Hot game deals

[Thad]

Eye of the Beholder trilogy free on GOG.

[Newbie]

Since it's finally available on Steam, Outer Wilds is 33% off, making it $16.65 USD. If you somehow haven't heard me evangelize about this before, Outer Wilds casts you as a fledgling alien astronaut/archaeologist in a disproportionately fascinating star system. You're free to set your own goals and explore as you'd like, but don't confuse this for a survival game like No Man's Sky: here, there are no tools to construct, no abilities to level-up, and no upgrades to unlock. The only factors limiting your exploration are the laws of physics, the sturdiness of your body, and your own understanding of the worlds around you. Armed with complete knowledge of the game and its secrets, you could bring the narrative to a successful conclusion in less than half an hour, but most players will spend 15 to 20 hours investigating all of its mysteries.

There is no other game which impresses me as much as this one. When I first finished it, I had to watch as many different Let's Play streams online as I could find, because the moments of revelation and existential awe are so powerful, even when experienced vicariously. I encourage you to go in with as little foreknowledge as you can.

[beatbandito]

Outer Wilds is out on Steam and 33% off for two weeks.

I just finished it myself after over a year of on-and-off playing and the entire experience through the final end credits was

Trying to avoid spoilers as much as possible, It's for the best if you're able to go in completely blind as I did and stop reading here.

But, to describe it at all, I do need to at least lay out that it's exploration and 3D platforming in a time loop. You start in a really great in-universe tutorial that covers the gameplay basics and controls / tools in natural ways that are still as obvious as they need to be about the actual applications and then you just explore the solar system. That's it. You're given a beautiful means of finding other members of the Outer Wilds Ventures who you can ask for directions, but just going to the first thing you see, the coolest thing you see, or where you end up when trying to do any of those three things will get you to something worth seeing. The solar system itself and planets are rather small, but dense. You wont see everything that exists out there, but it's not too hard to find the important and story bits if you can manage to focus on the area you're in without getting compelled to check something else cool out.

Narratively it's basically an open-world walking simulator. There is a full story of the history of your solar system and the events you're caught up in that you're not required to complete, but is the only means to learning where and how to progress with any real direction. The fact that you can reveal individual points of information in any order means you control the narrative course of your adventure, even if it always ends up in the same place. I managed to trip my way into some "endgame" areas early and missed an obvious area that I had written off for a long time, making the information in there a complete shock to me. My idea of how the story would be resolved had developed naturally and seemed to be on point until a single revelation put some other points into perspective or, more-so, revealed them to be just perspectives from characters and not solely as information from designers for you to find for your experience.

Gameplay wise things are pretty chill. The controls for your ship took me a long time to work out, and I could then pick it up again months later and have no issue. You'll learn about the planets and technology of system and solve problems with that information. There's very little real performative challenge. If you can see where you want to be or do next and can't get there you're probably going about it wrong and are missing information or just need to look around for another route. Until the very end, the final task after the narrative has been completed is left for you to figured out based on the information you have, and I was sure I must've been wrong about it because it seemed like a lot more than the game had ever asked me to get done in one go.

The ending is fantastic, but there's not much that can be gone into there in a "spoiler-free" recommendation. But it wont disappoint you if you've made it that far. Unless you're a complete monster.

I can't recommend this game enough, GOTY 2018 and probably 2019 and 2020 too.

[Thad]

I've been thinking for years "Y'know, one of these days I should probably buy Doom on sale just so I've got it in my collection." (I've got a copy of Ultimate Doom around here somewhere on floppies, so I wouldn't feel too bad about just torrenting that one, but I'm not sure I've ever actually played Doom 2.)

Anyway. With the Steam summer sale winding down I thought to check whether it's available for cheap and hey, Doom Classic Complete is $4.49 and Doom 64 is $1.49.

(Doom 3 is $1.49 for vanilla and $5.99 for the BFG Edition, or if you want something a little more contemporary Doom 2016 is $5.99 and Doom Eternal is $29.99 for base and $53.99 for Deluxe.)

I suppose one of these days I should try out GZDoom or Chocolate Doom or one of the other open-source engines.

Anyway, Steam sale ends in about 2 hours. Still a little time to grab some stuff. (The other thing I've bought is the Stardew Valley soundtrack, $2.99.)

[Brantly B.]

gzDoom (or GZDoom or gzDOOM or whatever) is the only bearable way to play the game in the modern era imho. If you install any of the supported games on Steam they'll show up automatically in gzDoom, so that's a nice way to go about it all legal-like.

Also if anyone has a PC VR headset, OpenVRgzDoom (or oPeNvRgZdOoM kekeke) is fantastic.

[Thad]

Yeah, of all the source ports that's the one I hear the most about. (Well, that or prBoom, because prBoom's been ported to everything.)

I've also heard some good things about Chocolate Doom (which I guess has been succeeded by Crispy Doom) and Doom Legacy.

[Mongrel]

I used to replay it pretty regularly when it was ZDoom... what did they add with the G?

[insert joke here]

[Thad]

Mainly OpenGL/Vulkan rendering, though there's a more thorough feature list over at doomwiki.org.

[Thad]

Square Enix sale is on through tomorrow.

I went ahead and grabbed FF7. Is FF8 Remastered worth it? From what I understand the major downside is the lack of analog controls, but OTOH you can speed the game up and disable battles.

I also might have a Switch at some point in the future; should I hold off and get it for Switch? I got FF7PC for the mods, but there don't seem to be too many mods to speak of for FF8.

[JD]

Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War free on GOG.

[Thad]

Worms: Armageddon just got an update, and is currently on sale at Humble alongside a bunch of other Team17 games.

I've got the Dreamcast version and played the everlovin' fuck out of it in college. The PC version feels like one of those that really should be in my library.

[nosimpleway]

Once in a while I want to play a shitton of Worms but nobody else I know plays, so I never bothered buying it myself

[pacobird]

Romancing SaGa 2 is currently $2.99 on Play Store/Apple Store.

[JD]

Serious Sam 1 free today on gog.com. 23 hours to go!

[Thad]

Sonic 2 is free on Steam, and various other Sonic games are on sale.

[Brantly B.]

NiGHTS (Steam copy) for the cost of your personal information.

Don't mind my phrasing too much - that's just my standard more accurate way of describing "'''free''' with newsletter subscription". But I don't think it's such a bad deal if you haven't found the game in your library already on account of some bundle or another.

[Thad]

They've got some new games releasing for free over the next few days, too.

[Thad]

Secret, Trials, and Collection of Mana are discounted on Steam and/or Switch until November 2.

[Thad]

Europa Universalis 2 is free at GOG.

[JD]

Butcher free at GOG.