Well, I guess they have to make up for other inadequacies in some way.

Well it is called the "Massive Ordanance Penatrator". Sounds like there's some insecurities somewhere...

> what is a grue?

You know what had another thought. What about E.T. for the 2600? Didn't that set the precedent for totally retarded games?

I was always a big fan of Syndicate. At the time it was pretty revolutionary in that you could pretty much interact with the entire environment in one way or another long before you hit the GTA series and what not.

I'm sure there'll be a lot more that folks can think of out here in Slashdot land.....

But see. These are reasons why you should try throw a few extra bucks at the brick and mortar store from time to time. It costs money to provide that service of being able to checkout the thing before you buy, etc.

Just something to keep conscious of. If it costs you a few bucks more, help em out.

At the same time, admittedly there have been times I've checked it out in the store and they can't match so I buy online. There was a lcd tv I was going to buy a while back that neither Best Buy or Circuit City brick-and-mortar were even willing to try to match to Amazon's deal (CC and Bestbuy wanted ~$2k, amazon wanted ~$1500), plus amazon was throwing in a blu-ray player.

I gave them both opportunities to match but they didn't want "to consider amazon their competition". Circuit City didn't let me down either, every time I shopped there the clerks usually drove me batty and caused me to shop elsewhere. Well sorry guys, I bought it online, and amazon did a pretty fantastic job. Had they come close (within $100-200 or so), I would have probably bought it at one of the two. Especially since I didn't know about the BD player deal till around checkout time.

So anyway, consider chucking a few bucks to your local retailer from time to time if its in the ballpark, otherwise, they may not be there down the road. Price isn't always everything.

Same boat over here. I have no problem paying for games (though I rarely buy them when they first come out). I believe whole heartedly in supporting creative software developers who put out useful/interesting/fun/etc software.

I do have a problem with the state of DRM. Consequently, I haven't even bothered to look at GTA IV or Red Alert 3 for me. In fact since that seems to the de facto standard on most PC games (or so it seems) I've just stopped buying PC games outright. It doesn't help that a lot of the games suck now either (FPS bore the hell out of me and that seems to be another trend).

I agree that the cost for "new" games is too much. What to do? Just wait the 6 months to a year for them to drop down to the $20 price point. If its game I love, maybe I'll pony up the extra cash in advance, but frankly most games don't fall into that category. At $20 if it sucks, I don't care too much. Frankly I have more important things to worry about than gaming, so if I "deny myself" for a bit, its usually for the better anyway.

Something tells me that the folks involved aren't going to forget this lesson very soon. You'd need to verify that there is some working gray matter upstairs during the interview process, but so long as they know its an f'up, and why it was one, I can sorta justify they won't make that same mistake down the road on my dime.