September is here, and soon the sweltering days of summer will be far behind us. But over at Fanatical, the deals stretch out beyond the horizon. There's so many, in fact, that you definitely need someone to sort through them and pick out a selection of the best ones going.
Well, that's what we're here for. Whether your fancy is management sims, gangster tales, strategy, or just shooting unpleasant people from a very long way away, we've got you covered.
Remember that for Labor Day, Fanatical is offering an extra 8% off PC games—including stuff that's already on sale—if you use the code LABOR8 at checkout. You can use that code on their audio and software products, too, if you happen to use your PC for something besides games (pretty strange, if you ask me).
Top Pick: F1 Manager 2022—10% off
£40.49/$49.49 | Fanatical link
F1 Manager might be the most dad game that's ever happened. Don't get me wrong, it's great, and it's received a few fulsome write-ups in our pages alone, but it's a game of tyre degradation graphs, fuel conservation, and obsessive attention to minute detail. It's a strategy game more than a racing sim, and is replete with all the spreadsheets, tables, and historical data you need to optimise the living daylights out of every nanosecond of your races.
But there's layers beyond the races. Managing an F1 team involves making decisions about personnel allocation, R&D, sponsorship deals, and responding to emails (much like real life). As you bounce back and forth between these two layers, you'll gradually hone your team into an F1 race-winning machine. Or at the very least get something like an informal PhD in tyre technology.
Total War: Warhammer 3—21% off
£39.49/$47.39 | Fanatical link
The series that should have been called Total Warhammer continues in this third instalment, which sees you guide one of a number of Warhammer factions to domination and glory through gameplay that's turn-based on the grand scale and real-time during battles. We liked it quite a bit, praising it for the depth of its mechanics and its full commitment to Warhammer's "wonderfully over-the-top brand of fantasy".
Two Point Campus–21% off
£27.64/$31.59 | Fanatical link
Two Point Campus takes all the Theme Hospital-inspired zaniness of Two Point Hospital and moves it to the classroom. It's your job to build an educational empire that produces hard-working, inspired, and above all lucrative graduates in courses ranging from "Money Wangling" to Wizardry.
Mafia: Definitive Edition—68% off
£11.19/$12.79 | Fanatical link
The 2020 remake of the 2002 classic, Mafia: Definitive Edition is a trope-filled gangster tale set in the "City of Lost Heaven"—which is definitely not Chicago—in the 1930s. You play a taxi driver who gets sucked into a life of crime after two wiseguys commandeer your car to make a quick getaway. Expect broads, capos, and the legal minimum of at least one guy called Paulie.
Sniper Elite 5—26% off
£33.29/$36.99 | Fanatical link
Shooting Nazis is, of course, great. Shooting them from really far away? Even better. Ensnaring them in Rube Goldberg machine deathtraps that you've planned out meticulously and triggered with a single bullet from miles off? I couldn't ask for anything more.
