Best Steam Summer Sale Deals: Day 2
Carry on my saleward son.
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 two of the sale and how to play the monster summer sale game.
As always, the rules: it's rarely worth buying a game that isn't on flash, daily or other timed deal, as most will eventually be on one. If you miss it, there's a set of encore deals on the final day. If all else fails, you can still pick it up for its regular price on the final day. The wishlist is a good way to keep track of just the games you're interested in. If sale drama is your bag, Pip's broken down Rockstar's GTA V silliness for you fine folks.
Now, the minigame. It's, well, exactly what it looks like. You click on the enemies to do damage and they slowly kill you off. You get gold when they die and can spend it on upgrades. The auto-fire cannon is best, as it means you do more damage without paying any attention or effort - which should tell you everything you need to know, really. You'll do a bit more DPS if you can be bothered to click away, but I'd recommend spending your time doing almost anything else. This all continues while you're out of game, so it's worth heading in to check how much gold you have and buy upgrades every now and then.
As for rewards, the community as a whole defeating monsters across a number of different instances of this game, unlocks different sales. There's a maximum of nine per day. You can see the progress towards them and what's currently unlocked at the bottom of the game menu screen. It seems inevitable that all nine will be unlocked every day, and you don't need to participate to get access to them, so overall you can pay as much or as little attention as you wish. If you want to dive a little deeper, this Reddit thread seems to have all the best details at time of writing.
TO THE DEALSMOBILE:
5. Wasteland 2
50% off: $19.99 / £14.99 / €19.99, Store page
inXile's first released of many Kickstarter success stories and sequel to their late 80s survival RPG in a Fallout-style wasteland America. It proved popular enough both pre and post release to let inXile continue existence. Adam reviewed it for us saying he enjoyed it most of the time, if not "from one hour to the next" due to its old school fiddlyness and lack of polish. You can see other news about the game here.
4. Grey Goo
60% off: $19.99/ £11.99 / €18.39, Store page
A classic three-race RTS release for modern times. It puts the focus on larger scale decisions over management in this story of humanity, aliens and the eponymous nanobots fighting for dominance. Alec took a look at it during the lengthy beta period and here's what we've had to say since.
3. Democracy 3
75% off: $6.24 / £4.74 / €5.74, Store page
Cliffski's just-how-awful-can-everything-be simulator about running a government in the modern world. Want to feel sorry for politicians and everyone else involved in this system we've built? Or perhaps, turn it into a utopia based on police surveillance, mandatory military service and legalised substances? It's the game for you. Graham built the glorious land of RPSdom in his review of the original release. Probably worth shelling over the extra quid or equivalent currency for the three expansions, which you can read about in all our posts here.
2. Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
63% off: $24.48 / £16.23 / €22.48, New Order & Old Blood Store pages
The nazi-blasters are discounted by 75% and 50% respectively. One of the biggest surprises of the last couple of years, it turned out you could make a classic FPS based on a resurrected franchise that wasn't a big pile of offensive nothing. The first game even took our Bestest Best FPS 2014 award. Here's what Alec thought on release, along with the rest of the team. He also gave his thoughts on The Old Blood.
1. Crypt of the Necrodancer
50% off: $7.49 / £5.49 / €7.49, Store page
Dance for your roguelike, as the old saying goes. A rhythm-based dungeon-crawler where each action - movement, attacking, using items - must be done in time to the funky beat playing in the background. It's an incredible idea executed almost flawlessly with one of the best soundtracks in gaming. Alec gave some impressions on the Early Access build at the start of its sixth month stretch in July. More recently, Quinns opened his COGWATCH series with a deep dive on just how wonderful its main mechanic is.
From yesterday's dailies, some lovely folk in the comments recommended:
Metro Redux Bundle - $9.99 / £6.79 / €7.99 - HDified versions of the two excellent post-apoc Russian subway FPSes.
Homeworld Remastered Collection - $13.99 / £10.79 / €12.79 - HD rereleases of Relic's space RTS series, including an all-new multiplayer.
Darkest Dungeon - $14.99 / £11.24 / €14.99 - Early Access roguelike RPG about leading a team of adventurers to their deaths.
Elsewhere on the internet, GOG and itch.io are having their own sales. RPS recommends Dreamfall Chapters from the former and Sunset from the latter.
Meanwhile, this:
