Last night I finally finished building a brand new gaming PC, which is happily sat in my lounge downloading updates from Steam.

I’m about ten years out of the loop when it comes to PC games. I’ve bought X-Com and Civilization V, but aside from strategy games I’ll occasionally dabble with Half Life 2 and Counterstrike.

Is there anything on Steam at the moment that’s unmissable and cheap?

Portal 2

I think Borderlands is currently on sale on Steam. Hugely entertaining game and by the time you finish it, and all the add-ons, the second one should have dropped in price too.

Im keeping my eye open for a s/.h copy of The Orange Box for Half life and portal for my Xbox. Anyone want to sell me one?

Starcraft 2? 😀

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/freespace_2

http://www.humblebundle.com/

+1 for Portal & Portal 2

Episodes 1 & 2 for Half-life 2 if you’ve not played them.

Maybe Fallout 3/New Vegas – can probably pick up a good deal with all the extras included.

Crysis

I’ll echo portal 1 and 2
Fallout new vegas is good, I thought 3 was so so
Oblivion and skyrim if you like that sort of thing
I’ve played a lot of codmw3 multiplayer, not played much MP before, I liked it but lots of cheating going on and from other players it sounds like it’s far from the best of it’s genre.
Currently x3 reunion is a huge time sink for me, but again probably an acquired taste.

Far Cry 3 is GOTY for me. Not cheap on sale or owt – it’s a new release – but it’s brilliant if you’re an FPS fan.

Plus they content has been cracked wide open, so there are quite a few mods out already 🙂

Steam sale is on now, it’s a game in itself. Choose what you want, put it in a wishlist then see how long you can hold your nerve: prices can be fluid with daily deals and flash sale. Batman games were a couple of quid each which is utterly bargainous.

Yes, Portal and Portal 2 are genuinely essential. The Left4Dead games (also by Valve) are good for a bit of cooperative zombie-killling. Don’t do much strategy stuff myself, but of those I’ve tried the Total War series are excellent – plenty to choose from according to your preferred historical period, and the older ones will be cheapytastic.

Just enjoyed Portal 2 as well. It was about three quid from Steam, which is absolutely phenomenal value.

It’s worth picking up HL2 Episodes 1 and 2 as well if they’re cheap.

Portal is very overrated… But that’s OK, it’s still great.

As far as strategy- yes, Total War. TBH I’m not the biggest fan now, loved the earlier games before they bloated, but I’m in a minority. And Company of Heroes 2 is about to come out, since COH is the best realtime strategy game ever made I guess COH2 should be good. (worth buying the old one, if it came out today it’d still be a big deal)

Fallout 3/Skyrim are great exploring games- you can follow the game itself and the plot, if you like, but tbh Fallout 3 wears out halfway through if you do that. But just dicking around in the wastes is fantastic. Never played a game with such a feeling of place.

(Don’t buy Fallout DLC, it’s no good! Most especially, don’t do anything that lets your level cap rise too high, if you get it to 30 with Broken Steel, all of a sudden most enemies turn into terrible, fun-less bags of HP and the game’s shooting goes crap.)

Oh… And leftfield option, the original STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, and mod the crap out of it. The later games are alright but SOC is something a bit special, and the graphics mods make it quite, quite brilliant.

I’ve got Orange Box, so I’ve got HL2 covered. I get bored with FPS games very quickly, but I’ve enjoyed the old Grand Theft games on the PS2/3. Am I correct in guessing that there’s another GTA on it’s way soon?

Space/Flight Sims: – what is there out there that’s worth playing? I used to play CFS3 quite a bit, so what’s good these days for a Battle of Britain type fix?

GTA5 is on preorder for the consoles which means it’ll be out on PC in about 9 years, and it’ll be so bugged that it won’t work for a year after that.

Oh… And leftfield option, the original STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, and mod the crap out of it. The later games are alright but SOC is something a bit special, and the graphics mods make it quite, quite brilliant.

+1 although I never got to modding the game.

Hugely entertaining game, best played late at night with the lights off and headphones. One of the only games that really scared me at times 😳

Must re-activate my account and download it sometime.

Left 4 Dead 2

nuff said.

microsoft flight is worth downloading just for a ‘free’ flight sim fun
(lots of Expesinsive addons though!)

Space/Flight Sims: – what is there out there that’s worth playing?

I already answered that. Freespace 2 ($5 from GOG today) with the Open Source Project add-ons.

Dwarf Fortress. It’s free as well.

if you have half life then you’ll already have the best game on the orange box, TEAM FORTRESS 2. awesome game, shit loads of maps, guns and players. Never gets boring.

planetside 2 is worth checking out as its free. battlefield 3 is also worth a look.

Due to the for the heads up on the Steam sale, I am currently very much enjoying Borderlands Game of the year edition, and Wargame: European Escalation 🙂 Thanx fellas keep ’em coming….