Now I'm seeing commercials all over the place from GameStop for people to trade in their used video games to GameStop for $15. So I'm thinking to myself, "if they are buying these games for $15, then they must be selling them at a very nice discount." Like many other times in my life, I'm dead wrong. Below is just a short list of video games that I interested in playing and their GameStop new and used prices. 
That afternoon I took a short drive to my local Hollywood Video to rent a couple video games and spend the rest of that afternoon playing. As I'm driving to the store I'm thinking how awesome it will be to play Call of Duty 4 or Orange Box. I'm imagining how great the feeling will be as I pick up Battlefield Bad Company and tear up the online multiplayer. As you can imagine, this trip also ended in severe disappointment. They had absolutely nothing to rent. I mean nothing! The 30yoRoomie and I were debating whether we should rent Nascar 08 (they've already released Nascar 09 which was out of stock), Ghost Recon 2, or Splinter Cell Double Agent. All of these games were originally released 1 or even 2 years ago. Games released within the past 6 months? Forget about it.
We ended up renting Nascar and Splinter Cell and to be fair, we are having a lot of fun with both. Nascar is a surprisingly good game, with some very difficult driving mechanics and races that are very rewarding. Splinter Cell is a very intelligent spy game with some serious difficulty issues if you've never played a Splinter Cell game before.
This is a new found joy of renting for me. Now I get to play games I wouldn't have even touched before, and I don't have to shell out the money that GameStop is asking. So what I plan on doing over the next day or two is go online to a game renting website called GameFly. GameFly works just like NetFlix. For a monthly fee, you can rent any game you want and keep it as long as you like. When you are done, just send it back and they give you another to rent. I'm having a hard time debating if the amount per month ($16 for one game at a time, $22 for two games at a time) is worth it. For right now, it definitely seems like it is, however when Christmas rolls around and I've got a pile of new games to play, maybe not. But I think I'll give it a shot and I'll let you know how I feel about it in a later blog.
So in the immediate future I'm going to start knocking some of those games off of my list. And don't judge me because of the games I play. They all can't be first person shooters. Sometimes you need to play a Lost: Via Domus or a Boom Blox. Sometimes it's ok to rent a crappy game. This way I'll appreciate the better games that much more.
Until next time,
- The 30 Year Old Gamer
2 comments:
you should look at buying games on ebay. 1 month old games are usually 40 dollars and older games are in the 20-30 dollar range. i have never had a problem with the hundred or so games i've bought there.
That's not a bad idea. However, I'm very skeptical about buying games on Ebay. It just seems so unsafe. I could see myself getting a game used as a chewtoy in some kid's basement.
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