Twenty Pound Gamer

All Quiet on The Western Front

2010-04-22T14:26:00.000+01:00

Well we're now a good chunk into April and i'm still yet to purchase a game on any platform, which i'm very happy with. instead i have been spending most time playing Football Manger 2010 as mentioned in the previous post. Currently just finished the 3rd season which was spent at Welling in the Blue Square South league. If you're wondering how i did, well lets just say it didn't quite go to plan. Relegated on the last day of the season, after a promising first half. After christmas was a disaster and we went 20 games without a win. 2 wins and a draw in the last 3 games wasn't enough.

Away from mainstream gaming i've been taking advantage on Apples generosity (well the app makers generosity rearlly) of having ample ammounts of free iphone games. I'm downloading a couple a day, and whilst they don't offer any rearly significant gameplay do offer something fresh every day. Two favourites so far have been Babel Rising & Last Front. Looking on the horrizon and May is looking to be the hardest month yet. Red Dead Redemption is looking like a purchase. Might trade in some games at CEX though to help fund it.

March Madness...Well not rearlly

2010-03-31T09:52:00.000+01:00

Wow it's been a while since the last blog update. Since then not an awful lot has changed. I rented MySims on the Wii which has been played a grand total of once for about an hour and a half. I want to play it more but i keep getting distracted (more on that later). I also recieved MAG which i did buy for £25 but don't worry, it was purchased in January from a friend/fellow Thunderbolt Games writer, it just took him longer than expected to send it me. Once again it's been played once for about an hour, although with the bank holiday weekend looming i'm saving it for then.

Instead most of my free time has been spent on Football Manager 2010. It's a game i got just before Christmas but have barely touched. So one evening pulled it out and decided to play an LLM game and has since taken over my life. LLM is a bit different from how i'd normally play as it trys to be as realistic as possible. Basically you've got to:

Start in the lowest league possible
Must scout all players before signing
Avoid player search like the plague
hire all staff via the job centre
not use tactical or training guides or downloads
and under absolutly no scenario are you to use the editor or download things unless only graphical or from SI themselves.

I know some people think it'll be sad and boring but after one season (of which i was relegated and thus sacked) i'm loving it. If you're interested in finding out more check these forums out: LLM at FM Britain, LLM on SI Forums.

March was also my 24th Birthday, (March 27th to be precise). I didn't get any games but i did recieve quite a bit of money (£110) which put me in an odd position, i didn't want to buy any games with it. I mean there's plenty of great games out there which i would ordianily buy in an instant but when i went to choose one i saw the latest releases all shiny and entising and thought i could rent them and save a fortune. As such i'm thinking of saving this money for PlayStation Move. Unlike some i love innovation in gaming and so both Move and Natal are very intriguing for me. Needless to say that they wil be fairly expensive and so it would be best to put this money aside and save ti for then. Of course there's a lot of great games coming out between now and then so we'll see what happens.

Speaking of money i'm pleased to announce that March has been a complete and utterr success. Bar the rental subscription not a single penny has been spent on gaming. This challange is looking easy after all.

Tango Down

2010-03-07T17:05:00.001Z

The strange thing is that since the start of the challenge I’ve barely spent any time playing. During the first week I spent so much time trying to do some basic design stuff for this blog that I didn’t have any free time and this week I’ve just not felt like gaming. I have played bit though. Mainly trying to get into Operation Flashpoint: DR but it’s just not working. I want to like it, but it’s too tough for me. Maybe if I had time to get into it and ‘be’ the soldier it would be different but I just don’t have the patience for it so I’ll cut my losses and send it Back to boomerang who’ll hopefully replace it with Heavy Rain (Fat chance of that happening as it’s fairly new but I can live I hope).

I’ve also been giving the 360 a sort out, finally managed to get around transferring the data from the old premium to the new elite and I’ve just catching up n some downloading of demo and trials. Got around to playing Toy Soldiers which I was looking forward to last week but after playing it, it’s not what I thought. Plays like a tower defence game using WW1 style toys and you can control some of the units yourself. It’s ok, but I was hoping for a Battlefield esque game. Still it’s not as if I wasted any money on it so that’s ok. I am hearing good things about the Just Cause 2 demo so I’ve lined that up for download. I played the original in fact it was one of the first games I got on the 360. At the time I really liked it, but subsequent play through showed it as a nothing more that ok.

In term of the challenge it’s all going very well, not bought anything yet other than the rental subscription, but seeing people rave on about Heavy Rain, Sega racing and Battlefield Bad Company 2 has been giving me urges but I’m sure I can overcome them especially as they aren’t games I’d ordinarily buy anyway.

