The Game Plan: September

I've decided to go about my Fall gaming schedule a little differently this year and actually try to map it out a bit. Here is the plan for September, feel free to add your own!

Week Of: September 1st

STALKER CLEAR SKY (PC) BUY $39.99

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Mercenaries 2 (360) RENT

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September 8th

Spore (PC) BUY $49.99

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NHL 2009 (360) BUY $59.99

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September 15th

Dragon Quest IV (DS) BUY $39.99

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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (360) RENT

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Witcher Enhanced (PC) Free Download

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Crysis Warhead (PC) BUY $29.99

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September 22nd

Brothers In Arms: Hells Highway (PC) BUY $49.99

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September 29th

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (360) RENT - This comes out at the top of the month, but I'll rent it here.

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Total: $299.93 Plus Tax. This includes the $29.99 flat rental fee I'll be giving Blockbuster to rent one game at a time for the month.

Hmmmm ... that's a lot. Maybe I'll skip hockey for a bit.

Im hoping I can get away easy this time. October with its Fallouts and all will be uglier.

Spore
Warhammer Online

Done

Edit: Actually Im thinking of re-subscribing to Gamefly for the fall-winter so I can play more, like that Jedi game.

Hum.....

I think the only one on that list is Crysis: Warhead for me and that is a toss up.

Gears of War 2 - whatever.

That's it.

I refuse to do my list like that. It'll just reveal how much I plan on spending on video games over the next three months and it'll just upset me too much and lead to several nights of me drinking Canadian Club and wondering what I'm doing with my life.

Anyways, in addition to Crysis: Warhead, The Witcher (I will be re-purchasing the new version), STALKER and Spore, I certainly plan on buying Wipeout HD and King's Bounty this upcoming month well, and I'm thinking of picking up Pure.

My definite buys for the rest of the year at the moment are STALKER: Clear Sky and Fallout 3. (The Witcher: Enhanced Edition too, but that's a free download for me.)

I will probably pick up Spore and Far Cry 2 as well but may hold off on those two for a bit.

IM Conversation:

Demi: how do you find the time to play $300 worth of games? Jesus.

Certis: I never said I'd have time.

Demi: so why buy them now?

*long pause*

Certis: Shut your filthy mouth.

Demiurge wrote:

IM Conversation:

Demi: how do you find the time to play $300 worth of games? Jesus.

Certis: I never said I'd have time.

Demi: so why buy them now?

*long pause*

Certis: Shut your filthy mouth.

Honestly, I'm planning on picking up the single-player titles for or shortly after Christmas.

I think that might even include Fallout, though that thought does make me twitch something awful.

I plan on getting all of those PC games to. My rule of thumb is to not buy another game until I finished the one I just bought.

If I don't I get some serious buyers remorse. Thank god PC games are always $50 and below.

I"m trying to stick to the one a month plan:
Sept: Spore
Oct: Fallout 3
Nov: Probably Gears 2; but may be Left 4 Dead, Rock Band 2 or the WoW Expansion.

If I deviate from this, I'll start up Gamefly again to stem the flow of money raining from my bank account.

It's a tough time to be on a budget.

TempestBlayze wrote:

My rule of thumb is to not buy another game until I finished the one I just bought.

That was my rule too. Several times. I broke it every single time.

I pre-order every "must buy" title in August, and pay them off in full. This ensures I'm not overspending on money I don't have during the holidays. I'm already exceeding what I spent last year during the holidays on games. $670. And that's not including any of my "maybe" titles, and several digital download releases I can't manually pre-order yet.

I think gamefly is the only way I'm going to make it through the holiday season while remaining financially solvent.

kuddles wrote:
TempestBlayze wrote:

My rule of thumb is to not buy another game until I finished the one I just bought.

That was my rule too. Several times. I broke it every single time.

I pre-order every "must buy" title in August, and pay them off in full. This ensures I'm not overspending on money I don't have during the holidays. I'm already exceeding what I spent last year during the holidays on games. $670. And that's not including any of my "maybe" titles, and several digital download releases I can't manually pre-order yet.

I'm so glad someone else does this now I don't feel as guilty, haha. I pre-ordered all my must-buy's already and it came to around $730 (11 titles including the already shipped too human).

I'm sure somewhere along the line I'll pick up other stuff as well.

Gaming is such a great habit to have once you have a job.

Someone wrote an article or a post or something somewhere about video game piles of shame and basically traced the origin of this phenomenon back to childhood when we all had to make life or death decisions about which games we wanted to ask for for christmas or birthdays or what have you.

I know I spent many a fevered night scanning the pages of my nintendo power trying to figure out what I really really needed to have, lol.

I'm with Certis and I love the plan. I have a sheet printed out with all relase dates I'm interested in accross all platforms broken down by month. For Sept I have:

Pre-Ordered
Spore (PC)
Rock Band 2 (360)
Star Wars: Force Unleashed (360)

Buy Eventually
Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise (360)
Witcher Enhanced (360)

Rent
NHL 09 (360)
Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise (ds)
Brother's in Arms: Hell's Highway (360)
Mercanaries 2 (360)

Certis wrote:

Here is the plan for September...

