Dragon Age II Not until it’s $19.99 and with all DLC. I loved the first and was disappointed to hear of the changes they made in the second iteration. I would not bother with it at all but I’ve heard - from some corners - that the story is great and the DLC makes a so-so experience pretty darn good.
Duke Nukem Forever Not until it’s $9.99. I have no love for Duke. But as a follower of the industry, and having heard so much about this game over the years, I’m willing to download it and play with it a bit just to see what the final outcome was all these years later.
I’m waiting on $20 for DarkSpore (getting close, $24 at Origin now). Watching some videos piqued my interest in it, but I don’t know if I’ll really have the time to play it all that much, so it’s not worth full price to me.
I was going to talk about a couple upcoming games, but this is also what I do. The exception is $15 or less indie games I’m really interested in (e.g., Bastion).
As for the games Jake mentioned I would buy DNF for $5 just to experience the terribleness first hand, but unless I get it for free I will never pick-up Dragon Age II. It may not be universally bad, but there are so many things that would bug me that it just wouldn’t be worth me time.
I play the waiting game with almost all AAA games, with very few exceptions… I bought Portal 2 at release, and I bought Starcraft 2 at full price (subsidized with a gift card) because I didn’t see the price coming down anytime soon. Most of the time, though, I’m waiting until the ‘Game of the Year with DLC’ edition goes cheap. Generally, $20 or less. Or, with Steam sales, much less.
I’m quite content to regard DNF from afar. And I don’t think I’ll ever pick up Dragon Age 2… having played Mass Effect 1 (bought for $8, no DLC, not too shabby) and Dragon Age (bought for $15, hated it), I have no interest in making the time or monetary investment in a Bioware RPG for quite a while.
I hope no one has pick Dragon Age 2 because is the game I am waiting for. I never finished Dragon Age Awakening DLC after buying it, I feel bad for buying it. DA2 looked like more combat on top of more combat, and I think this is why I never finished Awakening. But is a game I am looking forward to, just my price for it is near 20$, maybe 18$.
Agreed. I never pay full price for any game. It usually has to hit $29 before I will buy it. And I usually don’t mess with the DLC unless I get a version of the game that has those included.
Same here. As much as I want to support game developers I’ve just gotten very cheap in my old age :) Actually, cheap isn’t it really. I just feel some sort of guilt at spending $50 - $60 for a game especially when I have such a huge backlog of unfinished and barely played games.
This has been the cycle of late:
Buy newly released game at full price.
Pop it in to check out the intro, play for a few minutes.
Set aside due to lack of time or wanting to finish older games.
Get around to playing it 8 months to a year later after several price reductions.
There are exceptions though. I will usually pick up Atlus RPGs at release because Atlus never disappoints me. That used to be the case with Square and Bioware but frankly I don’t care about them anymore.
But yeah, back to OP:
Dragon Age 2 here as well. A friend loaned me the original and I loved it and thought it was a good return to form by Bioware but never bought it though I was excited for the sequel until all the info regarding play mechanics hit the net. Why Bioware??? WHY???
Red Dead Redemption - same friend let me borrow this and I had a blast with it for a few days. Thought of buying it but I have this problem with most Rockstar games (meaning the GTA series): I enjoy them for a little while but they never hook me long-term. I did enjoy this one more than the GTAs so I should give it another chance - but only when the price drops to $20 or less. I don’t want to be wrong again.
I recently got a bunch of 'em. Drakensang, Dawn of Discovery, Sim City Societies, Tropico 3 expansion and quite a few others I recently crossed off the list…all for $5 or less. But there are a few on the list:
Witcher II - I didn’t enjoy the first one all that much and never completed it. Still, everyone raved about #2 and I’d like to give it a shot, but for no more than $20-$25.
Dead Rising II - Not a fan of action games and the motion in this might make me queasy. Still, if it’s under $10, I’ll give it a go.
Tropico 4 - It’s not out yet, but either it’ll have to be the best thing since sliced bread or under $15 for me to get it. Plus, I just got the expansion, so I’m set for a while.
Dragon Age II - Played and liked the first, but the 2nd sounds very disappointing. I won’t consider it above $10.
Fate of the World - It’s been on sale for $5 before and when it gets there again I’ll likely pick it up.
I’m sure there’s a few others, but those are the ones that come to mind right now.
But ultimately, my backlog is MASSIVE right now. It’s bigger than it’s ever been. So I’m more than content to wait on these games, because I have so much stuff yet to play right now it’s absurd.
Yeah, I went through the same cycle in the last couple of years. I always end up getting to the games much later than when I buy them, and in the interim they’ve been discounted, so I figure, why not wait for the discount, it’s the same to me functionally, except I’m more cash-strapped these days than I used to be, so that’s additional incentive to wait.
Plus, starting about 3 months ago, my gaming time went from a couple of hours a day at most to about 10 minutes a day at most, on average, which severely limited what kinds of games I could play as well as what I could afford (time-wise). I basically stopped buying all games, even discounted ones, until I get through some of my back-log of games that I want to get through. (Not a big pile of theoretical back log, just some games that came out within the last few years that I’ve meaning to get to).
