Steam Autumn Sale 2016: Best Games to Buy

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It's not the grand Steam Summer Sale or the magnificent Steam Christmas Sale, but Valve has launched its Steam Autumn Sale today. Steam has a whole host of titles on sale until November 29, after which time all of these great deals will hide again until the Holiday Sale in December. Here's some of the games you should think about picking up for this sale.

Doom

• $19.79 - 67% Off [Windows]

Doom is back, fast, furious, and burning with the fires of hell! What was once Doom 4 during a troubled development period absolutely stuck the landing, as our own Jaz Rignall noted in his review:

"The single-player campaign is a blisteringly fast, gruesomely gory experience that, while feeling somewhat padded out towards its latter stages, nevertheless delivers a rip-roaring ride that's challenging and thoroughly entertaining. Forget the plot, and just enjoy running around, single-handedly blasting the seven shades of crap out of a hellspawn of demons using a toolbox of great-feeling weapons. Ultimately, it's oldschool-feeling FPS action, and it's great."

Cities: Skylines

• $7.49 - 75% Off [Windows]

Where EA faltered with SimCity, Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive succeeded with Cities: Skylines. This is the premier city-builder on PC right now. This is the vanilla version of the game, but Colossal Order has since supported Cities Skylines with two expansions - Snowfall and After Dark - adding a new weather system, day/night cycle, new buildings, and new district specializations. There's also the upcoming Natural Disasters expansion, which brings forest fires, tornados, and meteors into the mix.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition

• $7.49 - 75% Off [Windows, Mac]

Pour one out for our homies. Sleeping Dogs was one of the better open-world titles of the last generation, putting players in the role Detective Wei Shen in a difficult mission undercover in Hong Kong. The combat was great, the driving was solid, the city was just the right size, and the story campaign was focused. As a bonus, the game even comes with all the DLC. I loved it, Jaz loved it, and it's absolutely worth the asking price. United Front Games may be gone, but it's not forgotten.

The Blackwell Bundle

• $3.99 - 80% Off [Various Platforms]

Likewise, if you're looking for a great game in the style of the old LucasArts adventure games, here's the Blackwell series. Rosa Blackwell is a neophyte medium attached to her spirit guide, Joey Mallone, a former detective. Together, they fight crime! Unfortunately, the bundle is missing the final game in the series, the Blackwell Epiphany. You can pick that up on sale for 80 percent off as well.

Axiom Verge

• $9.99 - 50% Off [Windows, Mac, Linux]

If you love classic Metroidvania titles, you'll get a kick out of this loving homage to the original Metroid. Jaz and Jeremy both raved about the game in our review:

"Axiom Verge uses a Metroid blueprint as its foundations, and builds upon it something old, yet something new, weaving in deft control and design touches from other games of the period, like Blaster Master, Star Control, and Contra. The result is a Metroidvania par excellence; one of the most engaging and addictive I've played in years."

"Axiom Verge goes the whole retro hog. It's in the little things. Anyone who gamed through the late 80’s and early 90’s will love the meticulous attention to detail poured into the game’s looks and cut scenes. The backgrounds are authentically tiled, colors and black space have been cleverly used to create period-style shading and depth, and even the way the enemies move and fire feels absolutely spot-on."- Jaz

"Tom Happ's Axiom Verge appears to have been built around that entire experience: Of being a kid poking around inside a game's code, of the illicit thrill of turning an adventure inside-out by traveling beyond its intended boundaries. It taps into a collective experience shared by countless old fans of NES games, creating a sort of controlled sensation of chaos. Unlike Metroid, Axiom Verge's glitches are a deliberate part of the game design and won't cause the code to break. Yet the game perfectly captures the feeling of those early days of console gaming, the spirit of venturing beyond the game's intended parameters."- Jeremy

Sid Meier's Civilization V: Complete

• $12.27 - 92% Off [Windows]

Civilization VI has been released and it's a damned good start for the next generation of Sid Meier's Civilization series. Of course, VI's launch means you can get all of the previous version for cheap! This is Civilization: Complete Edition, bundling Civilization V, its expansions Brave New World and Gods & Kings, and all assorted DLC. It's the full Civilization experience for a low, low price!

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1

• $7.49 - 75% Off [Windows]

The anime aesthetic is your thing, you might want want to check out this mix of visual novel and JRPG. Featuring a bunch of characters based on game consoles in various degrees of fanservice, this is the first of the Hyperdimension Neptunia HD remasters. You can also have Re;Birth 2 and 3 on the store if the first game tickles your fancy. Re;Birth 2 shares the first's discount, while Re;Birth 3 brings it down to 70% instead.

