Good Value, Bad Value

[Shoggoth2588]

The recent thread on here about The Most You've Paid on the Single Game made me think of the cost and value of games in general. There are games that I've bought that were on clearance and yet I still feel like I over paid. On the flip-side, there are games that I've bought new on one console that I later buy again on another platform because I want more achievements/trophies or just to experience it again in a slightly different way. What I'm asking here is, what's a game that you bought used or cheap that was so satisfying you wouldn't have minded paying the full, day-one price for it. What games have you bought for cheap or used that you feel like you overpaid for?

When it comes to games that I thought were great for their value, Sonic 06 and Duke Nukem Forever. I bought both for about $25 (Sonic 06 for $10 DNF for $15). For those prices, I found both were not as terrible as I was lead to believe. DNF was run-of-the-mill which wouldn't have been bad if it was any other FPS. Sonic 06 was the most fun I've had with a 3D Sonic game that didn't feature a Chao Garden. I don't know what it is about massively glitchy, broken games that endears me to them but those are both games that I wouldn't have minded paying $20 - $30 for. I've even looked into getting the PS3 version of Sonic 06...but stopped looking when I realized it probably wouldn't have trophy support.

When it comes to games that I feel like I overpaid for, I got Aliens: Colonial Marines on the PS3 for about $15. This was the collector's edition that comes with the awesome statuette and DLC things. I definitely feel like I overpaid for this. The DLC content feels like what a gun-tutorial would be like and the game itself is just so...so bad. Another example of a cheap-game I feel like I overpaid for was Fable Anniversary Edition on the 360 (paid a bit less than $20) which runs like a freaking port. If your game is exclusive to one specific console, please make sure it runs properly.

Anyway, what about you people? What games took your dollars farther? What games did you waste money on despite the savings?

 

[Risingblade]

I've bought skyrim 3 times and it's been completely worth it for how much time I put into that game.

 

[LaoJim]

Geometry Wars on a second hand collections of 6 XBox arcade games I bought for £1. And that's not counting the value I got from the other 5 games (which included a surprising addiction to Backgammon)

Civilization 4 was basically the only game I played in (I think) 2007-8 and I only paid £5 for it.

 

[Evonisia]

Tomb Raider 2013 springs to mind immediately. I got it £15 second hand in early 2014 and I was just so damn impressed with it that I would have paid full price at launch for the damn thing. To compensate, I got the Xbox One version by year's end, and a few days later it was on sale on Steam for £3.50, so I bought it across three platforms, all of which I deemed fully worthy of a full-price purchase.

I got Silent Hill: Homecoming for something like £8, and I just find it lame on its own, and to the series its a shameless rip-off of Silent Hill 2. I'm not even a massive fan of SH2 (more of a SH3 man myself) but the game deserved better than having something that limp and half-hearted emulate its story for the new generation. Shattered Memories and Downpour are both games that would go in to the first category of worth more than their asking price, at the very least.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Good value: FTL. I bought it for $2.50 when it was on sale. The amount of time I spent playing was insane considering how little I paid for it. Then they released the free Advanced Edition expansion just when I was starting to get bored. Honestly, I actually feel kind of bad that they got so little money from me.

Bad value: GTA IV. Not only did I pay full price for it on launch day, but the employee manning the counter convinced me to buy the player's guide for an extra $20. I really tried to enjoy it, but it just felt...empty. Devoid of that particular wacky brand of humor that characterized previous games in the series. Not only that, but it was the Xbox 360 version, which meant I couldn't turn to the modding community to fix my gripes with it.

 

[Mutant1988]

When I had more disposable income, I did purposefully pick up terrible games at bargain prices, because I do derive a lot of entertainment from making fun of those games. But I also enjoyed being pleasantly surprised by what games like that did right. Which is also why I bought a lot of average games, just to see if there's something in them that they do a lot better than the top rated ones. A surprising amount of games have something like that.

So yeah, I would definitely say that the ability to enjoy a game depends on how much you paid for the experience and that I have personally been more generous to a game's failings because I paid less. I've also been harsher because I paid far too much.

A bit off-topic perhaps, but I bought Far Cry 2 Special Edition at full price. Why? The latest Far Cry entry by Ubisoft was awesome and I expected more of that. Worst purchase ever. **** that game.

Meanwhile, I imported the JP version of Earth Defense Force 2025. A game with oh so many flaws, but so much fun in spite of all of it. Worth every cent. That too is a bit off-topic though, since it's not a savings story.

