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Charles2222 -> RE: First Impressions (6/20/2007 10:56:41 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ravinhood
quote:
ORIGINAL: Charles_22
One catch to your little theory, rh, is that you have been able to bargain bin in the days when wargames were aplenty at stores. Nowadays that's not happening, except for sims and FPS's.
As far as internet purchasing goes, I don't know about you or Dredd, but I don't trust the delivery system to get it to me, although, I think I have always received all the stuff I order (go figure). It's just that to see it in a store is security. It's being able to play it right away if you so desire. My postal service is so lousy you're lucky to get something in a week. There's also that momentum consideration too, known to others as get-them-while-they're-hot, to where if I have to wait for a week to get something I likely be so focused on something else during the interval, that my enthusiasm, if there were any, will have likely taken somewhat of a beating. I don't know what it is, but this happens to me on mail orders for some reason. It's like, great, I'm glad it arrived, but it inevitably ends up arriving at a bad day of the week or something like that, to where I don't jump on it right away or I'm so involved in another game I hate to tear away. I guess you guys that don't work 3rd shift don't have that problem that much, but to buy somethign at a store is still far superior, because you're probably not buying it just before you're fixing to drag off to bed or work.
I guess that was part of th e old days too wasn't it? Where part of your buying a game at the store was the immediacy of it. If it was one that just got released, assuming you had a shot at getting it, whatever you were playing took a back seat because you knew you could play the new game right away. When the game just gets delivered to you in some random manner it's just not the same.
Yes that is true Charles, but, the other thing of nowadays is I already have umpteen jillion WW2 games, half a jillion civil war games and another half a jillion napoleonic games. Therefore most of this stuff coming out today just doesn't appeal to me anyway. Thus, I can sit back and wait YEARS for some of these titles to go bargain bin or used or capitalize on Matrixgames Christmas Specials or NWS since they are nothing more than the same just from a different perspective. I mean how many ways do you want to play a grand scale WW2 game? Lol I already have HOI I & II, GGWAW, Panzer General I & II, Strategic Command I, even the old 3rd Reich computer game. It's just gotten to a point with me it's just tossing money to the wind to pay $40 or $50 for the same thing I already own in several different variants and I haven't even played all of them out, probably never will. Funny thing is Panzer General and HOI I are the only two of the bunch I paid full retail for. I held out for all the rest for $10 or less. I don't even recall what I paid for computer 3rd Reich, but, it was a sale not full retail price.
Things of the Pacific War Land Battles or Ancients I will pretty much pay full price for or not wait as long as I can with most WW2 titles and civil war titles and napoleonic titles. I jumped on HPS Pacific War Squad Battles game as soon as I saw it. I bought Tin Soldiers:Caesar as well outright. For me it HAS to be NEW and something I don't have a large collection of. Ancients/Medieval and Pacific War Land Battles are pretty rare in comparison to most of what is always being released. That Zulu War/Rorkes Drift game I put a thread up about I would buy in a heartbeat, just because I don't have anything for that war period except an old Impressions game from waayyyyy back there that really had an awful ai and ui.
I can still catch some Matrixgames on Ebay from time to time if I want them. It is rare to see one up, but, still they do popup from time to time. With the direct download you don't see many of them though. I wouldn't purchase a direct download game from anyone anyway. I don't trust it. But, NWS stocks all of Matrixgames titels and those are all hard copy with cd and printed manual (the ones that have printed manuals now) and he gives some special deals from time to time let alone offers great tradein value for your titles you no longer care about or want to keep or play.
Then of course my greatest option is friends in my area who play wargames as well who have titles I don't and I can still play many titles without having to own the game. LOL I guess the only thing to thwart that will be when the license agreement states in the future that YOU are the ONLY person that can play this game from your computer except online email or ISP. hahaha You may NOT allow anyone in your local area to play this game or take home and play on their computer without expressed written permission which we will never give. lol roflmao.
As far as internet purchasing, I guess I'm blessed or lucky or whatever, but, all my transactions with ebay and amazon.com have always been successful and I've been using them since what now 1996, over 11 years without a loss or disappointment in quality of the items I bought. It's direct download I don't like. I want physical copy of everything I buy. I don't like paying for air or digits I want my cdrom/dvd, a nice colorful printed manual (spiral bound if possible) and a jewel case not these bloomin envelopes (more cheapness out of publishers) and they can keep the box. The game box never did do me any good and that's just a waste of resources if you ask me. ;)
It's funny you would say that about direct downlaod, because I was thinking the only way to bring back the immediacy of buying a wargame at a store was to use that method. Yes, I don't like that method either, though I have used it once or twice. the only thing I do like, if anybody is doing it, and would for the most part totally revive the old days of buying them at the store, would be if the company in question would offer you *both* the physical copy and the sirect downlaod for the physical price. That way there's no delay unless the DD screws up, and you will get the physical as you pretty much would get anything in the mail.
