What game do you guys have on 'post-order'?

I always buy games only on sale. My rule of thumb is: if it's around 20€ it's a no-brainer. Anything above that I only buy for games that I really really want and that stay above 20€ even when on sale.

This is the way I do it too. I also factor in cost by hour. Like if I think I will put 50 hours into a game then I wouldn't mind paying $50 cuz that's only $1 per hour of enjoyment. Most games are 5-25 hrs though so that's the price range I tend to stick with.

There's also quality of enjoyment. Like if I take 4 hours to beat a game but it's so good it changes my life or is unlike any game I've played before, then I don't mind a higher cost per hour. For example, Outer Wilds.

Factorio! That thing is never on sale...

Not sure if you know this but on the off chance, that's a deliberate choice by the devs, so it really won't ever be on sale.
- Although I haven't explicitly heard anything, I kind of assumed, given the years it's been on my wishlist :D.
  
  I'll play it one day, but Dyson Sphere is still filling that hole for me for now.
i def gave up on that and picked it up eventually

I picked up the RE remakes this summer sale that were -75%. I’m a pirate at heart but pirating on the Steam Deck is annoying so I’m willing to buy video games (talk about GabeN being correct once again that piracy is a service issue) for it. I’ll wait until the RE4 remake is -75% and then buy it as well, likely the next summer sale.

RE4 remake is absolutely fantastic and put to shame a lot of modern action games.
i need to look into those. it’ll be my first play through and the remakes might be a good way to do that
- The RE 1 remake is quite good as well, still, despite being originally made for Gamecube. The pre-rendered backgrounds on Gamecube era hardware led to graphics that still hold up today. That said, the controls are much more old school, so maybe save it for after you've beaten 2 and 3

NieR: Automata - I'm hoping for $20, but $25 would work; I think it's about time for another price drop
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I kind of like BotW, but not enough to jump on TotK; I want it eventually, so I'll buy it once I can find it used for $40 or so; I can wait a couple years though
Mount & Blade: Bannerlord - looking for $20 or so; I'm thoroughly enjoying Warband so I'm in no rush
Elden Ring - I'm not super interested, but I'd pay $20 or so to give it a shot

I'm not against paying full price for games but I need to be really interested. I'm probably going to pay full price for Cities Skylines 2 in lieu of buying more DLC for the original. If Paradox makes EUV, I'd probably buy that near launch (I have all but the latest expansion for EUIV). Likewise if there's a new Portal game.

I'm mostly a patient gamer because I don't feel all that excited following the latest trends and prefer to play a less buggy game than join a community playing something new. The discounts are nice though.

As someone who followed the development of Bannerlord since the first blog post and who first played Warband in 2010, I can confirm that it is truly excellent and with a handful of mods is straight up better in every way but one: in Warband, the total conversion mods are fully mature entire alternate campaigns. I must've sunk 100 hours into Gekokujo (Warband mod that puts the campaign in warring-states era Japan) alone, let alone A Clash of Kings (the Game of Thrones total conversion).
dude, this list and reasoning... are you... me?

Literally every game I own is either from Fitgirl, free from epic or bought on sale

Who's Fitgirl?
- She's a repacker, she takes cracked games and repacks them into way smaller downloads, think 20Gb download for a 60Gb game.
- Nice try Anti-P2P :P
  
  She lives in a non-extradition country
- The repacker (they don't crack anything!) that could teach a thing or two to those morons who send games with packages in the hundreds of gigabytes to users. Seriously good work.

I'm hoping they keep working on Darktide. I played it on gamepass when it came out, and the gameplay feels just great, but the progression is very bare-bones and doesn't really feel complete.

Vermintide went through a similar period too, so I have hope that it's going to be a great game eventually. Fatshark has something of a reputation for making games that feel great but then just boondoggling some kind of implementation. It seems like they're devs that care, but their corporate overlords keep their hands tied too.

Yup, I got into Vermintide early then too late. By the time I got back in 4 out of 5 matches was just people either speed running through the map or someone aimbotting the Gatling bow.

I'm holding off on Darktide for the same reasons as you. Hopefully we get that sweet spot soon.

The first spider man game. I wont pay more than 20 bucks no matter how good people will say it is.

I got lucky with that one. My kid bought a PS4 (and has since bought a PS5) and both Spider-Man games, so I didn't end up having to pay anything to play them.
Just came back from a cruise and played it.

It's a good game, but definitely gets repetitive after a while.

Spiderman is ridiculously under powered. He's fighting regular henchmen and it takes FOREVER to get them down... IE one of them shoots a rocker launcher, you catch the rocker and yeet it directly back into the fucker... Aaaaaand he just stands back up......

There are also segments where you are MJ and miles which are pure stealth and just boring as shit.

Overall 8/10 it's fun, but certainly not the greatest game ever. I'd still put the Batman games above this for sure.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

I love the Yakuza series, but I think the combat is just good enough to pass rather than a strength. I generally prefer turn-based games.

The problem isn't even the money. It's Denuvo. I don't want that on my PC.

I could get it on PS4/5 instead, but that's so much more limiting than having it on Steam. Denuvo is expensive, and I hope Sega drops it in a couple years.

Nier Automata and Sales must be made of the same magnetized material because holy shit that thing refuses to hit $20.

A bunch of AVNs imma purchase on the next Steam sale. Although I might buy them full price because I like what I've played so far and I think it's vital to vote with one's wallet, but also encourage independent developers. I've been buying a lot of independent games lately, instead of waiting for bigger titles to drop in price. Mostly because I'm tired of mediocrity in a shiny package.

I'm thinking Starfield. Ship building and their procgen both look amazing, but if I'm waiting at least 6 months for the bugs to get worked out by both the devs and the modding community, why not at least wait till it's $30 or less?

yeah, that's definitely a benefit of being patient. allowing all the kinks to be worked out for a better overall experience.

I am going to buy Book of Hours on release day because I really liked Cultist Simulator and it's lore.

I know there's a lot of controversy about it, but I enjoyed the story of the beta of Diablo 4. My close friends have been into it and it would be nice to play together, videogame politics aside.

I don't want to pay full price for it, however. I paid that much for Modern Warfare II, though personally I think more hours have been put into that than most games I could think of.

I'm waiting for the Harry Potter to get down in price

Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Dying Light, Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil remakes and Village.

All of these have a lot of hype but I'm not fully sold on their gameplay, convinced about their quality/performance, or just haven't been able to justify buying more games while my backlog still has decent amount of bought games.

Also Steam Deck. I'm waiting for an OLED version or next version. There are so many games i just don't even consider playing on TV but would love to play on a handheld device. Mostly 2d/isometric games.

Until the Steam Deck or ROG don't have a better battery, there is no point buying a tethered handheld