Games that provided most/least value for money

[speczero]

In MMO's, there is probably not any other game that gives you more of the game and actual play time than Lord of the Rings Online. I'm not actually sure how much total, but if you do everything and explore, there are probably many hundreds of hours of free play time in the game.

[StarseedWarrior]

Gotham knights who cares about cannon if you like action rpgs you need to play it.

[TheOtherTed]

Just found out that "Ace of Aces" is getting a Kickstarter resurrection.  I don't remember the name, but I do remember a WWI dogfighting game that I played the heck out of on a housemate's PC in the early 90s (when a 286 computer was kind of a big deal).  Poor kid - between the three of us mooching gamer schlubs, I don't think she ever got any playtime on that rig.

 

Anyway, any fellow oldbies out there remember if there were other similar games around that time?

[lemming]

54 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

Just found out that "Ace of Aces" is getting a Kickstarter resurrection.  I don't remember the name, but I do remember a WWI dogfighting game that I played the heck out of on a housemate's PC in the early 90s (when a 286 computer was kind of a big deal).  Poor kid - between the three of us mooching gamer schlubs, I don't think she ever got any playtime on that rig.

 

Anyway, any fellow oldbies out there remember if there were other similar games around that time?

I don't think the Picture Book game has any connection to the video game.  I played both.   Though there was a WWII PC game that I preferred, I think it was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aces_of_the_Pacific 

 

And yes, there's another update to the picture book version on KS.  And there were a few different versions in the past including a Dragonriders of Pern style.

[TheOtherTed]

Whoops, I read that KS completely wrong - just saw "A of A" and got all excited.  There was an older video game called "Ace of Aces" that ran on MS-DOS, but from the footage I could find, I couldn't say whether I played that or "A of P."  Ah, well, nice nostalgia kick regardless.

[lemming]

24 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

Whoops, I read that KS completely wrong - just saw "A of A" and got all excited.  There was an older video game called "Ace of Aces" that ran on MS-DOS, but from the footage I could find, I couldn't say whether I played that or "A of P."  Ah, well, nice nostalgia kick regardless.

Looking around, looks like emulators have it.  Just tried out Aces of the Pacific, and yep, that was the game I played too much of.

[Art Vandelay]

Best:  Valheim.  £15 for 600+ hours.  Will be even higher when the new content drop happens.

Worst:  Elder Scrolls Online.  Not their fault, got it in November and was starting to really like it but then...  Homecoming!  Have not logged on since.

 

[Cyri]

Mass Effect, Warhammer II, and Warhammer III have given me the most for my money.  

 

Any number of games qualify for least.

[kelika2]

Highest:

Most bethesda fallout/elder scrolls games.  between mods for bikini armor and huge breasts that keeps me coming back I love finding a small mod that changes gameplay drastically that warrants another playthrough

Increasing Hand to Hand damage in ES3/4/5 was huuuuuge.  Went from the worst thing you can do to being medium high tier.  From bare fists to adding poisons in oblivion to Enchanting - I Do What I Want allowing hand to hand damage on all pieces of gear in skyrim.  also a mod called Unarmed Helper that scales with your level.  Khajiit went from never used to being the main character so many times

Mods that added cut weapons in FO3, or DLC altering properties like reducing alien armor/health when you are past level 20, or a mod that scales the rednecks damage to be resistable instead of flat damage

And as I approach 1500 hours in new vegas there is always always always something to alter to change things for the better.  taking companions into DLC, adding new purified water recipes from various fruits, changing around perk levels and requirements, adding cut content, backwards compatibility for perks and weapons (ex: police pistol from dead money being effected by cowboy)

 

Also other MMOs like everquest, warcraft, star wars galaxies/old republic.  Hell even now as im kinda burnt out on CoH im running around tattooine as a fencer/smuggler/pistoleer shooting sandpeople in the dick.

 

Lowest:

most n64 games

no description needed

[Riverdusk]

All the Morrowind love.  I know I'm the odd duck that while I found it decent, I probably rate it the lowest of the entire series.  Maybe because I started with Arena and Daggerfall.  Morrowind felt so stripped down and limited compared to the almost pure sandbox of Daggerfall so it was a hard adjustment for me.   And cliff racers still give me nightmares. 😁  Think I also prefer more trad fantasy over the weird stuff, so even Oblivion and Skyrim I liked better just for the setting, and of course also Skyrim for finally making combat decent.

