The stars have aligned: It's finally time to play Cyberpunk 2077, or whichever other hit RPG you've been putting off. The Helldivers 2 excitement earlier this year was intoxicating, and for a while everyone I knew was into Palworld or Dragon's Dogma 2 or Balatro, but the FOMO readings have finally dropped to safe levels again. If you aren't embroiled in one of the big recent expansions—Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, Destiny 2: The Final Shape, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree—there aren't any recent full game releases radiating that mega-phenomenon 'you have to be there' energy to me.
The two most-played new games on Steam, a free-to-play shooter called The First Descendant and a free-to-play survival game called Once Human, haven't impressed us. We called The First Descendant "dollar store Destiny," and the only reason I've found to recommend Once Human so far is its unnecessarily granular character creator . Free-to-play games do offer the compelling advantage that you don't have to convince your friends to buy anything to play with you, so their popularity is understandable, but for the weird sci-fi experience Once Human is going for, I think you'd be better served by Control or Remnant 2, and for multiplayer survival, I'd go with Valheim or the more recent Abiotic Factor.
Those games may not be free-to-play, but there's still a day left in Steam's Summer Sale: Control and Valheim are $10 each, Abiotic Factor is $20, and Remnant 2 is $25. You wouldn't be the only one pi.