I just built myself a new PC to replace my 14ish year old desktop, and for reasons mostly unknown but including the excellent prices + rebate on amazon, I including a Radeon video card so I can do PC gaming. Now I need to know where to buy games -clearly you don’t hike down to CompUsa or Microcenter and buy disks any more. Do I just set up an account on Steam? Other sites? I see there’s a thread about game sales - any advice as to when games go on sale, etc? Thank you.
Steam is a great place for games.
Steam is going to be your one-stop shop for most of your games. A lot of times, buying a digitial copy of a game from Amazon or elsewhere actually means being given a code that lets you download the game through Steam. So yeah, definitely go get an account.
Some EA games will only be available on Origin.
Older games will be available at GoG.com.
There are lots of other sites, too, but those three will get you pretty far.
As for Steam sales, there’s a reason we have a thread devoted to them: they don’t announce upcoming sales for specific games. If there’s a game you want that isn’t at a price point you want, you can tag it as a “wish list” item and Steam will send you an email if/when it goes on sale.
I believe the next big sale starts tomorrow. Don’t buy anything until tomorrow afternoon (their sales start at 10AM PST, I think).
Which means you should spend the rest of today and tomorrow morning having all of us throw game titles at you, most of which will not be what you’re looking for, but we’ll tell you all about them anyways because we liked them and we just want to talk about it.
So… what are you looking for?
And sites you want to check out, aside from Steam, are Green Man Gaming (in the middle of their own Holiday sale right now), the Humble Bundle (you pay what you want for bundled games for various platforms, as well as different weekly bundles), and Bundle Stars (packaged games for super cheap; good for loading up on a lot of games really fast).
Yeah, the only other suggestion I have, DCnDC covered in his second post - Humble Bundle/Humble Store. Mostly the same stuff as Steam, often just giving you a steam key, but different sales.
Perfect!
My hands down favorite game of all time was Thief, hence my user name. Other games I’ve liked - various wartime FPSs, the Batman Arkham games, Saints Row and GTA type games, Bioshock 1 through x.
And it’s this Radeon R9 270 card, if that makes a difference.
I assume you’re talking about the original Thief: The Dark Project and not the reboot from earlier this year?
I take it from that and they rest of the titles you mentioned you like first/third-person action games with a story?
The Thief reboot is not bad. It’s not quite the same as the original game, but I enjoyed it. You may also like Dishonored; same type of first-person stealth gameplay, but in a dystopian steampunk setting.
GTA 5 is scheduled to come out for PC at the end of January.
The Borderlands games are pure, stupid FPS fun.
Just Cause 2 is pure, stupid 3rd-person fun.
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is a fun, stylish Western FPS.
The Far Cry games are excellent.
Left 4 Dead and its sequel are good FPS zombie games.
Metro: Last Light is a FPS with a bit of a thriller/stealth/survival horror slant.
Shadow of Mordor is excellent. Run around Mordor and kill orcs, Arkham-style.
Sniper Elite V2 and III are pretty good 3rd person WW2 sniper/stealth games.
The Splinter Cell games are all outstanding.
It sounds like you HAVE played some modern games though, right? You mentioned the arkham knight series.
If you haven’t’ played all of those games they are usually heavily discounted on Steam sales, usually bundled up too, so if you did play them, and maybe it was awhile ago, and maybe on a last gen console, picking it up on PC might be a good idea, if cheap enough. You get to experience them with better graphics and performance. Kind of one of those unspoken PC gaming benefits - future hardware upgrades usually net you immediate upgrades to past games, without having to spend $60 on “remastered HD versions” like on consoles.
FPS games with stories I’d recommend:
All of the Bioshock games.
Half life 2 and episode 1 and 2… if you haven’t played them yet.
Far Cry 3 and 4.
With some stealth elements: Deus Ex: human revolution.
With some survival elements: The STALKER series.
With puzzle elements: Portal and Portal 2.
With loot elements: Borderlands 2.
With RPG elements: Fallout 3 + fallout new vegas.
Third person: The Mass Effect series. Tomb raider (the new one). Dead Space series.
Thanks. I’ve played several of the games you’ve both mentioned on an Xbox 360, but I’ll look at the others.
Two more questions though - if I buy games on Steam, I don’t have to download them on the spot, correct? And you say the next Steam sale starts tomorrow - that’s a time limited sale, not a product limited sale, right? I don’t have to camp out on the website to buy games at exactly 10 AM PST, like I’m buying One Direction tickets for my daughters.
