Best Steam Summer Sale Deals: Day 10
We gather here at the death of deals
What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 10 of the sale.
I threatened to talk about Batman here yesterday but now it's just going to make me sad that I can't play until Tuesday at the earliest. Instead I'll let you know that on page two there's going to be an additional set of cool deals from the final day of the GOG Summer Sale. They've returned all their deals from the past couple of weeks so there's a lot to choose from.
As for Steam, the current batch of deals is the finalé. They'll run for 48 hours and then that will be your lot. Make sure to have a glance through the other nine posts to see if there's anything super special you missed and, as usual, I'll detail the five best below.
Welcome to Dealsham Asylum:
5. Hotline Miami 2
33% off: $10.04 / £8.03 / €10.04, Store page
Sequel to the smash hit top-down neon-violence simulator that split fans and critics alike. It's bigger, bolder and harder than its predecessor, but some felt it lost part of its charm when transitioning to a more solid narrative and longer structure. Personally I found it as frustrating as the first game but just as impulsive and fun, with levels based on shooting varying the flow rather than interrupting it. It also has the best soundtrack in games, particularly this masterpiece. Adam fell on the positive side in his review.
4. Garry's Mod
50% off: $4.99 / £2.99 / €4.99, Store page
Congratulations on passing The Test if you still don't own Garry's Mod, your reward is the ability to buy Garry's Mod reasonably cheaply. What is there left to say about the screenshot and movie making masterpiece of physics messing-about that managed to spawn an entire development studio? Even if you're not creatively minded, Garry's Mod multiplayer modes vary so wildly and wonderfully you'll inevitably find something to your liking within its vast archives. I particularly recommend Trouble In Terrorist Town which is about hunting down traitors within the midst of the players and scales quite well between 5 and 20 players. Ol' Craig Pearson was so unable to stop writing about it he ended up with a job at Facepunch and his trifecta of features from late 2012 are a delight: on the mod's history split over two parts and its future.
3. Payday 2
75% off: $4.99 / £3.74 / €4.99, Store page
Four player co-op bank robbing and crime-doing in Washington DC. Extensively patched and DLC'd since release, there's also a GOTY edition for a few extra bucks that includes about thirty bits and bobs of delicious content. Heists build from convenience store robberies to full on Fort Knox style plans, through kidnappings and hacking along the way. Craig reviewed it back in 2013 and also interviewed game director David Goldfarb.
2. Assetto Corsa
50% off: $24.99 / £17.49 / €22.49, Store page
From what I'm told by my more patient friends, Assetto Corsa is the single best racing sim on the market or, indeed, ever. After a lengthy and successful Early Access period it launched earlier this year. A quick glance at the store page shows a list of officially licensed cars and tracks from all over the world and a slew of recommendations based on its realism. Far-smarter-than-me Man Tim Stone considers it the 5th best simulation game of all time. It's also featured heavily in The Flare Path.
1. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
50% off: $24.99 / £14.99 / €24.99, Store page
In the midst of an eternal struggle with Wolfenstein as the most surprisingly good game to come out in recent memory, everyone almost rejected Shadow of Mordor's AssCreedlike charms out of turn. It turned out that it was a solid replication of the free-running in that game, paired with a Batman-like fighting system and an incredible management minigame of killing and being killed by orcs. Hopefully you go in without the half-way point twist spoiled for you because it's such a wonderful moment of natural progression for game design that's introduced in the best possible way. John split his review into two bits to make sure he branded it with recommendation strongly enough and the team gathered first to discuss its merits then later in the year to award it Bestest Best Action Game of 2014. Finally Dota 2 hero Matthew Cox experimented with playing it as a permadeath game.
From the comments yesterday, some of the other Resident Evil games were recommended. RE6 has more than its fair share of supporters and haters but those on the positive side seem more reasonable. The episodic Revelations 2 also gets a good rep from those in the know. Finally the original Resident Evil got remastered early this year and is also on sale at a quarter off. Here's wot Adam thought.
It won't be on deal by the time you read this but there's been more recommendations than I've seen all week for One Finger Death Punch. It's a two button brawler that in investigating to see if it was worth recommending I just lost about half an hour to. If you enjoy watching stickmen murder each other in a variety of hilarious ways or just enjoy rhythm action, it's the game for you. Adam explained why it was more than your average minimalist game in his review.