March-ing Onto Glory

2010-03-01T17:43:00.001Z

Today is a glorious day. Not only is the sun shining for the first time this year but it’s also the first month of the challenge which means… I’ve got a fresh £20 to play with. All those lovely games I can buy, I’m salivating at the prospect. But no, I must be strong, the more I save now the more I can spend later when it’s going to get really tough. Not that March isn’t a hotbed of titles anyway; just look at some of the games coming out this month:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 05/03/2010

Final Fantasy XIII 09/03/2010

Yakuza 3 12/03/2010

God of War 3 19/03/2010

Just Cause II 26/03/2010

Prison Break: The Conspiracy 26/03/2010

Mafia 2: 26/03/2010

Heck If I was feeing partially stupid I could spend £110 on the God of War Ultimate Edition alone. Madness.

And that’s just the physical releases, god knows what tantalising bits of DLC and digital games are going to be released, I’m already tempted by Toy Soldiers on the 360. A game that sees you playing as a range of WWI based toys either as an individual unit like a FPS or controlling the whole army like a strategy game.

Then again it’s not as if I haven’t already spent some money. Amongst the emails boasting weekly deals and upcoming releases was an email informing me that the subscription payment was successful for Boomerang which kindly informing me that I’ve spent £8 for another month of gaming.

Check back again to see if when I spend any more money. MUST BE STRONG!!!

Sundays Are For Resting

2010-02-28T19:02:00.004Z

If Only.

You see I’ve spent the past few days trying to understand html and failing miserably. God knows how anyone understands it which is why in the past couple of days I’ve achieved precisely nothing... well apart from choosing another standard Blogger template.

Away from my failures I can report success. For a start it is the last day of February and I have not spent a penny on gaming since the start of the challenge. Ok it was only 6 days but it's a milestone nether the less.

I can also inform you that I’ve progressed in Operation Flashpoint: DR. After dying lots and spending far too many hours on it I have finished the first level. I'm also happy to say that it is growing on me, it might not be love, but it's certainly respect and that means it's not being sent back first thing Monday morning.

One thing is for sure. No matter how much time I’ve spent of Operation Flashpoint, it’s a fraction of the amount of time I’ve spent on CountryEx, a game created by thunderbolt head honcho Phil Morton. Ok so I may by bias (especially as I’m top of the leaderboard) but it is an incredibly addictive game. Every day since being invited I signed in first thing, bought some shares and then spent the rest of the day checking back making changes as necessary.

So that was my weekend. Here's looking forward to a new successful month.

Dragons & Witchcraft

2010-02-25T21:17:00.002Z

Came home tonight to find Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising from Boomerang Rentals. It was a game I was going to buy at release, especially as it was one of the titles caught up in the pre Christmas price war so was priced about £25, but due to a heavy release schedule it fell by the wayside. Anyway I managed to play for an hour or so and I’m not sure what to think of it. It’s one of those marmite games and I want to love it, but it’s not happened as yet. I don’t mind it being tactical and slow, but I don’t want to get attacked by a spec on the horizon. Hopefully it’ll win me over, and the Silent Witness-esque theme tune is soothing.

And now for the future, I know that this blog is a bit bland, but hopefully that’ll change over the coming weeks. I’m trying to do my own layout and stuff but in all honesty web design (Or blog design) isn’t really something I’m familiar with so it’ll be a lot of trial and error so please bare with me. As an example of how useless I am I signed up for a site meter which records the number of visits and views your website gets. For the first 2 days it was stuck on zero. Concerned that no one was reading this I went through the email they sent me again and found I had to install something in the HTML code.

On a completely different note just saw the DFS winter sale advert and is it just me or the clip of the couple playing a game using controllers without battery packs or cables. Tis witchcraft I tell ya.

A Man Needs a List

2010-02-24T13:54:00.003Z

And here’s mine:

That is the list of games i've put down to rent. There’s something therapeutic about going through a database of games and ticking off the ones you want. I can’t put my finger on it; maybe it’s reassurance, knowing what’s to come. I do lists quite often, although usually it’s looking at upcoming releases and figuring out which ones to buy and coming to the realisation that from September onwards will be very expensive.

Ok so there are 30+ titles on that list and at 2 games a month it’ll take 15months minimum to work my way through them. Undoubtedly in a few weeks I’ll rearrange the list and half of them will be removed, replaced with newer (and thus better) games.

Speaking of upcoming games thank you to Game Central (the Teletext reviewers) for being brave enough to give 4/10 to Heavy Rain, which is released later this week. It was a game I was looking forward to but now thanks to your review I won’t even give it a second chance[/sarcasm]. Seriously though I’m guessing somebody will be receiving an E-mail from Quantic Dream.

I've also come to the conclusion that it will be silly to give myself the £20 budget this month as there’s only a few days left. So I’ll try not to buy anything for the remainder of the month. Even I should be able to do that.