It looks like you're missed Rock Band 2, which means I'll be spending even more money over the next month... I hate you for making me aware of it.

Rock Band 2 is one of the outliers for me. I'm interested, but I just don't think we'd play it enough to justify buying the whole kit. We held off on the original version, we may survive the bite on this one too.

wordsmythe wrote:
Demiurge wrote:

IM Conversation:

Demi: how do you find the time to play $300 worth of games? Jesus.

Certis: I never said I'd have time.

Demi: so why buy them now?

*long pause*

Certis: Shut your filthy mouth.

Honestly, I'm planning on picking up the single-player titles for or shortly after Christmas.

I think that might even include Fallout, though that thought does make me twitch something awful.

Wow, GWJ wisdom that isn't just filthy enabling. I'd love to follow the "support the developers who make good games" model of purchasing, understanding that day one purchases do them more good than a few months down the line. However, we are still moving into a new house w/ new appliances and furniture. I'm also facing having to sell my beloved old BMW motorcycle at a significant loss in order to buy something that I can ride without trucking it to the mechanic first. I'm hemorrhaging capital out several severed arteries at once.

Christ, first I move to the suburbs, now I'm considering my budget priorities before new games and hardware upgrades. After almost 40 years of delightful arrested development I may be growing up. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

If this is just what you have planned for September, I almost wonder how much you will spend on games from now till January.

I also want to know where you will get all this time to play and beat all of them too.

I'm so incredibly psyched to play a new STALKER game and a new Crysis game back to back. I'm worried that Spore may monopolize all of my gaming time and I won't get to those until next year, though. Oh well, at least I have a contingency if Spore turns out to suck.

Fallout 3 and Spore are the only two that I'm looking at buying right away. There are quite a few games in my own stack that i need to finish off and once I do, I have a feeling they will be traded in for something that has been out for a while. Fallout and Spore are the only two that I think I will have problems waiting til the price drops. I will be renting Mercs 2 and Force unleashed for sure though.

Mercenaries 2... yep, just one game.

Rock Band 2 is one of the outliers for me. I'm interested, but I just don't think we'd play it enough to justify buying the whole kit.

I've seen you play drums. This is probably for the best.

It'll be such a shame when I lose my job next month.

Demiurge wrote:

IM Conversation:

Demi: how do you find the time to play $300 worth of games? Jesus.

Certis: I never said I'd have time.

Demi: so why buy them now?

*long pause*

Certis: Shut your filthy mouth.

I'm with Certis... though Force Unleashed? Really? I mean, he's wearing an S&M suit in that screenshot! The pillow is not enough!

Last week of August, September, October, November... looks like an impending drunken haze of gaming gluttony. An orgy of game purchasing satisfaction.

I know I want the following:
Mercenaries 2 (360)
Saints Row 2 (360)
Fable 2 (360)
Warriors Orochi 2 (360: meh, so shoot me. It was a 29.99 pre-order)
Gears of War 2 (360) see a trend here with the 2's) and the damn plastic lancer from hell temptation
Left 4 Dead (360)
Spore (PC)
Fallout 3 (format undecided...ARGH!)

I'm doomed.

My birthday was a bit earlier in the month and if folks asked what I'd like, I humbly requested a monetary donation towards the Fall Gaming Fund. When I explained that everything is coming out August - November, someone said, "oh good, you'll have ideas for the holidays." Depressingly, I answered "You don't know me then... I have no willpower to wait till December."

Jeez, I'm still finishing games that came out in last years' drunken orgy of gaming releases....

TempestBlayze wrote:

My rule of thumb is to not buy another game until I finished the one I just bought.

I've recently adopted this tactic, but with the added twist that I have to wait two months from the time of purchase of the last game in addition to finishing the game-- so if I buy a game that I kill off in a weekend I have to either replay it or play old games from my library until the alotted 60 days is up.

(Aside: Hey, I just realized that means my gaming habit will cost a dollar a day. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee, but since I don't drink coffee there's no savings to be had by quitting. /Aside)

Yes, I know I could rent but... I don't want to. I have no rational justification-- I just prefer to own the games I play. That way if the game manages to really piss me off I can feel free to take it down to the rifle range and shoot all the bad-guys in the game at once.

The only exception for me is demos. The existence of PSN demos has saved me lots of coin because it allowed me to find out that I hate the gameplay of Drake's Fortune without forking over any money at all for the privilege of finding that out.

For the most part, the games I feel a really strong urge to get on release are the multiplayer ones. Games like that, it can be "get in early before the GWJ community moves on" kind of deal. And then, most multiplayer games don't appeal to me. The rest can wait.

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TempestBlayze wrote:

I plan on getting all of those PC games to. My rule of thumb is to not buy another game until I finished the one I just bought.

So did you finish TF2 yet? I liked the boss at the end.

No, wait, that was my wife telling me to quit being an idiot and come to bed...

Oso wrote:

I move to the suburbs

I've found your problem.