On page 2, a visit to GOGtown.
As you can see in the above screencap, if you spend above a certain amount in the GOG sale you get access to three bonus 'free' games. 70p spent will get you classic city management Sim City 2000, £13.10 nets you Chernobyl FPS horror STALKER Clear Sky and £32.70 gets you classic XCOM-alike Xenonauts.
Loads of Telltale Stuff
Various% off: Store page
Whether you're an fatigueless veteran, returning fan or newly arrived to the Telltale sphere of decision-branching adventure games, there's almost certainly something here for you. Tales from the Borderlands, trailered above, is the cool kid on the currently-unfinished-block, managing to appeal to fans of the series and those that just like to laugh. Here's Adam on the first episode.
You can get the three released Walking Dead games (two full series and one spinoff minisode) as a bundle deal for around a tenner. There's a reason that first season shot Telltale to stardom and jumpstarted their particular style of the genre and it's worth it for that alone. John considers it the 19th best adventure game ever. The followup never seemed to get the same watercooler traction, but still reviewed well.
And since this is my post and I can do what I like and you aren't my real dad anyway so stop pretending you are, I'm going to recommend Tales of Monkey Island for less than the price of a reasonably sized pizza. I like it a lot more than my peers, though agree middle sections can drag. I also think it has a better final episode than TWD season 1 did, surprisingly dark, easily funny and genuinely excellent.
Darksiders Series
74% off: £16.27*, Store page
A personal favourite series of mine which I was sad to see go down with the fall of THQ. Some company or other did buy up the license, but it won't be the same developers if and when its time comes around again. It's about two of the four horsemen (War in the first game, Death in the second) battling through a post-apocalyptic Earth to find out what caused Heaven and Hell to descend upon each other. It has an incredibly bulky art style to its characters and world which I absolutely love, plus it's fast, action-packed and just enough like Zelda to tickle parts of my brain developed by the N64 and GBA. John was a big fan of the sequel particularly.
*My method for finding US/EU prices on GOG wasn't working, but due to their price parity clause you should end up paying about this for it in whatever your local currency is. Worst comes to the worst, you'll pay a bit more but get some store credit, as described in their FAQ.
Doorkickers
75% off: £3.29, Store page
Frozen Synapse meets Rainbow Six in this turn-based tactics game of, uh, kicking down doors, rescuing hostages and killing drug dealers. You play a SWAT team sent on various missions and equipped with modern-day tech for scouting out buildings - cameras to see under doors, flashbangs to storm rooms, that sort of thing. We named it the Bestest Best Tactics of 2014, letting The Two Smiths wax on about their love of top-down SWATting. Simulation master Tim Stone wrote our review, managing to fit a pun into even the title. Well done, Tim.
The Banner Saga
75% off: £3.29, Store page
The astonishingly beautiful strategy game from Stoic about a tribe of viking-likes trekking across their ice age world in search of a new home. Battles play out on a turn-based board of moving heroes and troops around. When characters die, that's it for them, Fire Emblem style. These can be influenced by decisions made in the RPG world map. Adam found it difficult to love, despite how much he liked the scenary. Him and Alec had a fight well-mannered discussion on its pros and cons. John was also there, kind of.
NEO Scavenger
33% off: £6.59, Store page
Graham's game of the year 2014 is a survival game about waking up in a wasteland you neither understand nor are equipped to deal with. Character creation has a heavy influence on how you interact with the world as a whole host of special abilities let you live off plants, navigate easier or fight better. It's difficult to put it in terms better than Graham did when he and Adam awarded it Bestest Best Combat, so I'll just link to that and quote this bit:
NEO Scavenger’s fights are what would happen if the staff of RPS got drunk, took off their shoes, and decided to fight to death in a muddy field.
Fantastic. If you want more, Adam did a three part diary. If you're part of our supporter program (as always, thanks so much), Graham's written quite a bit about the game in his posts. Find them, and all the rest of our coverage on the game, here.
Do let others know below if you've spotted any hot deals on either platform today. Tomorrow's the final day of the sale so hold your wallets tight folks, we're nearly through. It's been a pleasure.