What was your worst buy this year? (and best non-buy)

You define your worst buy. It could be the worst game, the game you didn't play or whatever else you determine.


SUCKER! (Worst Buys):

1. Diablo III - Someone on another message board put it this way: "It's a great example of what happens when a company makes a product that primarily benefits them, rather thancustomers. What's fun about a real money auction house? What actual gaming improvement occurs? The answer isn't just none, it's a bunch of negative fun." I entirely agree. I got maybe 10 hours of real gameplay for my $60.

2. Distant Worlds - Screw you, Brian Rubin. ;) Actually, I love the game. It's a great 4X space simulator with incredible depth and options. I'm not sure how the damn thing works, but it's a great game. Of course, I bought it and all the expansions at full friggin' price becuase Rubin was pushing it and Matrix doesn't discount. Two weeks later it was $20 cheaper and now it's $40 cheaper. Meanwhile, I haven't had time to really get into it all that much so it's a $90 virtual paperweight. I've got to get into this one...someday.


YEAH, I'M TEH NEO BITCH!:

1. SWTOR - Yeah, I know technically this was released at the end of December last year. So what? I was so gung-ho about this game...until I managed to get into the beta. What I found was a plodding MMO with mediocre graphics, small zones and utterly derivative gameplay. When I tried to post about it, I was soundly criticized for doing so. Glad I dodged this bullet.

2. King Arthur II - The concept really appeals to me - combine TW and some RPG/Fantasy elements. But the first one didn't grab me, so I waited on the 2nd. Glad I did.

Crusader Kings 2: I bought this during the steam summer sale, tried to play it but was far too intimidated by the complexity of it all. I may try again one day.

Guild Wars 2: such a disappointing MMO. It had all the pieces to be great, but fell ever so slightly short.

Worst Purchase:
Planetside 2 (Alpha Squad): Worst shooter I've ever played.

Best Non-Buy:
Baldur's Gate EE

I'm tempted to say Assassin's Creed 3, but it's really not a terrible game on balance. Just such a mess in places that I regretted paying full price for it.

I'm also still pissed that since I got The Walking Dead episode 1 for free when I joined Playstation Plus, I was unable to buy or play any of the subsequent episodes once my subscription lapsed and episode 1 became unavailable to me. So I've only played through episode 3 and am waiting for a Steam sale on the PC version before buying them all there. Not sure if TWD or Playstation Plus qualifies as the worst purchase there, though.

Apparently mine was the WoW expansion since I bought it, installed it, logged in once, and let my account expire. There's $50 (or whatever) I want back.

Stronghold 3. I got it massively discounted and was still pissed off at how shit it is.

Gods and Kings is another one. I don't mind occasionally playing it but I'm just not that into the Civ style game anymore. Plus the last thing that game needed was yet another basically irrelevant level up system. How many fucking ways do I seriously need to level my duders plz? I guess I could expand my disappointment to Civ more generally.

Rise of the Samurai for the third, mostly because I don't care for samurai (give me peasant warriors please) or elite warriors more generally, and this expansion made them ridiculously potent such that my normal horde oriented tactics couldn't even come close to competing (except, of course, in auto resolve). Classy game, not my style.

Guild Wars 2 was a disappointment in terms of post release. ANet said they wouldn't do something, and then they did it a couple months into the life of the game. I don't enjoy grinding for gear so now I'm left wanting to yak all over them. Meanwhile playing Battle Barbie is a giant pain in the ass thanks to a shit awful appearance system based around only ever having one outfit on at a time. SO IRKSOME.

I've currently taught Riztro, Kat, McKnight and Nate how to play. They all now understand why this game is so fucking awesome. My next person on the teaching block is Neopythia. YOU SHOULD PLAY MULTIPLAYER WITH ME. I will teach you the ways of the swish courtier until you're a dab hand at a plot and can suss out the inheritance laws of a kingdom just by looking at the family tree.

Add me on Steam and whisper me when you see me online. I will drop what I am doing to teach you how to play because the teaching process entertains the fucklesticks out of me. Or if you want to play in single player and don't want me nattering away in mumble, just ask questions on steam and I'll explain while doing other stuff. I'm only realistically available on the weekend.

