After every game I play through I tend to look at what the game did right and what the game did wrong and then compare those things to other games I've played before and the gaming market in general. I think there can be lines drawn between almost every game and it's pretty easy to see why some games succeed while others end up littering bargain bins a few months down the road. This rant comes after playing Legendary and realizing that all games are not created equal which left me wondering, "Why are their prices?"

I say this only because I was shopping at a Wal-Mart when I came across Legendary in a bargain bin at a $30 price point. I knew ahead of the time the reviews that this game got were mostly average to poor but I picked the game up anyways. Before I even sat down to play the game I realized that a lot of people said this game is mediocre or even old fashioned because it doesn't break any new ground and that started me thinking of how my opinion might be swayed a little bit seeing as I'm paying half as much as they did.

I really think some developers are incapable of making great games and certain publishers are unable to fund great games and Legendary is an example of this. There was no way this game was going to be a hit and I find it even more damaging to the game's sales for it to come out at the busiest time of the year and priced the same as games that have a ton of hype surrounding them. They knew they had an inferior product so my question is why not sell it at a cheaper price to compete?

I imagine this being as if Burger King tried to compete with Red Robin's burgers at a price point level. It would be sheer lunacy if a Whopper meal ran someone $11 when the food is bargain level quality. So I don't understand why some game publishers or developers try to do the same.

There would be clearly some benefits of pricing a game less than blockbuster titles and I think reviews would be one of the first things to reflect this. Of course eventually if this price point is successful, there would be a huge flood of bargain titles competing against one another and reviews would once again level out but I think the first few average titles to come out sporting a below average price would rake in the benefits of being reviewed on a different scale. At $30, Legendary could have been in a league of its own instead of being compared to games like Half Life 2, and other better quality shooters. But no, instead they shot themselves, or more appropriate for this game, axed themselves in the foot by putting themselves in a race they would never win.

I'm also thinking of impulse buys. When I was at Wal-Mart that day, there was no way that $60 was going to be an impulse buy, but for the price of two new DVD's I could instead have roughly eight hours of entertainment instead of the average four hours of entertainment from DVD's. I actually put back a couple of DVD's and picked up Legendary. Now $30 might be a steep impulse by for some and it's not like I'd make buys like this too often but a recent release at that price that I was somewhat interested in was too good to pass up.

In the end, I did my review, posted it up here on Gamespot and then looked at the other reviews of the game. The average was 5.1 for critics and a bit lower from gamers that were probably thoroughly pissed over paying $60 for this game. My score ended up being a little higher than the critic average but not too high.

In theory, the smaller price point worked for me. Would you react similarly in this situation?

Legendary: I can't say they didn't warn me when I looked at the scores for this game and read some blurbs about how average it is. It is very mediocre but at a discounted cost, it's a good enough time. My review of it is right Nyeah.