With steep discounts on hundreds of games listed in Steam’s marketplace, now is the perfect time to stockpile a few games to dive into a bit later.
My life has always been one of intense fixations that alternate between my lifelong interests of sports, video games, roller coasters and music. What’s always a bit funny and interesting is looking back and trying to pinpoint the moment when a fixation began.
My (and my wife’s, for that matter) current fixation on Steam games began a little over a month ago, when we were trying to find a game to play and attempted to load The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on our Xbox One, which includes a file that we’ve easily put over 100 hours into.
Yet after the game didn’t load, we remembered that we both already own the game on Steam as well, and thought it would be fun to restart our files that haven’t been touched in several years – mine since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and my wife’s since the summer of 2023.
In the month-plus since, we’ve both been glued to our computers, adding dozens of hours to Skyrim while also diving into a handful of other titles that were already in our libraries or were listed on sale in Steam’s marketplace.
Although I was aware that Steam frequently puts games on sale, I had no idea just how massive their summer sale would be – listing droves of games with steep discounts, providing an excellent opportunity to stockpile a few titles to enjoy once I’m done with the games I’m currently playing.
Despite having a Steam account since July 2006, the vast majority of my usage of the platform came in the late 2000’s as a way to play Half-Life 2: Deathmatch – on a version of Steam that is worlds different than the all-encompassing gaming hub we know today.
After years of PC games not receiving physical releases and console games homogenizing more and more with the PC experience, Steam has blossomed into a one-stop shop for gamers of every kind, allowing someone like me to have an excellent mix of remastered throwbacks and newer games I likely otherwise wouldn’t have played.
It also offers an opportunity to play what were predominantly console games from 10-15 years ago on a PC in a streamlined experience that didn’t quite exist when the games themselves came out.
With another six days of Steam’s Summer Sale, here’s a look at the titles being added to the backlog in my library:
1. Dragon Age: Origins
Initially released in 2009 as the first installment to the Dragon Age series, this title immediately soared to critical acclaim and commercial success within the gaming world, combining elements of a Japanese RPG with the more westernized action RPG format seen in many popular stateside games.
With character customization, party travel and an immersive storyline that pits the fate of the world on the shoulders of the player’s created character, Dragon Age: Origins has always felt like a game I would find myself playing for hours on end once I got into the meat of the storyline.
While JRPG Tales of Symphonia is just about my favorite game of all-time, my experience with other RPGs is relatively limited – with Dragon Age: Origins appearing to be a perfect mix of the JRPG elements I’m familiar with from ToS while still having more than enough to create a novel experience.
Although I had started this game on the PlayStation 3 a few years back, I’ve yet to truly dive into the storyline, which I’m now eager to do thanks to Steam’s sale that currently offers the game at a 90% off discount for just $2.99. At under 24 GB in size, the title also won’t hog up your hard drive, making it a frugal option in terms of both price and hard drive space.
2. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
My wife and I just recently embarked on our maiden playthroughs of Cyberpunk 2077, a CD Projekt Red creation that was met with notoriety upon its console release for its litany of bugs and performance issues before seeing a renaissance in public and critical reception in the five-plus years since its release.
What allowed Cyberpunk to receive any of that hype in the first place was the smashing success of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a fantasy-based, open-world action RPG that hit the shelves in May 2015 – and was nearly immediately hailed as a landmark title of the genre.
Although I know next-to-nothing about this game, I feel like I’d be kidding myself if I entered it with any expectations other than being fully engrossed within a couple of hours.
Based on The Witcher, a Polish series of fantasy novels, the game’s world takes heavy inspiration from Slavic folklore and the geography of northern and central Europe – not unlike the clear inspiration that Scandinavian geography and history provided to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Though it isn’t quite the nonlinear journey that Skyrim is, the sheer size of the game’s world, variety of weaponry and ways to improve the player’s character give it the same characteristics of an endless journey where there is always something to do or a way to improve your character.
Unbelievably, this massive game that’s just over 11 years old is currently available for just $3.99, with the Complete Edition including all story expansions on sale for only $9.99 – a ridiculous bargain for an AAA game that still commands a massive player base.
3. Final Fantasy VII
Yes, the insanely sharp-looking remake is also available on Steam, but it’s hard to not find the allure in the JRPG that effectively put the genre on the map in the west – while also serving as the only non-Tales of Symphonia RPG that I played as a child.
Though the copy I played through the game with on the PlayStation has been lost since 2006, the legacy of FFVII has only grown throughout the years, viewed as both a landmark title in gaming as a whole while serving as the standard-bearer influence for the ensuing generation of JRPGs.
Graphically, things are a bit rough in the original version of the game – rough enough to the point where most gamers younger than I am likely view it as unplayable. Still, the PC version of the original provides solid upscaling and a better control scheme than the 1997 PlayStation version – which was released prior to PlayStation controllers including control sticks.
Featuring a long, politically-charged story with a wide range of twists and turns, FFVII is an emotional journey to invest in, with constantly flowing character development and an expansive world that must have felt limitless upon its original release in 1997.
Though the original version is already a pretty inexpensive game with a normal price of just $11.99, a 60% discount brings the price down to $4.79 – an excellent bargain for a title universally regarded as one of the greatest of all-time.
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