 

CoH and the Elder Scroll series are the easy answer to the question though.  Honorable mention to XCom, which came out right around when CoH shut down and helped take my mind off that.

 

As someone else said, I have too many unplayed Steam games, so any of those for worst.

 

 

[Latex]

Trying to judge games on how they affected me, how much fun I got out of them oppose to hours played! I've thousands of hours in some games and you could say that's value for money, but they don't really stick out as something special.

$19.99: SIGNALIS, old school Resident Evil/Silent Hill style game that fucks with your head and leaves you thinking about it for a long time after, might be the best single player indie game I've ever played https://store.steampowered.com/app/1262350/SIGNALIS/

Free: Warframe, the game begins 200 hours in when you make your character, addictive gameplay, addictive grind loop, fair monetization, free, a combat system that spawned a whole host of copycats. Didn't get into it my first time put it down for a year and tried it again then found to love it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/230410/Warframe/

 

Free/Sub/B2P: MMO Games, dabbled in a lot of MMO's. The worst was probably Lost Ark because it shoves twenty systems in your face at level 5 and it confused the hell out of me. For the best? SWTOR, CoH, WoW, Wildstar (rip), GW2. I think all these MMO's do certain things better than others, SWTOR has the best story/dialogue stuff, GW2 has the best open world meta events are fantastic, Wildstar had the best PVP, I love the artstyle of Wildstar too, CoH is perfect for casual gameplay with no hard requirements, WoW is decent enough.

Least Value for Money

$59.99: Baldur's Gate 3, I know... shocking? Before you get your pitchforks have you tried multiplayer? I've been playing this recently for the first time and me and my friend have almost rage quit this Game of the Year. The sheer amount of bugs, hardstuck quests, having to save/reload a good 7 times in a 4 hour session due to cinematics not triggering basically hardstuck, glitched cutscenes, conversations out of order, lines of dialogue skipped leaving you completely baffled where the story is going. When it works, I love it! But the bugs are everywhere and really degrade the experience for me. I've yet to play single player but I intend to, Act III feels especially undercooked and rushed, still a great game but might be the buggiest I've played. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1086940/Baldurs_Gate_3/

$69.99: Starfield, I wanted to love this game but it feels so 'generic' and bland, like an Generative AI could of made it, utterly soulless with a story that makes no sense. Lifeless characters, lifeless planets, lifeless gameplay. Took me 57 hours of trying to love Starfield, trying to mod it to be a decent game, just wasn't happening, absolutely do not buy this game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1716740/Starfield/

 

Edited March 11 by Latex

[TheOtherTed]

1 hour ago, Latex said:

Baldur's Gate 3, I know... shocking?

I hear ya.  Putting bugs and awkward writing aside, though, my first and still greatest issue is with the lack of replayability.  Sure, I can start a new playthrough as a Druid to shake things up a bit (for some reason, my brain doesn't "get" D&D druids), but I'll still be playing through the same scenarios and the same dialogue in more or less the same order as my Rogue, my Paladin, my Warlock, etc.

 

That said, I'm still getting fair mileage out of the game, so I wouldn't rank it as one of the worst values I've bought into.  It just doesn't support alts in the way that so many other games do.

[Latex]

On 3/11/2024 at 9:46 PM, TheOtherTed said:

I hear ya.  Putting bugs and awkward writing aside, though, my first and still greatest issue is with the lack of replayability.  Sure, I can start a new playthrough as a Druid to shake things up a bit (for some reason, my brain doesn't "get" D&D druids), but I'll still be playing through the same scenarios and the same dialogue in more or less the same order as my Rogue, my Paladin, my Warlock, etc.

 

That said, I'm still getting fair mileage out of the game, so I wouldn't rank it as one of the worst values I've bought into.  It just doesn't support alts in the way that so many other games do.

