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Steam sale - post your recommendations
The steam sale has been going on for a few days now. I'd like to start a discussion on recommendations for games that might not immediately grab attention or were given bad reviews at launch or really any criteria at all.
Recommend something!
The Shadowrun games by Harebrained Schemes, especially Dragonfall, are very good, story heavy, RPG. They're also a great introduction to Shadowrun in general to boot, if you like tabletop roleplaying.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is an amazingly well written game that is very deep and imaginative. Very text dense. While you can hack and slash your way through like any other RPG, there's actually non-combat solutions to nearly every obstacle in the game, if you want to go that route.
Monster Prom is sold as a dating sim, but it's much more of a board game than anything else (with the goal being to get a date for the prom). Very funny. Highly irreverent. It sometimes suffers from a bit of katy teh penguin of d00m syndrome, but overall, very charming.
I love the Shadowrun games. I should play through them again in preparation for Cyberpunk 2077
I am also hype for Cyberpunk 2077.
Am I an anomaly or others are finding this kind of approach "lazy" and "wrong" in 2018? I mean, I come from baldur's gate as a background and don't remember to have to read that much. We talk about several paragraph of dialog in font-size 10 sometimes.
It's probably my age as well. At over 30 I don't want to stare a small text for long session on a screen anymore.
I think it's a budget thing. I'm sure they'd love to do cinematic cut scenes, but a lot of these isometric RPGs just don't have the budget for it.
If you don't have it, get the Valve Complete Pack.
It's the best games ever* for only $15 ($200.81 off sale). Less than $1 per game.
* It's a matter of objective opinion.
Portal holds a very special place in my heart. If you haven't yet, play through the sequel. It's a host of colourful commentary.
Don't forget Dota 2, for $15 it's a steal, this game will last your for 1000's of hours !
Very much worth grabbing this while it's on sale - if nothing else, you get Portal and Portal 2, and a load of other games for free!
I'll start. Middle Earth: Shadows of War.
This game was initially launched with some pretty bad loot boxes. They were purchasable via real money and included character power level increase, that alone made me write off the game entirely.
Now that it's on sale (66% off or so), I figured I would check it out. I'm so glad I did. It's a ton of fun being very similar to the first game but with more everything and the loot is really interesting. I'm only into act 2 (of 4) now, but I'm having an absolute blast with the game at the point.
If you like action adventure games with enjoyable combat (combos, counters, ranged, stealth) then this might be worth a pick up!
I also picked this up, but haven't tried it yet (still going through the first game). Excited that you're giving it a positive review though!
To add onto this, I bought the game for console on launch and just recently bought the Gold version for PC during the sale because it's so damn good and it was cheaper than buying all the DLC separately on console.
The Lootbox Market always felt very disjointed and sort of tacked on at the end for me. The main incentive to buy lootboxes was to get orcs with random stats and hope you get a good one. But it kinda flies in the face of the main reason to play the game imo, which is the Nemesis system. Travelling through Mordor and forging your own story with the orcs you encounter is part of the core gameplay. Why would I want to just straight up buy orcs that are just immediately on my side?
The devs do a pretty good job of listening to the community, and as a result they've actually removed lootboxes entirely and are currently working on a free update scheduled to hit in July that will flesh out Act IV to make it less grindy.
If you liked the first game, or are a fan of Arkham style combat RPG games, then Shadow of War is a must-buy.
For Myst fans, 'The Witness' saw some excellent reviews and looks like a fantastic and thoughtful exploration game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/210970/The_Witness/
This and Braid are, hands down, my favorite games. It's like a game made for people burned out by modern videogames being often so stupid and goes, "hey, relax, look at this, videogames can be beautiful, gameplay can be art, oh hey, don't mind if I make you obsess over a line puzzle for a day...". It's a gamedesign master piece. Maybe too meta/abstract for some people to enjoy but that doesn't make the design any less brilliant. Over the years, I've grown into a huge fan of Jonathan Blow's work (his talks on youtube are genius) and this is everything he's been obsessing over for 7 years, poured into one game.
This reply in itself is reason for me to fork over the dough for this one. Thanks for firsthand recommendation.
Dead Cells is a hecka fun game. Rise of Nations Extended Edition holds up nice if you're into RTS with a Civ flavour.
