Welcome to The Budget Gamer,
I started this blog because I am always purchasing games on the cheap, be it through GOG.com, or daily sales on one digital distribution source or another. This leads to me having a very large collection of games I paid anywhere from nothing, to $20 for.. some of them are worth the money, a lot of them aren't.
I hope that my reviews help to keep you from wasting money on the not-so-good ones that I made the mistake of buying.
Every Tuesday you'll get a review of a game that costs $20 or less, and on the first Friday of the month you'll get a game that is absolutely free to play.
In my reviews, you will find both my personal take on the mechanics of the game, from the most objective standpoint I can give, as well as a basic overview of what the game is about, and my completely subjective opinion of the game. Plus basic information on the game, where it's available and for how much.
On the Freebie reviews, they might be Free-to-play MMOs, or games available free of charge from GOG or another source, exceptional Flash games, or perhaps even a demo of a game that offers a lot of game play.
At the start, you will find 3 things:
Beaten: y/n
I have a very short attention span with video games, so I jump around in them a lot, and make new characters and test things.. for me to actually have beat a game says something in and of itself. I provide that detail so you know if I'm speaking from the perspective of the entire game, or what of the game I played. Generally if the answer is 'no', I will try to give a general idea of how much I've played it.
Zolgar's Rating: X/10
My rating is, simply put, the score out of 10 I give the game right this minute. This is 100% subjective. There may be a note of 'vanilla X' 'modded X', vanilla means playing the game 'out of the box'.
Replayability:
My rating system for how the replayability of a game is as follows:
None: Puzzle games where there is only 1 possible way to do things, at all, so there is no new experience in the game.
Low: Games where things don't really change as you go through them, but have entertaining enough game play to warrant going through it again, perhaps challenging yourself to do it faster or in a different way.
Moderate: Games that you can make minor changes in as you play the game, leading to possibly a different ending, but over all it's still basically playing the exact same game over again. Or games which have multiple playable characters, that have slightly different play styles, but the game itself doesn't change at all.
Decent: Games that as you play through them, what you do actually alters events further in the game, leading to not only a different ending, but different experiences. Or games that have multiple playable characters, and a non-static world.
High: Games that have multiple playable characters, or better yet the ability to make your own characters, and a story that changes depending on how you play the game, leading to both different gaming experiences and a different ending. Might also include games where the world is so massive and has so much to do that you can get lost in the world and wander around forever almost like it's an MMO.
Perfect: Simply put, games that go above and beyond, making it an entirely new game every time you play it practically.
MMO: Occasionally I'll review MMOs, and to be honest, MMOs are a completely different can of worms for replayability.
You will notice I rarely mention graphics more than in passing, unless there is something exceptional to say about them. The reason for this is most of the games I review are older, so it's to be expected that their graphics are sub-par compared to modern gaming. If you're the kind of gamer that absolutely has to have good graphics to be able to play a game, I suggest not trying to game on a budget.
Lastly, I am human, so I do make mistakes on occasion. I do my best to get my facts straight and do my homework when writing my reviews, but sometimes that won't be enough. If you find an error in my reviews, please let me know. Errors, however, do not include you simply disagreeing with my opinion on a game.
