Steam Charts: Fishy Wishies Edition
Epic Content
It worked! Everyone, it worked! The sacrifices we all made, they were all worth it. Some said we were fools to ritually slaughter those Fortnite players and smear our naked bodies with their blood and entrails, but look! No GTA V in the Steam Charts! And no Monster Hunter World! Sure, there's still flipping Clancy Siege, and obviously nothing short of sacrificing a god could take out Plunkbat, but it's a chart filled with fresh, new and even lovely games!
10. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
Right, here we go. The Tom Clancy well will eventually run dry, so for as long as this sticks in the Charts, I shall correct predict Ubisoft's next run of eponymous games: the James Patterson series.
James Patterson's Alex Cross: Cross Country
An open-world action game loosely based on the first seventy-three books in the Alex Cross series, imagined through the lens of 2012's all-time classic Tyler Perry interpretation of the character. Perry will reprise his award-nominated role, as players race from Washington DC to LA in the most exciting Alex Cross murder-mystery yet! Expect a significant multiplayer mode in which other people are Alex Cross too, and an annual pass to include regular monthly updates as Patterson adds new books to the series.
9. Metro Exodus
Well here's a strange one. I'm not sure I can quite explain it, since the announcement and ensuing brouhaha occurred last Monday. It's hard to see how enough pre-orders could have sneaked through to see this grossing in the top ten. But then, it's here, so presumably that must have happened.
Which does rather ask the question about just how much more money 4A and Deep Silver could have made from Steam sales over however much Epic gave them to opt out.
The Metro Exodus Steam store page still exists, but perhaps with a pinch of spite, Valve have stopped it being possible to find in the search box! Meanwhile, cretins are having an orchestrated tantrum and review bombing the previous Metro games.
What an incredibly silly situation. Everyone grow up.
8. Subnautica
Coo, isn't this lovely! The release of follow-up Below Zero's early access has inspired enough people to pick up the original too. And gosh will they be happy they did. A properly splendid and utterly lovely game, about looking at fishies and perhaps at some point getting around to find out about possible intelligent life on the planet.
I talk a bit about why I love it so much in this article from last year.
7. Wargroove
Yippee! See what I mean? All that blood on our hands felt like a lot at the time, but now see the fruits of our slaughters? Chirpy happy games all over the best sellers! And they don't get much chirpier than Wargroove.
The Advance Wars-me-do is maybe not the perfect replication of Intelligent Systems' series, but it at least has the good nature to exist. Brendan's review cautiously celebrates all it gets right, and last week's podcast has Brendan, Graham, and that handsome man, me, talk about our individual experiences.
5 & 6. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
Having hung around the Charts a good while via pre-orders, Ace Combat 7 is now occupying two slots upon release. Which means an awful lot of people have £70 to buy the launch edition, rather than the already eye-gouging £50 for the vanilla version.
So I want to help. If you too have too much money and don't know what to do with it, send it to me, John Walker, at the John Walker Would Like A New Laptop Foundation, c/o Rock Paper Shotgun, Earth. Any extra funds raised will be spent on Amazon.
4. Plunkbat
Skip the first 30 seconds to avoid hearing Dave Droptrow gravelling gibberish about the traffic on the 6s and 9s, and enjoy all full half hour of Explosions In The Sky (with another interruption in the middle).
2 & 3. Resident Evil 2
Obviously the guaranteed number one, right! Last week it took up an astonishing four spots on the Charts, the reception's been great, word has been spreading, so... BUT WAIT NOW WHAT IS THIS?!
Still clearly selling extremely well, this reimagining of the 1744 original parlour game Halt! Be There An Zombie Within Thine Walls! manages to take up two spots on its own, but it's still no match for the mighty...
1. Subnautica: Below Zero
WOO-HOO!
I mean, this is all very silly - it costs more than the complete and finished Subnautica, and yet it's just a few hours of an incredibly early alpha. A very good one! I wrote my thoughts about Below Zero's expandaloning of the original game last week, and had such a lovely time returning to the waters of Planet 4546B. But crikey, still, out-grossing Resi 2 and Plunkbat?!
And it's worth noting that's a bigger deal than you might think. Below Zero (that was the second time ever I've managed to type that without first accidentally typing "Sub Zero" which it clearly should have been called) costs about £15, compared to Resi's £50. To out-gross at that price means, according to my calculations, it must have sold... four hundred and seventy-nine billion copies. Which is good going.
The Steam Charts are compiled via Steam's internal charts of the highest grossing games on Steam over the previous week.