Steam Charts: Sidney The Best

I have a terrible confession to make. While, on a weekly basis, I protest about the oft-unchanging nature of these charts, the truth is that a new entry makes me sigh. It means I have to laboriously type out new HTML rather than just copy the links from last week. This means terrible, unspeakable suffering in a week such as this, where there actually are quite a few 'new' games.

1. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

Due for release in two days, but making it to the top on the back of a wave of pre-orders last week. Whether this is down to pure enthusiasm or fear of missing out on a rather ugly pre-order deal which restricted the Aztec faction to folk who paid speculatively I do not know. It should be noted that the Aztecs will be made available for free to everyone after 90 days, which rather shines a light on the arbitrary nature of this particular promotion.

2. Shadow Warrior 2

Wang wangles his wangy way to a wangtastic number two position. Just good vibes for its manic-comedic ultraviolence, or aided and abetted by a surprising dearth of new big-brand first-person shooters in what is usually one of the biggest months of the year for Ian Machinegun and friends? COD and Battlefield are on their way, although we won't see the latter here as it's Origin-limited. Gears of War, though third person, is also doing the triple-A pew-pew march, but it's Windows-store exclusive for the time being.

3. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

This is almost certainly the £70 Digital Deluxe Edition. Stop that, it's silly.

4. Mafia III

A short-lived reign at the top - perhaps because the response to 2K's latest period open-worlder was on the tepid side. It's a crying shame this wasn't more of a triumph, as it's a rare and welcome thing for a mainstream videogame to be told from a black perspective. Let's just hope the muted reaction to Mafia III doesn't deter other corps from resisting action game protagonist tropes.

5. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Though we often wonder about why Valve are still yet to announce a new
Half-Life game, the continued presence of CSGO in these charts makes it
Easy to see why that is the case. Given the enormous sums of money that
Valve are surely making from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive alone
Each and every week (not even counting add-on sales), there's simply no
Need for them to be working on what would be a primarily singleplayer
Game. I don't think it's inaccurate of me to claim here that almost
All of us wish to find out what happened to Gordon Freeman after Ep 2
But let's face it, between CSGO, Dota 2 and Steam itself Valve's got
Untold amounts of money and, frankly, workload to deal with as it
Stands. Mind you, that doesn't seem to have prevented the company from
Investing in costly hardware experiments with limited mainstream appeal,
Such as the Vive and that buzzing lump of plastic known as the Steam
Controller. I know that the employees working on these are different to the
Ones who work in software rather than hardware, but even so it's just
Mighty hard to suppress the feeling that the company seems so much more
Interested in something other than that what so many of us want from it.
Never mind, at least we can all kid ourselves that the Steam Winter sale has
Got some kind of hidden HL3 announcement ARG.

6. Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man

Back in the day, as I recall, Europe Universalis games were the kind of thing that editors felt duty-bound to run reviews of from some dim sense that they shouldn't neglect the strategy market. Desperate emails were sent out, scouring the ranks of tired freelancers for someone, anyone who might dig grand strategy, often resulting in confused, mealy-mouthed pieces that praised 'depth' and complained about graphics. How the worm has turned: Paradox's bread and butter is pretty much guaranteed a top-ten slot these days. It's big business, to the point that even an add-on can do this well.

7. Shadow Warrior 2

I believe this to be the 'Deluxe' version whose main draw is a gold skin for some weapons and armour. Joke's on us, isn't it?

8. Grand Theft Auto V

9. Battlerite

Watching you, Battlerite. Watching you.

10. Football Manager 2017

The foot-to-ball gods will be pleased. I know I act all 'pfft, sport', but the truth is I really enjoy football management games despite not understanding 90% of it. This latter essentially disqualifies me from writing critically about an FM game, which is a damned shame as I'd love to find an excuse to pour a few hundred hours of my so-called life into one.

Oh, this is another entry based only on pre-orders, by the way. I'd love to have a way to filter those guys (and the duplicate entries) out, but I don't so I won't.