They were a plucky young company, with nothing more than a dream in their pocket and a nickel in their eye. They had a vision -- a vision of getting out from under "the man" and making money hand over fist on their own terms. With a couple of modestly successful shooters under their collective belt -- cult favorites about an MIT professor with an attitude -- they were ready to branch out into a brave new world. The brave new world of $20 digitally-distributed episodic content.

The hypegasm for Half-Life 2: Episode One has hit gale force recently, and I -- not being the better man -- was compelled, nay forced, to launch the Steam client and see what digitally delivered delights awaited my decisive declamation of debit card digits.

When last we encountered Steam, we were pretty sad, mainly because it appeared to be all about roadblocks in the way of the CD we'd already purchased. So, this time, I'm trying from the "right" direction. I pre-ordered Sin Episodes: Emergence so that on the day of reckoning, instead of waiting, nay fidgeting, by the phone for my EB dealer to give me "the call," I can simply boot up the machine and get the party started. And, I gotta say, this time the experience was pleasant. They've improved the Steam UI substantially -- now it feels more like a groovy kind of gray, instead of a "Welcome to City 17" kind of gray. And the pre-load experience was much less irritating when I started it, and then proceeded to go play Tomb Raider instead.

The most fascinating and unexpected part was that the original Sin game was included. Man, the things we thought looked awesome back in the day. Wow. Get me out of this crazy time machine!