Including DLC, micro transaction purchases, etc. If you got a game for free, please also list your non-infinite next best.
For me it’s Team Fortress 2. $100 total spent on hats and the Orange Box back in the day, 4200 hours plus of fun, meaning 2.3¢ AUD per hour. Initially I thought DotA2 would be my best but it turns out I’ve spent a lot more money in that game than I thought…
My worst is God of War: Ragnarok. Bought it full price for $95 AUD, only played 2 hours and hated it, meaning $47.50 AUD per hour.
Most - SimCity 4. I don’t remember buying the CD but countless hours later I can say it was worth it.
Least is really hard. Like you have to really really fuck up a game for me to not like it. Three come to mind. Cities Skylines 2. Mortal Kombat 1. Starfield. Both games coming after two of my all time faves. I spent 500+ hours in CS1. If you can’t tell city builders are my jam. So for me to actively despise a city builder is pretty condemning of the quality of the game. That’s my problem with Skylines 2.
MK1 I powered through the story and had no desire to play any other part of it. It was a buggy incomplete mess. The roster was a step back from MK11 IMO. The game play was supposed to address the main complaints of how slow and limited MK11 was. They did that by adding a gimmick instead of going back to the MKX formula. MK1 is just a failed mess of a game.
I would have forgot about Starfield if not for seeing it in my Steam library just now. Mechanically this game fucking blows. I really hate some of the design decisions they made in the game. Like oxygen frequently stopping you from sprinting early game. The menu designs. Space flight. It’s all so baffling to me. They really fumbled the ball.
Check your local library, can rent console games for free!
RE9 is probably on the lower end for me. Was excited and paid full price and didn’t even get more than an hour into a second run before I got bored. The game is good but a depressing amount of it is basically on rails, kind of like the Beneviento house in RE8.
For 70 fucking bucks, it needs to ship with a mercenaries mode or seriously different NG+ mode. Insanity stops being interesting as soon as you get the blood collector and start making OP backstab injectors again and ironically showcases how actually rather unobservant most enemies are.
Compare that to games like Abiotic Factor, which are half the price (and I paid less than that because I got it during its 0.9 early access patch) and I’ve clocked hundreds of hours in or games like WoW or FFXIV which have clocked several thousand hours each.
Tormentor❌ Punisher
Bought it on chrono(gg) for $1 and have something like 500 hours in it. Made it to number 2 on the global HardMode leaderboard.
Both one of the most difficult and infuriating games I’ve ever played, but one of the most skill-based and almost infinitely playable… Crazy considering it’s a 2d top down arena based shooter.
Never heard of this one, it looks right up my alley though. Loved Hotline Miami and Brotato
This game is insane, unforgiving and brutally skill based. Let it make you it’s bitch for a while because that’s what it’s going to do for like 20 hours so settle in for a ride LOL then you can try hard mode when you think you’re good and be reminded that this game hates you ahah
Vampire survivor. $4.
1000+ hours. Of just staring at pretty colors.
Bought every single DLC to continue supporting them.
Fallout 3 or New Vegas. I can’t remember which cause they’re both pretty close in overall hours played.
Minecraft is obviously up there, as is TF2 like you. Factorio is very high for me, relatively low cost and many hours sunk into it.
My current worst is probably Baldur’s Gate 3, I bought it to play with a friend but we’ve only done one session so far.
I had the same experience with BG3. It feels more like a single player game in a way, in multiplayer it felt a bit awkward with the story moments. My partner kept skipping cutscenes, and making weird story choices that often led to genocide. Which I suppose is peak chaotic neutral murder hobo DnD behaviour, but the game really isn’t balanced around murder hobo 😂. I kind of was just held hostage and had to sit there while they talked to people and I had no idea what was going on. I’m planning to try again in single player eventually.
Playing a game like BG3 in co-op sounds utterly absurd to me. You’re supposed to have a gripping narrative with your character (which for a lot players will be a self insert, making it even more personal) with lots of text to read and digest and process. How are you supposed to focus on all that if you’re on a call with a friend??
It was in person so it was even worse lol. Couch co-op chaos did not go well with BG3.
