Isn’t it wonderful that PC software is available from a wide range of sources, all competing with each other to offer the best value, features and service they can, in order to earn your attention and custom. Any move to try and restrict the distribution of PC software to a smaller number of distributors, perhaps even just one, would clearly be massively detrimental to consumers, and would drive prices up. I sure hope nothing like that happens in the future. Here’s lots of great value games, all from different retailers, and all heavily reduced. If you want even more cheap games, you can probably find a load more over at SavyGamer.co.uk.
XIII – £1.90/€2.42/$2.99
I’ve not played this since back around when it came out, but I quite liked it back then. Not sure how well it will have aged, is it really nearly a decade old? The thing that makes XIII different to the other games about shooting people is that it has a comic book style cel-shaded appearance, including onomatopoeic big block letters for sounds effects like “BLAM!” for explosions and “Tap, tap, tap” for footsteps. It’s a cool visual trick, and enough to make XIII stand out. I also seem to recall using quite a lot of objects in the environment as improvised weaponry, like shards of glass from broken windows that you can throw at dudes, and chairs with which you can hit dudes. It’s quite French, and is probably a better Bourne game than the Bourne game was. I say give it a shot.
ArmA II: Combined Operations – £13.99/$20.99
I’m pretty confident that this is the cheapest ArmA2: CO has been since DayZ came out. This is what you want if you want to play DayZ, and even though a standalone version is in the pipeline, the mod version is being developed alongside the standalone version. If you’re only interested in DayZ, it’s hard to say for certain whether this is the best value option. I reckon any standalone version will cost around this much anyway, and with this purchase you also get ArmA 2.
The Secret World – £15.92/€20.26/$24.99
Shh. It’s a secret. TSW is Ragnar Tørnquist’s foray into games with lots and lots of people controlled by players. Adam thought these things about it:
This world has been part of my life for a few months now and if the subscription model does allow Funcom to keep their staff and continue to grow the narrative, I’ll be sticking around for a good while. The lack of classes and levels isn’t the innovation here, it’s the crafting of a world worth experiencing, packed with stories worth pursuing. Like all the best songs, it’s one you want to share with everyone around you and, Lord knows, I’ve been wittering on about my exploits to anyone who’ll listen.
More over here. This is from Amazon US so you’ll need to enter a US billing address.
Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic – £1/€1/$1
This is a game about submarines, right? First I was hoping it would be a game about a mute-protagonist hitman, but the big picture of a submarine on the front cover leads me to suspect it’s actually a naval warfare simulation. Clearly, I’ve not played it, but I might give it a try for a quid. This uses Ubisoft’s nasty always online DRM, so ironically it would be totally unplayable on board a submarine!
Deal of the week
Saints Row: The Third – £3.99
Apply coupon “pcgamer20”, registers on Steam. Probably UK only.
RPS’s resident Gangsta correspondent, Mr John Walker, has this to say about SR3:
I really bloody love Saints Row: The Third. It is, on so very many levels, an exceptional game. Its multiple layers of irony are coated in thick layers of idiocy and bombast, creating a game that’s simultaneously wickedly smart and phenomenally stupid. It’s a big, ridiculous thing that’s bulging at the edges with nonsensical things to do, yet rigidly structured and extremely well crafted. It’s a strong linear narrative precariously laid down within a deranged playground. And I feel immensely guilty for not being nearly bothered enough by how grotesquely offensive it is.
The rest is here
Also of note:
GOG FPS promo
Unity of Command – £12.48/€15/$15
Alan Wake – £5.74/€6.99/$7.49
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – £3.99. Apply coupon “pcgamer20”, registers on Steam.
Enormous Dotemu Pack – £6.36/€8.10/$9.99
BIT.TRIP BEAT, Fieldrunners, SpaceChem & Uplink – Pay What You Want
All Zombies Must Die!, Cubemen, Platformance: Castle Pain, Platformance: Temple Death, SOL: Exodus, SQUIDS & VectorGeddon, PC – £3.51/€4.47/$5.51
SavyGamer.co.uk is the budget gaming hub.
18/08/2012 at 14:15 thepaleking says:
For those of you buying Blood, considering buying Blood; this mod adds about another full games worth of content – link to moddb.com
18/08/2012 at 14:20 grundus says:
Get Games has a sale on, pretty meh (don’t much like them either) but I think I’m going to get Battlestations: Pacific off them for £2.50. Just Cause 2 is also 75% off and a few other nice things.
