Budget Battle, Gaming for the Recession.
In these difficult economic times, the high price of Video Games is hard to bear. Moondoggie82 has a simple solution that will save you cash, and keep your bitching friends in check.
July 8, 2009 by MoonDoggie82
Filed under Geek, One Gaming Nation, Words
I recently forced myself to stick to a budget, that means no more buying games just because I can. I only pre-order the games that I am most excited about playing, not the games that I am curious about, the problem with this, is it can leave you really bored. Even though the games that I still own are fun to play, once beaten, I constantly look for something new.
The answer? Used games.
Now here’s a quick back story as to why I’m even writing this. I have been getting crap from my friends, for as they put it “scraping the bottom of the barrel of gaming.” here’s why:
I started off returning a couple of games to finish paying off the Ghostbusters video game. With the money left over I bought, The Force Unleashed – used, I beat it in one night so returned it for, Clive Barker’s: Jericho. When I beat that, I returned it and got The Darkness, then Dark Sector and Kane & Lynch. I actually kept Dark Sector because it’s a great game, but returned Kane & Lynch because I hated the controls. Next was Stranglehold, but that also was returned for F4:ROTSS which was traded in for Perfect Dark Zero, then Jumper and lastly Bionicle Heroes.
I’m not saying the name of the store I use, because people have told me that some stores have stopped doing this. My store hasn’t.
Wherever you buy your games, always look at the receipts. They should tell you about their return and exchange policies, and sometime like with me, it can work in your favor.
A lot of these games are also good if you want a quick boost in your Xbox gamerscore.
Here’s a quick recap on some of the games that i’ve utilized this strategy with:
Bionicle Heroes – This game is so friggin’ annoying, the controls are garbage, the sound is horrible, and the screen gets all blurry. All in all it’s a garbage title, Sneak King would be more fun.
Jumper – Easy 1000gs it only takes 2 playthoughs and the game is only 3 hours long.
Perfect Dark Zero – very aggravating game, but you can get the online achievements by plugging in a second controller and playing the various game types.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer – Easy 1000gs, but you have to actually play the game and nobody deserves that type of punishment. I could have got the 1000 but i would have had to play it again to get the last achievement and that’s not gonna happen.
Dark Sector – Great story and the gameplay is pretty solid game mechanics, almost impossible to get the online achievements now seeing as how very few people are playing it. Definitely worth getting.
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men -The story is great and I was really hoping they would fix some of the stuff that had bugged me while playing the demo, but they didn’t so I tried to make quick work of this game. Online play was okay it could have been a lot better.
Stranglehold -Is the sequel to John Woo’s Hard Boiled starring Chow Yun-Fat. The story is great as are the controls. My only problem is that the slow-mo bullet time effect gets old quick, as does the rampage mode, but if you love Chow Yun-Fat or John Woo (although he owes his success in the USA to Jean Claude Van Damme) you’ll like this game.
The Darkness -Based on the Top Cow comic of the same name, it had some pretty innovative stuff, but I CAN NOT tolerate that Brooklyn Italian accent. It one of the reason I moved out of New York. Plus they couldn’t even pronounce they names of New York Locations properly. Very poor writing and voice acting.
Clive Barker’s: Jericho -You know the old Clive Baker tale, “An ancient evil has broken through into our world and is threatening to spread its taint across the whole of the Earth unless it’s stopped” (direct quote check the link and see for yourself). You are the member of an elite paranormal military squad known as the Jericho Team and it’s your job to stop the Taint. It’s a pretty descent game great story it would make and awesome movie like Kane and Lynch and Dark Sector.
The Force Unleahed – I liked it and I don’t really like Star Wars games, I like that it was a different story and it was very deep. The controls were solid and voice acting was spot on.
At the time I am writing this I have not yet finished Bionicle, but I have still gotten 4755 gamerscore points from playing the above games.
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Michaelangelo on Wed, Jul 8th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
I have a friend who does the exact same thing. I’m one of those fags who likes to own games and doesn’t like to get rid of them, so I have rarely ever traded in a game, but it is a good idea.
Lately, I’ve been saving money on games by taking advantage of a sale Toys R Us runs constantly. When a big new game comes out, they usually give you a $20 gift card for a future purchase, if you buy the game the day or day after it comes out. So for the past five months or so, I’ve been spending 40 bucks on games as opposed to 60.
JaneBlow on Wed, Jul 8th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
ooh, sneaky sneaky! I’m checking all my receipts! I’ve been itching to play some old games, but it hasn’t been in the budget to buy them.
Sean - MoonDoggie82 on Thu, Jul 9th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I didn’t even know until the clerk told me. Thank God they do this because when I went to return Bionicle Heroes, they originally put it in as a trade in and said they it’s worthy 70 cents….and I said “fuck you, ass hammer I said return not trade in”.