The game isn't hard to learn, really! You just don't know what massive chunks of information you can safely ignore yet.

Much gonorrhea was had that day

Best: Diablo3
You can't really beat a purchase price of ~-1000 Euros.

Worst: None really, since I spent almost all the time playing Diablo3. Maybe some indie games that I bought for cheap and will never get around to playing.

Best:
FTL was by far my best purchase this year in terms of time and enjoyment.

Worst:
None of the games I bought were actually bad, although I have some buyer's remorse.
1. Torchlight 2, which I bought at launch, but have played for a grand total of 20 minutes.
2. XCOM, which I enjoyed, but feel like I overpaid.

Either I'm misunderstanding what Blackadar meant by "Best Non-Buy," or he needs to explain it better. My understanding is that it's a game you were hyped about, maybe had plans to get, but for one reason or another ended up not buying; and subsequently dodged a bullet when it turned out the game was junk or unappealing in some other way.

Worst Buy: I would say that in a strange twist of timing, Dishonored is my "worst buy" because if I had waited two weeks I would have paid half price.

Best Non-Buy: I'm still sticking with XCom. I've been very pleased so far that I didn't buy this.

Best Buy: Kerbal Space Program. This edges out Dishonored and Gnomoria.

The game that you didn't buy and were glad later that you didn't.

WORST BUY

This week end I said to myself : hey, you've been pretty harsh with Diablo III, and people say it has improved since the launch. You should give it a new try to see if it's really worse than Torchlight 2 that you just bought.

Me : okay, yeah, nice idea. I remember the combat being crunchier.

An so I patched it, tried to enter my password. Account locked. Ok. My SP game is locked, nice.

I tried to reactivate the account : that doesn't seem to work from their web interface. I guess I could call their customer service... But well I paid 60 euros for that lagging piece of shit single player game, full of RMT and dumb dialogue. I was going to give it another chance, honest, but instead I guess I'll just say fuck you to Blizzard and never ever buy one of their shitty products.

Honorable mention : Catherine, which has a plot that reminds me of those shirts that give you ten reasons to prefer beer to women (yeah dude). I never expected to be that disapointed by Atlus.

BEST NO BUY

I don't know really. I was tempted to buy Asscreed 3, but didn't bite, but maybe it's not that bad a game. In time I buy almost everything anyway, when the price is right.

I knew it.

Worst buy: $30 for Conquest of Elysium, which left me cold. I need to give that another go, I suppose. I compare this expenditure unfavorably to the $60 I spent on the aforementioned, BrianRubinPlugged, Distant Worlds, which I love the shit out of and can't wait for the next expansion. And of course now CoE can be had in a bundle for next to nothing.

Best non-buy: Fallen Enchantress. Because I got both Warlock and Eador: Genesis combined for less than FE, and they both scratch that fantasy TBS itch quite well.

Right now the "glad I didn't buy" is miner wars, which per their forums seems to be a bit of a "not sandboxy at all" thing that has a lot of folks pissy.

Worst buy:.. I probably didn't get nearly as much value from The Secret World as I should have. I loved the story, but I couldn't get past basically hating the minute to minute gameplay.

All the D3 hate has me amused, since from a cost/fun had ratio it's one of my more worthwhile purchases this year, ranking pretty much behind only GW2 and FTL. Not saying it's a perfect game by any means, just that it's actually still a fun clickfest ARPG.

Bad purchases:

-AssCred3 - I don't feel like I got my money's worth, especially based on the shitty technical state of the game.

-Diablo 3 - Not just a waste of money, a colossal waste of time.

-Don't Starve - Overpriced style-over-substance indie game. It's in "alpha," but I don't predict it'll be a game worth playing even at release. The parts just aren't there.

-Vita - Sorta. I'm not disappointed by the hardware; I'm disappointed by the library and future prospects.

-Xenoblade Chronicles + Wii - Because I bought a Wii to play it, and I bought a bunch of "cheap" Wii games when I bought the Wii, which was a waste. Shoulda waited for the new laptop I eventually bought and just emulated it.

-The countless PC games I bought, often at full price, and didn't even install, let alone play. I have yet to come to terms with the fact that I'm not a PC gamer anymore.

