Steam Charts: Falsifiable Evidence Edition
Click through for your chance to win an article!
Exciting news! Steam Charts is proud to announce it's to be an Epic exclusive! From now on you can read your favourite article about the top selling games on Steam exclusively on the Epic Store!
But don't worry, long-term readers - you'll still be able to read the articles right here on RPS, after just one year. Everyone's a winner!
No, but seriously, if Epic wants to give me a vast pile of money to screw over Steam, I am IN.
10. Destiny 2
Bungie are obviously best known for Pathways Into Darkness, but it turns out they've also made a little game called Destiny 2. It's only been sold via a small parochial online store until recently, but will be on Steam from the 1st of October, and people seem to have forgotten the vagaries of chronology and started buying it already!
Destiny 2 moves on from Bungie's more familiar Mac-based windowed approach to the FPS genre, and introduces some elements from their first game, Pong variant Gnop!. It's an interesting new direction for the team, and one I think that's likely to prove unsuccessful, but it's still nice to see them try.
9. Flibble Glibble Pants
What’s Another Thing You Could Buy Instead Of GTA V Again?
8. Plunkbat
Here you are, have the exceptional Katie Dey's Dissolving:
7. NBA 2K20
Getting absolutely trounced by Steam reviews, the general opinion appears to be this is 2K19 but with more micro-transactions. It's so 2K19 that it apparently even labelled itself such on the taskbar. Ohwhatagiveaway. (I installed it to check, and it now says "2K20", so perhaps it was fixed.)
But I should stress I haven't played it because, er, it's a basketball game. Basketball's always struck me as a game that looks great fun to play, but just bizarre to watch. Two teams of epic giants taking it in turns to throw the ball through the hoop, as time gradually unwinds to the point of almost not moving by the end. The idea of pretending to control that action doesn't really appeal at all. And that's before you approach 2K's nickel-and-diming approach to the series, reaching an almost parodic zenith with this edition's literal casino.
Kudos to the unnamed Steam reviewer who commented,
"They put a basketball minigame in one of the best gambling simulator game on steam!"
6. Valve Index VR Kit
Gosh there's nothing else to say about this. But it's not all about me! What would YOU like to talk about?! I'll tell you what - you fill in your own topics here, and we'll have a nice chat.
So, reader, what's on your mind?
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Goodness me, what an interesting perspective. I hadn't looked at it that way before.
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Well, no, I wouldn't put it like that. Can you explain what you mean a bit more?
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Good grief, there's no need to be like that! I only asked you a question!
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No, fuck YOU. Seriously. This is why I never let you speak at these things.
5. Spyro Reignited Trilogy
Well yay, because this is lovely. Remastered for console boxes last year, this saw a hefty time first and foremost on my PS4 as I played through all three games with my four-year-old. Well, I say "played through", but I of course mean, "played up until the bosses got too tedious and moved on to the next one," because, video games.
I never played Spyro the first time around, because I was exactly the wrong age to want to play kids' games in 1998. And I was a little apprehensive going into this, because I'd been so recently burned by picking up the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, and discovering that those games were absolutely awful. Fortunately Spyro is mostly great, and has the accolade of being the first game my kid wanted to play himself, learning to manage a PS controller in order to do so.
It's also rather hilarious that twenty year old children's platform games are out-selling Plunkbat and Flibble Glibble Pants this week.
And for your viewing pleasure, here is a picture of my old cat, Dexter, enjoying Spyro.
4. Gears 5 Ultimate Edition China Only
I have absolutely no idea what's going on here. I'd have thought Gears (Of War) 5 pre-orders would be all over the charts this week, with the positive reviews flying around (hell, without the positive reviews). But its only appearance this week is for a Chinese-only entry for the game, inaccessible from my part of the Earth.
Either way, the game is out today, and you'd do well to read Matthew's splendid review of it. I've never played a Gears Of War game, but after reading that I really want to play this one. Also, note this is not an Epic exclusive, because Epic no longer have anything to do with the series, beyond providing its engine. And more importantly, despite now being owned by Microsoft, it's also not a Ghastly Windows Store exclusive! It's on Steam for everyone, and not just China, today.
PS. Are we all just agreeing not to mention that they've forgotten to write "Of War" on the box?
3. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt GOTYE
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwn. It's been 70% off all week, hence its return to these here shores.
It must be nice to have a game that's so ridiculously successful that whenever you fancy, say, a nice holiday, you put it on sale and watch another squillion pounds come in. Have a lovely holiday, Simon CDProjekt!
2. StarLadder 2019 Berlin CS:GO Major Championship Viewer Pass + 3 Souvenir Tokens
macdows 95
Right, listen: I'm not going to tell you a single thing about macdows 95. I'm just going to tell you, if you trust me, buy it. It costs about £3. It's unlike anything else you've played. It's amazing.
If you don't trust me, then I don't even like you and don't want you to play nice games.
1. Remnant: From The Ashes
A strange effect of having written this "brilliant" and "insightful" column (quotes taken from reviews I imagine) for the last two years is a growing resentment for games that I've no desire to play, but stick around for week after week. Last week, after a very quickly aborted attempt to play the game (I loved Darksiders II, I've as much desire to play Dark Souls as I do to hammer an ebola-infected nail into my eyeball), I did my very best to be magnanimous about it.
This week, well, I've written this to get out of it. Next week, if it's still lingering about, I shall have grown to resent it enough that I'll start to complain about it, simply by dint of having nothing useful to say about it. And that's not fair on the game! So everyone stop buying it.
The Steam Charts are compiled via Steam's higgledy-piggledy notions of the highest grossing games on Steam over the previous week, gently vomited onto a plate, and then wiped across your screen.