Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I rarely buy games right when they come out because, with some rare exceptions, I don't often find games I am willing to pay a premium for to have right away. I usually decide to wait a while, but, as a consequence, I tend to forget about games that catch my eye and never get around to playing them.

So, what are some good older PC games that are now in the bargain bin on Steam that you recommend?

I'll start with some games I have recently purchased cheaply and thoroughly enjoyed -

Crysis 1 - Wow, I was blown away by this game! Highly recommend if you have been living under a rock like me and never played.

Blood Bowl - Perfect translation of the board game to the PC

Magicka - Cool little game I did not regret spending $2.99 on

Spec Ops: The Line - friend recently gifted this to me, and I loved it. Great story.

Torchlight 1 and 2 - Better than Diablo III in my book, at bargain prices

Warlock - Great 4X game at a great price

Any other suggestions? I've got my eye on:

Elven Legacy
Demigod
Just Cause 2
King Arthur Fallen Champions
Kings Crusade

Just Cause 2 is just fun.
After playing borderlands 2 I might pick up #1

Yeah, Just Cause 2 looks like a total blast. I'm sort of hesitating on it, though, because it's $14.99 at the moment.

Oh, I will also add to the list of oldies but goodies - Titan Quest. Surprisingly addictive click-fest Diablo clone.


Ooh, is World in Conflict any good? I remember being very interested in that when it came out.

System Shock 2, missed it the first time round all those years ago, but thankfully GOG.com came to the rescue.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Great rpg. 25% off atm. Be warned though. Straight off steam it's broken. Needs abit of work to get it running.

I don't see why everyone loves Just Cause 2 so much. The animation is really bad and amateurish, and there's craploads of travelling. I've played about 7 hours of it, can't bring myself to play anymore. Luckily I got it when it was only £2

Oh, yeah, I've heard great things about Vampire. I may pick it up. Have also heard it needs patching with fan mods... everyone talks about "The Hotel" (no spoilers, please!)

I picked up World in Conflict for $10. I like it. It's worth $10 for sure. Kind of reminds me of Company of Heroes, but better.

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:
Yeah, Just Cause 2 looks like a total blast. I'm sort of hesitating on it, though, because it's $14.99 at the moment.

Oh, I will also add to the list of oldies but goodies - Titan Quest. Surprisingly addictive click-fest Diablo clone.


Ooh, is World in Conflict any good? I remember being very interested in that when it came out.

Buy. It. Now.

Seriously, that game is too fun to be waiting on. Not to mention some crazy modders are making a multiplayer mode for it (you thought single player was insane? Wait till you see a 150 people tearing that map apart)

As for games I'd recommend, the original XCOM EU is an excellent game, if a bit old. Watch a let's play on it or two, and if you can stand the graphics, get it. Once you've bought it, download XCOMutil to fix some of the old bugs the game used to have and it gives you a ton more options.

Also if you don't have FTL yet, get that. It's a lot of fun and it's on sale all the time.

OP don't bother with demigod, it has no players and.. it's not good... It was just one of the first failures in the line dota clones.

MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:
Yeah, Just Cause 2 looks like a total blast. I'm sort of hesitating on it, though, because it's $14.99 at the moment.

Oh, I will also add to the list of oldies but goodies - Titan Quest. Surprisingly addictive click-fest Diablo clone.


Ooh, is World in Conflict any good? I remember being very interested in that when it came out.

Buy. It. Now.

Seriously, that game is too fun to be waiting on. Not to mention some crazy modders are making a multiplayer mode for it (you thought single player was insane? Wait till you see a 150 people tearing that map apart)

As for games I'd recommend, the original XCOM EU is an excellent game, if a bit old. Watch a let's play on it or two, and if you can stand the graphics, get it. Once you've bought it, download XCOMutil to fix some of the old bugs the game used to have and it gives you a ton more options.

Also if you don't have FTL yet, get that. It's a lot of fun and it's on sale all the time.

Yeah, I picked up World in Conflict last night. LOVE IT! That game is just insane. Fully worth $10.

I've heard good things about FTL. Will check it out. Thanks.

Soladrin wrote:OP don't bother with demigod, it has no players and.. it's not good... It was just one of the first failures in the line dota clones.

Thanks for the tip! I remember it being a game that looked cool at the time, but it sounds like it hasn't aged well.

Ah, World in Conflict, aside from one very annoying character, well worth playing through. I got the collector's edition back in the day, came with a piece of zee mauer.

+1 for World In Conflict, that game was and still is one of my all time favorit games. When it came out it was rather refreshing to play it, although a certain character made me curse my computer

As for older games that's pretty much all I play. (lousy 2005 PC grumbles) Age of Empires 2 + conquerors, Star Wars Empire at war + Forces of Corruption, Dawn of war Dark Crusade, Battletech games (Mechwarrior 4, Mechcommander 2), Star Wars Battlefront II, Robin hood the Legend of Sherwood, Age of Mythology + Titans, Geneforge games. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5,)

Star Wars: Jedi Knight Jedi Academy. It's a lot better than it looks.