Bad purchase:

• ARMA. This isn't a statement on quality -- I just paid full retail for a title that's on sale frequently and I only wanted to play for the zombie add-on, and which I have yet to even install on my PC.
• Dungeonbowl. NO SINGLE PLAYER MODE.

Good non-purchase -- games I was initially interested in and then decided to back off on buying:

• SWTOR.
• PlanetSide 2.
• Game of Thrones RPG.

Bad Purchase
Crusader Kings 2: After watching an hour or so of tutorial and lets play videos I still found the game incomprehensible and I think I'm just not the audience at all for Paradox.

XCom: I was really expecting to get more out of the game then what I did, I do feel somewhat good that I got the game for $36 and a $10 coupon from GMG. But I was hoping for a game that I could keep playing and be surprised, not a one and done game.

I bought relatively few games this year, so that colors things a bit.

Bad Buys

Star Fox 64 3D. Not a bad game I guess, but I didn't play much of it. I never played this on N64, and come to think of it I was never all that enthused about Star Fox on the SNES, so I'm not really sure why I got it, except that it was new software for the 3DS I suppose.

Various Indie Stuff. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Sine Mora, Mark of the Ninja, and some others. Just various stuff I bought on sale and installed but never got into.

Best Non-buy

Baldur's Gate EE. I was going to get this for iOS, so technically I couldn't own it yet even if I wanted to, but given the response the PC version and the fact that they've had so many problems getting it through Apple's certification process, I've preemptively decided to avoid it. Also, $20 is too much, and I don't have a lot of confidence in their ability to make the interface good on a touch screen based on what they've shown so far.

Bad Purchase: Pandaria

Good Non-Purchase: Elemental/FE

I AM A STRAIGHT-UP SUCKER:
CoDBLOPS 2: Every once in a while, I pay full-price for one of these spectacle rail-shooters. And I kick myself in the ass every single time after playing them. I'd like to kick my ass x2 for this one. I went back and played CoDBLOPS1, just to get my head around these games again, and CoDBLOPS' short, linear, shit campaign just waltzed all over CoDBLOPS 2's incoherent pile of mismashed fuckery. And the multiplayer is just the usual asshat jackoffery. So Activision, I guess you got my money again. Enjoy your donkey shows.

Towns and Gnomoria: I might have liked these at one time in my life. But the OCD does not flow in my ass strong any more. As the saying goes, "The best game of Dwarf Fortress is somebody else's playthrough". Throw a few other Indie games in there that made me say, "You know, I was ten years too earlier with my Klik n' Play and Games Factory games. I would have been making bank with Gila Copter and GunJudge now."

Xenonauts: Nowhere near done when promised, and the Kickstarter after the Alpha sale left a bad taste in my mouth. Plus, after enjoying the shit out of the new XCOM, if and when Xenonauts does get finished, and I play it, I'll probably be like, "Wow, this is some archaic 90's shit right here. The dye from my Doc Marten's must have given me the OCD I mentioned earlier."

GAMES I'M GLAD I DIDN'T BUY
Other than shooters, I'm pretty good at smelling the air around a game, also thanks in part to participating in this community and The Other Board [tm]. So there's nothing on the shelf that I look at and go, "You know, I was thinking of buying that, but I'm glad I didn't."

Ha I'm a cheap bastard so I wait like a buzzard for games to go cheap before I buy them usually.

I'd say the Kinect was a waste of money except for Happy Action Theater being a total smash hit with children at parties and Nike+ Training has me and the wife sweating away. So...that doesn't count.

I did buy a second copy of Prototype because I thought it was Prototype 2 and I didn't look at the cover close enough.

As an aside, not sure how people are patting themselves on the back for not "buying" Free To Play Planetside 2. I get that Kerzain payed the $40 alpha membership, but by his own admission he played HUNDREDS of hours of it before bailing. Still. Free.

Oh! I know! Battlefield 3! Unfun in every-way Battlefield Bad Co 2 is awesome.

Worst Decision:
Resident Evil 6: The boss fight against the Roombas sealed its fate. Despite being a sequel to one of the best coop titles I've played, this game is a mess and needed the kind of overhaul that got RE4 from "messy traditional survival horror" to "top game in its generation". There are some good ideas but boy am I glad I only rented that second copy for coop.

