1. STAY IN
Unlike other areas of life, gaming has always been fairly resilient to the pressures of a recession. What's the one thing that happens when money gets tight? People stay in. Save money by entertaining yourself on the cheap indoors.

So traditionally, playing games saves you money - a copy of MGS4 is cheaper than a holiday in Corfu. In fact, a family holiday to the Greek isle will set you back £889 on lastminute.com; for that you can get a brand new PlayStation 3 and 14 games. You won't need to come out until the Credit Crunch has run its course with that little lot. 50 Points

2. BUY ONLINE
Don't pay silly money prices for games that are far cheaper online. By and large, the High Street stores aren't cutting prices on PS3 hardware, if you want a cheaper console you'll need to go to online auction sites like eBay.com. You should expect to pick up a second hand PlayStation 3 for under £250, saving vital cash to splash on second hand games and online peripherals. 20 Points

3. TRADE IN
The easiest way to save money is not to pay full price for a game. Ever again. Dig through your games collection looking for crap to trade in. Do you really play that copy of Wall-E your gran bought you for your birthday because she still doesn't understand you're all grown up now with a job, a girlfriend and delicately sculpted facial hair?

No matter, old games you never play can fetch a decent price as a trade-in on the High Street. We did a bit of research and discovered that GAME offers more money for games still sitting in the charts than most (that copy of Wall-E would net you £20). 30 Points

4. TRY SOMETHING NEW
Here's the deal. Story-driven games like Condemned 2, The Bourne Conspiracy and even this month's exclusive, Star Wars The Force Unleashed, don't offer longterm value.

You finish it, watch the credits roll and sit back to admire your work. The Credit Crunch demands more. You need old-school games you can go back to, games that demand you beat them rather than complete them, games like The Club. Before the Credit Crunch these games were out of favour and so are going cheap in most High Street stores and internet shops. 40 Points

5. IRONIC GAMING
You have a collection of great games. You've played MGS4, GTAIV and Uncharted to death. There's nothing more to see or do. The cheap option is to go ironic. Ironic gaming means you can eek out pleasure from the worst-ever games.

Invite some friends round and laugh at the B-Movie one-liners in Haze. Gawp at the incomprehensible plotting of Dark Sector. Get sucked into the epic nonsense of Lair. Find yourself getting strangely addicted to Kung Fu Panda's God Of War for kids. The point is: crap games are cheap. Ironic gaming can only harm your reputation and not your bank balance. It's foolproof. 5 Points

6. HOLD TOURNAMENTS
Make your game nights more fun by holding regular tournaments. Pro Evo nights are always good. Get four TVs in your living room to simulate home and away matches. Pro Evo always runs differently on differently sized TVs (some update slower).

The thrill of going to Dean Park to win the league or the Bramble Colosseum to stave off relegation is what makes Pro Evo all the more fun. Why not throw £5 each into the pot for a winner-takes-all buzz? Just remember to lock the doors to stop stroppy players from running out and remember, it's just a game. Don't let Pro Evo destroy your life. (We're looking at you Lewis). 10 Points

7. DEMOS
They're free and they're just a click away. If you pay a visit to the PSN Store, you can download free playable demos for all the latest releases. Some are poor, but occasionally a gem will appear - the Battlefield: Bad Company demo offered limitless online play until the game was released. It's expected that Sony will probably do something similar with Resistance 2 in early October. 20 Points

8. SHARE GAMES
It sounds simple enough, but why not spread the cost of a new game among your group of friends? Pro Evo and FIFA are always best played together, so chipping in for a group copy of PES09 makes perfect sense. 15 Points

9. BUY BUDGET
Sony recently released its budget label, in a natty red looking packaging. Games in the collection are selling for £19.99 and include first-party games Resistance, MotorStorm and Heavenly Sword.

