Actually, there was more buying than spending. Of course, I have more money than free time, so maybe I should've gone the other route. Regardless, I took advantage of the endless supply of holiday sales and on-line promotions to secure a ton of games for relatively little cash. It's probably not in the spirit of Christmas, but hey. (Actually, rampant consumerism is more or less Christmas in a nutshell, so yay for me!)
My tally, as best as I can recall:
PC
Master of Magic and Master of Orion 1/2 from www.gog.com, $6 total. Two of my favorites from my younger days, and worth it for the nostalgia alone. MOM is a real sleeper gem that didn't shine until months of patches, and MOO2 is the perfect 'play it in one sitting' 4X game. As always, GOG provides these games in pristine patched condition, emulated perfectly and complete with all kinds of digital bonuses. What a great company.
Alice: Madness Returns, $8 on Steam. The only game I bought on Steam during the holidays, which shocked me to no end. I just don't PC game that much anymore. It's almost embarrassing to say it, but I don't like gaming from a desk chair anymore, even a nice one like mine. I gotta put my feet up!
3DS
Pilotwings: Something Or Other from BestBuy.com, $5. I forgot the subtitle. I liked the original, needed a 3DS game, and it was $5. That sounds like a winning formula.
PS3
LittleBigPlanet 2: Super Special Ediition. Amazon, I think, for $25-ish. Broke the bank on this one!
360
L.A. Noire, Complete Director's Magical Edition. $20 from BestBuy.com. I almost got the Complete Director's Magical Edition of Red Dead, too, even though I already played the core game - the DLC sounds interesting, and I gave away my copy to my brother. But I had bought enough already and I didn't feel like getting re-immersed into RDR again.
The Orange Box, $12 from Amazon, I think. I've played 75% of the set already, but I was curious about the Half-Life 2 add-ons. And who can play enough Portal? I also have a dread-based curiousity to see TF2 on a console.
Brutal Legend, $11 or so from Amazon. I hate going cheap with a Tim Shafer game (the man wrote Day of the Tentacle and Psychonauts, for crying out loud!) but $60 seemed like a high price for hanging out with Jack Black and Motorhead. Poor Tim - as usual, someone who dabbles in the clever and strange gets relegated to banging out Sesame Street product in his golden years, while bearded thirty-something hacks sell millions of copies regurgitating action movie tropes with AAA budgets. Speaking of which...
Gears Of War Triple Pack, $19 from Amazon. Started playing the original, and I wasn't exactly blown away. Vanquish took the GOW template and did it a thousand times better in every regard. Then again, GOW2 or 3 might illuminate me further on the issue. To their credit, both series refuse to take their subject matter seriously, and deliver hilariously over-the-top space marine insanity. The GOW games seem tailor-made for rainy-day co-op sessions with a buddy, where game quality isn't as important as pal quality.
Skyrim, $40, Amazon. Fine, I caved. You win. Here's a Christmas cookie.
The original Saint's Row, $12, Amazon. Not very good when compared to the sequels, but the soundtrack is pretty righteous. The lack of mid-mission checkpoints is a dealbreaker, though. That's fine for, say, Bayonetta, where any damage you take is your bad. But in something like Saint's Row, where an errant sports car or random fire can inexplicably kill you, I need time insurance. It's fun to see how far the series has evolved in a short time, though. (Well, evolved in terms of gameplay and design... it's actually gone backwards in terms of sensibility and taste, which is not a criticism.)
12 Months Of X-Box Live, $30, Amazon. And you get the code up-front so there's no muss or fuss.
All this stuff should keep me off the streets for months. Ergo, everyone wins!