18/08/2012 at 14:50 monkehhh says:
Decent price for Just Cause 2, especially as the multiplayer project for it is looking awesome. Also ran by the Eurogamer folks, so they’re probably not going to spend your money on killing kittens.
(Steam version of JC2 too, so you don’t need any random downloader/installer)
18/08/2012 at 14:51 Mr. Mister says:
Seeing a JC2 sale is always nice with the mp mod going on and that.
18/08/2012 at 16:25 Axyl says:
Another plug for getgamesgo
Picked up Sleeping Dogs Limited Edition (unsure what the Ltd Ed actually gives) for £22.44
Registered on Steam, key was delivered to both my email and the website’s “My Account” section instantly. Zero issues. DLC bought on Steam separately works just fine too.
link to getgamesgo.com
Oh, and the game is excellent and the PC Porting is refreshingly well done.
Highly recommend. The combat especially makes you feel like a righteous badass-hammer of god.
18/08/2012 at 20:50 Lacero says:
The steam code they’ve given me doesn’t work. I’m sure it’ll be sorted, but fair warning to others out there
20/08/2012 at 02:10 kavz1987 says:
I played XIII fairly recently and I am happy to report that the shell shaded graphics and strong storyline stand up very well. A word of warning though the game is bastard hard which is not helped by a malicious checkpoint save system.
http://code.google.com/p/better-oblivion-sorting-software/
18/08/2012 at 14:43 CitizenDickbag says:
Just wanted to mention how fucking bad Green Man Gaming botched key distribution for Sleeping Dogs and Darksiders II pre-orders. Be really wary in the future of any ~crazy discounts~ on pre-orders from them.
18/08/2012 at 15:07 felisc says:
oh ? :/
i just preordered borderlands 2 for a healthy 30 euros… I’ve only bought one game on this website (masseffect3) and it went smoothly, i hope I won’t find myself in a pickle when borderlands2 is out.
Can you elaborate on what went wrong ?
18/08/2012 at 15:11 Soapeh says:
I prepurchased Darksiders II for £24 from shopto.net and they randomly decided to cancel my preorder citing a problem with keys yet they are still offering the game on the site. Not happy :(
18/08/2012 at 16:02 Marik Bentusi says:
Really? My DXHR preorder from there went completely smooth.
18/08/2012 at 16:11 SkittleDiddler says:
One reason to avoid buying new or newish games from them.
18/08/2012 at 17:19 YogSo says:
Stay Calm & Don’t Panic:
“Regarding Sleeping Dogs: We would like to apologise for any confusion caused to users regarding this release. The earlier email received by users was sent out in error, prior to us adding keys to the system. This was a system error and has been rectified. All keys were allocated to users on the day of release, as promised by GMG.”
From this official blog post.
18/08/2012 at 19:05 G_Man_007 says:
I had a little trouble trying to get LOTR:War in the North from Green Man Gaming last night for £2.00, but I tried a second time, and it worked fine. I’ve bought Space Marine from them before with no problem, I’d say overall nothing to worry about.
18/08/2012 at 22:42 Maltose says:
Greenmangaming has more key distirbution hiccups than most, if not all other digital distribution services (I got a duplicate Guild Wars 2 key and ended up missing a beta weekend), but they fixed the issue in my case in about half a week. Support is helpful, if a bit unresponsive/slow. They do have the best pre-order discounts by far, though, especially since they seem to have 20 or 25% off coupons that are good for any game (even preorders and season passes) every 2 weeks or so.
19/08/2012 at 02:55 nearly says:
I’ve heard of other retailers having issues with duplicate Guild Wars 2 keys, GameStop in particular. I wouldn’t necessarily hold that one against them
18/08/2012 at 14:57 johnki says:
Actually, according to a quick Google search, Silent Hunter does not require you to always be online.
18/08/2012 at 15:03 Recidivist says:
Buying from PCWorld is a bitch.
18/08/2012 at 15:05 AlexClockwork says:
So I’ll finally get to replay XIII, yay! ^^ (I still have it in physical version, but I’m willing to pay 3$ just so that I don’t need the CD anymore… XD)
18/08/2012 at 15:18 JohnnyK says:
To add to the Silent Hunter item, some other UBI games are also heavily discounted, and tomorrow they’ll have Driver:SF Deluxe Edition for 1€.
18/08/2012 at 15:49 Houghtezo says:
Driver: SF is a fantastic game, and for €1 I can’t recommend it enough.
