forked 40 pounds out for MW3. This fucker better be good but if it's anything like MW2, I think I'll get my money's worth. The Spec Ops in MW2 had me playing the game for a long time - definitely good value there. Also, I just got a Nvidia GTX580 and want to showcase it.
Anyone played it yet?

But the main thing that I wanted to ask you guys was how do you feel about spending money on games? A pint of lager at my local pub costs over 4 pounds and I get tanked without hesitation, yet I often contemplate for a day on whether or not I'm going to buy a game on sale that is only 2 pounds. The other day I took my date out and spent a considerable amount of money on food and drinks, yet having bought MW3 did not leave me with a feeling of money well spent.

Do you guys get a similar feeling when shopping for games? Is it due to the abundance of sales going on all the time? Or is it because we so often just end up not playing the games that we buy?

Don't you all just hate such uninformative topic titles?

If I want a game, I buy it. Well, assuming I have money to do so.

As I said in the OP, I loved MW2 because of the Spec Ops. Challenging little episodes for two players and I did them solo. Some of them took me an entire day to finally finish off and I probably got a lot more game time out of that game than from almost any other modern release. I read that MW3 also has Spec Ops, which is what actually made me buy the game in the end.
Never played the multiplayer in MW2, but I have a friend staying at mine for a few days who loves it, so we'll probably end up playing some.
WaW by the way, had amazing multiplayer, which actually got me into the series in the first place. WaW was the first CoD game that I played and I absolutely loved it.

I'll try Trine 2, thanks for the tip. I recently finished The Lost Vikings again, but I'm not sure whether I'll have the time and patience for another game like that for a while. What exactly do you mean by that? Does this also mean that you play every single game that you buy?

If there's a game I want and can afford, I'll get it without thinking much about it. The ones that I really want enough to pay full price for, yes.
I am weak to sales though and have a big backlog of older games. Hopefully I get to play them all.

I hope you love DLCs man: http://www.trueachievements.com/n6308/modern-warfare-3-to-receive-20-dlc-packs.htm

I doubt it. I almost never buy DLC, even if it's for a game that I really like. At best I might get the Spec Ops ones, but even that is doubtful. I definitely won't be buying their MP packs.
By the way, I am not a CoD fanboy and I genuinely dislike Activision, but this doesn't stop me from appreciating a game for what it is.

Generally I wait. I view buying something that I can't wait for to be weakness! Seriously though, with the cost of a new games from a big publisher and the knowledge that a dozen DLCs will be released, I wait until the GOTY or Gold edition until I fork over my hard earned cash. For games that I am just dying to get a hold of I have developed a strategy: buy the hard copy of the game, get 20-40 hours out of it, sell it online, and in a year buy the more complete and cheaper edition online. There is no sense in losing a ton of cash when the original version of the game is going to be out of date in a matter of months, and as long as you sell the game a few weeks before Christmas you will get a tidy portion of your money back.

It sounds like you really loved MW2, if that's the case I wouldn't hesitate on 3 unless there were some seriously ominous warning signs.

I loved Batman AA and didn't think twice about pre-ordering AC given what I'd seen.

Normally I'm fairly conservative with actual pre-orders but if I manage to wait after release I find I only need to wait like 3-5 weeks for a pretty deep sale (20-30 USD off) on Amazon.com or some such, so I tend to go ahead and wait.

Still, there's stand out titles that I simply pull the trigger on. It sounds like MW3 was your stand out title. I wouldn't worry about it.

I guess I've become spoiled. I remember one or two years ago thinking how cool it is to be able to buy simple puzzle games for a smartphone for a mere 1-3€. Now that I've become accustomed to being able to buy full PC games for a few euros (e.g. from GoG), the smartphone games seem overpriced in comparison.

I don't buy new games for a full price (e.g. 40€ or over) anymore due to:

- my backlog of older games, and the abundance of cheap, old-ish games for PC

- due to the ongoing DLC madness with new games, I'd want to wait for a complete "gold edition" anyway, not to buy the whole game in several pieces. This was true already with "expansion packs" in earlier PC games. Then again, if I was still waiting for the gold edition of Half-life 2... is the next (final?) episode still coming?