I have a different mind for WWII titles in particular, and my mind pretty much focuses there in wargame terms. To me, since I like WWII so much, I don't buy every title that is out there, probably not even a third of them, and while I see something of the futility of buying constant new versions, of say, 3rd reich, I also think that with time and the power of the computer that they should be getting better in terms of what you can or should be able to do with them; comparing winSPWW2 to SP for example, so I'm not so worn out of the same ol' theme over and over. Let me see if I can recall the computer games I had and what happened to them in the 3rd Reich vein and some future ones, in no particular order:
3rd Reich - Didn't play it very long. I can't recall why I didn't like it, but it was pretty substantial reasoning. I probably played it a few hours.
Panzer General - Never played it. I liked Fantasy General for the days I bought those sort of games to any extent, but my hallowed WWII category I could not see exposing to such a system. It just seemed too cartoonish for me to get any link to history out of it.
Clash of Steel - Whooped it like crazy once or twice as Germany. After that, I hated it. It was a child's game more or less as I saw it.
HoI - Have the first one. Disliked it to about the point that I exited 3rd Reich. Felt so ripped off by this game that I never considered HoI2.
WiF - There may be some possibility there.
This game - Maybe, maybe.
GGWAW - No way. Seasonal turns are worse than CoS. No way ever I will get a seasonal garbage game again, unless you're talking something with a very long lifespan like the Civ series. I can't recall if 3rd Reich or CoS were seasonal.
Strategic Command - I played a bit of a demo I think, and while it I found it generally favorable, there just wasn't enough there to make me want it to play it more than once or twice. That is my overall perspective on any game. I have to envision myslef playing it for at least a whole week straight, or it's a waste of time and money. I don't buy just to have a title or for experimentation purposes. If it's cheap experiment away, but otherwise not.
Just in pure concept alone, it seems to me that the best 3rd reich type game to come along will be WiF, but if it doesn't have an AI I won't buy it naturally.
This game has some strong points such as I mentioned about the map being so large and the attention to convoying, but only one unit attacking at a time is a significant drawback. I have no idea how WiF will let you attack, or how many turns it will have, but from what I have listed here, there's not really a very strong candidate to date. CEaW may be the best as of now, but then it has the largest pricetag of the bunch too. I just don't see anything gripping me, WiF aside, like WiR did for example. I tend to group WiR into the 3rd Reich category because it was so large for the time, but it was only east front. That's what I'm hoping for and probing for on the 3rd Reich type game, that I will find one as good as that was, so until that time comes I don't buy each and every one of them that comes along and conclude they're all the same. The fact that I can often tell that without buying them helps very much to deal with the frustration that I've bought something which is same-ol same-ol. It's pretty easy to find games that won't measure up and you already know this before you turned down buying them. This game I think quite clearly isn't on that level, but it is perhaps somewhere inbetween. The only question I have is whether I want to settle for inbetween for the time being.
It appears that our basic buying modes are significantly different. It looks like your method is basically scattershot, that you want to get as many of them as you can, thereby, perhaps, not getting much into scrutiny before purchase, perhaps as well not believing you can accurately judge them before you buy them; but buying them cheap. My buying pattern is quite different. I usually pay full price for at least the WWII titles, but I put heavy discernment into them and so I don't buy very many of them. It is very possible that I will buy a game that I can easily see isn't any better than the other attempts at a specific genre, but it would only be likely if I was just completely bored with what I had at that time (or I was stuck with a Vista machine[;)]). As I said before, if I don't see myself playing something for a week straight, and that's probably being conservative, I just won't buy it and unless the game is over $40 the price is relatively meaningless. If it's over $40, then it's placed at much higher scrutiny. Basically, if you can foresee yourself playing something at least a week straight, that amounts to it having legs. I say that because I don't just buy a title to get me by for a week of gaming and want to see longevity out of it. To play something shorter than a week, is more of a distraction and a nuisance than a pleasure.
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