I bought the UBIsoft pack on the steam summer sale because I momentarily forgot about all their horrible DRM. It was only when I tried to play From Dust and I couldn’t get in because the UBI servers were down that I remembered why I didn’t already own all of those games…..
18/08/2012 at 19:52 Avish says:
Just bought Might & Magic Heroes 6 for 9euros, which is the best price I’ve seen for this game, so far .
Nice to see Ubisoft doing something right, on the PC, for a change.
18/08/2012 at 15:30 Llewyn says:
Jagged Alliance: BIA is £7.49 on Gamersgate today – as low as it was during the recent Steam sale, but some of you will no doubt have 15% Gamersgate discounts as well. Despite the dreadful demo and lukewarm reviews I’m somewhat tempted for £6.37.
18/08/2012 at 22:21 Evertoaster says:
Thank you, I was waiting till the price dropped for this one.
18/08/2012 at 15:30 Jenks says:
“I’m pretty confident that this is the cheapest ArmA2: CO has been since DayZ came out.”
It was $14.99 on Amazon in May, at least in the US.
link to forums.steampowered.com
18/08/2012 at 18:32 Bobtree says:
Yep, I got that deal too, and had $10 credit on Amazon, so it was $5. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have taken a chance on it.
18/08/2012 at 15:32 frenz0rz says:
Can anyone recommend Silent Hunter 5 for me, or is it as disappointing as I’ve heard? I played hours of SH3 back in the day and still have it installed with the wonderful GWX mod, but the graphics are starting to look slightly stodgy and the load times are abysmal.
18/08/2012 at 15:57 Vinraith says:
You’d be much better off picking up Silent Hunter IV and the Trigger Maru mod, 5 is something of a train wreck.
18/08/2012 at 23:25 kommissarnicko says:
SH5 is definitely a crappy version of SH3. The “multiplayer” does NOT work, and hyper-realistic mode basically means things take a realistic amount of time and are realistically vague, but you don’t get to flip through the identification charts and fuck up your firing solution or do any of the really fun realistic stuff. There MAY be a mod or something out there, but not that I know of. Also, the load times in SH5 are still pretty bad.
I’d say pass, personally. Although at this price it wouldn’t be a complete waste.
18/08/2012 at 15:58 jaronimoe says:
So, any opinions on the latest indieroyale bundle?
I definitely want to play both Platformance titles – but I could get them for a few cents cheaper than the bundle on their own.
What do you guys think about the other games?
19/08/2012 at 00:21 ThinkAndGrowWitcher says:
If you like ‘hidden gems’ in the form of well-polished (and fun) action/strategy titles, then Cubemen and Squids are well worth the price alone. Cubemen being a great little take on Tower Defence, and Squids being…er… well just a bloody lovely little turn-based thingamy-cute-em-up with bells on.
Sol Exodus seems a decently made Freespace-ish space shooter (easily accessible demo on Steam), and have yet to try All Zombies Must Die.
The icing on the cake has been the constant giggling of my son during the Super Meatboy-esque 10-deaths-per-second, hair-extracting challenges of the Platformance games. Strangely alluring single-map games of run-jump-squish, they can best be summed up as f*$!@ing b@s%^rds!
All in all, if any of that floats your digital boat, well worth the paltry entry fee (and more).
19/08/2012 at 01:02 jaronimoe says:
alright, sounds good.
thanks for the input!
I think I will get the bundle for the Platformance titles and Squids.
18/08/2012 at 15:59 Vinraith says:
Gamersgate’s huge summer sale rolls on, and Lewie continues to oddly ignore it. Most strategy games in the place are 50% off, with daily deals each day at deeper discounts. Today that means:
$15 Unity of Command
$15 Fall of the Samurai
$10 Jagged Alliance Back in Action
$5 RUSE (which is outstanding, if you’ve not played it)
18/08/2012 at 16:36 SkittleDiddler says:
Yeah, what’s up with that? I’ve gotten some awesome deals in that sale so far. RPS is doing its readers a disservice by ignoring it.
18/08/2012 at 17:50 ThinkAndGrowWitcher says:
The bargain bucket itself these days is full of holes. The real bargains are nearly always solely to be found in the comments unfortunately.
You’d think that someone who gets to promote their own site from RPS’ traffic would at least do a better job of advertising their ‘skills’! Ho-hum.
