$60 a Month: Episode VII
For a short month and one coming off a gargantuan post-holiday game bonanza, you might think I’d take it a little bit easy, maybe fixate some on a few of January’s bounty. Instead, find out what happens when my budget widens just a little and the activity on Goozex picks up significantly.
Budget
I carried over a meager $1.99 from January’s antics. However, I also did some side-job work for my wife’s employer which netted me $100 for an afternoon’s work. I decided not to spend the whole $100 on games, so I set aside a nice $60 chunk for some other pursuits and added the remaining $40 to my budget for a $100 total.
The Game List
- Everyday Shooter
Platform: PlayStation Network
Method: Online Purchase
Cost: $9.99
The highlight of PSN aims to do for Sony’s downloadable service what Geometry Wars did for Xbox Live Arcade and succeeds pretty admirably. It’s a strange game, full of weird outside-the-box design decisions and a particular depth (perhaps it is better described as “breadth”) that make it a long form game despite it’s largely repetitive nature. Comparing it strictly to GeoWars isn’t exactly fair considering that their most common elements are a very fundamental mechanic and the delivery mechanism but where they differ most significantly is price: EDS is $10 while GeoWars is $5. Considering that there is more to EDS I feel the price is justified and I certainly don’t mind owning both. - Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles
Platform: PSP
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
The chance to play a localized version of Rondo of Blood is pretty exciting for Castlevania fans such as myself, and while the game is worth every point it took to execute the trade, the biggest disappointment is in the fact that you have to unlock a lot of the desirable content, notably the original 2D Rondo and the re-translated Symphony of the Night. Now I already have SotN on XBLA, but having a portable version isn’t a bad thing… if only it were included from the outset. The habit developers have of locking away valuable (and advertised I might add) content so you have to play the game their way is, in essence, anti-consumer. Case study: Contra 4. - Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Platform: Nintendo DS
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
A strange point-and-click style adventure… novel… thing, it gets points for it’s moody atmosphere and stellar presentation (the Ah-Ha style hand-drawn animation graphics are especially striking). What it loses some points for is having a somewhat clunky menu system and a laborious pace at the critical beginning of the game. Definitely a game I want to have on hand for “mood gaming” (i.e. “I’m really in the mood for something adventure-y…”) and probably too lengthy for a rental, it seems just right as a Goozex trade. - Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Platform: PlayStation 3
Method: Rental
Cost: $6.50
People have described the visuals in this game as the best on the PS3. I didn’t find that to be the case exactly (I thought Heavenly Sword and Uncharted looked better) but it is pretty fun. Platformers, especially the 3D variety, have to have perfect controls for me to tolerate them (a reason why my infatuation with Mario 64 is best described as “mild”) and R&C certainly has that, but I felt that the game was designed as fanservice to those who had followed the series along and was if not openly hostile toward newbies to the characters at least harboring a secret grudge. I didn’t finish it during the rental period but I did feel like I got a full $6.50 out of it and am really not all that interested in spending the money for a second rental or another means of acquisition. - Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Platform: PlayStation 3
Method: Retail Purchase
Cost: $64.94
So far Uncharted is my favorite PS3 exclusive. It manages to do so many things right that I found it easy to forgive the things it does wrong. What is most significant from a $60 a Month perspective though is that I paid full price for the game, beat it in a little over a week and immediately shipped it off to Goozex for the 1,000 points it commanded. So does that make it a bad purchase? I think it ultimately does because while I was able to convert those 1,000 points into several great PSP games and I got to play the game, I probably don’t know that this is a game I feel happy having owned. An example is BioShock, a game I’m rather glad to have owned despite the fact that it didn’t stay in my collection long. While I certainly don’t regret playing Uncharted, I think the same satisfaction could have come from a rental or two and the Goozex points would have felt better coming out of a game I got a lot of play from like Assassin’s Creed or Mass Effect. - Poker Smash
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Method: Download
Cost: $10.00
The only question when it comes to Poker Smash is whether it’s worth the $10.00 if you already own Planet Puzzle League. My answer is yes because I think that while PPL is nearly the perfect handheld puzzle game (and is so incredibly well suited to the DS), it really works best in its shorter form modes like Daily Play and Puzzle Mode. As an endless speed-up or time-challenge single player game it does eventually get a bit old. Therefore when you’re looking for a deeper console-based Puzzle League type game, Poker Smash is exactly what the doctor ordered. - Mega Man Powered Up
Platform: PSP
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
3D facelifts of classic 2D games can be hit or miss. Where they tend to hit the most often is with 3D graphics presented in the classic 2D style, such as New Super Mario Bros. and even Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles. Mega Man Powered Up gets this right as well and while the game it’s based on (the original Mega Man) isn’t the best of the NES-era MM games (that honor would belong to Mega Man 2), the update offers enough extra charm and whimsy to make it worthwhile. I probably would have only bought the game at bargain prices (it’s not really worth more than $12 at the most) but as a Goozex trade I think it’s winning. - Resistance: Fall of Man
Platform:PlayStation 3
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