Plus third parties are getting in on the action with Sega Rally, WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 08 and Assassin's Creed all getting a re-release. Best of the bunch is Sony's Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, a brilliant game now backed by Trophies. 10 Points

10. BUY ****CS
PlayStation has a huge back catalogue of ****c games, so why not pay a trip to a High Street bargain bin or eBay for a cheap thrill? The likes of God Of War, Black and Killzone are all still playable on the 60GB model PS3, and you can tweak the visual output in your XMB menu to smooth the old PS2 textures. Better still, looking back to the ****cs may throw up some golden greats you missed out on the first time around. 10 Points

11. WATCH MOVIES
When you bought your PS3 you got one of the market's leading Blu-ray players on the cheap. The films are more expensive but most High Street stores (Zavvi, GAME and HMV) are currently doing Credit Crunch-handy deals, HMV's five Blu-rays for £59.99 is pretty good; the films include Hellboy, Ghostrider and Hostel (not great, but cheap).30 Points

12. FREE UPDATES
EA's new aim is to find ways to ensure you keep its games stuck in your PlayStation 3 for longer and don't trade them in. To this end, the super-publisher has opted to give away free content for its biggest games. Other publishers have also been offering new maps, weapons and scenarios for existing games, for free. If you're on a tight budget, then games with regular free updates that extend their lifespan are a must. 50 Points

13. TURN PROFESSIONAL
Like energy drinks, fried chicken and only ever wear T-shirts emblazoned with a Pokémon, Street Fighter character or nondescript military phrase?

Then sir, you're a Pro Gamer. It's hard to get into and you do need to be obsessively good, but if you manage to get onto the tour, you'll make a fortune through sponsorship (the Major League Gaming teams recently signed a merchandising deal worth $10 million).

The downside is that most pro tournaments are built around US-friendly games like Halo and Quake and there's currently no pro league listed for PixelJunk Monsters. 10 Points

14. PLAY ONLINE
Unlike Xbox 360, playing online costs you nothing other than your standard monthly broadband splurge. So why not make the most of it?

Games such as Call Of Duty 4, Battlefield: Bad Company and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 have a thriving online community and all three offer a Perks-based structure meaning the more you play the better you get and the more unlockables you earn. There's more to games than completing the Story mode. Get a good online game (COD4 is still the pack leader) and you'll not need anything else. Money saved. 50 Points

15. FREE PHONE CALLS
Get yourself a Bluetooth headset (the Sony Ericsson HBH-PV700 is good) and log-in to a game. Soul Calibur IV is a good one to try, just turn off the match timer to stay in the game. Now pause the game or just sit there and chat away. For free. Sure, you have to pay for a Broadband connection, but you do get unlimited international calls. 40 Points

16. HIGH STREET DEALS
Don't forget to go outside the big stores to hunt down those elusive bargains. There are still some good local game shops hidden away in small town Britain that will often do you a good deal.

17. LOWER YOUR SIGHTS
If it's a new game you're after, don't be afraid to experiment with the junk at
the bottom of the barrel. A duffer like Beowulf can be found at CEX (cex.co.uk) for only £8, EA's brawler Def Jam ICON is going for a pocket-friendly £5 on eBay and the simple, but very playable Ridge Racer 7 is £5 - again on eBay. If you really want to live dangerously, you could pick up Genji for £4 on eBay. It's really crap, but it does have an iconic place in PS3 history - "BIG GIANT CRABS!" 5 Points

18. DO IT YOURSELF
In theory, Sony's LittleBigPlanet is going to be the game that keeps on giving. Buy it in October, and you'll never need another game because you can just make your own within LBP. This game creator will enable you to make your own platformer and share it with friends online. Not only that, you'll be able to sell items, characters and levels to make some virtual money from your creations, if they're good enough. 30 Points

19. PSN GAMES
The last six months have seen a rise in the quality and quantity of the PSN Store games. These are no longer twee takes on old ideas, but inventive, deep and rewarding titles in their own right.

Super Stardust HD is a great game and now comes backed by Trophies, adding greatly to its lifespan. But new releases like PixelJunk Eden, Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Fat Princess all boast short-term novelty and longterm challenge, and retail at the pocket friendly, money-saving price of £3.99. 50 Points

20. FREE GAMES
Flash games have been entertaining cheapskates for years now and, if you haven't had a look at them in a while, you'll be surprised - they're better than ever. If you use your PS3's web browser you can access loads of arcade games at http://www.computerandvideogames.com/www.greatgamesexperiment.com which tags any Flash games it hosts as PS3 playable - just so you know.

