Hello, fellow gamers! I am a poor college student, but I love video gaming! The thing is, I have a pretty skookum laptop for my college activities, meaning I can play video games! However, most new video games cost an arm and a nipple, and so I have had to do some scouring of the Steam platform in order to find some gems that were cheap. Now, dear reader, I pass my findings off to you! In this list, I included games which have online capability (though some may only be LAN-only because the servers are shut down), have fun offline single-player features, and which suit my liking. You may or may not have heard of some of these games, and this is by far not a "Best of" list, but I hope I can at least provide some guidance to your pursuit of gaming happiness on a budget! So, without further ado, let's jump into this alphabetical list and have some fun!

1. Far Cry 2

$9.99 on Steam

Hey there gamer friend! Do you like open-world shooter games that let you be the tank or the sniper? Do you like games where you can level up, control the story, make actually useful NPC allies, and blow stuff up? Well look no further than Far Cry 2! In it, you play as a mercenary who is after the Jackal—an arms dealer who sold guns to opposing factions in a small country in Africa which started an all-out civil war that tore it apart! Your mission: kill the Jackal, and make sure you get your meds so you don’t die of malaria. Far Cry 2’s gripping story, beautiful graphics, and awesome realism will draw you back into the jungle over and over again for more explosions… and more malaria meds.

2. Garry's Mod

$9.99 on Steam

A former mod for the game Half Life 2, Garry’s Mod is a sandbox game in which anything is possible. Everything in the game is customizable, and players create the rules. You can use the tool gun to make rockets, spawn zombies, and hundreds of other things. You can download custom maps and tools to use in your games. Additionally, there are thousands upon thousands of community-created gamemodes like Trouble in Terrorist Town which is a hunt for a traitor amongst the ranks of the Terrorists. Basically, Garry’s Mod is a playground for the creative-inclined gamer.

3. Goat Simulator

$9.99 on Steam

Ok, remember when I said that this list wasn’t in order? Hypothetically, if it were in order, Goat Simulator would be my top pick for games under $10. It is the pinnacle of goat simulation technology—a masterwork of absurdity, mundanity, and buggy coding which culminates into a pulsating ejaculate of a video game. You control the goat; you can move around, lick things with your adhesive tongue, head-butt and kick various explosive objects, and be a goat!

4. Medal of Honor: Airborne

$9.99 on Steam

This game blew my mind when I first played it. You play as an American soldier during World War II fighting Germans in the European Theater of Operations. What I thought was innovative was the fact that you were a member of an airborne troop, meaning you airdropped into combat! This also means you get to choose where you start the mission! Also, you could upgrade the weapons you used in the game! Airborne is a great game for the price—a rewarding leveling system and freedom of spawn make this game a must for libertarian gamers!

5. Portal

$9.99 on Steam

You play as Chell—a test subject in Aperture Laboratories. You use a portal gun to traverse puzzles under the guidance of GLADoS, a mysterious robotic voice who promises cake at the end of your journey. A portal gun is a device which has the ability to create two portals which you can teleport between. As you progress through the game, the challenges get more difficult until you finally reach the cake. This game gave me chills; it’s not obvious at first why, but throughout its short campaign you will discover some shocking secrets about Aperture Labs. Aside from its story, there are endless maps and wonderful cheat codes to fuel replayability so you will never want to stop playing. In short, Portal is amazing.

6. Postal 2

$9.99 on Steam

As the game stresses, this game is only as violent as you make it, however, that’s no fun. In Postal 2, you play as the Postal Dude. The premise of the game is that your wife has given you errands like “get some milk” or “fix the car,” however you encounter… interesting situations along the way. Now, this game is not for the faint of heart—it is disgustingly offensive and just all around a bad game. Muslims, rednecks, women, white middle-class cis-gendered men, police officers, church officials, game developers… no one is safe from Postal 2’s madness. Not to mention that you can blow people up with shotguns, attach a cat to the barrel of your weapons, and pee on people. But that’s what gives it its charm. And, in fact, you don’t even have to kill anyone to beat the game. The developers are not joking when they state that the game is as violent as you are—there are hundreds of Let’s Plays on beating Postal 2 without spilling blood. But, like I stated above, that’s no fun. Postal 2 is a weird game that only the most depraved people can play, but if that sounds like you, pick it up at the Steam store for only $10 and play away.

7. The Ship

$9.99 on Steam

You play as a rich passenger aboard a cruise liner which has mysteriously gone off course. As tensions begin to rise within the boat, a projector screen falls from the ceiling and the venture capitalist behind the cruise appears. “Welcome ladies and gentlemen, welcome one and all! I am Mr. X, and if you will be good enough to listen for a moment I can explain all the commotion.” He calmly informs you that your ship has gone missing… and that no help is coming for you. After the gasps of passengers dissipate, he tells everyone: “that leaves just you, and me, and the little game we are going to play.” The Ship is a wonderful title created in Valve’s Source engine which has a single-player, offline multiplayer, and multiplayer options. In its game mode, you are paired to another guest which is called your “quarry.” Only you know who your quarry is—your quarry does not know you. You have to navigate the ship and find your quarry and kill them with weapons located all over the ship. But be careful, someone else is looking for you too. And, don’t forget to eat, drink, sleep, pee, and stay clean—you are on a cruise, after all.

8. Star Wars: Battlefront 2

$9.99 on Steam

For epic battles between everyone’s favorite space-age factions, look no further than Star Wars: Battlefront 2. In this game, you can play as Clones, Droids, Rebels, and Stormtroopers in huge battles on maps that are based in places you’ve seen on the big screen. When I say huge battles, I mean 32 vs. 32 NPC battles—that’s offline! Online, you can go even larger, however, the servers were shut down, meaning that you cannot connect to another player over the net… but LAN parties are a different question. Star Wars: Battlefront 2 offers the wonder and exhilaration of the movies without being too overbearing, a beautiful thing in the age of DLC and feature-dense garbage of today.

9. Terraria

$9.99 on Steam

Some have described it as the poor man’s Minecraft, while others (myself included) consider it a unique title in of itself. The premise is the same as Minecraft—use your pickaxe to mine minerals in order to craft better tools and materials—however that is where the similarities end. In Terraria there are hundreds of different tools and weapons you can craft—from pick axes to drills, from bows to star-shooting mega-machineguns, from potions which heal to potions which allow you to breathe in lava. There are also a lot of boss battles, a hard-mode which unlocks when you defeat the Wall of Flesh—spawning a bunch of new biomes and opening up possibilities for more items to craft, more bosses, more loot, more characters, etc. etc. In short, Minecraft is the poor man’s Terraria.

10. Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition

$9.99 on Steam

The Liandri Corporation has enlisted professional mercenaries from all races in the known universe to compete in Unreal Tournament—one of the biggest sporting events in the galaxy. You (and, maybe, your friends) are a contestant, and you have to fight through toil after toil to be the champion of the Tournament. Its game modes include deathmatch (and its numerous variations), capture the flag, domination, and objective modes. This game is a great game for LAN parties—cheap, moddable, and intense. Unreal Tournament is a must for every gamer.

In conclusion, this is only but a sample of all of the offerings for budget gaming, I just hoped to provide a starting place (or some inspiration) to the starving college gamer such as myself. I hope you enjoyed my list, game on!