The Guildmasters

With christmas not far away we are already looking at how we can get the most for our money. For gamers it can be expensive and even harder to know what to get them, this is where we come in.

If you know you want to buy someone a PS3 then you may know that they have knocked $100 off the original price, you probably won’t find the PS3 cheaper than that anywhere as the price is sort of regulated, so whatever shop you look in the price will be the same, but you can still save more money by being aware of package deals or “bundles”.

Bundled package with the PS3 means you pay the same price for the system but you’ll get extra stuff thrown in, usually a game or an extra controller, over the next few days i’ll be scouring every major chain out there to find you the best bundled deals on the latest systems.

I’ll also be recommending a few of the latest game titles which will give value for money in terms of playability, excitement factor, story line and extra’s, so if you know a gamer you want to buy for this christmas but not sure what to get them, this series of upcoming posts should help.

We will also be adding more gaming gift ideas to the merchandise posts so be sure to check those out and if you already have a PS3 or know someone who does then you can always check the latest PS3 accessory post I done a few days ago here.

Tony

Wow there are some real animals playing this game, versus is resident evil 5 add-on to play online, it’s the same as mercenaries but at the same time very different.
It’s another addictive version of play and it really shows that i’m a newbie at it, after a couple of hours I improved a lot and even got one of the 10 trophies available with this add-on.
Anyone wanting to play me in either survivors or slayers my username is Knightofthe9 it’s really great fun, especially if you get a couple of players that are actually playing it properly.
There was a few times I got to play with players who just wanted to take me out and that was a little frustrating, wish i’d had a microphone, or maybe it’s a good job I don’t have one, lol
Come join the fun, it’s really cool.

Tony

I’m more than a little annoyed about the prices i’ve seen for add-ons that I would like to have but simply can’t afford.
I really enjoyed playing fallout 3 and I was looking over at the playstation store this morning and noticed they had 4 add-ons for fallout 3, awesome I thought, trouble is each one was a staggering $9.99, if you take in to account the game was $60 when it first came out, that now adds up to over $100 if you want everything. $100 per game I think is way too high.

This doesn’t apply to all games, I was also checking out the Resident Evil 5 add-on for playing slayers, which is online only I believe and that was only $4.99
Obviously the price comes down over time but you really don’t want to wait a year or more to buy an add-on, especially on a really cool game.

Needless to say I won’t be purchasing the add-ons for fallout 3 which is a shame, I really wanted to play those, but at $4.99 I may get the RE5 add-on.

What’s your take on pricey add-ons? I’ve heard people griping about $1.99 add-ons so I definitely think $9.99 is too high.

I think at $60 average per new game the companies have got more than their fair share of profits within that price range, when I see a $9.99 add-on that’s more along the lines of greed, especially when there are 4 of them for just one game, wouldn’t be so bad if it was $9.99 for all four but i’d still have a problem with that.

Come on Sony listen to your fans, get together with the game developers and give us some decent pricing on add-ons if you really must charge anything for them.

Tony

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, so we’ve got some of the most advanced gaming systems you could ever expect to see, hard drives where memory is no obstacle now. Games which play like movies, consoles that can even play movies, so what is going to be the next big thing in the gaming world?

Personally I think with games with such a high price tag on them now and with us in the middle of a recession and so many out of work the gaming industry is going to have to start thinking of ways to keep those sales up or slash prices, which they don’t particularly like to do. With game rentals an option sales can only go down, unless you give the consumer a reason to keep paying $60 per game.

One way to do this would be to start giving people a chance at making some money playing games, I really don’t know why it isn’t already a big thing, it’s been done before with great success.

If you bring an average game onto the market with only a fair rating, add $10,000 prize money to the first person to solve it then you see sales start to treble and quadruple for an otherwise unpopular game.
It was done back in the 80’s when a type of game computer keyboard called the commodore 64 was extremely popular, the game was called Eureka and it was an adventure game, the first person to put the pieces together and solve the adventure and phoned the telephone number and won the money, turned out it was a 15yr old from the United Kingdom and actually won the 25,000 pounds ( uk sterling ), that’s around $50,000 give or take a few hundred.

Ok it’s a gimmick of sorts but it creates sales, and also gives gamers an extra reason for buying the game, even if they wouldn’t normally have bought it.

I do believe that this will eventually happen, it’s just who starts it off, the rest will follow suit. Let’s face it playing Resident Evil 5 was amazing, imaging how much better it would have been if there was 10K prize money to fight for, and I wouldn’t feel so guilty about spending so many hours playing my fave game 🙂

What do you think will be the next big thing in gaming?

Tony

Had a chance to play the demo for Brutal Legend today, this is my biggest surprise as far as games go this year, it really didn’t sound like my kind of game but it turned out to be a really fun game.
If you don’t buy this one at least rent it, the comments are really funny, the demo got completed in about 20 minutes but we couldn’t stop laughing, cool graphics and easy to use buttons make it a really fun game to play. I’ll write a review on it once I play the whole game but I don’t want to give anything away here.

If your looking for decent boss battles which seem to last forever then Devil May Cry 4 is right up your street, awesome graphics too, great cut scenes, if you liked the previous Devil May Cry’s you’ll love this one.

I’ve also been playing Infamous today for a while and this one is a keeper, another really fun game to play and very original, main story mode with side quests is going to make this one last many hours, I spent so much time messing around with my awesome powers and climbing stuff I never even finished the quest in the demo, it was a lot of fun.

Also watched the trailer for borderlands, this looks like another great game, tons of weapons, characters and looks like it’s going to be one of those games which is very open ended like fallout 3, talking of which i’ll be getting the add-ons for fallout 3 any day now.

Worse game played was Batman, the graphics were pretty awesome as were the cut scenes, I didn’t like the fighting much as the moves didn’t seem to connect with the enemy, it was like the enemy was reacting to the wind of my kicks or punches, and you can’t hit anyone else but enemies, not even the guards which was wierd, there seems like there will be loads of stuff to do in this game, just in the demo I unlocked some stuff so i’d recommend this one as a rental only, great looking game but some disappointments along the way.

Tony

It seems we have a lot to choose from over the next couple of months, lots of new games coming in time for christmas so there should be a game for everyone.

Some of the games i’ll be reviewing over the next few days will be Brutal Legend ( release date oct 13th ), Borderlands ( release date oct 20th ), Assassins Creed 2 ( release date nov 17th ), Dragon Age: Origins ( release date nov 19th ), The Saboteur ( release date dec 8th ) and quite few more.

I’ll get you as much info on these new games which should give you an idea of what to start spending your christmas money on.

If you want me to give you some info or review a particular game just drop a post in here and i’ll see what I can do, you can pre-order most “coming soon” titles from amazon or check out my review on Gamefly and rent them first so you don’t waste money.

Tony