21. BUY PROMO COPIES
Game publishers regularly send out promo copies for new releases, now we on PSW play our freebies to death when they arrive, but that doesn't mean your typical casual journo on Radio Jipped doesn't take one look at the shiny disc and bung it straight on eBay. The downside is that these discs come minus covers, boxes and instruction manuals. But do you really need a manual for Mercenaries 2? Most games lead you by the hand anyway. 15 Points

22. ALL MOD CONS
The modding scene is just taking off on PS3 - the daddy is Unreal Tournament III due to its massive PC fanbase who kindly make their mods playable on PS3.

The best to date is still the LEGO mod that turns the game world into LEGO and even adds in destructible scenery. There are loads of free-to-use maps, items and characters (everyone from Snake, Master Chief and Cloud Strife are in here) made by the Unreal Tournament III community. If you fancy modding yourself or just want to get some free goodies to play with visit: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/www.ut3mod.com. 10 Points

23. PLAY PC GAMES
Your PS3 can be hooked up to your PC via its media server function in the Settings menu on the XMB. Now if you have a natty bit of software like StreamMyGame on your PC, you can play your PC games on your PS3. There's even been a recent software update that enables you to play Crysis using the Sixaxis controller. Open up your PS3 to some cheap PC games - visit streammygame.com. 5 Points

24. IMPORT GAMES
Make full use of the upside to the Credit Crunch - that's the value of the pound to the dollar. Every PS3 game you see on eBay.com (the US version of eBay) is virtually half price under current exchange rates.

Army Of Two is $22 (£11), Soul Calibur IV $52 (£26) and Guitar Hero Aerosmith plus a Guitar controller is only $99 (£50). Oh, there was a single copy of Medal Of Honor going for 50 pence, but it felt wrong. 25 Points

25. TROPHIES
Sony's new Trophy system (earn little Gold, Silver and Bronze 'Trophies' for completing hidden tasks in a game) could be your biggest Credit Crunch friend. Why buy a new game when you have yet to unlock the Platinum Trophy in Super Stardust HD?

The reason to pursue Trophies is to brag, to show off you PS3 Profile online and boast about your achievements in the most mundane games imaginable. It's the virtual equivalent of measuring your knob or boasting about pay packet.

Right now there aren't many games that support Trophies, but by the end of the year most PS3 releases will feature the reward system. By 2009; Trophies will be mandatory in every PS3 game. Let's hope the Credit Crunch is over then. 50 Points

UK gamers will finally be able to buy Manhunt 2 for Playstation 2, PSP, and Wii on 31 October.

Originally released in the US over a year ago, the game was refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Certification in June 2007.

Following multiple appeals and changes to the game, it was granted a certificate in March.

The goriest scenes were blurred out in the American version of the game but have been removed altogether in the UK.

In the game, players assume the role of a mental asylum patient who must escape by any means including attacks with improvised weapons in an effort to discover why he has been imprisoned.

The BBFC initially banned the game for its "unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone" and also rejected an initial edited version of the game.

After extensive negotiations between Rockstar, the BBFC and the Video Appeals Committee, an 18 certificate was issued in March.

UK gamers will finally be able to buy Manhunt 2 for Playstation 2, PSP, and Wii on 31 October.

Originally released in the US over a year ago, the game was refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Certification in June 2007.

Following multiple appeals and changes to the game, it was granted a certificate in March.

The goriest scenes were blurred out in the American version of the game but have been removed altogether in the UK.

In the game, players assume the role of a mental asylum patient who must escape by any means including attacks with improvised weapons in an effort to discover why he has been imprisoned.

The BBFC initially banned the game for its "unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone" and also rejected an initial edited version of the game.

After extensive negotiations between Rockstar, the BBFC and the Video Appeals Committee, an 18 certificate was issued in March.