Hey guys. So I have been absent from the world of PC gaming for about a decade. Now, being happily divorced, I have taken the next plunge and have spent a little over $2000 throwing together a new PC. I'll have the Witcher 3 (free with the video card I bought) to keep me busy for a little while, but the truth of the matter is that I'll be broke for a few months, with maybe $150 allotted to game purchases in those months. I'd like to make that go as far as possible.

So my question is: Can you guys throw suggestions my way for getting the biggest bang for my buck price/content wise with limited funds in the immediate future? Are there any inexpensive steam purchases you guys and gals have made from which you feel you have got more than your money's worth?

My tastes are all over the place so any and all suggestions are appreciated.

Binding of Isaac and Spelunky are pretty cheap and wonderfully re-playable. Obviously Civ V will get you your monies worth. You can also look to Endless Legend or the recent Total War games for more stuff in the 4x genre. Skyrim and New Vegas have great modders (not a lot of great modding fans though). Oh and the Dragon Age games are great if your into fantasy rpgs like the witcher, and they'll certainly get you your money's worth aw well.

Oh, and the crpg renaissance is in full swing. I really enjoyed Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2 after playing them earlier this year. Shadowrun returns is also great, but its not as meaty as the firs two.

If you haven't played PC games in a decade, then there's no point in buying anything from Steam unless it's discounted by 75 percent or more. There are discounts all the time. The Steam Summer Sale should start next month.

@ezekiel: Completely forgot about that. Spend your time with the Witcher 3 and then, when the sale goes up, those $150 bucks will probably set you up for the next two years.

There are a ton of Free to Play games that are actually worth checking out, and there are a couple of good "buy to play" MMOs that are worth your time as well that you can find quite cheap. Many are on Steam. Don't discount F2P as being garbage just because they're free, they are some of the most popular PC games right now.

Keep an eye out for weekly Steam sales and pick up games that look interesting when they are 75% off or something like that. Check historical game prices on steamprices.com/us before buying. Definitely wait until the Steam Summer Sale starts before buying anything that isn't deeply discounted though, which should be next month.

Here are some free or really cheap games worth checking out:

• Dota 2
• League of Legends
• Heroes of the Storm
• Hearthstone
• There are free Starter Editions of all the popular Blizzard games - StarCraft 2, WoW, Diablo 3
• Path of Exile
• Marvel Heroes
• Team Fortress 2
• Warframe
• War Thunder
• Guild Wars 2 - $20 on Amazon, no monthly fee.
• Star Wars - The Old Republic

Don't feel like you have to spend a bunch of money on games right now to get some use out of your PC, because you really don't.

Thanks everybody. The help was much appreciated.

The Witcher 2 is $3 on Steam for the weekend if you haven't played that & want to get into it before the 3rd one.

heh heh...happily divorced. nice. As others have mentioned, Steam Weekend Sales/Daily Deals and the big seasonal ones...summer coming soon. I have been using Steam for almost a decade, since back when it was a forced install (with Half Life 2 I believe) and I hated it...damn third party software hogging up my system resources and taking up chunks of the then quite limited bandwidth of my dial up 56Kbps internet connection. A lot has changed since then and Steam is pretty much all I use now for buying and playing games. Of course, as big as Steam has gotten there has been the inevitable backlash against them for a variety of reasons (some legitimate some not so much). Of course one should always mention Humble Bundle as well.

Probably I'd recommend saving money till you find something that looks great on a steam sale, especially if it's a fairly recent game. The biggest sales are the one in summer, and the one in winter.

Like others have mentioned, enjoy the fuck out of The Witcher 3. There should be a steam sale in the next month and a half, so you will find some awesome games soon.

If you are looking for a few PC games to test that tiny-god you call a new PC, check out; the excellent port of GTA V, a fully modded-the-fuck-out Skyrim (Last I saw the game was $5), then Crysis 3. Those four games should give you an eyegazm that lasts months on end.