It's not new, but I think Tinertia is a tragically overlooked game, and it's on sale for its lowest price ever (60% off, $4.79 USD).
If you enjoy challenging platformers like Super Meat Boy, you'll probably love Tinertia. It's a platformer where you can't really "jump", and instead you primarily have to propel yourself through the levels by rocket-jumping, which introduces some really neat possibilities between being able to "jump" in any direction and keep up some insane momentum with consecutive rocket-jumps.
It's polished, feels great to play, has a good style and soundtrack, and gets really challenging. It always makes me sad to see how few entries there are on the game's leaderboards, since it obviously didn't sell very many copies even though it really deserves to have done well. Despite that, the devs have still continued updating it for years, doing things like tweaking levels and achievements, adding a randomly-generated mode, and even a neat VR mode.
I had never heard of this game before your recommendation, it looks like a ton of fun!
Adding this one to my cart!
I just picked this up - I just built a full-sized Virtual On focused twin stick cabinet, so I'm looking for titles that make use of the dual flight stick. Looking forward to checking this out.
Huh, I have no idea how well it'll work with a setup like that, but it could be interesting. Let me know how it works out.
They did say twin stick, so as long as it takes digital inputs for movement, I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best. Will report back.
Pillars of Eternity is a CRPG thats currently 40% off. This game reminds me a lot of the old Infinity Engine games like Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate, and the combat is pretty challenging and actually requires strategy.
I got "The Long Dark" for just a couple of bucks. Haven't played it much yet so I cannot give it a proper review, but I really like the art- and sound-design. If you're into open world survival games it's well worth checking out.
That's a great game. I haven't played it in a while. I know they finally added a story mode I have to check out. But just the sandbox mode was amazing. VERY slow paced game. Kinda of frightening at first...low on supplies...trekking into the unknown. I tried to use as little external help as possible.
I didn't plan on filling my backlog even more but I think I'll get Prey. I heard it's the closest thing to a modern day System Shock available and that's what I've been waiting for, for almost two decades.
I got it on the steam sale and spent most of the weekend playing it. Great game and the opening hour is phenomenal.
I'm currently enjoying The Silver Case by "world-renowned developer SUDA51." It's a crime adventure game/visual novel set in 90s Japan. It has a very unique style and presentation (definitely not your standard Japanese anime visual novel), interesting characters and story, and fantastic soundtrack. There are some puzzles, but you can skip through them if you only care about the story.
Haha, it's even 51% off. Truly a SUDA51 game, through and through.
Though not technically part of the sale, Objects in Space was just released into Early Access at a discounted price. I've had some fun playing it this weekend. Its like a submarine game in space. Keep in mind though...it was just released into Early Access (there are bugs).
This game looks strangely interesting. I'm only hesitant due to the common reports of bugs and lack of multiplayer. I'm definitely adding it to my follow list, but may wait for a major update or two before jumping in.
I bought in to Early Access because I liked the idea and want to support the devs. But yeah, EA games are basically paid for beta testing.
I've been lucky and only had 1 crash (I sent in my crash reports). It seems a lot of the game breaking crashes seem to be on the Mac version (I'm on PC). Last night in Discord one of the devs said they were working specifically on that. They also said that multiplayer is being worked on...but I wouldn't take that as a guarantee that its going to make it into the final product.
Its a small team. I hope they can keep cranking out updates and get this game into 1.0 before they burn out!
I get the feeling that multiplayer will be co-op and similar to Star Trek: Bridge Crew rather than several players controlling multiple ships. I'd love to see this game with procedurally generated systems and dedicated servers, but unfortunately I doubt that will happen.
Yeah. The dev mentioned that whole co-op crew thing last night too. No word on multiple ships. Honestly, I think multiple ships is probably easier to pull off than a well balanced co-op crew. I can't imagine how they're going to make the stations interesting enough for a dedicated crew member, but not so complex that a single player can't manage all the stations at once.
I'm sad. The only game I wanted, KeeperRL, is not up for sale.
However its only $15, so I'm gonna get it anyway.
If you're into First-person Shooters, I'd recommend Insurgency
https://store.steampowered.com/app/222880/Insurgency/
or its WW2 counterpart Day of Infamy
https://store.steampowered.com/app/447820/Day_of_Infamy/
Both are very unforgiving (single hits can kill, no health regeneration, etc.) but that's part of the fun :)