On topic, about bargain bin games - In terms of terrible games, I can't say that I paid too much for any of them, given how much entertainment they have provided me over the years. Even if that entertainment mostly derived from telling others how much shit those games are.

World War 2 Combat Road to Berlin is a good example. I only bought that game because a friend on Gamefaqs wrote a funny review on it and I wanted to experience the awfulness first hand. I was not disappointed. One of the few games bad enough to give me a headache. And I don't mean like motion sickness or anything - The quality of it's design is so bad it's headache inducing. That's quite a feat.

I did pick up Postal 2 when it was on sale and holy crap - It's garbage. It's not funny, it's not fun to play and it's ugly as hell. Why does this crap have fans?

I also bought Brink for about $15 or so. What a waste of money. Terrible game with completely dysfunctional level and objective design. Literally EVERYTHING is a choke point and gameplay devolves instantly into a tedious meat grind where you aren't given enough time to complete any objective before the opposing team has respawned and gotten back into the fight. It's practically unplayable offline with bots. Add to that the uselessness of the parkour and the terrible character designs and it's just a terrible game through and through.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Good Value: Minecraft at $26.95 has more than paid for it self with and without mods. Fallout 1 and 2 bought a half dozen times at 10 bucks a pop. FTL for free as a gift. Over 10 coppies of Master of Orion 2 (Losing discs sucks). Fallout 3, and New Vegas as gifts with all DLC when they were on sale. All the money I pumped in to Star Trek Online. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 at $20. Deus Ex and Invisible War at $5 is still hard to top.

Bad Value: Mass Effect 3 at $60 and Star Wars: The Old Republic at the same price. I lost a lot of respect for BioWare for those. Titan Fall at launch price. I got 5 hours of play out of it before I was sick of it.

 

[L. Declis]

I have bought all the Mass Effects four times, either as presents or to put on my PC, as well as the DLC. It was that good for me.

I have replayed Final Fantasy VII about 4 times, and Final Fantasy 10 about 7 times. For 20 quid yet 200+ hours each, a bloody good deal.

Civ 5 with all 3 DLCs was £60, and yet I'm rocking 180 hours more or less. 30p per hour is decent value for a good game.

Dawn of War 1. I must have sunk a thousand hours into that over my life. I bought it for £20. Best value game for me ever. I still love it.

Metal Gear Solid 2 has been completed by me easily 30 times on every difficulty with every dog tag. I even began speed running it before I knew what speed running was, I was just one of those freaks who loved the story (still skipped Rose whenever I could). I still know every single aspect of that game. I still remember most of the dialogue, which is sad now I think about it. Although I appreciate it so much more when I'm older. "Jack, do you know what day it is?"

 

[thoughtwrangler]

Dragon Quest IX and Dead Rising would have satisfied me greatly at full price. But as it is, they're by far the best money I've spent in gaming. ($9 and $5 USD, respectively.) Also, Ys: The Oath in Felghana. Snagged it for about $3 on steam. Magnifique

 

[Rayce Archer]

I go by movies. So it costs me about 11 dollars to go to a movie and movies are usually 90 minutes to 2 hours. So a game costs 5-6 movies; if I enjoyed it for at least 10 hours then I'm happy.

You might think this would be an easy metric to succeed by, but it's not. Evolve only just this weekend met its movie metric value, and it took me 2 years before I extracted 10 hours of fun from the first Fallout.

 

[flying_whimsy]

The most value I've gotten out of a game has by far been final fantasy viii: I paid $20 for it when it became part of the greatest hits collection for the psx and have played through on average once a year every year ever since. I even bought it on steam just for the sake of having it (I emulate my older console stuff as the consoles themselves are starting to wear out, so re-releases are useless to me).

The least value I got was probably for Section 8: I paid $6 on clearance and since I don't do multiplayer I got very little out of the game. The other one would probably be line rider 2: found it in a dollar bin a little bit ago only to find it doesn't work since the authentication server shut down.

 

[dohnut king]

Best: Civ. 4 plus both expansions. Probably $100 for the set, easily 1500+ hours if you include the Fall From Heaven mod. If you like them, strategy games are probably the best value in gaming.

Worst: Shadowgate. I paid full retail (probably $40) in 1987 to find out I hated point and click adventure games. Probably spent no more than two very frustrating hours.

 

[maninahat]

I bought Silent Hunter 3 on 3 seperate occasions (usually because I lose the previous disc/disc breaks). I don't think I have spent more hours on any one game, with perhaps the exception of the Total War series (though they cost quite a bit more). Best value though is probably Theme Hospital, which was has been about 50p (30 cents) for a good 15 years or so, and actually seems to be increasing in price now that we have moved away from physical disc sales.