18/08/2012 at 17:56 PleasingFungus says:
Yeah, the bargain bucket is hardly worth the money we pay for it these days!
18/08/2012 at 19:55 Avish says:
Free or not, it’s still a service and as such it’s OK to complain about it. Especially if the complaint is very much justified like Vinraith’s (Ignoring a 3 weeks onging sale).
18/08/2012 at 20:43 mcol says:
So there’s the obligatory and horribly insidious (and frankly out dated) ‘but it’s free!’ argument. But actually I agree with the op. This regular feature is a thinly veiled pimp for a website leeching easily available info, which has many alternatives.
The downside is I don’t think the author even cares or pays any attention, the better offers have always been in the comments section. Perhaps that’s the intention, if so, you may as well read the thread in the forum.
19/08/2012 at 06:19 RobF says:
Good lord, you miserable buggers. I happen to like and find the BB *incredibly* helpful.
I normally keep a close eye on Savy but I’ve been head down on stuff for a fortnight now and missed loads of stuff so I’m grateful to have somewhere with a quick round up on here. I’d have not known Saints Row 3 was going for less than a fiver without today’s post for one thing and other times, when I am paying attention, it serves as a nice reminder of things to get I might have forgotten about.
No, it doesn’t have all the bargains in the known universe and there’s always going to be some not included. Great! This is why science invented comments sections, y’know? Fill in the blanks. There’s a big old space every Saturday where you can tell all the thousands of people who visit RPS about the bargain you’ve found also, unlike the six people and a goat who visit the forum.
This moaning every week is right tiresome. Just post the bargains, guys! It’s not difficult and that way, everyone is happier.
19/08/2012 at 08:36 Kaira- says:
Then again, ignoring a rather major DD-services excellent sales for n-th week after many notices in the comments section is quite… yeah.
19/08/2012 at 18:20 RobF says:
Given the general “don’t read below the article” most people who write things in the Internet are forced to employ, maybe these comments don’t actually get read? I know I wouldn’t want to read people saying I’m doing a shit job and my column shouldn’t be here because x bargain wasn’t posted each and every week. If sooner just top myself than read that all the time. (nb. Not including Vin’s querying why it’s not there, just the misery guff above)
Lewie’s been posting the choice offers on Savy so it’s clearly not some sort of personal vendetta or owt like that. So yeah, if something isn’t listed, rather than making the comments section a slightly shitter place to frequent, just post the bloody bargains that you want to draw attention to and it’s nicer for everyone. Maybe if everyone did that too, people would want to read below the articles more too!
19/08/2012 at 04:36 bill says:
Yeah. It’s shocking that one guy doesn’t know more than everybody all together knows. and it’s terrible that we have the comments to add more information.
19/08/2012 at 17:28 ThinkAndGrowWitcher says:
Point missed much? (yep).
19/08/2012 at 17:46 The Random One says:
I bought more stuff off Gamersgate’s summer sale than off Steam’s. (Because I hate Steam.)
But if I think last week’s Bucket did mention Pathologic’s sale on Gamersgate, they just didn’t mention it was one of their daily deals (which actually last like three days I think). It would have been remiss of RPS not to mention Pathologic whenever possible.
18/08/2012 at 17:03 Kingmarzo says:
About £10.00 for Unity of Command at Gamersgate is a bit of a bargain
Edit: thats with IGN discount!
18/08/2012 at 17:08 Heliocentric says:
Ruse is £5 in the UK… I’ll wait for a sale that isn’t screwing me over because of my location.
*glances at angry Euro guys*
…
*runs*
18/08/2012 at 18:11 RegisteredUser says:
Ruse I would say is an aquired taste. If you like the way it plays, you’ll love it, if not, you get bored after a handful of maps the latest.
I think it has a demo, maybe give that a complete playthrough, first?
Hoping that its long enough to give a good impression(i.e. middle part of the campaign unit wise) that is.
19/08/2012 at 01:40 Hardlylikely says:
While on GG, I have never played Crusader Kings, is it worth looking at the first one before getting the sequel? They are both on sale, and people seem to be digging CK2. Would I miss anything important by not playing the first?
edit: reply fail my own.
19/08/2012 at 03:57 Kaira- says:
Nah, not really. CK2 is so vastly improved experience when compared to the original that there’s really no point playing the original.
18/08/2012 at 16:21 mbp says:
I played XIII fairly recently and I am happy to report that the shell shaded graphics and strong storyline stand up very well. A word of warning though the game is bastard hard which is not helped by a malicious checkpoint save system.
