Here's a few of our favourite games from Fanatical's summer sale
Summer steams ahead over at Fanatical as we enter our third week of deals fever. As ever, if you want to make this a summer to remember (i.e. one you spend mostly indoors playing videogames), you'll want to head over there and check out what's on offer.
But if that sounds like too much decision-making this early in the day, we can help you out. We've picked out another crop of the finest discounted games for you to check out from the many that are currently on sale.
Top Pick: Soul Hackers 2—20% off
£39.99/$47.99 | Fanatical link
Soul Hackers 2 is the latest in the proud line of "Shin Megami Tensei games that aren't Persona" and follows the story of a war between duelling cabals of devil summoners. It's a sequel 25 years in the making: the original Soul Hackers debuted on a mysterious monolith called the Sega Saturn all the way back in 1997. I suppose you can't rush perfection.
It's more combat-focused than the Persona games. You'll find yourself guiding your party of loveable cyberpunk demon-wranglers through various dungeons and engaging in traditional-but-rewarding turn-based JRPG combat. Even social links and confidants—the dating sim staple of the Persona series—are replaced by a set of dungeons called "Soul Matrixes" that see you diving into the minds of your companions and battling their demons, which are literal and metaphorical all at once. If you got hooked on SMT when we finally got Persona 4 in 2020, Soul Hackers 2 will tide you over until Joker and the Phantom Thieves finally land on our shores this October.
Subnautica—40% off
£14.99/$17.99 | Fanatical link
I've never been one for survival games; I struggle enough to survive in real life. But something about Subnautica meant I poured almost 70 hours into the darn thing. Maybe it's the subversive and (ironically) dry wit of its anti-corporate humour, maybe it's the well-paced mystery constantly unfolding at the heart of the game's plot. Maybe I just like hanging out with massive fish. Whatever it is, Subnautica is the only survival game I've ever loved, and I suspect that may be the case for some time.
Shenmue 3—78% off
£5.49/$6.59 | Fanatical link
The adventures of jiu-jitsu idiot Ryo Hazuki continue in Shenmue 3, which sees our beloved and baffling hero continue the search for his father's murderer in the mountains of Guilin, China. Shenmue 3 is a weird, deliberate, and languid experience that heard the criticisms people levelled at the games preceding it and responded, "Those things are all good, actually". We liked it a lot and, while it won't change the mind of Shenmue-haters, the world is a better place for its existence.
Kerbal Space Program—77% off
£6.89/$9.19 | Fanatical link
We choose to go to the moon because we clearly aren't fit for survival here on Earth. Kerbal Space Program is the premiere NASA-sim on the market, painstakingly modelling the physics and mechanics of spaceflight and letting you build the astonishingly explosive deathtraps of your dreams.
XCOM 2—91% off
£3.32/$5.69 | Fanatical link
You're not playing defence anymore. XCOM 2 takes the defensive gameplay of Firaxis' first XCOM and turns it on its head: now you're controlling a cadre of revolutionary guerillas fighting to topple a tyrannical alien regime whose conquest of Earth was very successful indeed.
Elite Dangerous—79% off
£4.19/$6.29 | Fanatical link
The finest space-trucking sim on the market. Elite Dangerous isn't perfect: its procedurally-generated missions can get old and its last expansion was controversial to say the least, but nothing else I've played captures the immensity and sublimity of space quite like it. Just point yourself in a random direction and activate your frame shift drive. That's where the real fun is.