So the big steam sale has started! My wife gave me a card early and I went a little over, but that’s ok because she loves me
I grabbed:
Dead Cells and both expansions - seems like a really good metrovania and that’s my current vibe.
Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition - I played it back in the day and really liked it. It was a well made D&D type RPG with a nice set of intros for your different chars. Post dragonlypse open world RPG setting, tons of different storyline options, nice char building. Can’t wait to play it again, new and improved
Grim Dawn - diablo style action rpg. Looks like a lot of great features and 60,000 mostly positive reviews. This looks like the isometric action scatching post that I’ve been itching for.
Guns, Gore, and Cannoli 2. From the reviews it sounds like they built and expanded on the first one, which was awesome on my 7 year old PC with 2 ppl and 2 controllers. I beat the 1st game twice with 2 different relatives and am working on it with another cuzin. Said to be shorter than the first, but sweet.
Hive Jump - Intense 1-4 player action platformer. I’ve been looking for more games I can multi on the same comp, and this looks perfect for that.
Pacer - Loved the PS Wipeout series back in the day and this looks like a nice roller coaster hovercraft multiplayer racing headrush inducing funfest.
Retrowave - I loved the old Outrun arcade racing game, and there’s some good ones on steam. I’m hoping this fits into that category. If not, well, it was a half a dollar…
Stories: The Path of Destinies - Single player action RPG. Did I mention that diablo itch? More lotion please!
Vandals - similar to the Lara Coft Guardians of Light and Hitman Go, which I have both of and like a lot. It’s a turn based puzzle/strategy game.
Zombasite - more isometric action, this one involving zombies.
Blasphemous - picked this metroidvania up earlier on a weeklong dec special and have been playing and loving it. Been trying to find something good since Hollow Knight. Nice music, spooky goth atmosphere, nice gear and upgrades system. Despite the name and the latin style text that uses words like excommunicate and heretic, it doesn’t involve the Christian religion. So you can play with grandma. The game is set in it’s own bizarre medieval horror movie world, and it’s been a lot of fun so far (8 hours in).
So tell us what you got, what it’s like, why ya got it, etc.
Really nothing that I need, but there’s a few games I’m eyeballing, mostly smaller games that never go on sale except for now. A lot of them are still in Early Access.
UBOAT - WW2 strategy/submarine simulation
Barn Finders - storage auction/picking simulation
NavalArt - building, naval combat sandbox
Superliminal - first-person puzzle game; the primary puzzle mechanism is forced perspective
Not a whole lot so far (and probably won’t wind up with a huge haul)
Mass Effect Trilogy - Was briefly on sale for $10 on Amazon. I tried ME & ME2 both briefly but neither hooked me at the time. I figured for $10 for the remastered trilogy, I’d take the gamble of trying them again and see if they can work some sort of magic on me
Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst - Was $2 on Steam and, well, looks like I’d get two bucks worth out of it. Looks fairly pretty and future stylish, anyway.
I might wind up getting Half Life: Alyx since a few friends have played and told me it was a really good use of their VR sets. I’m sitting on $26 worth of Steam credit anyway so an additional $3 out of pocket sounds safe enough. Rifling through my wish list gives me a bunch of games that I either now feel “eh” about or are only at an uninspiring discount. I should probably weed through my wish list; I have stuff on there that I added five years ago and still don’t bother buying when it’s 80% off
Tip for an extra discount in the Steam store: if a game is a part of a bundle and you already own one of the games in the bundle, even if there are only two games in the bundle, they don’t charge you for the game(s) you already own and you still get the remaining game(s) with the extra discount (another 10-15%).
I just bought UBOAT, on sale for $12.59 from $29.99, but it’s part of a two-game bundle with Car Mechanic Simulator 2018, which I already own, so I bought the bundle and got it for just $10.50.
Ooof… I never go into these expecting much and then
Major Titles
Games that are AAA quality names
Mass Effect Legendary Edition - As previously mentioned, I’ve never played through the ME games so for $10 on Amazon I figured I’d give it another go.
Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst - $2 on Steam, why not.
Half-Life: Alyx - A friend has gushed about this as THE reason to have a VR set so it seemed like a safe bet at half price.
Minor but Still Cool Titles
More indie stuff that still looked promising
Townscaper - Been mentioned in the general PC thread before, I think. Low stress city “painter” versus management sim
Deep Sky Derelicts - Turn-based roguelike about looting/salvaging alien ships. Card based combat. Comicbook style art. Looks fun!
Foregone - Metroidvania style platformer with gear system and other bits. Reviews compared it a lot to Dead Cells.
No Plan B - Puzzle/tactics game about setting up a SWAT team’s movement and tactics through an event to get everyone out alive. This will fall under “Games I like but really suck at”, I can feel it.