There is something about Resistance that just screams “launch title.” Perhaps it is the underwhelming graphics, especially in the character models. Perhaps it is the way Resistance doesn’t work very hard to make itself stand out among a sea of console FPS’. But I think mostly it’s in the way the game is an Insomniac Games original IP that reeks of half-hearted Halo competitor that mostly represented a way for the developers to get their hands dirty with the PS3 dev kit before they committed their precious franchise IPs to the learning curve of the Cell Processor. As an expensive trade item from Goozex it carries little risk of budget destruction and I enjoy it just enough to see it through to the end, but like all other PS3 exclusives, it lacks the punch to entice me to keep it around in my collection once the credits roll. - Jeanne d’Arc
Platform: PSP
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
I can’t truly explain how much I adore this game. Okay I can start by saying that it was a total steal on Goozex for a paltry 550 points and then I can state that it feels similar to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, to which I lost what feels like weeks of my life. Then on top of that you add a wonderful little fantasy take on the legend of Joan of Arc and some slick Anime cutscenes and you have a package that I cannot resist. This game will have long legs in my collection and I will count it a huge success on the budget acquisition front. - Manhunt 2
Platform: PSP
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
A miserable little game with limited ambition and a flawed understanding of what makes a game worth playing. I traded it back immediately after less than two hours of play which means it might not even be worth mentioning in the list but I did acquire and play it this month so I suppose it counts. Avoid at all costs and whatever you do, do not spend money on this game. - Peggle
Platform: iPod
Method: iTunes Music Store Purchase
Cost: $4.99
Can I confess something? I kind of wanted to hate this game. It has that universal appeal thing in its reputation that always sounds to me from the outside like “It’s vanilla, unremarkable and chiefly designed to cater to the lowest common denominator.” The truth is that it is in fact all of those things. But what it also happens to be is fun, in the way that Tetris and Zuma are fun. This is no-barrier gaming at its best with clever, colorful aesthetics that harken the days of playing NES long past your bedtime on some anonymous game with brightly colored characters and no pretext of deep story or meaningful outcome, just fun for its own sake. Peggle is also perfectly suited for play on an iPod and you can even listen to your own music while you play. I’m not completely sure it’s $5 price tag is perfectly tuned, I would have liked to see a $2-3.50 range game, but the few pennies aren’t much of a deal breaker except there doesn’t seem to be a trial mode so it’s probably worth seeking out elsewhere just to ensure you enjoy it before buying. - Sega Genesis Collection
Platform: PSP
Method: Goozex
Cost: Trade
This is exactly the kind of thing I wish Nintendo would do. My primary interest in the Wii at this point is the Virtual Console (something I don’t feel is worth the $250 price tag) but what I would really like is a collection of NES and SNES games on my DS. Legally, with the kind of added save game and extras options that the Sega Gensis Collection provides. Lacking an official Nintendo product like that I’m forced to semi-shady options like the R4 and emulation. If not for the inclusion of some questionable titles like Flicky I’d say this was my best acquisition of the month, but because there does seem to be a fair amount of filler here, I’ll give the honor to Jeanne D’Arc and call this one a runner-up.
List Breakdown
The herculean 12-game month is impressive when you consider that other than the inaugural Episode I (August ’07), this is the highest activity level for a $60 a Month, even including the craziness that was last month. Aside from a few PS3 titles I picked up in order to “catch up” with Sony’s console everything this month was either downloadable or portable, with an emphasis on PSP titles. And other than Manhunt 2, all the games were good to play even if Uncharted wasn’t perhaps the best game to have purchased. For a time I debated whether to try Devil May Cry 4 or Uncharted but since I’ve never been a huge DMC fan and I wasn’t blown away by the demo and since I really enjoyed Uncharted (while it lasted) I don’t regret passing up DMC for Uncharted. I do think I probably could have gotten away with renting them both for a couple of weeks each for the same or less cost, but I’m certainly not sorry trading a newer PS3 game resulted in the windfall of PSP titles from Goozex.
It should be noted that Goozex really came through this month and I even still have several trades pending for next month that were started because of the trading activity in February (see below for the games I unloaded).
Sacrifices
I traded off Guitar Hero III (just the game), Call of Duty 4, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Jade Empire, Enchanted Arms, Manhunt 2, Gun and one of the two copies I had of Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror. Several of those were high-demand, big points items on Goozex (GHIII, Uncharted and CoD4 specifically) which resulted in a bounty of points that I leveraged into a windfall of less “expensive” games.
I did hesitate quite a bit on CoD4 but ultimately I felt I was getting frustrated with the game more often than I was having fun with it and I prefer to, you know, have fun when I play video games so I let it go. I wasn’t that sad about most of the other games (well, I had mixed feelings about Uncharted but only because it was full-price when I bought it and it hit the Goozex list so shortly after I bought it).
ResultsMy total purchases for the month added up to $96.42. Since I added the $40 from the side-job money that means I came in under budget by $3.58 which will carry over into March.
Obviously I did really well using Goozex this month and I used most of my extra cash on smaller downloadable games like Everyday Shooter and Peggle that gave me more bang for the buck in terms of new games I got to play. I think since I had the extra padding to work with I went away from my typical regimen of only buying games that would cost too much to rent or that I want to keep for multiplayer purposes with Uncharted. I think that budget-conscious gamers are best served by knowing what kind of gamer they are and tailoring their purchases to games that fit their style and will give them the most enjoyment for their money.
I slipped up a bit on that front in my haste to try Uncharted, so hopefully I’ll be a bit more conscientious next month. Join me on or around March 31 to see how it turned out.