Getting The Ball Rolling

2010-02-23T11:10:00.001Z

Today is the first real day of this challenge. Yesterday was more mentally preparing (leaving it till the night before, well there's a change), today action is to be taken.

My last post highlighted 2 points which had to be addressed if this was ever going to work; Xbox live and monthly rentals which combined was a large portion of the £20 budget.

Looking at both I don't really want to give either up. Xbox Live is pretty much a necessity. It might not get used every day but it gets used often enough to justify its price. But just because it justifies its price doesn't mean I shouldn't look to get it cheaper. After a bit of search I’ve found a few legit sites which sell them for £26 a saving of £14 a year. That means that the monthly cost of XBLA is £2.17. I've also had a rummage through all the game cases and found a number of free 48hr trials, most of which were scratched off and given to other people (damn my generosity), but there was 1 left so I’ll try to add that later. It might not be much but it's still something.

The biggest consumer of the budget is monthly rentals. I currently pay £13.99 for 2 games at a time, and as many games I want. If the service was used regularly enough it would be a bargain. But alas it gets wasted. I've currently had the same two PSP games sat collecting dust since December, neither of which have been played with since December; Money down the drain. Renting is definitely the way to go, it means I can play the latest games at a fraction of the price, but clearly the cost needs to be reduced so I’ve downgraded my package to one which costs £7.99 for 1 game at a time and a maximum of 2 games per month. Considering I don't complete games that fast it should prove ideal.

Combined that is £10.16 leaving £9.84 for anything else purchases. Looking online there's a decent selection of games available for that price, thing like Mad World on the Wii and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts on the 360 I'm hoping that I can restrain myself from spending it on rubbish just because it's cheap and saving as much as possible.

The Idiot Strikes Again

2010-02-22T21:01:00.001Z

Well just a few short hours into my experiment and my impatient nature has already shown its ugly face.

On the way home from work I was trying to put the conditions of this experiment into stone and came across the realisation that this might not be possible. Well of course it IS possible, after all gaming is a luxury. What I mean is it might not be possible for me. First allow me to tell you the terms I agreed with myself (yes I'm anal like that):

£20 (GBP) a month is budgeted for gaming which covers:

Xbox Live subscription
Xbox Live Marketplace
PlayStation Store
Wii Shop Channel
App Store
Steam, etc, etc
New & Pre-owned games
Rentals

Money not spent can be carried over

Any money from sales of games can be added to the fund

Gifts are exempt

On a side note I do volunteer for a gaming site called Thunderbolt Games, where I am a writer. As part of this I do occasionally get games for free, these are a little perk which might make this experiment a bit easier that it would ordinarily be.

I think you'll all agree that its fair stuff. The problem is that i already have a Xbox live subscription and a monthly rental subscription. The combined total of these is...£17.32 per month. That is £39 for a 12 month Xbox live subscription and 13.99 a month for my rental subscription, needless to say some cost cutting needs to be done. Either that or I'm gaming on £2.68 a month. Maybe I should of thought about the £30 budget a bit more before rushing a head and commiting myself to £20.

The Start of a Journey

2010-02-22T17:42:00.003Z

Hello and welcome to Twenty Pound Gamer.

This blog is about my journey into the wonderful world of being ~~tight~~ sensible with money when it comes to gaming.

The reason I’m doing this is mainly to prove a point to myself that I do have self restraint and that I can go on sites like Amazon, or to shops like GAME and not come away £40 poorer. You see, my problem is that I’m easily influenced and very impatient. It's 9 at night and I pop on a forum and see someone talking about how great Metal Gear Solid 4 is and I’ll want it immediately. The sensible option would be to go online, look for the best price, order it and wait a couple of days for it to come through the post. What do I do? Drive to the 24hr Tesco in town to buy a copy which is probably £5-£10 more expensive and slap it on the debit card along with some snacks I’ve also just picked up on impulse. IDIOT!!!

The start of this year has been no exception, already I’ve spent far too much, mainly due to the replacement of both a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (Damn this generations poor reliability!) but also through the purchase of games like Mass Effect 2 and Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time, and don't even get me started on the amount of money wasted through rubbish on the App Store; god knows how many 59p games I’ve downloaded, played once and then deleted. If my calculations are right the total I’ve spent is over a whopping £550 on gaming, and it's only February.

With that depressing fact in mind I’ve decided to game on a budget. The first decision is what the budget should be. First thoughts are £40, but that seems too easy, it’s one new release every month, hardly seems like a challenge at all. £30 is good. There's not too many new releases you can get for that, but once again it didn't seem like that big of a challenge; just wait a couple of weeks when the price drops and bingo, I’m sure there’s plenty of deals for 2 semi new releases for thirty pounds as well. £20? Perfect. A quick look on the web shows there plenty of games for £20, I can even buy relative new releases like Bayonetta for £17.99.

A Suitably realistic but challenging task. Brilliant.