 Soladrin wrote:
OP don't bother with demigod, it has no players and.. it's not good... It was just one of the first failures in the line dota clones.

I liked demigod, it suffered from a small player base of typically douchey DOTA players

A game that I missed out on back in the day was Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire, so I bought a big box version and have been playing that on my Win95 rig. It's not on Steam, but GOG has it.

Yeah, going back to Alpha Centauri was fun. I forgot how damned uncompromising older games could be.

How about Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth -
graphics are a bit dated, but the first half is some awesome atmospheric horror. After that it gets a bit more arcade-y and less stealth/avoidance, but still fun.

Evil Genius - Basically you are a Bond Villain. Similar to Dungeon Keeper - you build your secret island lair, recruit minions and henchmen, commit capers, build nefarious traps to deceive or kill pesky do-gooders. A ton of fun.

Ghost Master - You are in charge of a cadre of different ghosts, ghouls, spirits and monsters, and given a specific task (scare all the people out of a certain building, et cet).

Darwinia + Multiwinia - An RTS in which you are in an 80's themed computer world and you must lead artificially intelligent sprites against the computer virus that has infected their system.

XCom and many of it's clones -
XCom and Terror From the Deep,
The UFO series - Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight
UFO:Extraterrestrials Gold - the Steam version comes with a mod that actually makes it a pretty good game. Without the mod, avoid avoid avoid.

Hmm... UFO series doesn't seem available on Steam anymore, but it's one of the few XCOM clones that I liked
Aftermath is the most like XCOM, except that it takes place after the majority of humanity has already been wiped out. I never actually played this one.

Aftershock takes place later, you play as a faction of humans who took up residence on an alien crafted space station while alien spores ate the biomass of earth to create a biological supercomputer... thingy. You have to return to the Earth and figger stuff out.

My favorite - Afterlight - You take the part of a small group of scientists who fled the Earth for Mars, before the Earth was more or less destroyed. The graphics got a little cartoony compared to it's predecessors, but instead of a small military team that is more or less the tip of the the spear of a larger organization, you play as the team of scientists, and that is mostly it.

While you can get a few new recruits, any time someone dies, it is a big loss. It was the most intimate and RPGish of any of the XCOM clones I've played, and it's fun watching your rag tag group of scientists and engineers gradually turn into plasma cannon wielding badasses. Or at least some of them, because you still have to research and terraform the planet before the 50,000 odd cryogenically preserved people on your ship start dying, so you can't go too gung ho with the military side of things.

(Broken record) DEUS EX!! (/Broken record)

I'll echo System Shock 2 as well, though admittedly a quirk of design at the very end was frustrating. Didn't ruin the rest of it for me.

Elder Scrolls Oblivion is still really engrossing and should be a steal, while Skyrim has dropped in price quite appreciably.

Bioshock!

Arcanum: what can I say, this game still kicks a ton of ass! A true classic!
Dragon Age Origins: this game will steal days of your time, guaranteed.
StarCraft 2: I picked this up about 3 months before the HoTS expansion, that said, the game is about 3 years old now and still more than competitive with modern titles.

Funny you should mention Dragon Age - I'm playing through 2 again at the moment (sorely underrated, itself) and it's making me want to play Origins again. :p

Download dawn of war 2 and had a blast playing through the single player recently.

Oh, and Darklands.


Darklands was awesome. Holy crap, here comes the wild hunt! Call on a saint to drive them off or you're burger. Satanist witch trying to kill you? Have your alchemist throw a vial of Arabian Fire down her devil worshipping face hole.

Diablo 2. I didn't play it until 2009 when my soldiers got me to play it on our deployment.

I still need to play Dark Souls. I want a good challenge.

Also the .Hack// G.U series since I played the original 4 a long time ago.

Dwarf Fortress !

If you are looking for good old games, why not try http://www.gog.com? Lots of true classics (as well as a few stinkers), cheap prices and best of all absolutely no DRM of any kind.

Currently they have Arcanum, System Shock 2 and Legend of Grimrock on sale, you could buy all 3 for $12 and I strongly suggest that you do.

I wish I had bought skyrim when it first came out.

Is Arcanum actually any good? Chris Avellone's playthrough of its kind of made it come across as rather bland. How does it compare to say Baldur's Gate or Fallout?

I had a great deal of fun with Arcanum something like... I want to say 14 years ago. I have no idea how it has held up over time, although I do recall playing it again about 10 years ago or so and feeling it was a bit tedious.

If you can pick it up for $5 or something like that, I think it's definitely worth it.

Skies of Arcadia: Legends.

An update really but fantastic. A good friend lent me the Gamecube to play it on and I have since pondered buying one just to get a copy of the game.

Most of the things I want to think it copies came after it and many things I wish people would copy from it have yet to be exploited.