Dying Light - Enhanced Edition, The Following Expansion

• $29.99 - 50% Off [Windows]

If you can stomach the first-person viewpoint, Dying Light is one of the best zombie parkour games ever. Okay, it's really the only zombie parkour game, but what the game does, it does well. Players are thrown into the zombie-infested city of Harran on a mission to find one man. Run and leap over zombies as you scavenge supplies to craft new weapons and armor. And don't look down.

This edition is an improved version of the original Dying Light game, alongside the game's signifcant story expansion: The Following. The expansion takes players outside of the city, with new weapons and the addition of vehicles. Now in your buggy, you can tear across farmland, mowing down zombies. While Dying Light is its own unique thing, The Following feels like a zombie-stuff Far Cry.

From my review of the expansion: "The Following isn't really Dying Light anymore. It's a different game based around the same concepts. The high point and flow state of Dying Light was in leaping from rooftop to rooftop, running in an unbroken line across a wild and uneven city with ever touching the ground. In the Following, it's tearing across the countryside in your buggy, doing damage to zombies as you pass, but never fully stopping your mad ride. The Following feels like a melee-focused Far Cry, while Dying Light was its own beast. Luckily, the shared save system means when you get tired of The Following, you can just jump over to Dying Light. Everything carries over seamlessly."

Legend of Grimrock 2

• $8.15 - 66% Off [Windows, Mac]

I have not played this game. I have not touched this series. But reader SatelliteofLove and others have recommended it time and time again, so it deserves a spot on this list. A first-person, dungeon-crawler like the early Dungeons and Dragons games like Eye of the Beholder, Grimrock has you sending your party of four into unknown territory. If you dig the genre, this is one of the few games that does it anymore.

Sunless Sea

• $6.45 - 66% Off [Windows, Mac]

In the Victorian Gothic universe of Fallen London, you have to navigate your ship through a pitch black ocean. Sunless Sea is like FTL; every shot is your only shot. Find loot, upgrade your ship, and recruit unique officers. Will you make it through, lose the sanity of your crew, or turn to cannabalism to survive?

Endless Legend Collection

• $28.83 - 70% Off [Windows, Mac]

I've been recommending this one forever and if you notice the price has gone up, that's because Amplitude Studios released another great expansion in October! Tempest adds the Morgawr faction, focused on controlling the high seas. The expansion brings naval warfare to the Endless Legend series for the first time! Endless Legend is still one of the best 4X strategy games in recent memory. If you haven't played Endless Legend yet, this is your gateway for entry.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

• $9.99 - 50% Off [Windows]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is JRPG action like you remember it, but better. This is a loving localization of Nihon Falcom's epic Trails in the Sky series, and the second game is also available on Steam. If you want to know what all the fuss is about, this is the place to start.

Shadow Warrior

• $3.99 - 90% Off [Windows, Mac, Linux]

Lots of players missed Shadow Warrior the first and second time around, but with Shadow Warrior 2 stomping hard with that FPS action, perhaps this 2013 reboot will get a few new fans. Join Lo Wang, a hitman who gets in way over his head. Take up your trusty katana and a heap of guns to destroy a demonic invasion; Shadow Warrior is fast, bloody, and fun.

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

• $6.59 - 67% Off [Windows]

MachineGames suprised everyone with its reboot of id Software's classic with Wolfenstein: The New Order. The Old Blood is The New Order's lean, meaner, and more violent little brother.

"The Old Blood is solid fare that offers plenty to get your teeth into. It's priced right, is very well produced, and its dialog has some excellent moments of deadpan humor. It's not particularly long – offering perhaps seven or so hours of campaign gameplay, and a bunch of challenges that are unlocked along the way – but there are few games that offer the kind of rip-roaring action that The Old Blood does," said Jaz in his review of the game.

Shadowrun Hong Kong

• $4.99 - 75% Off [Windows, Mac, Linux]

The third game in Harebrained Schemes amazing Shadowrun RPG series. After rebooting with the Kickstarted Shadowrun Returns and the follow-up Shadowrun: Dragonfall, Harebrained takes the game to the mean streets of Hong Kong. Will you find your Cyberpunk self in the gleaming lights of the city? You can also pick up the entire series for 82% off ($12.35).