Questionable taste and a hell of a lot of disposable income. $40 is a budget price point? Jeez! Are you a nuclear physicist?!
Not at all. I just don’t have any kids and games are my only real hobby when it comes to spending money. It is sad that $40 looks like a good price now, but $60 is such an absurd starting price, especially for a game like Wanted or 50 Cent, that lopping $20 off seems like a deal.
Yes, it is absurd that $40 seems like a good price. With all these Steam deals, my magic price point – that point where my wallet opens for even average games – is closer to $10 now.
I’m in MSUSteve’s boat. I spent 40 bucks on Burnout Paradise as soon as there was a 20 bucks off sale, since it was something I’d been looking forward to. I don’t know whether I’d spend anything more than about 10 bucks for either Wanted or 50 Cent though.
Oh yeah, that’s a pretty easy position to take on the PC. I’m mostly a console gamer, and deals like the awesome Steam discounts don’t typically happen for console games.
The recent positive write-up about Wanted on Penny Arcade leads me to believe that MSUSteve probably won’t be sorry with the purchase. I know these lesser hyped games don’t get as much respect, and don’t sell as well as big releases, but often times I’m with Steve in that they turn out to be better experiences. Timeshift is a perfect example of that. I’d take Timeshift’s single player campaign any day over games like Resistance, Resistance 2’s single player, Killzone’s single player, Halo 3’s single player campaign, etc. It gets the mechanics of the game just right, as well as the balancing and satisfaction level of using the weapons. Some people complain that Timeshift is built around a gimmick. While that’s true, they just use that gimmick really, really well.
Wanted might be short and based on a movie, but it might be more satisfying to play through than a lot of other, bigger, hyped shooters.
You should make a little foray, Steve. A junkie like you would have quite a feast on the massive body of cheap PC titles growing only larger by the week.
I didn’t mean to imply that I never play games on my PC. I bought a pretty nice Dell XPS 420 not too long ago for just that purpose. But if it comes down to choosing between PC or console, I always choose consoled (FEAR 2 and Far Cry 2 being two recent examples). I’ve bitten on quite a few recent Steam sales, including the Max Payne games, the id pack, and Mount & Blade, but sadly enough, haven’t played much of anything on my PC lately. I did pickup Dawn of War 2, which is cool, along with Red Alert 3, both which are fun to play co-op with my brother.
I was hoping Fracture would be the next Timeshift, but it didn’t seem to use its gimmick in any particularly clever ways.
You all need to create your own Mediocre Games thread.
We need to build a Timeshift fan club, and find out what happened to the developers after Sierra was dismantled. Seriously, those guys are really talented. Specifically the game designers who worked on that game.
I think the whole clue thing they use would be more fun if it wasn’t blindingly obvious what each of those things is going to be.
Hmm, that must have been a today-only sale (currently $54.78 there, which is the same as Newegg and Tigerdirect but still cheaper than Amazon and Best Buy).
It wasn’ta today only sale, because I pondered over it for about a week or two. its probably just gone back up to what it was. Sorry for the mislead though. Solid controller, I’d still pick it up at that price.
Just to offer a counter opinion - I found the story to be forgettably generic and very terse, mostly a vehicle to get you from spectacularly gorgeous level to spectacularly gorgeous level. However, the levels are, if not universally amazing, at least mostly so. And while I don’t disagree that the targetting needs work and the jumping is not always what it could be, I didn’t find either aspect particularly frustrating. Meanwhile the game offers a wondrous playground of Force-based murder to take on. And while most of the later enemies are immune to particular tricks, I had several options at my disposal for dealing with virtually everything in the game. The QTEs? Sure, as a game design element they’re fairly loathsome, but these are simple and inspire some really cool stuff going on in the background (and, helpfully, you can mostly actually watch them as you’re pressing buttons).
I still wouldn’t recommend buying it, mind you. It’s short, pretty easy on normal difficulty, and I don’t see a lot of replay value. $20 isn’t the worst price for it, but you could just as easily rent it and beat it that way, most likely.
Cubit
4078
Gamersgate has Crusader Kings and Deus Vult for $9.99
