It’s deal dump time isn’t it, and you will enjoy these delicious offers. Let’s be clear – what we all want is some cheap games, preferably ones that can be purchased with a minimum of effort and will be good for playing while Jessica Jones is on the second monitor. That’s (some of) what you’re going to get this week. As always, let us know in the comments if something’s caught your eye and we’ll all appreciate it.
Humble 2K Weekend Sale
Multi-massive publisher 2K are having a sale over on Humble. You can get your pick of their semi-recent allstars like Bioshock Infinite, Borderlands and Civilisation. A few key things missing: the Rising Tide expansion that makes Beyond Earth a far better game, XCOM 2 pre-orders of course and Telltale’s recent Tales from the Borderlands. However, it caught my attention because it offers the underrated, interesting and more than a little hyper-violent The Darkness II for ‘free’ if you spend $12/€12/£10 or more. The latest Borderlands pre-sequel would be the quickest way to do it, but a few of the cheaper games bundled together – on quick glance, Spec Ops: The Line will cover half of it – should also do the trick. Outside of slightly disturbing kill animations, it’s a game I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and well worth a tenner with a couple of extra games on top.
Humble are also running a deal on Batman this weekend. They’ve got the first two Arkham games at teeny tiny prices and if you don’t have them I expect I’m not the first to tell you you should. There’s also the Lego Batmans, which do a good job of following that formula with a large array of DC characters. However, I’d like to throw up the defenses for Arkham Origins. It’s nowhere near as good as Asylum or City (or Knight, if it runs) but it does tell a decent story, have some interesting fights and generally fill the Batman void. Plus it actually worked at release and now. Bonus.
Galactic Civilisations On GOG
Gal Civ 2 and 3 are a pair of the better 4Xs out there, especially when it comes to space. GOG have managed to grab both for their store, and they’re both sitting at a discounted price. The third installment is still £20, with a bunch of possible DLC to grab on top – a good price, but perhaps still a little expensive for deal-blood. GalCiv 2 on the other had is 75% off at £3.29 or just under how much I just paid for this delicious burger. Glasgow take-outs are pretty amazing, but not as good as ruling the galaxy with an iron fist/impressive space-radio towers.
Legend of Grimrock Series
Playfield.io, who I haven’t heard of before but look as legit as anyone else, are doing the pair of Legend of Grimrock games for£5.74. They’re very classic dungeon crawlers in the 80s mould, except with a significant upgrade in graphics and features. As someone with no nostalgia for the era whatsoever, I still had a good time with it. It’s fun to explore and find secrets, a tactical challenge when it comes to positioning/ability use and has a nicely old-school attitude to putting you straight into the action. It also has a level editor and has sold pretty well, so there’s a decent selection of no-doubt devilishly-hard custom content to wade through.
Space Engineers
It’s not often we feature Early Access games, but Space Engineers fulfills the two requirements they often don’t – being highly rated and being on sale. In fact, it’s completely free for the weekend on Steam. Seemingly the best of the space-Minecrafts, our very own dear departed Steve Hogarty recommended it thusly, as quoted on their Steam page: “Buy, unless you are bereft of even the slightest shred of creativity.” He had a way with words, that one. It’s receiving very regular updates thanks to having sold so well and has evolved from a space-only affair of giant robo-sharks and other projects to the planet-bound beauty you see above. If you’ve been waiting, you can do a lot worse than the 50% off at £9.49 it’s currently going for.
We pass once more through the eye of deals and into the glorious weekend zone. While Jessica Jones will be taking the next ten or so hours of my awake time, Man In The High Castle, an alternate-history What-If-The-Nazis-Won series based on a Philip K. Dick book has also been released today. It’s on Amazon Video instead of Netflix, sadly, but it looks equally entertaining. If you’ve got time between all that TV, enjoy your game playing.