The Steam Summer Sale is well and truly upon us, and with only a few days remaining to cash in on the mega-savings for thousands upon thousands of games, we here at GOA have decided to do our part by putying together a list of our favourite and must-have games that are all currently heavily discounted. From Indie masterpieces, to Triple A steals, there’s plenty to spend your hard earned cash on, so look no further.
Disco Elysium – The Final Cut
Disco Elysium is an award-winning indie masterpiece that is currently 65% off in the Steam Summer sales. It’s absolutely perfect for those who enjoy a more traditional table-top RPG, with one of the more unique settings I’ve ever encountered in this genre of game.Taking the role of a drunk detective with hangover-induced amnesia, you find yourself thrown into a horrific murder-mystery which you’ll be trying to solve for the next 30-ish hours of gameplay. There’s no right or wrong path to follow throughout your playthrough, which is what really makes Disco Elysium shine. Your actions and decisions can shape whichever detective persona you want to possess, and my god are there a lot of decisions you can make. It’s without a doubt one of the best written games I’ve ever played, and I’ve found myself finishing it six times, just to see the alternative outcome for some of my decisions.
You’ll uncover a skill-system as you progress, but you won’t find any combat in Disco Elysium. Instead, skills continue to shape how you want your detective-persona to approach various scenarios. If you choose to level up your Intelligence and unlock the Encyclopedia skill, you might get the chance to learn the definition of a word during dialogue that previously might have gone over your head. Maybe instead you prefer the ‘bad-cop’ approach and want to intimidate a witness. Easy solution: simply level up your Physical Instrument total. It’s one of the most unique systems, and one of the most unique RPG games I’ve ever played. I genuinely cannot recommend it more.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
I was very skeptical with the unofficial sequel to Marvel’s Avengers, but was absolutely blown away with just how on-brand and fun Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is (and of course, it’s on sale right now). You spend the entirety of the 18-hour campaign playing as Star-Lord, venturing across the galaxy getting yourself into trouble in the most Guardians of the Galaxy ways possible. It’s a mixture of level exploration, combat and dialogue, all of which is presented with stunning level and art design.
Although you don’t directly control every Guardian, you do have the opportunity to use and upgrade multiple unique abilities for each member, which you can synergize to your overall play-style. The enemy design is the real selling point of the game-play experience, as the variety and complexity of the ‘baddies’ you encounter, really cement the inter-galactic nature of the game-world and offers a real challenge. The humor, group interactions and overall combat just felt so genuine to the source material, and as a bit of a (massive) Marvel fan, this really added to the overall gameplay experience. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is everything it’s predecessor should have been, so here’s hoping future iterations of the franchise follow suit.
Chivalry 2
I was supremely disappointed how quickly the player-based faded for Chivalry 2 when it initially launched exclusively on the Epic games store last year. I absolutely love the Chivalry series of games, purely for the fact that medieval combat is overwhelmingly enjoyable to be a part of in an FPS-slasher setting. It’s exclusively a multiplayer game, in which you engage in large scale combat, assaults or just pure gladiatorial combat.
There’s nothing more epic then seeing two heavily armoured knights bashing eachother with elegant weaponry, only to be shot down by a cowardly archer off in the distance (this is me, I’m the coward). A large-scale update just launched alongside the official Steam release, which is offering an abundance of new content, so with the current 40% discount offered in the Steam Summer Sale, Chivalry 2 is a must-buy from me.
Devil May Cry 5
If you haven’t had a chance to step into the Devil May Cry Franchise, there’s never been a better time than now. In it’s simplest form, Devil May Cry 5 (DMC5) is a third-person hack-and-slash game that revolves around a score-attack mechanic. You’ll be fighting and comboing your way through hoards of enemies with incredibly distinctively unique weapons in an attempt to improve your score on each level. The majority of your time in DMC5 will be spent killing a LOT of demons. An in-game ranking system will constantly judge the style and effectiveness of the combos you manage to string together, encouraging you to better your performance (or at least discourage you from spamming the same one combo you managed to learn).
Throughout the game, you rotate between the perspectives of the games three protagonists, Dante, Nero, and V, all of which have incredibly unique playstyles and weapon combinations to suit whichever preference you may have. The combat is where the entire DMC franchise shines and distinguishes it from it’s peers, with it’s advanced mechanical depth and creativity when it comes to combining attacks. Admittedly, DMC5 was my first introduction to the series, but as soon as I finished it, I couldn’t help but pickup the entire series just to satisfy my inner completionist (alongside catching up on some of the lore which went a bit over my head). You can pickup Devil May Cry 5 now from the Steam Summer Sale for a whopping 67% off.
Transport Fever 2
Transport Fever 2 is the benchmark of what a classic transport simulation game should play like. It’s visuals, gameplay and just ability so sink time into is second-to-none. For those unaware of the series, in it’s simplest form Transport Fever 2 is celebration of how stunning public and mass transport systems can be. To my fellow Australians, this will sound like complete and utter nonesense, but trust me when I say this: other parts of the world actually have competent transportation systems. Crazy right?
The overall goal of Transport Fever 2 is to make as much money as you can by connecting
cities to the various resources they may need. On any given given level, you’ll find multiple randomly generated
communities spread across the map, which will have a demand for various resources and goods, and it’s up to you to help deliver said goods. It’s a relatively simple premise, with stunning visuals (and a really active modding community) that is painfully easy to lose countless hours to. If any of the aforementioned appeals to you, you can pickup Transport Fever 2 from the Steam Summer Sale for 50% off.
Chrono Trigger
For those who somehow haven’t heard of it, Chrono Trigger is a timeless JRPG classic developed by the creators of Dragon Quest, Dragon Ball and Final Fantasy. In it’s simplest form, Chrono Trigger is a time travel story starting off in a quaint village, which ends up spanning the entire history of the human race (this is significantly underselling the game, but it’s a hard one to summarize).
The story is the best feature of the game, which is heightened by it’s interplay between the game’s vast cast of playable characters. Each and every character is developed with a distinct personality and set of story quests that reinforce these personalities (if you get through them all, it’s really hard to dislike any of the cast). Unbenonounced to a lot of gamers out there, Chrono Trigger was the game that introduced and innovated on gameplay features such New game +, alongside multiple story endings to the story, which enabled almost every person who got their hands on the game, to fall into the endless loop of replaying it. If you are in the mood for one of the most icon JRPG’s to ever exist, look no further than one of the greatest to ever be released in Chrono Trigger, which is currently 50% off in the Steam Summer Sale.
