Steam versus Manual Install

This might be a stupid question, however I have always installed locally through disk on my laptop as the DVD will stay in there generally. I tend to play the game at home, but also I do long train journeys and fire it up on the train. Am I right in thinking that you have to be connected to the internet to play through steam? if so it kind of rules out installing through Steam and would have to install locally.

no you dont have to be online to play through steam, only to install and update.

ah right, misunderstood. And what would you recommend? Steam or local?

Steam has an offline mode but to be safe i would use the dvd. It will work everytime while you know that steam will want to authenticate just after you board the train

ah right, misunderstood. And what would you recommend? Steam or local?

i would say steam, i prefer not having to rely on always having the disk, and when you are online it auto updates the game for you when patches are avaliable.

local is better, steam is crap.

steam is good never had a problem

if you have friends on steam, then it is worth it, its nice chatting to them while ingame

Steam ftw.

I'd say steam, unless you never ever ever use your DVD drive for anything else. I hate having to search for discs to play games. You can always still use the DVD if for any reason steam dies, but it saves you a bit of hassle otherwise.

I've used steam for basically since it came out, but i always buy the discs and play off-steam.

I'd rather not have to log in to steam every time i wanna play FM, and i usually leave FM minimized while i play counter-strike or something, whereas steam won't let you open 2 games at the same time. Also if you're banking on steam letting you use offline mode, sometimes it randomly won't let you and you'll need an internet connection to get past the login screen

Also it's never a problem for me with having to remember the disc; unless i reinstall OSX or windows on my macbook, the FM disc stays in the tray until the next version comes out - i'll buy every other game i wanna play on steam anyway!

The only reason I would use steam is for the 09 skin, but after a few hours with 2011 skin I like that almost as much.

I dont like using steam because its something unnessesary running in the background thats a pain in the bum and doesnt help my PCs performance.

steam is awesome

I don't like steam, but I still bite the bullet and use it. Playing with disc inserted is even worse: the disc gets scratched and my drive tends to get insanely loud at times. I wish they would bring back the uniloc system from FM09. With that you could play without disc and without steam. After the initial authentication problem it was pretty great.