I'm loving the game still, almost at the end with my friend after 70hours gameplay but we encountered a fresh swathe of bugs last night in Act III that made us both just throw our hands up. Elevators in a key moment of the game (Cazador) weren't working, we had to save-load three times before the dialogue progressed and allowed us to actually play, save files get big toward the ending and that took up fifteen minutes of frustration.

The Mage Tower area in Baldur's Gate outright refused to load for my friend, we could not progress together, the save file got nuked we had to load a save 20 mins prior to that moment and we outright could not play co-op around the Mage Tower area; the game just said 'nope!' I had to do key fights and infiltration solo, it's the only way we could progress and it was beyond frustrating.

 

I've been told Single Player doesn't have anywhere near the amount of issues, co-op has been an absolute mess. It's my first playthrough so my first impressions.

 

[XaoGarrent]

I have a truly absurd amount of time invested into Warframe. Something on the order of 3,500 hours. I think I've spent maybe $500 on the game total, but it might be more. I've been playing so long it's hard to remember. This is in total half a decade of play time.

 

A lot of the appeal is oddly similar to that of City of Heroes, especially if you're willing to throw some money at the game for cosmetics. Grab a frame, make an interesting build you like, and then "fashion frame" until you get something that looks really cool. They go out and just throw hands for hours. Collect loot, build new stuff, and then repeat the cycle.

 

It's also got this... Super unique sci-fi setting that somehow feels alien and nostalgic at the same time. It picks at the same part of my brain that things like Final Fantasy 7 or Mega Man X do, and I have trouble figuring out exactly why.

 

The frame on the left here is Gauss, with the Graxx skin. I added some accessories and colored him to make him like some kind of anime robot. Warframe is a game that is heavily about mobility, and Gauss' whole thing is speed. Gauss' first ability is literally "hit this button to go a thousand miles per hour." Hit 1 to become the Flash. Basically, he's super fast, super durable and does a ton of damage. He can clear many missions in a couple of minutes (he can do captures in under 60 seconds), provided you can actually manage to control him. Some of the frames in this game are so fast that they're actually difficult to control, and Gauss is one of them.

[seebs]

One of my contenders for best was a little puzzle game called something like "everything must go" for iOS which was just a simple stacking-objects puzzle thing that I played for an insane number of hours, until an iOS update killed it.

[Trike]

Best value: Mass Effect 2. Played it through 4 times to get different endings and make different choices. Just an amazingly immersive and cool universe with fun gameplay.

 

Worst value: Mass Effect 3. Turns out none of your choices mattered and the story was hot garbage, even before you got to the stupid ending. “Hey, the galaxy is on fire! Earth is being destroyed! Go get some ointment for this one guy.” WTF. I also bought the so-called Collector’s Edition based on the promises lies of BioWare, which was a bunch of digital crap.

 

 

Best value: WarCraft II and WarCraft III. Super-cool games that sucked me in for multiple hours and many play-throughs with different factions and characters. Plus, making your own maps for PvP was always a cool addition.

 

Worst value: World of Warcraft. So terribly disappointing after the fun of the RTS games. One gaming acquaintance maintained it was easier to roleplay in WoW than CoH. I was like, “I just killed a giant chicken and looted a ‘glass of ice cold milk’ from it. How does that make any sense?”

 

 

Best value: Star Wars: Dark Forces. Unique gameplay for the day, adding to the Doom aesthetic with amazing abilities like “jump over a 6-inch barrier” and “look up”. 😁 But with Star Wars sound FX and music. I played the heck out of that.

 

Worst value: Star Wars: The Old Republic. Another BioWare garbage title that was, in a word, boring.

 

 

Best value: Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2. The original WWII versions were so good. They felt like real passion projects by people who were really into that era. I have never tried the modern-era versions of the game, although I did enjoy watching the game movie of the one that seems very much like Halo. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - 

 

[kanga]

Well, besides City of Heroes? got good moneys worth out of that, even while it was a sub 🙂 .

 

Hmm, how about Skyrim. Playing it yet again, with the Nolvus Ascended modlist.

[tidge]

My candidates for best value: Civ II and Civ V. Both of these allowed me to pass a LOT of time that would have otherwise been spent in dangerous ways. The latter also came during the podcast era, so it was a good excuse to chill to a whole lotta audio.

