$60 a Month: Episode III
The third month of my budgetary experiment saw a huge boost in retail purchases due to some “found” funds, but I’m beginning to wonder about Gameznflix and I’m getting concerned about next month’s double-threat of Call of Duty 4 and Mass Effect already. I match last month’s total in new acquisitions but this month I spend less time playing the new games than I have previously. All this and more after the hop.
Budget
I started out the month at -$2.91 because I went over by the amount of taxes last month. This month I added $78.47 to the budget for some video game writing work I did in September which I felt should be added to my budget since I earned it by playing and writing about games. I also earned $5.17 from this month’s recycling run. If you factor in the usual $60, the grand total before shopping was $140.73 for the month of October.
- Robotech: The Macross Saga
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
I didn’t play much of this game; I had it on my Goozex list because it was dirt cheap (100 Goozex points) and I’m a fan of Robotech so it’s more of a collector’s item than anything else (similar to September’s Robotech: Battlecry purchase). - Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Gameznflix Rental
Cost: $4.25
Originally it was on the GnF queue to fulfill a requirement for a 360 Voice “Launch King” badge. After I received the game I realized I don’t care about 360 Voice badges that much and I subsequently updated my queue. But I still had the game so I played it for a bit, earning the standard 100 points from it. It’s not nearly as good as Project 8 in every possible way, and I didn’t even feel the need to hang onto the latter game (which I purchased) so I sent it back. I didn’t hate it, but I spent less than two hours with it, all told. - Puzzle Quest
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Method: Microsoft Points Transaction
Cost: $15.00
Far and away my best purchase of the month; the $15 XBLA fee is chump change compared to the premium pricing the game carried on portable systems (PSP/DS) which made it a good bargain to begin with and then you add the fact that I love this game so much and it’s hard to see where I went wrong. This game has surpassed both Geometry Wars and Carcassonne as the XBLA game I’ve sunk the most time into and I’m still only about halfway done with it. Excellent buying decision. - Beautiful Katamari
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Retail Purchase, Sale
Cost: $26.84
As part of the Toys ‘R’ Us sale, I had to make a special trip to an out-of-the-way location to find one that had this in stock and after all that I end up liking but not loving the game. At a third of the retail price for a game I bought less than a week after it was released it’s hard to say it wasn’t a decent purchase, but I wish I had gotten more enjoyment out of the game. There are still some points I wouldn’t mind earning from the game on a rainy day sometime, but it’s a shelf title less than two weeks after I brought it home and that’s kind of unfortunate. - The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass
Platform: Nintendo DS
Method: Retail Purchase, Sale
Cost: $26.84
Of the three Toys ‘R’ Us titles, this is my favorite by a long shot. After being really disappointed with Twilight Princess, I’m glad to be back in Celda land and it’s just as charming as Wind Waker and in some cases more so because the stylus controls make everything feel really fresh and fun. It’s a great DS title and I’m glad I sort of accidentally picked this up because I was set to overlook it this month. - Tiger Woods 08
Platform: Nintendo DS
Method: Retail Purchase, Sale
Cost: $26.84
I needed to pick a “free” game for the Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale at Toys ‘R’ Us and since Katamari was $40 and Zelda was $35, it had to be cheaper than those to allow me to stay under my budget. I picked this one up because I heard good things about the console versions and I knew I couldn’t afford one of those so I thought this might be a good substitute. I only had a chance to play for a few minutes and then I put it down to do a Games For Lunch style impressions review, which should be up in the next week. For now I’m suspending judgement but if my impressions aren’t favorable it will be trade-in fodder quickly. - Psychonauts
Platform: Xbox
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
The critically-acclaimed but commercially ignored Xbox platformer was just sitting there on Goozex so I snatched it up. My initial foray was less than enthralling but I didn’t play for long so I also have to reserve full judgement for a later date. - Rule of Rose
Platform: PlayStation 2
Method: Gameznflix Rental
Cost: $4.25
A strange, slow, almost incomprehensible Silent Hill clone seemed really intriguing at first but so far has involved nothing but a really extended fetch quest and a lot of backtracking, phony open-endedness and no scares, creeps or psychological discomfort in spite of the ideal setting I played it. I’ve held onto it for an extra week to see if another 30 minutes or so won’t encourage me to carry on for the story’s sake, but I have a feeling it will be returned to GnF rather shortly. - Armored Core 4
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Gameznflix Rental
Cost: $4.25
It’s mechs fighting each other with some curiously clunky controls. I’ve only passed the very first real (non-tutorial) mission, which I’d already played in a demo anyway, but it looks like it may be fun for a bit. I kind of preferred the MechWarrior level of simplicity (which AC4 masks by choosing certain key tasks to perform for you like weapon selection and aiming) and so far the mech designs aren’t anything to write home about. Another game that has thirty minutes or an hour at most to convince me it’s worth a longer stay.
