Read our reviews of the Steam Autumn Sale's best sellers that you can buy right now
While launching a new generation of consoles is certainly a defining feature of 2020, the enormous seasonal sales from Steam are—along with Daylight Savings and tracking the moon's cycles for planting corn—a way of marking the passage of time through the year. While it's tempting to take a Mulligan and try 2020 over again, and while it's equally tempting to fast forward through it all and shake the ol' Etch A Sketch on New Year's Day 2021, there's also good reason to slow down today to give you time to cull your Steam Wishlist, see what to add to your library or what to delete from that list, and do what video gaming heroes can do during Pandemic 2: Electric Boogaloo—and that's play games.
But hey, while the government was pretty good at getting that first stimulus check out there, it's now obvious that's all we were going to get out of them for now. If you've still got your $1200, then you did better than I did, and you might need a little advice on what's really good in that Steam Sale before you go throwing money at another waste of time. We've reviewed most of the games on Steam's current best sellers. See if any of these current best sellers pique your interest:
- Destiny 2 is a living game, with an insurmountable amount of changes since its 2017 launch, but Rob, our resident Destiny expert, lays out the foundation.
- DOOM Eternal launched shortly into lockdown this year, and the game that I affectionately refer to as Due Maternal pulled a 9 out of 10.
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection is yet another game that's gone through mind-altering improvements since its 2014 launch. It's gone from a begrudging 7 out of 10 to an Overwhelmingly Positive 96% on Steam.
- Star Wars: Squadrons is a revelation in VR, but is a surprisingly deep flight sim on flatscreen too. After decades of fans clamoring for an X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter remake, Squadrons sticks the landing.
- The Sims 4 is quietly one of the biggest gaming franchises on the planet. And depending on where you stand with having to buy hundreds of dollars worth of DLC with each iteration, The Sims series as a whole is just absolutely wonderful. If you've never played one, give it a shot. It's the kind of game that realigns your perspective in life.
- Red Dead Redemption 2 stands alone in its field. Its dark country field. If you've never heard tell of the ballad of Arthur Morgan, then you're missing out on arguably the best Western in the whole medium.
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is only a year old or so, and is simply the best Star Wars game in years. For as long as the game was, we left it wanting more.
- Borderlands 3, if you buy it now, marks 10 years since we first set foot on Pandora. It reunites old friends on new planets and is in keeping with the best that Borderlands has produced over the past decade.
- Civilization VI is already one or two games into the series that seems to have split the fanbase. Regardless, we can't not recommend this one. It's many virtues overshadow this age-old series' many faults.
- Sea of Thieves was a revelation to many of us Gaming Nexus staffers when we got a little co-op time in. Lots of yelling, puking, throwing in the brig'ing, and finger pointing when it came to why we'd dry-docked ourselves onto yet another pier. What do you do with a drunken sailor? We had no idea.
- The Elder Scrolls Online, a game from 2014, makes it frighteningly apparent how long we've been waiting for the single-player Elder Scrolls VI. Nevertheless, in an era where the golden age of MMOs has long since diminished, this one has managed to keep a sizeable playerbase, making Tamriel often show up in the same sentences as Azeroth.
We can't possibly link you to every single video game in the Steam Autumn Sale, but wanted to throw some scores at you for those top sellers. They all happen to be good, so you can't go wrong with them. Now it's just up to you where to spend that pre-Stimulus Check #2 money before you even get it. Only got a bout 23 hours left. Slow down 2020 just long enough for you to catch a good deal.
