends, deforms, or snaps. Even your driver looks like a real dude.
And when you pause the game, the whole world freezes and you can use the stick to rotate the camera around your vehicle.
There are lots and lots of particle effects, and they're good ones! Mud and dust and bits of your and other people's rides.

As you can no doubt tell, I really like this game.
I've liked some of the off-road racers on the PS2, like "Smuggler's Run" and its sequel and even "JakX - Combat Racing".
But the technology wasn't really there to pull off the particle effects, physics, and vehicle/landscape deformation needed
to make things really FUN. The PS3 has technology and horsepower to spare, and "Motor Storm" is definitely a good first try.
Now, I just need $600 plus tax and an HD 1080p flat-screen TV. (The game comes with the console)
Oy gevalt...