What's up with budget games in Game?

In my local Game recently, I decided to take a look at the budget PC games section and see what they had on offer. I, for one, love budget games, and the chance to play substantially overlooked games at a reasonable price has me jumping for joy, and recently I've enjoyed games like The Thing and No-one Lives Forever 2 for less than £2 each from amazon. Arguably not the greatest games in the world, but still fun and enjoyable time-wasters.

Anyway, in Game they have a large section of games, as here:



Black and White: There's a massive gap between the hype surrounding Black and White and the game itself. It got incredible reviews but no one seemed to realise it wasn't actually any fun to play. I remember buying it myself, then taking it back to the shop cos I thought it sucked. Everyone in the shop was really surprised, saying stuff like "dude, that's just, like, so disrespectful to Molyneux, dude, the guy spent like years designing it, totally dude." I changed it for Deus Ex, and everyone in the shop let out a synchronised "meh..." But I ask you now staff at Electronics Boutique Cheltenham, WHO WAS RIGHT? IN WHICH GAME CAN YOU GIVE A CHILD SWEETS FOR INFORMATION THEN STAB HIM IN THE FACE AND GET THE SWEETS BACK?
Is it worth £5? Kinda, yes, but only so you can see how much of a mess the game is.

Red Alert 2, Sim City 3000, C&C: Tiberian Sun, Worms: Armageddon: These are all games that are united in the facts that:
1) They have predecessors.
2) They are nowhere near as good as their predecessors.
Probably a bit of a generalisation, but, it seems like brand loyalty is more important to games manufacturers than original ideas. B&W is probably the only game on the list that is established on its own hype rather than a franchise.

Taking a look on the horrible Sold Out website, there's an absolute stack of games Game could stock, and more importantly, the games listed as amazon's most popular are nowhere to be seen in this particular branch of Game. The worst thing of all is that the top three are all original, ground-breaking games; Deus Ex, Thief 1 & 2 and Eurofighter Typhoon.

The worst thing about this is that there's such a massive gap between what Game think will sell and what gamers really want. Obviously these games are selling but why can't people buy more imaginative games rather than sequel after sequel?

posted by Henry @ 8:17 am