How Much is Alan Wake Worth?

[Outright Villainy]

To be honest I love a good time sink. I tend to really get absorbed in games, so if I'm playing and I finish it in two sittings, I'm going to feel a little cheated, or at least not as fulfilled as I can be. Games like Fallout 3, Half life 2, any Zelda or Mario game, all great lengthy, well paced games. 10 hours is simply too short for me to spend so much money on full price. Then again I'm a dirt poor student, so value for money is something I thrive on.

Edit: oh to guess the games, I'll go with super mario bros (which has been on about a bajillion consoles) and seeing as you said one was updated I'll guess a street fighter game.

 

[Paco_the_Insane]

My guess is Peggle and Tetris. Tetris has been on every system ever, and Peggle is on PC, iPhone, XBLA, and DS.

I have a few games that I've bought and only played once or twice. I tried to play Oblivion twice, and I just got bored and stopped. Same thing with Gears of War. Also, when I got my PS2, it was a few years after it came out, so I got a stack of like 10 games for around 80 bucks, and I played a few games for a really long time (timesplitters 2) , and a few for almost none (splinter cell). I don't think it matters so much about how much you pay for a specific game, as long as you have fun with the total of your games. Sure, maybe you spend more time with one than another, but it might just be worth playing one for the experience of having played it.

 

[Susan Arendt]

I've actually only ever bought one version of Tetris - the original Gameboy version. You're close with Peggle, as I do have it on PC, DS, and XBLA, but that's only three.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

I would love to purchase and play Alan Wake, as it sounds quite entertaining. Sadly, the powers that be decided they did not need my demographic's business when they made it a console exclusive, so barring an eventual PC release, I'll be ignoring it forever.

 

[runedeadthA]

Either Diablo, Starcraft or warcraft *sigh* I've bought each of those games At least twice each...

Bought Diablo 2, left it in the wrong city. Bought starcraft, lost it. BOught warcraft 3 enjoyed it a ton, then had it stolen. I bought the battlechests for each one

Oh and its $100 for a AA game here in NZ SO its like 8/9 $'s an hour... Four months after the rest of the world fo course.

 

[ben---neb]

I agree with Susan: I paid £3 for Bioshock and felt ripped off by it. I paid £10 for Call of Duty 4 and I'm not entirely sure if that was money well spent.

I paid £5ish for Team Fortress 2 (part of Orange Box) and I've had 300+ hours of enjoyment from it. Now that's value for money.

I'm going to guess Plants vs Zombies or Bejeweled.

 

[Jared]

I will admit the length of Alan Wake is a little annoying...after all the time put into it I expected more...

 

[PHOENIXRIDER57]

I will, of course, reveal the two games eventually. But I'd like to hear some other guesses first.

Soul Caliber and Sonic?

All I got to say is: thank God for renting games. If I hear a game's campaign is only a few hours long, I'll go rent it for less than ten bucks. I'm sure I can get through a twelve hour game within a five day rental period. It makes having fun a lot cheaper.

 

[Galad]

Tell the story well enough, and make the gameplay fun enough and you can revisit a linear single-player game plenty of times thus turning the 12 hours into 120 or even more. Case in point - Max Payne 1 and/or 2 (at least for those of us that enjoyed it as much).

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

My guess for the two games would be:

1) A SNES-era Final Fantasy game (probably 4 or 6).
SNES, PSX, GBA, NDS... those games have been released a lot of times, both individually and as a part of collections.

2) An indie game (hooray for extreme vagueness!).
Because those are the only games I'd consider spending more money on than necessary.

 

[GoldenRaz]

Firstly, the obligatory guesses: Soul Calibur 2 and umm...I dunno, Mega Man?

Secondly, the article handles a question that I find quite interesting: how does one put different games' values in a scale? I kinda have this problem whenever someone asks me whether or not 'Game X' is worthy to get or not. I find that in most cases, there are simply too many factors defining what one find "fun" to give a simple answer.