It was good in Divinity: Original Sin 1 because in that game you can kind of just ignore the entire story and play it like an action CRPG, which we enjoyed a lot. I got my MC and Jafar (not his actual name but it was a funny running joke because we couldn’t remember his name), my partner got their MC and the two handed sword lady I also forget her name. It was a running joke like, FFS Jafaaaaar C’mon! Because he would constantly fall over and get crippled by every CC that got near him. Like his toe would touch one molecule of frozen floor and he’d just comically fall over for 3 turns… then fall over again as soon as he got up and tried to walk out of it. Classic Larian.
But yeah it didn’t work for BG3 because the story actually matters
Garry’s Mod, 10 dollars and 6000 hours logged.
Diablo 4…
Any game I’ve pirated hits infinity enjoyment per dollar, and honestly i can’t remember a game i’ve paid money for and didn’t get a good ratio of enjoyment out of. Probably something I haven’t played yet? Yapyap, i haven’t touched yet because my friends flaked, so i’ll pick that one.
I have wasted so much time in Satisfactory. Bought it on sale in 2020 I think, whenever it came to Steam.
Now get your downvotes ready, because the game that has been a waste of money for me is No Man’s Sky. Its just… not fun. Its repetitive. Im sure there is some obvious thing somewhere that I’m missing that makes the game fun but so far it’s hidden behind hours of grinding.
I love NMS but it’s been shelved for the better part of a year at this point and I don’t even really return for the updates anymore. Mods do a lot to improve the game and the new stuff they add is really cool but it’s built on a painfully limited and outdated foundation. Every planet might as well be the same so what’s the point of exploring?
NMS is the perfect game for a specific kind of person. Unfortunately that person isn’t me either. I’m glad some people like it though, and it seems well made
I think NMS is excellent, and not for me. I love logistics and puzzles. NMS is mostly exploration and combat. Their attempts at logistics and crafting are paltry, despite showing huge promise. Oh well. Maybe some day.
I got Rollercoaster Tycoon on the front of a Cereal box. I’m still playing that copy decades later… i think I’m working on dollar per decade rather than dollar an hour here
Best: Minecraft (bought at the Beta price), Counter Strike: Source, Counter Strike Global Offensive (I bought it before it became free), Rome Total War, Anno 1602, Age of Empires 2. I have hundreds of hours in all of these. Technically the last three were bought by my father originally, but I think I re-bought them all on digital platforms later.
Worst: Tom Clancy Division 2 (because it’s shit and full of adverts), Monster Hunter World (because it never worked for me properly), Dragon Age 2 (just didn’t like the style of top down gameplay).
Hmmm…
There are a few but my time tracker are all off for various reasons.
Minecraft, Skyrim, Conan Exiles, Rimworld, Baldurs Gate 3, XCOM2, Fallout 4, Civ 4. Cyberpunk might be in here.
Lots old games without trackers are likely in here. Final Fantasy Tactics has got to be really high on this list… Maybe FF3/6… Mario RPG?
All of these are easily at about 1000 hours now. I’ve played them for actual enjoyment. The best deal is likely Minecraft as I got that during my Indev… Skyrim I may have bought twice so that might be the worst deal of these.
As for the worst, hmmm. Maybe sometime like one of the more recent farcry. I guess a franchise game could count. Like ones that never really improve anything but I play cus friends or something. Like Forza Horizon. It’s not complete dogwater, but I have giving them money for it.
Most…is probably The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. That game came out when I was 3, I still have the original cartridge and it still works, and I still play that game to this day.
Least is probably going to be Where The Water Tastes Like Wine. I discovered the soundtrack first on Youtube, and then decided to try out the game. It’s a dialog heavy game, they put a lot of emphasis on the presentation and voice acting, and it’s idiotically slow. It puts a page of dialog up that you’ll have read before the voice actor starts talking. If you open the pause menu and Quit the game, IT TALKS MORE. I hit Alt+F4 and haven’t looked at it s ince.
I had bought two games at the same time, I played one of them for a few weeks before getting around to looking at WtWTLW, so I couldn’t refund it.
