Christmas trade in list. Help wanted! |
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| BY Andrew Woods Oct. 5th, 2008 | More on: |
It’s that time of year again, Santa Claus will soon be coming to town. It comes round so quick these days. Apparently this is because of my age, as you get older a year represents a much smaller percentage of your life, therefore it is less significant, therefore it flies by quicker. Something like that anyway…but I digress (didn’t take long - Ed). With the GimmeGimme Season almost upon us the big guns are being rolled out in the time honoured squabble for our money and as usual this put me in a bit of a quandry…what to buy?
Like most people, funds are very limited so I am very limited as to what I can buy. Now I think LittleBigPlanet is a no-brainer, my son James wants Force Unleashed, and I will probably get Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (like Madden but with real football) but then I get stuck. I reckon I can stretch to one more game, but I have no idea which one to go for.
I could go for Call of Duty: World at War but will that be a different enough departure from COD4 to warrant the cash outlay? Of course everybody else in the whole world will buy it so within the first 24 hours the COD4 servers will be like ghost towns, thus rendering COD4 entirely obsolete. I could go for BioShock, but it only lasts about 12 hours and has no multiplayer functionality at all, so very little replay value, it’s also a year old even though it’s only just out for PS3. Although I am a big fan of the SOCOM series this latest iteration does not look that great from what I have seen so far. I could go for MotorStorm Pacific Rift. I know they have made a lot of changes but surely this is just more of the same. MotorStorm was a great launch title but I can’t remember the last time I took it down from the shelf and blew the dust off. This is proving to be very difficult and I haven’t even considered the likes of Far Cry 2, Quantum of Solace, Fallout 3, Resistance 2, Tomb Raider: Underworld or Fracture (I kinda liked the demo). I suppose I could even wait until next year and get Gran Turismo 5, Killzone 2 or God of War III (except that it won’t be out for at least a year).
On the other side of this coin is the fact that in order to fund this gaming splurge I am gonna have to do a few trade-ins. Again I am wracked with indecision due to irrational sentimentality about certain titles. I am thinking of trading in three from the following four titles:- GTA4, MotorStorm, Resistance: Fall of Man, and The Orange Box.
Here’s my thinking so far. GTA4, once the story mode was completed it was too similar to previous titles to excite me further. Online could be great but isn’t as I seem to spend all my time in the lobby while people fanny about, bah. MotorStorm, as I said earlier, great launch title but I have played it to death, and again the online mode doesn’t cut it because there is a bad lobby system. Resistance, really good, has stood up well but has now been utterly replaced by COD4. The Orange Box, the Half-Life games were amazing but have zero replay value, ditto Portal, and I hear that Team Fortress 2 is really great but from where I am sitting getting into a game without multiple time-outs and fails is impossible. This is the only title in my list that I feel I have not had value for money, which is ridiculous as I got 5 games for the price of one, it’s just that TF2 was almost broken.
So there you have it. I NEED your help to decide which three games I should trade in and which one I should buy with the loot. I can’t make these decisions on my own, so to paraphrase a certain Princess…
Help me readers, you’re my only hope.
October 5th, 2008
at 9:20 am
Tomb Raider: Underworld and Far Cry 2 are absolute musts imo. But you seem to have completely forgotten Prince of Persia? If I had to get just one game this year, it’d be neck and neck between the Prince and Lara.
As for the games to get rid of, no point in keeping games you don’t play anymore. Especially Motorstorm and Resistance, once the sequels arrive, out hardly anyone will care abuot the originals anymore.
October 5th, 2008
at 9:29 am
Thanks for the input Rain. Resistance and Motorstorm are gonna go, but which one out of GTA4 and Orange Box? Should I give Team Fortress another chance?
BTW my PSN name is WOODSYMAN, maybe we can hook up online, in a purely platonic sense of course ;-)
October 5th, 2008
at 9:40 am
I’ve been neglecting my PS3 in a big way, even haven’t picked up MGS4 or Uncharted yet, which are the only games I really want that are available for it. So I don’t even have any online games to play on the PS3, just Heavenly Sword (gotta play it a third time, loved it) and Future Tools of Destruction (which I STILL haven’t finished).
And I’d say get rid of GTA IV, might want to play all the Half-Life games before ep.3 comes out.
October 5th, 2008
at 9:54 am
I’d say Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2. You just know Fallout will steal your life away for a few weeks. In a good way, obviously. And Far Cry looks likes it has legs, what with the map editor, the multiplayer and the replayability of the main game. Those are the pick of the bunch for me. Oh and Resistance 2! The design is ultra boring but the gameplay looks great. Film tie-ins, sequels by the back up developers, dying female icons - not much of the other lot grabs my fancy.
Ok, so that’s 3 and you noly wanted 1. It IS difficult again this year isn’t it?
You could always tell James that Christmas is cancelled. I’m sure he’d understand.
October 5th, 2008
at 11:20 am
Get Fifa 09 as your football game. Trust me, Fifa 09 has its got better graphics, online and gameplay this year. I don’t know if you have played the recent demos of Fifa or PES on Marketplace or PSN, but this is coming from someone who loved PES5 (and even 6). I strongly urge you to buy Fifa 09, even if you are getting PES 2009. Surely the two can coexist. But seriously, Fifa has tons of awesome modes for online and offline and you can even change the speed to make it play like PES if you want!
Get Fifa 09…..seriously, its a 29.99 at tesco. Or 34.99 at blockbuster with some free stuff with it (if you are in the UK that is).
October 5th, 2008
at 12:12 pm
I’d go with Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3..if you don’t want to see another human for a few months (I’ve already cleared November out). I’d wait on COD5, atleast until some reviews trickle out and if the online community builds up.
October 5th, 2008
at 3:11 pm
I would also go with FarCry 2 and maybe even pick a couple of sequels…i.e. get pacific rift after trading in the original Motorstorm. I wouldn’t bother with COD5 personally…too much of the same from Treyarch and didn’t we all like COD4 because it was ‘Modern Warfare’. I don’t wanna go back to world war 2 again hehe.