List Breakdown
The $26.84 price for each of the three games I bought via the Toys ‘R’ Us 2 for 1 sale is the total cost ($80.51) divided by three. Considering that the games cost $40 (Katamari), $35 (Zelda) and $30 (Tiger Woods), when you factor in the taxes that means I saved $27.38 by taking advantage of the sale. However, my experiences with the Toys ‘R’ Us stores (I had to visit three to get what I wanted) were universally unpleasant so while the deal was good, I don’t think I’ll be a regular customer.
Special Cases
It should be noted that I also acquired The Orange Box this month, but it is not listed above because it was an anniversary gift from my wife, Nikki. In the case of BioShock, which was also supposed to be a gift, I counted it as a purchased game because the “gift” aspect was somewhat fabricated. In this case however, there was an actual event that is typically accompanied by a gift so it would be weird to say I had “paid” for it. But because I’m not counting it against the budget, I’m also not listing it above, either.
The $5.17 from recycling was applied toward a pre-order for Mass Effect (well, $5.00 of it anyway). Normally I loathe pre-orders but there was a cool bonus disc included when you pre-order and I know that I did pretty good budget-wise this month so I figured I’d help myself out in November while I had the chance. The five bucks I put down on the pre-order comes off the price of the game when you pick it up.
This may end up being significant when you figure that while Mass Effect is on my must-buy list, Call of Duty 4 also comes out in November. I enjoyed the beta of CoD4 so much (and also earlier CoDs) I really wanted to get some time with this game, but I can’t generally afford two first-run retail titles in a single month. So now I’m locked into paying $55+tax ($59.54) for Mass Effect and then trying to figure out how to buy another $60 game ($64.95) with the same budget.
Pondering Gameznflix
I mentioned last month that I needed to re-evaluate Gameznflix this month to determine if it continues to be worth the $12.75/month hit to the budget. Of course I can make a simple mathematical comparison and say “I can play x games per month for under $13.” Usually, as long a x is greater than 2, I’m pretty safe in terms of raw numbers. But I have to consider quality as well since that $12.75 represents over 20% of my monthly budget. Is playing a greater number of games worth having to get by on four-fifths of my allotment?
It took some careful evaluation of the situation, breaking down each game I’ve rented so far and determining how much each game costs me (on average it costs me about $0.17 per day for each title), how much enjoyment I’ve gotten from each (I’ve had about 50% success with the service) and what else could have been done with the money ($51 over four months for around twenty games means I’ve yet to spend as much on those twenty as I would have on a single new game).
The service isn’t perfect, but it hasn’t been a complete bust either. Some things I can do on my end to improve the situation, like returning games I don’t care for more quickly. I tend to let my obsession with gamerscore dictate how long I hold onto titles I don’t care for: One or two sessions should be enough to let me know if I’m not interested in a game. Three weeks should be my maximum hold time; if I can’t finish a game reasonably quickly but I want to see it through, I need to find a copy of it used or something. And lastly I need to get games I don’t care about off my queue. I’ve already updated my queue and am working on the time held thing, but I also note that Gameznflix is consistently taking eight to ten days to get a game and ship the next one to my mailbox which is a part of why I dumped GameFly earlier this year. It’s better with GnF because I can afford a multi-game plan, but it does have a detrimental impact on the value I get from the service.
Sacrifices
This month I sent out Advance Wars Dual Strike for the DS to a Goozex trader, which I’m a little sad about because I really like AW, but there is a new DS game coming out that sounds like it addresses some of the quirks (read: flaws) that kept me from really getting sucked into AW:DS.
Results
There was a lot more purchasing done this month than usual, thanks to the extra cash but even after the $5 pre-order fee, $15 XBLA purchase, $80.51 Toys ‘R’ Us run and $12.75 Gameznflix fee, I still came out with $27.47 left over. That bodes pretty well for next month since there are two full-price games on my radar.
Traffic from Goozex was pretty light this month. I suspect that was mostly due to me splitting my gaming time across a lot of new titles so I didn’t have much time to finish with many of my other games, leaving me with less to trade away. I kind of don’t see this becoming less of an issue and since most of my potential trade fodder will probably disappear next month in a frustrating swap with GameStop so I can cover the $37.48 I need for CoD4. So I expect to sacrifice quite a few games next month, but on the bright side I need to free up some shelf space anyway.
Overall it was quite a good month. Even If you take the $78.47 infusion and the $80.51 purchase which almost took place outside the realm of $60 a Month, I did really well: $60.00 + $5.17 – $5.00 – $2.91 – $12.75 – $15.00 = $29.51. It helps when the big AAA title from the month ends up being a gift. I don’t anticipate any such luck in November.