What with the realization of the 30 gig required hard drive space and the recently announced $60 price tag, I feel the need to **** and moan a little bit here.

I have been, for a while now, anticipating the release of this game. Mostly the "SUPER INNOVATIVE NEW COMBAT" that is basically the cornerstone of its entire release. However, there's really no option for me to play it on my current rig when nearly half my current hard drive is required just to install the game, and there's no telling how much more space patching will take up. Okay let's evaluate this a little. 30 gigabytes. That's easily three or four times bigger than any other game install I've ever seen in my life. What exactly is taking up all this space? My current MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, comparatively, only required 7 gigabytes to install (with a recommended 10 gigabytes). I would be interested in seeing a graph that represents the required hard drive space for the average game over the past 10-15 years.

Also, a $60 Suggested Retail Price? Really? Is this what the "Games for Windows" trademark is supposed to do for me? PC games have, for the most part, held fast at the $50 spot for as long as I remember, so this price hike, especially considering that the user is about to embark on an extended payment plan just to play the game, seems like a scam. Yeah, yeah, you might be saying, "Big whoop, what's another $10?" My response is, "What is my extra $10 paying for?" It sure as hell isn't paying for more content than a tradionally priced $50 game would be. In this day of age where the developers and publishers are trying to force micro payments down our throat, this additional charge is most unwelcome.

So basically what this boils down to is my continued stance on PC gaming. Which can be summed up as, "Don't buy anything new." My current PC can't or won't provide the performance I want in my gaming on today's games. The last PC game I purchased at release was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in March of 2007. While I enjoyed that game, I realized that much of the enjoyment potential of that game had been thrown out the window when I was forced to switch down to directx 8 model lighting for performance reasons. I've been waiting to build a new PC, before getting heavily back into PC gaming (which unfortunately keeps getting pushed back because of priorties).

The other thing that supports my "Don't buy anything new" stance, is the fact that you might as well just wait for the price of a game to drop, especially if this $60 a game nonsense is going to continue. I wouldn't drop an extra Hamilton on a game purchase 10 years ago when games were AWESOME, I sure as hell ain't doing it today when half the crap published is shovelware.

/endrant

EDIT: So there's no complaints on the part of the $60 price tag bit, here's where I got my info from. Link courtesy of Ten-Ton Hammer & Kotaku