Dog Sled Saga - Sled team racing and management sim. Got this for free from a random game coupon.
EMMA: the Story - Short visual novel (with realistic scenes vs anime) about meeting some guy while waiting on a train to meet Emma. I actually got this because I needed another 50¢ to use a coupon but it looks like it’ll be worth a couple quarters.
Valkyria Chronicles - Older game with a blend of 1930’s setting, semi-anime aesthetics and future tech. Been on my wishlist forever but never bothered to pull the trigger.
Sea of Solitude - Stylish “experience” game about a woman facing her loneliness via a trip through a flooded city and its inhabitants.
Sally Face, Episode One: Strange Neighbors - Unsettling adventure story about a boy with a prosthetic face.
Shape of the World - Artsy first-person trek through a colorful indie fantasy world. Was free in a pack from GMG but is well rated and short to play so looks neat.
99Vidas - Retro-style beat 'em up. Like the above, was free and well rated
Anomaly 2 - Well regarded tower defense style game. Save the world from aliens and all that. Well reviewed but not a genre I usually play (was also free)
Absolute Drift - Top-down racing/puzzle game about drifting your car into the goal. Was free from GOG not too long ago but was in the same package as the last three games so now I own it on Steam.
Multiplayer Titles
Stuff to play with other people!
Deep Rock Galactic - A friend has been way into this game but no one else jumped in on it and he got sick of playing with randoms so a lot of us got a Steam Gift for Christmas. 4-man dwarf squads fighting/blasting their way through caves to the goal. To be honest, I used to think this was some Dwarf Fortress inspired thing (probably based on the art and lack of reading). Sure I’ll be playing it a lot.
Trashyard - No doubt terrible game we’ll play so we can laugh at how bad it is. I bought a bunch of 50¢ copies to inflict on friends. 4 person PvP with lots of Unity assets and a farting policeman.
Home Sweet Home: Survive - Another probably bad game a friend inflicted on us (we do this a lot). 4vs1 asymmetric game with a monster in a house trying to eat you. Or you trying to eat the people.
Gauntlet - Updated version of the classic. A few friends bought 4-packs and I wound up with a copy. Jophiel needs food badly.
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair - Solo or Co-Op team shooter stopping space bugs and knock-off Godzilla from destroying earth.
lolwtf Titles
Weird stuff I bought or was gifted (friends and I have a whole thing about gifting some of the weirdest shit we can find).
Horror Fish Simulator - You’re a zombie who is stuck alone and needs to fish to survive. That’s the game: a fishing sim except you’re a zombie.
CLT - Erotic tarot reading game/experience about the female orgasm.
Death On A Street Corner: Overdose Simulator - Just what it says on the tin. Live out the final minutes of a dude dying on a street corner. Merry Christmas!
Lawnmower Game: Space Fight - Race your riding lawnmower through SPACE!
Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar - This one deserves a little extra explanation. Once upon a time, some guy spent years and years making a dungeon crawling game and saying it would be the best ever. He finally released it for $40 and said he’d put it on a 10% sale for one week only and then vowed to never put it on sale again. He said his game was a labor of love, not some cheap commercial product and he didn’t want any casuals playing it; the $40 was a gatekeeping exercise for TruGamers only. Anyway, it was 99¢ on sale.
Seed of the Dead - Combination of zombie shooter and anime sex game that no one should have to experience.
CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience - Homeless survival roguelike that probably wants to teach me important lessons and probably won’t.
I got a Logitech steering wheel and petals!!!
Works fantastic with American Truck Simulator. It is recognized by my Need for Speed games but I am having trouble configuring it and am going to ask for help. Tight turns have to match my wheel.
But in ATS it feels like I’m driving an actual truck.
Congrats! It completely changes the ATS experience. Suddenly 1st person is totally viable and the truck stays in the lane without constant micro-adjustments.
I still use a controller for racing games. Personally I find the wheel actually increases the difficulty of racing games.
I forget to mention this earlier (usually do each sale) but people interested in the sale might want to check out Steamdb, a site that gives easy access to a bunch of Steam info and, for our purposes, allows you to sort and filter games based on price, level of discount, historic low prices, include/exclude tags like Multiplayer, DLC, Early Access or game genres, and more. If you link it to your account (risk free), it can exclude stuff you own or make use of your wishlist.
For instance, when I was looking up games to inflict upon my friends, it was each to search for games under a buck with fewer than 50 reviews (I wanted unknown titles) and exclude stuff like visual novels. Someone else might want to find well reviewed RPG games under $10 which are at their best recorded discount. It’s a really useful tool.
I was able to resist temptation during the winter sale, having dropped close to one hundred clams in the fall sale. However, I see that DCS has the Channel map at 50% off, that might be going into a cart this weekend.
