There’s a holiday weekend ahead. Need something good to play? Here are five games that are all excellent and also wildly cheap right now on Steam.
Tomb Raider (2013)
What if Uncharted was more like a Metroidvania? That’s one of the questions asked in the first game that kicked off the modern Tomb Raider revival. It’s got great bow-and-arrow action and a good story, and it’s currently only $3 on Steam. Or you can get the whole Survivor trilogy for just under $11 (until September 7).
From the Kotaku review:
You can feel the ambitions of the Crystal Dynamics creative team in the design of the game’s component parts. The presentational elements—plot, dialogue, voice acting and art design—all shine. Some characters lean too heavily on type but not so much as to be really annoying. This is a beautiful game to look at, too, with great animations and modeling/texture work that’s bursting with vivid, horrid detail in the characters and environments.
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
Atmospheric strategy and great level design set in Japan’s Edo period. That’s what’s on offer in Shadow Tactics, a strategy game that led a revival in real-time isometric stealth gameplay. Normally $40, it’s currently just $4 to own on Steam.
From the Kotaku review:
What keeps me poring over every map though, more than even the strategies and planning involved, is how pretty everything looks. There’s a wonderful toy-like quality to the game’s world, like it’s a giant diorama made by master craftsmen, and it’s a pleasure finding downtime to just pan the camera around and take everything in, from the gentle flowing of a river to the busywork of townspeople to the chaos of a battle unfolding around the map’s edges.
Grim Dawn
It’s not Warhammer, it’s Grim Dawn. Considered a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 when it was released a decade ago, the action-RPG takes isometric looting to a unique, Victorian-inspired apocalyptic fantasy world. It was always lauded as more hardcore than the pure sugar rush of some loot-based Diablo-likes, but recent updates have steered it more in the direction of a top-down Soulslike, to the chagrin of some long-time fans. For others, that’s a plus.
If you’ve never dipped your toes in this pond before, you can currently do so for just $3.75 on Steam. No Kotaku review of this one, so you’ll have to trust the 94-percent positive rating from users on Steam.
A Plague Tale: Innocence
A Plague Tale: Innocence holds up as a beautiful and haunting stealth adventure. There are shades of The Last of Us here, reflected through the lens of a rat-infested 1300s Europe. It’s sort of like an 8-to-10-hour playable movie, but a very good one. You can give it a shot for just $4 on Steam right now, and it’s the perfect follow-up if you recently played the action-oriented prequel, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, without having already experienced the rest of the series.
From a spoiler-filled Kotaku write-up:
It’s been so long since a game has truly scared me that A Plague Tale: Innocence caught me completely off guard. Tense, terrifying, and meticulously crafted, Plague Tale excels at making you feel utterly helpless. Set in late 1349 in Aquitaine, France, the medieval setting is one of the game’s strengths, distinguishing itself with the backdrop of a dark, and tragic, history.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Five years later, it still doesn’t feel like Guardians of the Galaxy has gotten its due. Hurt by the mess around the live-service Avengers game as well as broader burnout with the MCU, the game failed to find the audience it deserved, and not enough people experienced one of the best linear comic-book video games of the modern era. The storytelling is great, the combat is inventive, the puzzles are serviceable enough, and the game looks crazy beautiful. It’s the most expensive game on this list, but compared to its normal Steam price of $60, $9 is still a relative steal.
From the Kotaku review:
When Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t splitting my sides, it’s impressing the hell out of me as a fan of pulp science fiction. The aliens and planets depicted in the game remind me of the dusty old magazines I used to find at sci-fi conventions, their covers splashed with bizarre landscapes and creatures beyond my wildest imagination. Aside from the flashbacks to‘80s-era Earth, every setting in the game is fantastic.
