Leveling Down

The stock market has dropped below 7000 points, people have less disposable income, and video game studios all over the country are filing for bankruptcy or shutting down altogether. Though video games have been touted as “recession-proof”, that really isn’t the case; consumers are buying less titles and taking less risks, staying away from question marks and sticking to sure-fire franchises.

In this first of a two part feature, espion4ge and I have compiled a list of our favorite mainstream titles that you can get under $30 now. If you’re trying to save money and haven’t played these games yet, I’d definitely recommend picking some of them up. In many cases you can buy two of these games for the price of one new title today so if you’ve missed out on some of them, there are great deals to be had.

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Fallout 3’s Operation Anchorage – really worth $10?

cmfl3x asked me a little while back if I was looking forward to the Fallout 3 downloadable content. He seemed pretty excited about it and I felt bad telling him but no, I didn’t share in his excitement. In fact, while there are games I may fully enjoy, like Ninja Gaiden II or Fallout 3, I’ll never buy their DLC. To this day, I have not paid for downloadable content for any traditional game, and I don’t plan on ever doing so. Why? Because I don’t believe in what it stands for. Obviously if downloadable content is free, such as Burnout Paradise’s motorcycles and whatnot, or BioShock’s extra plasmids, then sure – it is always welcome. It’s when it starts getting charged for that it gets on my nerves.

I actually wrote up an entire article just knocking on it, but then felt it may come off as too much of a rant so I held off. I figure that if I could turn it into a discussion topic with cmfl3x, it’d be a little more civil.

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There are various enemies in the world of Tamriel, including ice elementals

Ah, Oblivion – the game that I bought originally when it came out for PC, played about 10 hours into it, got overwhelmed, and quit. Since borrowing it from my brother last Christmas, I’ve tried again and again to get into it, only to stop before I really even left the first zone because I just didn’t feel like tackling this monster of a game. It was good that there were Achievements this time to guide me, since without them I felt like I could be lost in the game forever. After finding some guidance in a noob Oblivion thread on a forum, I decided to force myself to start the game.

This was maybe two weeks ago. Now I can say I’ve finished the game, but I don’t think I can ever say I’ll have completed it since it is so massive in scope. 50 hours and 1000 Achievement points is good enough for me. I understand now why the game was so well received, and I can only agree.
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