[old blog import] My Life As A ScamLord

So, pottering around with the Wii at the weekend (and refusing outright to make that particular pun), I find that the shop channel as at long last started to catch up with the modern age and has some FREE DEMO'S!!!

Let the joy bells ring.

Anyway, the lack of any demo content has always been a little puzzling to me, so it's nice to see them taking even a tentative step in the right direction. There's only a handful of demo's on offer, but at least there's a couple I actually want to try. So I download the demos for World Of Goo and Final Fantasy My Life As A Darklord.

Now, My Life As A Darklord in particular has interested me for a very long time, so actually getting an opportunity to try it out is awesome. And it's a fun game. In fact I enjoy playing it so much I decide to actually buy it.

Now, here I must pause in my narrative to address the one niggling issue I have with the demo service (aside of course from the fact that you can't set it to download in the background and do something else). Simply the fact that, once you complete a demo you taken immediately into the shop, rather than just exiting back to the main screen. I find this to be rather obnoxious. If I want to buy the damn game then I'll do it in my own time, thanks.

Anyway, so despite having the shop pushed in my face I pay's my money and I takes my choice. 1000 points, or £7.00 in earth monies. After all, seven quid for a fun little game is a pretty good deal, right?

Well, yes. I think so. The game is fun, and I'm happy with my purchase.

But then you see this additional content menu. And this is where things start to get a bit dodgy. There's all this extra content you can buy for the game. New costumes, new monsters, items, that kind of thing.  Mostly it looks like you can just buy yourself some extra stuff to make things a bit easier. And, since I have some random left over points I do that myself.

Then, I decide to have a look at what all this stuff actually costs in real money. I mean, I'm liking this game, so obviously I'd like to experience as much of the available content as possible. So I go through and add it up.

Now, it is worth bearing in mind that none of this is REQUIRED to play the game. It would just be nice to have. But the full total for the additional content for a £7 game comes to...

£39.90

Which somehow strikes me as pretty shocking. If you want the whole shebang it'll end up costing you more than buying a big new release. Indeed, just getting the extra's that interest me (which is extra levels, monsters and artifacts) will cost about another £20.

This is undoubtedly the sort of thing it would be easy to spend to much money on, particularly with the actual values obfuscated by this whole points nonsense.

Exactly how I feel about all this is still a little undecided, as I am only partway through the game. Exactly how much unlockable content exists in game without paying and the games final length will impact quite severely. After all, it just feels like a set up to get you to buy more then I'll be quite dissapointed. On the other hand if it manages to stand alone satisfactorly then the additional content will be more like the icing on the cake.

Only time will tell.