Look, I see you over there with money in your pocket and nothing to spend it on. I’m here to help. I’m going to help lighten the burden of all that hard-earned cash. By directing you some great picks for this Steam sale!
You might start by having a look at some of our staff picks for Game of the Year 2015. They’re all great! And you can find out more about what makes them great at the aforementioned write-up.
- Cities: Skylines - $11.99
- Rocket League - $12.99
- Beyond Sol - $13.99
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - $44.99
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - $29.99
- Invisible, Inc. - $9.99
- Fallout 4 - $40.19
But enough about my fellow writers! I wanna tell you a little bit about the games I like. The games I think you should play. This will hopefully include a few you’ve never heard of before, or perhaps just never thought to try.
Axiom Verge is so great and more people need to know how great it is. It’s the best Metroidvania in years, it’s got a tremendously creative array of weapons and gear, and its pixel art aesthetic builds an ugly-beautiful techno-grunge look and feel that capitalizes on far more than nostalgia. It’s great! You should play it!
Ori and the Blind Forest - $9.99
Another great Metroidvania (yes I know that’s a dumb classification but it works), but one that focuses more on intense platformer challenges and beautiful, hand-painted visuals. It’s Disney-esque, and presents a terrific, well-paced adventure.
The Room has its roots on iOS, but don’t mistake it for a “mobile game.” It’s an in-depth puzzler with limited scope and tactile feel. Your actions are, unsurprisingly, confined to a single room, as you interact with a series of clockwork puzzle boxes and uncover strange, spooky mysteries.
Divekick’s real dumb! But also real fun. This is a two-button fighting game. There’s no movement controls, only dives and kicks. Divekick’s aim is to strip out the complexity of fighting games while leaving the core back-and-forth and mindgames intact. A task at which it admirably succeeds.
While I count Metal Gear’s ridiculous story arc among my favorite things in gaming, I never really considered myself a fan of stealth games until I played Mark of the Ninja. The stylish 2D platformer has perfect controls that make you feel absolutely powerful as you sneak past, assassinate, or straight-up brutalize your foes.
Cook, Serve, Delicious! - $3.99
Look, I know, it kinda just looks like Diner Dash. But it’s so much more than that! Cook, Serve, Delicious! is an in-depth title that not only makes delivering fry cook orders fun and addictive, but adds on a meta layer of restaurant management and a deep upgrade path.
I haven’t played nearly as much of this indie gem as I want to, but it’s a lovely quick-hit platforming adventure game that has you drilling deep, deep into the earth and collecting gems and minerals to spend on upgrades back on the surface that in turn let you go even deeper next run. It’s a calming-yet-addictive loop, and I can’t wait to see the developer’s same-universe-but-different-genre follow-up, SteamWorld Heist.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary - $2.24
In my review of Rise of the Tomb Raider here at GameWatcher, I called it the best game to bear the Tomb Raider name. Before that, I’d say the honor belonged to Tomb Raider: Anniversary, the Crystal Dynamics remake of the original game. Neither bogged down by the original’s archaic controls or the modern interpretations’ action focus, Anniversary is wonderful woman-versus-tomb experience that makes the environments themselves feel like mortal enemies.
The roguelike-like(-like?) Rogue Legacy is a deadly platformer where every run nets you gold to spend on persistent upgrades to make future runs easier. While the difficulty’s a little unbalanced--the challenge is focused almost entirely in the immensely difficult boss battles--the super-tight controls make this one a joy to play no matter how many times you jump back into it.
2015 is the year that FMV made an unexpected but triumphant return. While it’s not really surprising to see it popping up in ironic contexts, it is pretty incredible to see the technological relic used to tell a story as deep and fascinating as that in Her Story. Essentially, you’re seated at an old computer terminal looking through police interview footage of a woman in connection with her husband’s murder. Every clip will reveal new keywords and phrases that you can use to search for additional pieces of the interview. It challenges you to make connections and notes on your own, and works both by this challenge and by the wonderful performance of its female lead.
As for what I’m buying in the Steam sale, well… I was thinking about The Talos Principle - $9.99, This War of Mine - $5.99, and Tales from the Borderlands - $8.49 before embarrassingly realizing that I already owned all three. Oh well! I’m still thinking about picking up the Half-Life remake mod, Black Mesa - $9.99, and given how much I enjoyed Pillars of Eternity last year, I might give another throwback RPG a shot in the form of Divinity: Original Sin - $23.99.
What about you? Anything here pique your interest? Got other recommendations for your fellow GameWatchers? Let us know!
