23-07-2025
The Best Games Aren't New, Which Is Great News for Your Wallet
With game prices now standardized at $70 and hardware requirements higher than ever, getting into gaming has never been more expensive. But if you rewind the clock by just a few years, it's surprisingly easy to find incredible games at low prices.
'Old' Games Aren't Actually Old
What's the first thing you think of when you hear an "old game?" Chances are, it's low-poly graphics, outdated mechanics, simpler dialogue and storylines, and lackluster map design.
But it's 2025 now, and games have been pretty great for a while. So, when I say "older games," I'm not necessarily referring to retro titles you'd run on an emulator (though those count too, I suppose)—I'm actually mostly talking about somewhat modern games from the early-to-mid 2010s.
Think BioShock Infiniteor The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, rather than Grand Theft Auto III and Max Payne.
Even games like God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2are older titles now, as they were released back in 2018. The important factor here is that these games don't feel old. Heck, I'd go so far as to say that Red Dead Redemption 2 looks and plays better than half the AAA titles coming out today.
The graphics, storytelling, world and map design, and gameplay mechanics have all held up by modern standards. Compare a game from 2005 to one from 2015, and the leap in quality is apparent. But if you compare a 2015 release to a 2025 one, the difference isn't nearly as dramatic, even though the timespan is the same.
If you want a concrete example, just look at gameplay footage from Battlefield 2 (2005), Battlefield 1 (2016), and Battlefield 2042 (2021). Sure, the time gaps between the three releases aren't evenly spaced, but still, the difference in graphics and gameplay between BF2 and BF1 is far bigger than between BF1 and BF2042.
It makes sense, though—games experienced a massive boom in the 2000s and 2010s.
Many games that followed were all sequels or built directly on those foundations. Air strikes from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and newer CoD titles have remained largely the same. So have outpost captures in Far Cry games and leaps of faith in Assassin's Creed.
Most of gaming's biggest franchises had major entries in the 2010s that still hold up today—the aforementioned Far Cry and Assassin's Creed, but also Dark Souls, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid, Fallout, Watch Dogs, Borderlands, Dishonored, Portal, TES V: Skyrim, and many, many others.
The point is, these games are relatively old, even if we don't perceive them as such, both emotionally and on a technical level. Case in point: did 2017's Horizon Zero Dawn really need a 2024 remaster, considering how well the original has aged?
Sure, the remaster looks better, and I'm glad it exists—but I'd rather get the regular edition on sale for $10 than spend $50 on a version with marginally better visuals.
And that's the heart of it. It's easy to overlook aging games simply because something newer and flashier is available. But is the experience really that much better in Assassin's Creed Shadows compared to Assassin's Creed Origins if you haven't even played Origins yet? I'd wager no.
Buying New Games at Launch No Longer Makes Sense
AAA game prices have steadily climbed over the past few years. For a long time, $60 was the standard. Around 2022, that crept up to $70, and now, with Nintendo (surprisingly) leading the charge with Mario Kart World priced at $80, the reality of $100 games feels closer than ever.
The good news is that we don't have to buy $100 games if we don't want to or, more realistically, if we don't have the disposable income to justify it. There's a near-endless source of cheap, older games that used to cost $60 that you can now buy for just a few bucks on Steam, GOG, Epic Games, and Humble Bundle.
Steam sales are frequent, so create a wishlist of older titles that seem interesting, and wait until you can get them for $5–$10. I guarantee you'll have a blast playing through them if you just ignore the release date. As long as it looks decent enough (which many of them do) and you like the gameplay and find the story engaging, you won't feel like you're missing out.
By the way, if you strongly prefer to play newer games, you can often save $10–$20 by simply waiting for a sale.
For example, Assassin's Creed Shadows launched in March and is already 25% off at the time of writing. One-year-old games sometimes hit 50% or more during major sales events, meaning you could easily save hundreds of dollars by simply playing games one year late.
That said, if you're like most gamers, you probably already have an enormous backlog filled with gems that you've been ignoring because they're slightly older titles now. I still haven't played Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which I got for free in a giveaway a couple of years ago.
Speaking of giveaways, Epic Games gives out new games every week, and many of them are older AAA titles. Other online storefronts and publishers occasionally give away older titles, too, so it's worth keeping an eye on their official channels.
Older Games Run Great on Cheap Hardware
Modern PC hardware is prohibitively expensive these days—on top of high MSRPs, graphics cards in particular are always sold out and cost way more due to high demand. Fortunately, those cheap games can run on cheap hardware.
I have a new PC, so I'll use my Dell Latitude 5420 laptop as an example instead, which I got for around $280 used. It's powered by an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1185G7 with Iris Xe graphics, so it's not all that powerful. Still, it can run games like Need for Speed Most Wanted (2012), Far Cry 3, Dishonored, and even newer indie titles like Hades at playable frame rates.
And this is a business laptop; you'd get far more mileage out of an older desktop gaming PC with a dedicated graphics card. If you can find a used RX 580 or GTX 1060 for around $50–$70 and pair it with an older Ryzen or 6th-gen (or newer) Intel CPU on a DDR4 system, you'd have a phenomenal gaming rig for under $300.
If you're into handhelds and own a Steam Deck or Lenovo Legion Go, you already have a perfectly capable gaming device. While these devices struggle with demanding titles like Black Myth: Wukong (especially without upscaling and frame generation), they can easily handle nearly any five-year-old game at 60+ FPS.
You Can Mod Older Games to Extend Your Playtime
You've probably seen those clips of fully remastered GTA IV that make the game look better than those GTA VI trailers. That's all thanks to mods, which goes to show how good older games can look with a bit of effort.
Truth be told, these mods aren't always playable on less powerful hardware since they're often unoptimized, but there are many lighter mods that add content or refresh an older game's look and feel.
The best part is that modding PC games is easy. If you've never given mods a shot, you definitely should, as you can easily get dozens of hours of enjoyment from older games with the right mods. Skyrim is famous for its modding community and even has an amazing conversion mod that feels like a whole other game.
There's an endless source of critically acclaimed older games out there that you haven't played yet, so what are you waiting for? You can often find them on sale for just a few bucks, and they'll run smoothly on an aging PC. Don't feel like you're missing out whenever a new game comes out—those adventures will be waiting for you, just a few years down the road.