So that’s where I’m at right now. I made a few exceptions for the Summer of Arcade, but other than that, I’m pretty much on track to not buy any major games for the rest of the year because I just don’t have time for them.
Red Dead Redemption - same friend let me borrow this and I had a blast with it for a few days. Thought of buying it but I have this problem with most Rockstar games (meaning the GTA series): I enjoy them for a little while but they never hook me long-term. I did enjoy this one more than the GTAs so I should give it another chance - but only when the price drops to $20 or less. I don’t want to be wrong again.
Just a warning, when you do get to RDR, it’s really tough to get through the Mexico section. At least, it was for me. But on insistence from Qt3 members, I did finally power through it, and it was totally worth it. The final section of the game is very good, and that’s where the meat is. So if you do finally get RDR, be prepared to power through the Mexico section so you can get to the good part.
Game might be banned in Germany later (Swastikas etc.)
Game is available at my impulse price point of around 20 EUR at release
indie games that cost less than 10 EUR
No reason to pay full price as the industry is run by suits that don’t give a fuck about me as a gamer apart from my money so it’s game of whom fucks whom better these days.
Hah, this is exactly what popped into my mind when I saw the thread. I picked up the original, LOVED it, then learned I got the wrong version (chopped off ending, no improvements as patch, sadly) and well … not really keen on paying full price for an improved version of what I already have.
Portal 2 as well, and mostly anything coming out of Valve now. I know I’m just going to play it once to see what it’s like (and in Portal’s case for the story) and then be done. I pay full value for things that are going to be hanging around on my drive for a looooooong time (Saints Row 2, Just Cause 2, DX:HR, Dungeons of Dredmor, things like that). Replay value is basically king now.
I’ve stayed a few years behind the hardware cycle, so I’m still a few years behind on the game cycle. Which is great! Everything that runs well on my machine is being sold kitchen sink for pennies.
Seriously who cares about the latest and greatest thing (except for DoW2 OMG). Especially when you know that new games are always buggy and irritating! Let the early adopters figure stuff out, and then buy it when it’s all patched and ready for fun no hassle play.
As others have said, pretty much everything falls into this category for me. I’ve got enough unplayed games to last a long time, and everything drops in price so fast these days that it’s easy to be choosy. The last over-$15 game I bought was Etrian Odyssey III almost a year ago. I occasionally make exceptions for $15-or-less indies, as I did with Frozen Synapse (due to multiplayer) and Dredmor (wanted to send a vote of support for more commercial roguelikes), but for the most part I’m content to wait for them to hit 75% off or show up in a bundle.
Usually if I want a game, I’ll buy it at release. Most times Amazon is offering some promo credit to ease the pain of paying $60. If a game isn’t worth $60 to me, I’ll typically hold out for it to hit $40. If that doesn’t happen relatively soon after a game launches, I find that my price tolerance drops quickly. For example, had Dungeon Siege III been available for $40 on launch day, I’d have bought it. It went on sale for around $40 relatively soon after launch, but by then the launch hype had died down and the reviews weren’t great. Now I didn’t want it for $40. Recently it was on sale for $32. I still didn’t buy it. The further out from launch it gets, the less I’m willing to pay for a game.
All that said, I resolved to wait until Shadows of the Damned hit $40 before buying it. Of all the prominent games that launched around that time (FEAR 3, Dungeon Siege 3) Shadows of the Damned is the only one that has yet to be offered for less than $54.
Duke Nukem Forever - $5. I’m curious, but the demo was so awful that I can’t see myself paying more than that for the single playthrough so I can gawk at the trainwreck. Prey hit that price on Steam, so here’s to hoping!
Dead Island - $20. I’ve always thought a first person open-world zombie game would be what I wanted, but Dead Island adds two things I hate. In the playthrough videos I’ve seen, the game has deteriorating weapons and goofy boss fights. That’s $20 off my threshold price!
Call of Duty MW3 - $10. I’ve liked the previous games, but not enough to pay full price. With Battlefield 3 looking to deliver on everything I want out of a modern combat MP game, the only attraction for MW3 to me is the SP game. I have to see what gonzo nuttiness they toss out this time. Of course, CoD being the gazillion-seller it is, it will likely be 2015 before a price drop.
Arma 3 - $20. Speaking of modern combat, I’ve always loved this series of man-sim games, but the newest iteration goes to the future, and I’m not willing to take the journey for the same price with the same level of bugginess. With previous games, I could just fire up the sandbox editor and have at it, but the focus on future war there’s not much left for me. Sorry BI, you lost a day one sale on this one.
Right now I’m pretty much waiting on the holiday sale for Shogun 2. I know already that I don’t play strategy games compulsively enough to be worth full price, but I also know it looks so great that I must have it. Hopefully it’ll hit $25 and I’ll jump on it at that price.
Full price AAA games: I tend to buy them and actually complete them. Just got DX: HR and yeah, I’m’a get sucked into that one bigtime. Rage, Skyrim, and Batman: Arkham City are also on tap for this fall, all of them day one, and I’m sure I’ll finish all of them. Then next spring it’s all about backlog… well, at least until Diablo III…