Nope, you can do so later.
During the really big Steam sales (Thanksgiving, Christmas, sometime during the summer), they’ll have “flash sales” that only last a limited time. We’re not talking 10-15 minutes, but usually a decent chunk of the day. 6+ hours.
Oftentimes the most popular flash sales will make a reappearance at the end of the sale, but it’s not guaranteed. So if there’s a game you’re really hoping will go on sale, add it to your wish list and check your notifications regularly.
Something else about Steam sales:
Steam sales often discount games heavily, well past 60% off. But bear in mind that the digital age also means that the baseline prices of games tends to drop pretty quickly - even for AAA titles. So if you’re patient (and the fact that your last desktop was 14 years old tells me that you are), it’s worth waiting a bit for a game that looks good, but not “buy it right now” good.
That AAA title that’s 25% off its price of fifty bucks is going to be retailing at 34.99 in a few months, and then at the NEXT Steam sale it’ll be 40% off of THAT.
Yes. Additionally, especially during the winter holidays when everyone is having sales but also good advice year-round, is to shop around.
IsThereAnyDeal is an excellent resource. SteamDB is, as its title suggests, a Steam-centric site that highlights sales and packages on Steam on one convenient page (rather than having to search around on Steam itself). Amazon has weekly “digital deals,” starting Tuesdays I believe, and in many cases what you’re buying is simply a code to plug into Steam (which “buys” you the game on Steam).
Like everyone said steam and especially its sales is a very good place to buy games.
Here: www.g2a.com/r/top_offers you can also browse the offers. Usually new games at very good rates.
I’d stay away from G2A unless you’re willing to gamble. They’re not really a store so much as a middleman between various key-sellers and customers. Some people selling keys may be legitimate, some are grey market regional vendors where you need to activate via VPN, some are selling stolen keyscans (copies of retail boxed activation keys) or may be selling keys gotten with stolen credit cards, etc.
Also, G2A has some weirdo security where you run a program allowing the G2A rep remote viewing of your desktop so they can confirm if a key worked. If you don’t want to allow this, they won’t provide any customer service for bad/used/revoked keys.
Indeed, you can uninstall a game when you get tired of it, and a year later, re-install it from Steam at no extra cost. Sometimes, it’ll even keep your saves for you.
Two more stupid & related questions -
Is there a chart anywhere to compare relative GPU and CPU capabilities? I’m looking at Shadows of Mordor, which has listed as recommended requirements AMD FX 8350 and Radeon HD 7950. I’ve got an AMD FX 6300, and a Radeon R9 270, so I don’t know if I’m at 90% of the recommend, or 70%, or 10%.
Second, if I roll the dice and buy a game where I’m below the recommended reqs, and it turns out to look play like crap on my PC, do I have any recourse? Is there any 12hr or 24 hr return policy?
I’m beginning to remember why I bought a console a decade ago… 
Can You RUN It | Can I Run It | Can My PC Run It is pretty solid.
It’s going to try and determine where your computer fits on the scale between “minimum reqs” and “recommended reqs,” and then tell you which parts of your machine are deficient if you don’t meet the specs.
You can use the Graphic Card Hierarchy from Tom’s Hardware to roughly estimate where your card falls against another. Also, although a lot of people sniff at Can You Run It, it will give an idea of where your card falls short (if it does).
Required You Have
Icon Pixel Shader version 4.0 5.0
Icon Vertex Shader version 4.0 5.0
Icon Dedicated Video RAM 512 MB 3.1 GB
Most retailers don’t allow much recourse for games your system can’t run. Origin (Electronic Art’s answer to Steam) offers a “Great Game Guarantee” where you can return an Electronic Arts game within 24 hours, no questions asked. But that’s only for EA games and they’re the only ones I know of who have such a policy. Part of the problem is that if Amazon sells you a key, they don’t have an easy way of taking the game away from you once activated on Steam. Even if they refunded you, they can’t take the key back and restock it.
In addition to what’s already been mentioned, youtube is an incredible resource for this.
For example I just searched youtube for: shadow of mordor fx 6300 r9 270x
Result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsMm4KjDFO4
Dude is playing the game at max settings at 30+ FPS at 1080p on windows 8.1 with your CPU and GPU. So you have an idea of how the game will run.