Coin-Op'ed Gaming Facade: How to make the most out of your gaming monies!

Okay, I know I said a couple entries back, that this would be the NEXT article; however it should be understandable that an unscheduled post was made in tribute to the now late Steve Jobs. May he rest in peace and know up in heaven that he's missed and never forgotten.

That aside, moving onto the article that many have been waiting for. How to get the best bang for your buck in the world of gaming. Now, since I already covered Free-to-Play versus Pay-to-Play a couple articles ago, feel free to reference back to it for that information and insight:

Only Two Reasons You'll Need to Consider F2P over P2P. Though, there is one thing I did NOT point out in that article which I do feel needs some mention and clarification, and that is "buy to play" or B2P. Say what!? What's this "buy to play" I speak of? Let me explain what that is really quick. Essentially there's a bold line between the pay-to-play and free-to-play genres, and there are some games *called* "free-to-play" which actually reside in a little gray area within that bold line, and those games are actually and technically "buy to play". What I mean by "buy to play" is, it's a game you only have to buy once, then can play it as much as you want to. The biggest prime example of "buy to play" would be Guild Wars, and hopefully soon Guild Wars 2. Most multiplayer console games can also be considered "buy to play"; now the reason I felt this needed to be pointed out when it comes to making the most of your spending monies, is because you will find guides and reviews online that can leave you disappointed as far as price tags go. You'll see plenty of reviews and guides that will scream from the roof top that Guild Wars if "free to play", but they never tell you, "guess what, you need to buy that chit either from the store or digitally online" in order to play it; which means at some point you will have to reach into your pocket and spend money, making it not completely "free to play". But note, I am NOT trying to take anything at all away from Guild Wars or other "buy to play" games, as Guild Wars is an awesome game; I just really feel it needs to be noted that you do have to spend at least SOME money on it. There's been numerous times I'll think, "oh yeah, this new whatever it's name is game is F2P!? Booyah!", hop over to their website, look for the little download link, and guess what, "sorry, unless you have that extra $40-$60 or whatever to throw down right now, you ain't playing wit' 'dis chit yo!", though, thankfully, most games like this do have a trial. I myself just prefer not to really go the trial route unless I have those extra funds to spend and I'm window-shopping to spend them; why? Because it's teasing yourself to get addicted to the game for a week, two week, a month, or whatever the trial is, then suddenly boom, cold turkey, no more pew-pew for you!

Now to branch off of that article, however, the beauty of free to play, is it leaves us gamers more of a budget to sink back into other games, other titles, etc. One of the many reasons I actually enjoy PSN over XBL. Everybody has their own preferences granted, but the way I look at it, is the money I don't have to pay for an online network subscription on PSN is just a little bit more money I can either use on other PS3/PC/Xbox/Wii/PSP/DS games, or that I can use to get stuff either online or for an online service/game, or even use in cash shops, lol.

Moving right along, there's also something I like to do when it comes to purchasing games, I call it "game scouting", which is pretty much just frugal buying. I won't lie, when a game I really, really, really want comes out for the first time, if I have the money I may pre-order it for the bonuses, but those titles are few and far between typically. For most other titles, I've found if you wait typically three to six weeks, the prices drop quite drastically, even more so if you give it about two

months. That's pretty much the way the gaming industry works, they get their first big bang from the initial release, then they lower the price to get further sales from those who may not have been fully interested enough to buy it within the first week. I'm also one who loves to scrounge around in the bargain bins in gaming/electronics departments. I'm a sucker for the classics, and many times if you look right, you can leave with a stack of games for the same price as what you'd pay for a brand new release game.

Of course, on also has to always remember to window shop and browse around. Now with the information superhighway so easily at our disposal, this shouldn't be a problem. Typically most new releases have the same price no matter where you go, but different suppliers tend to have different pre-order bonuses, which I know, tends to be a bit of a pain trying to figure out what you want out of the 5-10 different pre-order selections.

Also, on the PC side, there's always emulators for any that want to emulate the older school games without having to hunt down all the hardware which now sells kind of steep since it's now considered "classic". Anything from MAME, to Nesticle, SNES9x, Dolphin, Project64, ePSXe, PCSX2, Chankast, Satourne, Fusion, Nebula, Kawaks, Stella, Project Tempest, RuMSX, WinUAE, NeoPop, M.E.S.S., Nostalgia, FreeDO, SainT, ColEm, AdamEm, and the list goes on. Just need to know where to look, and all those retro games that certain services charge you to be able to play again, and completely up for grabs and ready for the taking. :)

Finally, I was kind of saving the best for last, and this actually only kind of works out for PC gamers. Which as a PC gamer, I can say, any little bit you can save, means not only more you can dump into other games, but more you can dump into your gaming rig. I know I preach this app everywhere I go, even have a link to it over in the right margin over there, but I cannot even begin to tell you what a blessing the Game Booster app is. Keeping in mind, if you have a latest and greatest system, you're not going to notice much of an improvement with Game Booster, obviously; but it will come in handy even for you when your rig starts to become a bit out-dated.

In this current time frame of technological releases, Game Booster seems to work best for those of us on older dual-core system, or perhaps even very low-end quad-core systems. As an example, the current rig that I'm using is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual-Core 2.4ghz 4600+, with only 2Gb of RAM, and an nVidia GeForce 7950 GT. Now, with those specs in mind, while using Game Booster, I'm able to run at top-notch graphic settings on games such as World of Warcraft (minus sunshafts and any other "DX11" option as it's not a DX11 card), Fallen Earth (which still has some noticeable minor rubber-banding here or there due to their lack of code optimization), HellGate: Global, Face of Mankind, Allods Online, Age of Conan, CrimeCraft, Anarchy Online (not that this one's much of a stretch), Star Trek Online, Champions Online, and a bunch of others. To note, that's running at 1280x1024 resolution, 75hz refresh rate, typically between 30-60 FPS, and in some games like Fallen Earth I even peak up a tiny bit over 100 FPS. Even really overly processor/graphic heavy games like APB I can play and actually stand a chance. Granted, due to the APB application restrictions, I'm forced to run at near lowest graphics, but without Game Booster I can barely move in APB, with Game Booster I at least have somewhat of a fighting chance. The even bigger beauty, Game Booster is completely FREE. They have some sort of option for a premium or something, but I've never gotten it. Game Booster can run perfectly straight out of a default install, or if you're more the in-depth geeky type like myself, you can easily customize your settings on the fly, and with just a couple small optimizations specifically catered for your system, you'll be up and running in no time.

Think that's just about most of it for now, if I think of anything else, will keep this updated...