An example would be when my older cousin - who so far has only bought some "UFC"-fighting game and NHL 09 for his 360 - asked me if Assassin's Creed 2 was any fun. I'd say that yes, it most certainly is, but he found the intro to be quite uninteresting due to the emphasis on narrative over gameplay. And while it does open up later in the game, it keeps being a quite story-driven game, and I couldn't with unwavering certainty tell him that it would 'get better'. All I could say to him was that it does get more 'free' later, but it'll never get to the point where you would just go crazy and stab people at random while walking down the street, trying to avoid the guards.

Simply put, since I didn't know what he considers 'fun', I couldn't give him a straight-forward answer on whether or not he should get it.
I guess that must be the hardest part in writing a professional review; giving proper advise on a game's value in just a few words.

 

[pneuma08]

I can't imagine what game's you've bought 4 times. That's excessive.

Yeah, hard to argue with that, really. In the one game's case, it makes a certain amount of sense because each version was somewhat different. In the other game's case....I was being at least somewhat loony.

Each version is somewhat different, eh? So that's 4 "slightly different" versions of a game.

My guess would be Ocarina of Time, since that was remade a few different times. I'll take a second guess and say Resident Evil 4, which has a Gamecube, Wii, and PS2 versions, all sightly different. Then I'll take a stab in the dark and say Little Big Planet.

 

[SaintWaldo]

I will, of course, reveal the two games eventually. But I'd like to hear some other guesses first.

Persona and Animal Crossing ( and special sneaking in at teh last second with edit button guess: Disgaea 1!!!!)

In the spirit of personal disclosure, I've purchased Wizardy 1: 3x, MGS: 3, FFVII: 4x, FF Tactics: 3x, Disgaea 1 3x, Colonization and Pirates: 3x

And if they'd make it, I'd buy both X-Wing and TIE-Fighter (NOT XvT tho), including mission packs, about 5 more times if it would convince GOG or Steam to license and DOSBox it up.

 

[Fearzone]

Mass Effect 2 and Tempest?

 

[PayneTrayne]

I always find it odd that people get a bit annoyed at spending 6 bucks on an hour of video game, but have no problem paying 10 (that's how expensive movies are where I live) for movies.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

It's sad really. In school, I never had to bother studying, so I would only spend money on games that had the potential for hundreds of hours of gameplay. That quickly evolved into a love of games with that quality, like huge RPG's. Now I don't have nearly as much time, and yet I still buy those games and just never get around to finishing them. Ever.

 

[Sennz0r]

I'm getting Alan Wake because it looks like a throw back to "good" horror, not "jump out and shock you" horror. Don't care how short or long it is.

I just got back from playing Alan Wake (If I'm supposed to believe the people here I'm guessing I'm halfway through) and if you're interested in knowing before you buy, it's not at all that horror-like to me, to be honest. Sure there's suspense and the game keeps you on your toes but I never really got scared to go on, which has happened to me numerous times with other horror games.
That may have to do with the Normal difficulty setting I'm playing it on right now. Thinking next play through I'll crank it up two notches (Nightmare), that oughta get me tense.

Anyway the story's great, I do recommend you play it, even if it's more thriller than horror.

 

[Weaver]

I will, of course, reveal the two games eventually. But I'd like to hear some other guesses first.

I'm guessing it's an old game that's been re-released several times...

Super Mario 3?
It's been re-released about a million times so it's possible.

 

[Pyotr Romanov]

I'm getting Alan Wake because it looks like a throw back to "good" horror, not "jump out and shock you" horror. Don't care how short or long it is.

Have you played Penumbra? I just finished it, and it's seriously great. You can get it for whatever you want to pay from the Humble Indie Bundle [http://www.wolfire.com/humble]

Oh and, Plants vs. Zombies is my only guess.

 

[ciancon]

I've bought Crash Team Racing 3 times. First time i played and loved it. Then it got scratched so a couple of years later i got another. Then that got scratched. And now i have it on the PSN!
If i had to guess at another game i'd say Ape Escape.