Good Decisions (not to buy):
Guild Wars 2: Sounded promising, was still an MMO despite the lack of subscription fee.
Assassin's Creed 3: after liking each game in the series less as they came out, this one was well into "don't buy for any reason" territory. But the theme almost got me to ignore that Ubisoft has no idea what made the original special and wasn't about to let go of their shitty plot and awful "piles of box bullet points" approach to design. There is no excuse for the ginormous intro/tutorial. The last boss fight I had in the game was against Ben Franklin when he tried to bend me to his will via fetch quests. I won the boss fight, and sent it back to Gamefly.

Alan Wake: Yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

No idea what I dodged.

I don't really have a worst buy, because even the things I bought that I ended up not playing a lot are games I'm glad I helped support. Torchlight 2 and FTL are the prime candidates - glad both got made and that I supported them, but neither really engaged me for very long. Not sure why.

Best non-buy: I guess XCom, but I was on the fence about it from the start. Hearing all the stories here makes me pretty glad I held out. Ditto FC3. Both games I'm going to buy eventually, but with all the ambivalence towards them I'm thinking holding out was the right choice.

Actually, worst buy: Legends of Pegasus was candy for my love of space ships and strategy games. And had a neat concept and mechanics if it didn't crash every other minute and then the devs went belly up before fixing any of it. There were a few games like that this year that were released in completely unplayable states.

Best non-buy seems impossible to determine, because you could just be wrong about it and listening to people who are also wrong. Seems like an opportunity to just beat on companies you don't like/pat yourself on the back for not liking them/whatever more than anything useful to discuss.

My worst buys:

- All the shit I haven't played yet months after buying it on Steam because no good reason
- Borderlands 2. Didn't like Borderlands 1, got sucked into the 'this is so much better' hype, played 3 hours and said fuck it. Waste of money for me, and I should have known better.

I found my best non-buys through renting or participating in beta weekends, so I feel pretty comfortable with those. But yes, I expect there's a fair amount of confirmation bias.

Yeah, something you actually played would of course be an exception.

Heh, Mechwarrior Online was still my best non-buy. Glad for holding out until the game was released instead of being a sucker for a pre-order based upon nostalgia.

I really regret buying Miner Wars, though I didn't buy it this year. I saw the engine and thought "that is going to make a great game!" How wrong I was.

I wish I hadn't bought D3, but there was no way I could resist that. And I also got dozens of hours of play out of it, even if it has left me disappointed now.

Worst Buy: Mists of Pandaria. I knew I was over WoW, yet I decided to have one last fling to really confirm it. Really didn't need to do that. (Although the pet battles were fun!)

Diablo 3

Best non-buy was Torchlight 2, traded for it

God DAMMIT! How many times do I have to apologize for this one? I had NO IDEA there'd be a sale. ;) You should dive in, it's really awesome!

As for me, I got Red Faction: Armageddon in the THQ bundle, and even not having played it I regret spending money on it.

Yeah, shame, I got it for free and felt ripped off.

On the flip side I've gotten 10 hours out of Saints Row III. I didn't have Company of Heroes on Steam either, so the package was definitely worth the $5.63 I paid (yes I went exactly 1 cent over to get the bonus).

My worst: Secret World (and little shit-turd of a game called Dead Mountaineer's Hotel... Ambien purchase)
By best non-buy: GW2 (mainly because I was getting ready drop a big wad of cash on a couple of collector's editions)

Looking at pure play-time my best purchase of the year was D3 (roughly 150 hours) followed by Kingdoms of Amalur (80 hours).

Screw that, Borderlands 2 was my best purchase of the year. I just haven't finished putting the time in.

My best non-buy: Halo 4. I have a love/hate relationship with the Halo series, however Halo: Reach was one of my favourite games of 2010 and all of 2011. When 343 took over the management and balancing of the Reach multiplayer, my enthusiasm waned greatly. My Halo group were cautiously optimistic towards Halo 4, but in the end I don't think a single one of them ended up picking it up. I'm glad I didn't either.

My worst buy was one of those indie packs during the Steam summer sale. I wanted to try 4 of the 5, but nothing stuck (and the one I didn't want was friggan weird).