Summer is steaming ahead at Fanatical (opens in new tab) as we enter our third week of deals fever. As always, if you want to make it a summer to remember (i.e. a summer spent mostly indoors playing video games), you should go there and see what’s on offer.
But if that seems like too much decision making so early in the day, we can help. We’ve rounded up another selection of the best discounted games for you from the many currently on sale.
Top Picks: Soul Hackers 2-20% off
£39.99 / $47.99 | fanatic link (opens in new tab)
Soul Hackers 2 is the latest in the proud line of “Non Persona Shin Megami Tensei games” and follows the story of a war between dueling cliques of fiendish summoners. It’s a sequel 25 years in the making: The original Soul Hackers debuted in 1997 on a mysterious monolith called the Sega Saturn. I suppose you can’t rush perfection.
It is more combat oriented than the Persona games. You’ll find yourself leading your band of lovable cyberpunk demon wranglers through various dungeons, taking part in traditional, yet rewarding, turn-based JRPG battles. Even social ties and confidantes – the dating simulator of the Persona series – are being replaced by a series of dungeons called ‘Soul Matrixes’ in which you delve into the minds of your companions and fight their demons, which are literal and metaphorical at the same time. If you got addicted to SMT when we finally got Persona 4 in 2020, Soul Hackers 2 will help you out until Joker and the Phantom Thieves finally land on our shores in October (opens in new tab).
Subnautica—40% discount
£14.99 / $17.99 | fanatic link (opens in new tab)
I’ve never been one for survival games; I struggle enough to survive in real life. But something about Subnautica meant I put almost 70 hours into the damn thing. Maybe it’s the subversive and (ironically) dry humor of its anti-corporate humor, maybe it’s the well-run mystery that constantly unfolds at the heart of the game’s plot. Maybe I just like hanging out with huge fish. Whatever it is, Subnautica is the only survival game I’ve ever loved, and I suspect it will be for a while.
Shenmue 3-78% off
£5.49 / $6.59 | fanatic link (opens in new tab)
The adventures of jiu-jitsu idiot Ryo Hazuki continue in Shenmue 3, as our beloved and bewildering hero continues the search for his father’s killer in the mountains of Guilin, China. Shenmue 3 is a strange, intentional and languid experience that heard the criticism people had of the games that preceded it and replied, “Those things are all good really”. We really liked it and while it won’t change the mind of Shenmue haters, the world is a better place for her to exist.
Kerbal Space Program – 77% discount
£6.89 / $9.19 | fanatic link (opens in new tab)
We choose to go to the moon because we are clearly not fit to survive here on Earth. Kerbal Space Program is the first NASA sim on the market, meticulously modeling the physics and mechanics of spaceflight and letting you build the amazingly explosive deathtraps of your dreams.
£3.32/$5.69 | fanatic link (opens in new tab)
You no longer play defense. XCOM 2 takes the defensive gameplay of Firaxis’ first XCOM and turns it on its head: now you control a cadre of revolutionary guerrillas fighting to overthrow a tyrannical alien regime whose conquest of Earth was very successful indeed.
Elite Dangerous – 79% discount
£4.19 / $6.29 | fanatic link (opens in new tab)
The best space trucking sim on the market. Elite Dangerous isn’t perfect: the procedurally generated missions can get old, and the latest expansion was controversial to say the least, but nothing else I’ve played captures the vastness and sublimity of space so well. Just point yourself in any direction and activate your frame shift drive. That’s where the real fun lies.
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