 

Very close would be Deus Ex, as well as the DX: Human Revolution and DX: Mankind Divided versions. The initial release IIRC had the first two entire zones as part of a promo from PC Gamer! These FPS allowed alternate win-conditions as well as different ways to configure yourself! I enjoyed these so much more than other puzzle FPS like Half-Life, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Star Trek: Elite Force (I, II)... even though I enjoyed those.

 

Least value is slightly harder, because I simply set games aside and usually don't bear a grudge towards them. I paid for Civ VI during a steam sale, but haven't played it. I jumped through a LOT of hoops for a (at the time) newer version of Galactic Civilizations... so Gal Civ III I think... because of the nature of my original purchase, and a desire to install on a new PC... and I didn't end up playing it for very long. I'm a pretty casual 4x player, and Civ V tapped me out as far as exactly how much micro-management could I tolerate to play on the hardest (ehem, PC cheats) settings.

 

In the dark distant past, I can think of games like Starflight (I, II) that were fun, but ultimately time-sinks that became stressful, and Earl Weaver Baseball (more micromanagement, and not as much fun as Strat-o-Matic). In terms of consoles, the Intellivision AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin basically forever, as long as you didn't turn off the console. Similarly, I spent a lot of hours during a relatively short period of time with Bard's Tale I and II.

 

 

[KC4800]

7 Days to Die. I actually purchased it on Steam when it was on sale for $5.99 just prior to the big announcement that it was finally leaving Alpha and going live for console and PC. Version 1.0, baby!

 

This is the reason I haven't been playing too much CoH lately.

 

I find that I am really good at base building and resource management. 

 

And I learned how to kite from this game, which was an old school tactic rarely needed anymore in this game due to power creep. 

[Evercent]

This is a difficult choice for me as I rarely spend money on games due to either friends gifting them or real-life situations (I'm mostly broke and usually need the money for other, more important things, besides games here cost upwards of 1k ZAR). I own plenty on Steam and GoG, but I think the most I paid for a game personally was Guild Wars 2, I brought all the expansions except one out of my own pocket on sale and while I haven't played it recently, I can still say I feel like that was worth every cent.

 

[Seed22]

Dungeons of Hinterberg to me has been absolutely solid. It’s a dungeon crawler meets persona 5 and decides to be themed as a vacation(never could of guessed by the name 😛 ) Similar in design of the dungeons to the old Zelda games(and kinda has an art style inspired by the newer Zelda games or wind waker.

 

It’s truly relaxing, fun and just enough action to satisfy me, but the true star of the show has been the dungeons. Such fun puzzles, and I usually hate the damn things in other games. 
 

It’s free on gamepass and i think $30? Through steam. Next review will be for Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn when I get to it

Edited July 21 by Seed22

[Jiro Ito]

Great Value

Morrowind, Skyrim (mods!)

Fallout 3, 4, New Vegas

Planet Coaster

Knights of the Old Republic I and II

Dragon Age Origins

City of Heroes, it turns out!

 

Poor Value

Starfield 😞

Dragon Age II and III

Any other Star Wars game I've played since KOTOR

WoW

 

[Techwright]

7 hours ago, Jiro Ito said:

Great Value

...

Planet Coaster

 

 

Have you seen the announcement of Planet Coaster 2 for later this year?

 

Channel5 Gaming gives a good detailed look at the improvements to the franchise:

 

[Jiro Ito]

10 hours ago, Techwright said:

 

Have you seen the announcement of Planet Coaster 2 for later this year?

 

Channel5 Gaming gives a good detailed look at the improvements to the franchise:

 

 

No!  This is NOT the time management tool I needed lol

[Techwright]

19 hours ago, Jiro Ito said:

 

No!  This is NOT the time management tool I needed lol

I hear ya.  I was so excited to get into the original Planet Coaster, then realized how much time I'd need to find mods, parts, etc.  not to mention design and placement to make the parks I wanted.  It definitely could be achieved, just with a lot of time.  Channel 5's report shows that a lot of the things the community had struggled with are smoothly dealt with in Planet Coaster 2, allowing for faster turn around and more flexible builds.  The architects of the new game have clearly been listening the the players.