$60 a Month: Episode IV
It seems like a tough mission: Two highly anticipated AAA titles in the same month and only my usual $60 budget to acquire them both. I planned ahead a bit last month by putting down a pre-order for Mass Effect and having a decent carry-over, but that meant that I was going to have to be crafty if I wanted to pick up the month’s other must-have, Call of Duty 4, and not bust my budget.
Read on to see if I pulled it off.
Budget
The carryover from last month was $27.47. Add in the budget $60 and you have $87.47 to work with. Let’s see where it went.
The Game List
- Bust-a-Move DS
Platform: Nintendo DS
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
I got this game mostly for the multiplayer and I admit that I played it for a few hours when I first received it early in the month but I could never convince Nik to try it and other games got in the way. It was really cheap, points-wise, on Goozex so I don’t regret the trade at all. - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Retail Purchase + Trade-ins
Cost: $44.84
CoD4 is a really great game but since my trade-ins only got a 10% bonus I didn’t save as much on this title as I had hoped I would. I think it’s worth what I paid for it, but I lost a brand-new DS game and a 360 title I liked and could potentially have gotten some more play out of without much to show so I think while the game may be worth it, the sacrifices were not worth the savings. - TMNT
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
I traded for it, beat it, traded it in as part of the Mass Effect extravaganza. I don’t have any regrets about it on any of those levels. - The Darkness
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Gameznflix
Cost: $4.25
It’s a pretty decent game that would have been much more welcome about five months ago when I originally put it at the top of my queue. It’s languishing on my shelf a little because it’s competing with Mass Effect, CoD4 and a few other lingering favorites but I blame Gameznflix for having a stupid queue system and, in equal parts, myself for not figuring out how to make it work for too long. - Earth Defense Force 2017
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Gameznflix
Cost: $4.25
Not a great game, so it’s going back shortly after I give it one more brief chance to endear itself to me this coming weekend. As a title I considered buying for $20 on sale (on GameSpot’s recommendation), I’d say the $4.25 was a better deal to find out I didn’t care for it. - Okami
Platform: PlayStation 2
Method: Gameznflix
Cost: $4.25
I’ve barely cracked into this one. Again the fundamental problem with GnF is that it’s great when you have nothing else to play but kind of a waste when you have games you’re interested in but lack time to play sitting around costing you money. - Mass Effect
Platform: Xbox 360
Method: Retail Purchase + Trade-ins
Cost: $29.74
A game I’ve looked forward to for years that I bought on day one for less than half price. Granted, I sacrificed a lot for that price, but most of it was stuff I don’t miss like TMNT and Trace Memory. I’m still conflicted about Star Trek Legacy but I had it for months and never got around to playing it so I guess I’d rather have Mass Effect (a game I can’t put down) than a shelf-decoration.
Sacrifices
I traded Tiger Woods 08 (DS) and Saints Row in to GameStop to offset some pre-order pain for Call of Duty 4. I also sent Call of Duty 3, Diablo II and Perfect Dark Zero in to Goozex. And I did another trade-in round of TMNT, Star Trek Legacy, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Age of Empires II (DS) and Trace Memory to help with the cost of Mass Effect.
List Breakdown
Trading games into GameStop is not particularly cost-effective, which isn’t exactly breaking news but as a short-term way to clear out some shelf space and offset the cost of high-priced items (of which there were two this month) it can be a useful budget tactic. I do wish there had been a way for me to salvage Saints Row but I suppose I can always acquire it from Goozex later if I really want those last few achievements.
One thing that can help when trading in games to GameStop is to take advantage of their multiple-title trade-in bonuses. You get ripped off no matter what, but the games I traded in for Mass Effect were almost all going to be difficult to unload on Goozex (GRAW, for example, has been listed in my outgoing queue since I signed up with the service and it has said “Long Wait” for the entire time). Value-wise they aren’t a bad proposition on Goozex, but the demand is so low that they end up being useless space-wasters. You don’t get nearly as much with an in-store trade-in but I got an extra 30% credit for having five games; just one more of those little details that allowed me to hang tight in an expensive month.
Special Cases
I picked up Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance as part of my hardware trade-in to GameStop. Technically I didn’t purchase or acquire these games and while I can use them for Goozex fodder and the like, I figure they don’t really count as legitimate entries into the list.
Results
So starting from $87.47 I ended up with… 14 cents. I cut it close but I made it happen and I didn’t even do any recycling this month! Planning ahead in October made all the difference here: If I hadn’t put the $5 pre-order payment on Mass Effect, it would have been a much different outcome.
Next month I won’t be buying any games for myself since it’s a bit tacky to be purchasing things for yourself right before Christmas, but I’ll still be using Gameznflix and Goozex so I should have a nice bit of carryover in January.