[Puzzle GAs] The time has come![Now with solutions]

Hello, steamgifts. I've been a member for a while now and I've recently come to enjoy puzzles thanks to people like: Award, CptTrips, Mew2, Noctis149 and oGrady, you have represented a great source of inspiration . All the puzzles that I found on steamgifts have been great, so I apologize to those whom I haven't mentioned, but these users' creations were the most memorable for me.

Now the time has come and I have made a challenge of my own, the games that I am giving away are not among the most expensive, most wanted games in history, but they are nevertheless very nice, non-bundle games; no CV required.(yes there are two puzzles, in order to unlock the second, you would have to solve the first)

This is my first set of puzzles, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is easy, but then again, difficulty is relative and I just hope that you'll find them enjoyable.

As for the rules, do NOT post any hints and answers, you can post here to let me know when you are stuck and if I feel that too many people are having difficulties with a question, I will offer hints. Also, bump the thread whenever you can.

Good luck!

Edit 1: Both giveaways end on Jan 4, 2014 06:20 pm GMT.

Edit 2: Special thanks go to alpshrk and faragona from whom I burrowed two very nice concepts/ideas and incorporated them into my puzzle challenge.

Edit 3: Solutions

Alright, the GAs are over and I have already sent the gifts to the winners, so, as promised, I will be posting the solutions.

I will start by telling you how you were supposed to find the link to the puzzle. What I provided initially was this link: http://itstoohard.com/puzzle/hVNFv6FK and so many of you told me that the link was incorrect, but, it wasn't, this concept was inspired by alpshrk, who made me realize that I pastebin can be nicely used to increase the difficulty of puzzles. What you had to do was copy the characters from the URL (hVNFv6FK) and paste them to obtain this link http://pastebin.com/hVNFv6FK. The said link contained the 8 characters needed for the itstoohard link.

Alright, now let's get to the real puzzles:

Puzzle number 1:

This is the link to the solutions.

I will also explain how you were supposed to figure them:

Q1: This one was really easy, all you needed was to go to oGrady's original thread and read his OP and the hints, you had to use imDB and that was it pretty much.

Q2: This one was also easy and I have hinted it several times, the emphasis was on the word Our(steamgifts).

Q3: For those who solved Noctis' original puzzle, this one should have been easy as the answer was posted in the description of his last puzzle, for those who hadn't, figuring out one word from any of the three puzzles from his English, motherfucker! Do you speak it? puzzle and then figuring its etymology would have brought the answer. Now the trick with this one, was the format. Noctis launched two sets of puzzles at the same time, the potery one and the one that I have mentioned previously. I formulated the question as a poem, yet the answer was from the other set of puzzles.

Q4: This one was pretty straight-forward, it was encrypted, Keyed Caesar, the shift and key were also provided so it was quite easy.

Q5: This one would have been extremely hard, but the solutions were already posted here. The picture told you that it was about a datamatrix and clicking on it would have offered you the word tone. You were supposed to go to tonematrix and paste what I had provided and there was the datamatrix. Now application can scan tonematrix though, so you had to reproduce the tonematrix into excel/ on paper or however you preferred, thus creating the real datamatrix and then you had to scan it.

Puzzle number 2

This is the link to the solutions.

I was quite disappointed with this one, as it proved very easily exploitable due to Google's reverse image search. I decided not to punish the solvers as this was my fault, but as far as I'm concerned, nobody solved it as it was intended.

Due to this incident, I will not offer explanations as to how it was meant to be solved and I might burrow some of the techniques used there and adapt them to a new puzzle(no more picture puzzles from me, of course :P).

I would like to thank all those who participated and all those who inspired me to make puzzles and I wish everyone on steamgifts a truly fulfilling new year.