I just recently finished playing the Blue Toad Mystery Files that I purchased on PSN for around $8.
I wrote a review for it. I am going to try and start writing more reviews like I use to, I've just been waiting to finish some of my journalism classes so I can really get a grasp of how to write. I guess.
Also I started watching that show Lie To Me and it's really good.
Anyway, here's my review.
The whole "50 percent" deal Gamestop is having now with trade-ins really helped me out. Normally I am use to trading in a bucket full of games and getting around 12 cents worth of store credit. I only turned in about seven games and got $100 in credit. Pretty good deal, opposed to normally leaving Gamestop feeling ripped off. I got Final Fantasy and Darksiders. Hopfully the new Final Fantasy will be better than the last one. That wasn't a real home run.
I wish I had more time to play video games. I am always doing college stuff and never seem to be able to sit down and enjoy a video game. This, also, has made me feel disconnected with the game community and game news community. I feel so unaware of everything. I miss my games. I miss free time.
Just finished Wolfenstein. Wasn't all that great. I haven't played any of the other Wolfenstein games and this one seems to be a continuation of the series. Just a regular FPS with some watered-down graphics, clunky movements, and zero on-line community. I don't really even feel like writing a review for it, so I wont. Beat it in two days, but wasn't too captivating. It was like a movie on a plane; just something to do.
Back to school. Now I have no time for anything. So long Gamespot, we will only meet on brief occasions throughout the year. Don't forget to write. I will return soon.
So for the next couple of days, possible weeks, I will be out of town. In a far away land without any computers or anything. This is somewhat a bummer since I was just getting back into my grove of playing video games again. I've been playing the new Battlefield game a lot and recently picked up the newest Dynsasty Warriors. I will eventually have a review for Battlefield, but absolutely refuse to review Dynasty Warriors. I am also going to try and beat Valkyria Chronicles while I am away, since there is going to be a sequel.
I recently got a subscription to GameFly(GF), assuming it was a wise decision. However, I have since noticed that the time in which I get games is pretty slow and horrible. GF charges about 16 or 17 dollars, lowest, as it's minimum package deal, renting up to one game at a time for however long you want. To rent a game at Blockbuster is about 8 dollars, with tax. So in a sense, with GF you are paying for two rentals at Blockbuster for a subscription of one game out as long as you want as many different games as you want. But only one. No late fees, but last time I checked Blobkbuster doesn't have late fees either. Unless, of course, you keep it for an irrational amount of time. GF doesn't have late fees. But anyone who would keep a game longer than a month, doesn't seem to bright considering you're basically renting it out for 17 dollars.
But I digress.
GF warns you about them having a shipping period of around 2-4 days. Two day minimum. It also takes a considerate amount of time to return the game, and since GF doesn't ship you your next desired game until it gets the game you currently have out, that's about another 2-4 for them to acquire it. There's a problem here too. GF doesn't send your next game rental from your queue immediately. Instead it has to check the availability of all the games in your queue. Some have high availability, some medium, and some low. The fact of the matter is that it is going to take time for them to uae the process of elimination to find out which games are available for you to get, and which ones are not. This is also going to take time.
So let's go on a wild guess and say that the whole process of you getting your game selected for them to send you will take about 2 days. Now that we have all the numbers down, lets create a scenario. Assuming you get billed on the first of the month, proceeded by a followup billing that will occur on the first of the next month. So you immediately get charged 16 dollars for your one game rental subscription. You pick out your game and wait. Now it's going to take about 2 days for GF to check the game availability. It is now the 3rd of the month and you finally get a e-mail/SMS from GF telling you that your game has been shipped. Now that your game is on the way, you have to actually wait for it to get to you. Keeping in mind that there are only 4 GF locations in the entire country, depending on where you live depends on how fast you get your game.
Going into information overload, let get some facts. There are 4 GF in the whole country. There are 52 states in the entire country, so for every 13 states there is only 1 GF that can distribute games. Laying this out in a graph almost, imagine the US cut up into 4 different sections, each consisting of 13 states. Since the GF locations are sprawled west to east, lets say that this grid is set up going west to east. Still with me? Now, the US is about 3,000 miles stemming west to east, so now in each one of those sections containing 13 states, they are about 230 miles wide. So 1 GF in the country has to cater to about 13 states and over 230 miles wide. This is a very broad example but it gets my point across. Moral of the story; that's a lot of ground to cover for one store.
To be fair, I am going to say that you will have to wait about 3 days for you game to be shipped to you. So it is now the 6th of the month and you finally have your game. On an average, a gamer normally spends about 3-4 days of game play on a game. Lets say this game is an easy game, so it only took you 3 days to beat. Now this is not taking into account extra playability, if the game actually does take longer to beat, or if it's an RPG. Oh, woe is you if it's an RPG. This is based on a fact that you play a game and beat it and are done. No on-line fun, no extra trophies/achievements, nothing. So it is now the 9th of the month and you have beaten the game. You ship it back to GF and they do not receive it for another 2 days. You get an e-mail on the 11th saying that they got your game. Now you must wait, roughly averaged, about 5 days to have the game approved and back to you on time. More than half the month has gone by and you finally have your second game from your subscription that you pay 16-17 dollars for a month.
In all honesty, I like what GF is doing. Sometimes Blockbuster doesn't always have the best games in stock, or availability, and most of the time they are expensive. Now I know GF is suppose to take the place of gamers who don't have enough money to buy games, but if you're like me, you like to play a lot of games when they come out. I don't have money to buy games that come out frequently. I want to play them to see if they are good or not. I'm not going to spend 50 dollars on Transformers to find out I don't like it. It's not worth it. But also the amount of money GF is charging versus their service doesn't seem to reach an equilibrium. The scenario I set up was bare minimum. Assuming that you live generally close to a GF (not counting Hawaii or Alaska) and that you get the lowest subscription as well as play games for just 3 days and set them down. I didn't take into account a lot of factors. Especially weekends, when mail doesn't run. Since there are 8 days of the month, not counting holidays, when mail does not run, your month goes from 30 days to 22. This in cooperation with all the days you have to wait for your game to be sent, them to get your game, and you to actually play, may not seem worth it to some people.
Everything I am stating is based off of experience. I have been using GF and these are my results. Sure if you live in Austin, Texas you may not have these problems, but not everyone lives close to a GF station. I sent my GF game in last Thursday and have still yet to get a text saying that GF has gotten my game in the mail. It even says that I still have it out on my account status. It's times like these, where I am waiting for my game to get to GF just so I can wait more days for a new game to be shipped, when I question whether or not I am getting out, what I'm putting in.
So I have somewhat played all the new games out for the PS3 so far. So I was wondering if anyone could give me any advice on maybe a really fun game to play on the PSN or perhaps a fun free game to play on the computer, I have a Mac. I am just bored as of now and figured there has to be something out there that's good to play.
Oh and I just beat the recent Harry Potter game and wrote a review for it. Needless to say, it was pretty bad.
I know it's very late for this, but I just now beat it.
so I had to
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