 

[Asita]

Heh, got a bit of both out of Skyrim. Definitely got my money's worth out of it timewise, even ignoring the fact that I got it through a Steam holiday sale. Then some time later I found out that I'd somehow acquired Dawnguard for free (If memory serves, it was a spectacular accident on Steam's part). Cue the next steam sale when Skyrim's "Legendary Edition" was on sale for about...$13, I think, and I decided to buy it to square myself with Bethesda for the free copy of Dawnguard. Bad deal given that the bulk of the price was for the game proper and I already had Dawnguard - albeit not legitimately, by my standards - but wonderful for my piece of mind.

 

[Yopaz]

This is a tough one.

There is Killing Floor which is a really strong contender both because I bought it at a Steam sale and because I have played it for a long time. There's Tales of Symphonia which I have played for at least 600 hours. There's Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate which is kinda drawn down in value since I bought it for both the 3DS and the Wii U which almost doubles the cost.

However I think my winner would have to be Super Smash Bros Melee which I can't be sure how much I have played, but it probably ranges around 1000+ hours.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I wont go into detail, but here we go...

Alpha protocol - £1 ...damn good value

Destroy all humans: path of failure feuron - £1.30 ...terrible value!

Brink - £1 ...god awful. Bad value.

-

Witcher 2 - £10 ...amazing value. Havent finished anywhere near, but I sense the value, ignoring the eye rolling sex scenes of course.

Dragon Age: Inqui- £45 ...Gosh darn value right there, sonny jim!

COD AW - £45 or 50 ...Terrible value.

...zombies mode dlc - £12 ..."you fuckin what, mate?!" value.

Bioshock: infinite - Free! ...Infinite value!!

 

[Laughing Man]

I have a basic cost per hour play idea £1 per hour of game play, if a game achieves this then it has met my bare minimum for good value for money, in that respect

KSP 770 hours for £20 (great value)
Left 4 Dead 2 810 hours for £35 (great value)
Prison Architect 405 hours for £10 (great value)
Borderlands 2 320 hours for £35 (great value)

on the other hand

Crysis 3 5 hours for £40 (piss poor value)
Duke Nukem 89minutes for £35 (piss poor value)

 

[Bizzaro Stormy]

Bought Dynasty Warriors 3 for $5. Several hundred hours later I'd say it was worth it. Bad value is any game I've disliked and traded in at Gamestop. Not worth it at all. Find a friend to give them to if you can or sell them at a yard sale.

 

[Xeros]

Everything in the Orange Box. Got it on sale for $20, played the ever-living hell out of Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 & 2, and Portal, and when my buddies and I each had Team Fortress 2; hundreds, if not thousands of hours, lost.

I'd also throw Fallout 3 into the mix, but I was going through a particularly rough time when I played it. Still, well over 1000 hours played for the price of $15.

EDIT: Money wasted, however? I pre-ordered the deluxe edition of Watch Dogs ...on PC. Did the same thing for Saints Row 3 while I was fresh off a Saints Row 2 high.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Probably Killing Floor since someone already mentioned it, I got it ages ago in a winter sale and I play it every Christmas. The monster designs with the Christmas twist are damn good. I could never play default KF after seeing that, the Clots are just generic naked dudes instead of fucked up elves in funny hats.

Maybe Witcher 2 on the bad side? I got it cheap but I would really like the time spend downloading it on my shitty internet connection back since it was just a painful several hours of trying to like it before I uninstalled it. Damn would it kill someone to smile in that game? The gameplay can't even carry the terribly depressing universe, characters, setting, dialogue, visuals etc etc either.

Now Sunrider Academy I just finished one route of tonight (Ava/Kayto OTP motherfuckers) is going to be worth the money I paid for it despite it being official Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius alternate universe fanfiction. It's got a good sense of humour, has a few nods towards the original game without it being just "lol do you remember the other game we made XD" cringe, the art from Sunrider is vastly improved 's probably a shrewd move from the devs too so the next proper Sunrider sequel looks fantastic and the stories are looking solid. Most importantly, Cera City doesn't get nuked from orbit in the first 5 minutes of the game so that's nice.

Damn Love in Space. They cottoned on to how their first Sunrider was so good it should never have been a free to play game so they charge for the next one. I wonder if they'll do DLC, I mean they *should* have had Best Girl Icari in the game already but I suppose she'd be too similar to Ava.