- as almost all new games require some sort of online DRM authentication, I wouldn't buy the new games just to increase my backlog, but I buy them only when I am sure I will start playing them.

For example, the Steam offer for Bioshock 1-2 (which in my eyes are still "new games" :)) 5€ a piece was very tempting, but I thought "since I wouldn't play them right now anyway, why buy them now? It is not like they are going anywhere or that the price would be going up in the long run.". So, maybe I'll buy them in e.g. two years (Steam or elsewhere) when I feel I'll actually play them, possibly even cheaper than 5€/piece.

With GoG I don't think as much because I have an ownership and control of the games, so buying them in the backlog pile is just fine, as long as I think the price is right. :)

- Not to mention that new PC games still seem to be quite buggy. I'll let others be the beta testers of id's Rage etc., and let them review if the game really was worth it anyway. I'll later get the polished versions of games that are guaranteed to be great. :) I see absolutely no reason to e.g. pre-order games.

It may be that when I get a new PC, I get an urge to get at least a few brand-new games on it, just to show off the capabilities. It is not like people buy Citizen Kane or Chaplin bluray movies for their spanking new home theater either, but fluff like Transformers and Immortals to show it off.

I think the last time I was VERY anxious to get a new game that was either just become available or still coming was probably Doom. Or Dungeon Master on Amiga (back in late 80s!), which I tried to order all the way from US because it was not yet available in Europe. Maybe I just don't get so overly excited about single games anymore, I've become jaded even if I still enjoy good games.

Well being australian I get the "bonus" of asking myself that question pretty well constantly.

For me it comes down to a price to longevity ratio coupled with the 'got to have it on release' or 'fuck me I'm so dangerously bored that the only option is buy a game NOW or start torturing random passers by'.

Arkham City I bought locally because I found it for $68 which is a fairly good price given that the RRP was $110. I could have got it for $58 from ozgameshop but the saving was small and the 2-3 week wait was too long.

Much the same applied to Gears Of War 3, it was $75 locally and I could have saved $15 by ordering from ozgameshop but then I'd have had the delay and missed 2 weeks of coop shooting & chainsawing.

Dead Island I bought from Greenmangaming for $30, that was purely a price based decision, it was something on my maybe-list for a month or so before release but then found the discount for GMG and bought it immediately

Warhammer 40000 Space Marine was always going to be an ozgameshop game. It didn't look like the best game ever made & was likely to be rough around the edges. That and the fact that it was selling for $90 locally made the $58 and 2 weeks wait the more attractive option

Star Wars The Old Republic I preordered from amazon, largely thanks to the lack of alternatives. I ended up picking the priority courier shipping (in the probably vain hope of it arriving before christmas) that pushed the price up from $60 to $90 but I rationalised this by telling myself it's what I'd have been likely to pay for it locally anyway

All of these are examples of games that I was going to play as soon as I could. For stuff on GOG or steam sales, I do have a tendency to buy & download games but not get around to installing them for ages because the drive for playing something isn't as strong when its not a new game (as in one I've never played rather than chronologically new). It's also lead to me being more ruthless with my time, when I do install something I bought rather cheap, I tend to give it 2-3 hours to impress me and if it doesn't, the chances are good it'll never get another go.

If a new release is something i would definitely play now (like Fallout 3 and Alpha Protocol) I really did not care about the price (it helped that i was working in Australia. they make waaaaayyy too much money) i just bought it.

normally i don't as I have shitloads of games from going crazy on sales and i don't play a lot of games anyway so there is no reason for me to buy game on release and then play it 8 months later.

I'd rather spend my money on something infinite (like a video game) than something finite (alcohol). I don't hesitate buying games I want, but I definitely hesitate spending money on expensive dinners etc.

When I lived and worked in the US, I didn't care. I regularly bought new games or waited a month or so when they went down to $40 or less.

In Poland with new games having three digit price tags I am very hesitant before I make my purchase.

Besides, all I have now is a netbook and can't see myself buying the necessary pieces to build a decent comp in the near future. So no new games (old games are another story but only if my netbook can handle them) for me for a while.