18/08/2012 at 20:32 Baines says:
Back when it came out, I played the Gamecube port of it, and quit fairly early in the single player story.
Multiplayer was fun (local four player split-screen), but that suffered from a lack of options. If you didn’t know, back then it appeared that Ubisoft favored the PC and consoles got the short shrift. Ubisoft had the terrible idea of giving each console an “exclusive” multiplayer mode, in a game that already had rather limited customization options, limited game modes, and had some mode ideas that never survived the game’s development at all. (“Exclusive” is in quotes because the PC version got all the modes.)
18/08/2012 at 22:46 Kaira- says:
So far what I’ve played XIII on normal difficulty I’ve found it very enjoyable, though I’m still at quite the beginning (just now reached the sneaking mission in the military base). But I do enjoy how sneaking is emphasized as opposed to constant manshooting.
19/08/2012 at 00:22 CrookedLittleVein says:
“the game is bastard hard”
Yep. Got it when it first came out and I was still relatively new to gaming. My controller was flung across the room many a time.
19/08/2012 at 05:44 bill says:
it was a long time ago, but I don’t remember much controller flinging. Driv3r and Ninja Gaiden I remember… but I just remember this being a standard (of the time) FPS.
18/08/2012 at 17:52 namad says:
@Planetary Annihilation – A Next Generation RTS
one of the absolute best parts of total annihilation the original was some of it’s VERY UNIQUE still to this day features! there was an out of game extra program you could use to browse unit files and see the units stats and models and such out of game… AND users could make units, and upload those units to the main page! it made you feel invested, if anything was wrong you could just fix it! the 2nd or 3rd expansion pack for the game actually ended up bundling a lot of user files!
18/08/2012 at 21:57 Strazz says:
I believe you’re mistaken. I don’t recall there being any user-made content in The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics, neither do I recall Cavedog allowing users to upload units to the official website. There was a huge modding community though, which Cavedog encouraged, and there were a number of websites that would post new units, maps and later, total conversions.
Cavedog released new official units every week, and it was these units that were eventually included in The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics. As a testament to how they supported their customers back then, they even came out with six new units AFTER they released Battle Tactics.
18/08/2012 at 18:22 Ranger33 says:
Almost picked up Silent Hunter 5 for $20 the other day on a whim. For $1 I can’t pass it up, even if it means making a new account on yet another digital download store.
18/08/2012 at 18:27 Wilhelmy says:
Anyone wants to help me get a copy of SR3? I’m on the US, we can settle this through Paypal.
18/08/2012 at 19:16 Hoaxfish says:
Supreme Commander, including Gold version are up on Steam’s daily discount (75%).
link to store.steampowered.com
18/08/2012 at 20:35 Baines says:
I wonder if the Arma II discount is because of the increased talk of DayZ becoming a standalone game.
18/08/2012 at 22:24 The Greatness says:
When will there be cake in the Bargain Bucket, damn it?
19/08/2012 at 00:09 Hardlylikely says:
I like to try divisive games, on the grounds that something that genuinely splits opinion is worth consideration. As such I’ve been waiting to try Far Cry 2, but refused due to the DRM & my general avoidance of Ubisoft nowadays. Really pleased to find it DRM free now on GoG, and on sale no less!
Someone at Ubisoft must be talking sense, thanks to whoever they are. If only they could release some good new games on GoG. Same price and terms as Witcher 2 would do me fine. I pre-ordered that game just to say thanks (and also because wanting it), and I think digital pre-orders are stupid.
19/08/2012 at 05:41 drewski says:
Oooh, XIII was one of those games that I thought was intriguing at the time but never quite got around to playing.
$3? SOLD.
If I hadn’t already bought Far Cry 2 about 13 decades ago in a Steam sale I would definitely grab that too.
19/08/2012 at 21:38 Sleepymatt says:
You might have noticed your twin brother beat you to it, Mr Spambot.
20/08/2012 at 12:25 Jason Moyer says:
Precursors and Xenus 2 White Gold are 50% off on Gamersgate today. I’m not sure if I’m man enough to see how they are, tbh.
20/08/2012 at 23:14 AlienMind says:
“Any move to try and restrict the distribution of PC software to a smaller number of distributors, perhaps even just one, would clearly be massively detrimental to consumers, and would drive prices up.”
..and then they demand steamworks titles.