Cafe Society or IMHO? I leaned towards the former. Mods, my apologies if it should be in the latter.
I searched old threads but couldn’t really find much on Gamefly other than this thread, which is a little bit old now. For the uninitiated, Gamefly is basically Netflix, but for video games. I’ve heard a wide range of mixed reviews about the service, with many complaints that games “get lost in the mail” and also that there’s an insanely long turnaround time. (Likely not helped by the fact that there’s only one distribution center, and that’s in L.A. – on the opposite coast from Boston.) Any Dopers use this service and have comments about it? I’m considering doing it just to try and cut back on some video game spending (after buying a few $50 games that haven’t had quite the bang-for-the-buck I was hoping for…) Any thoughts?
I can’t help you on Gamefly, because I don’t play enough XBox games to justify the rental price, but do you read the reviews of games before you plunk down $50? There are a few places out there that compile reviews, including Rotten Tomatoes, so you can see the thoughts of a lot of reviewers instead of just one or two. Plus most sites include forums for reader reviews.
Yup, I read 'em, but I’ve found that I don’t always 100% agree. Case in point: the (relatively) new Prince of Persia game. I read some glowing reviews of it. So I got it. Beautiful game, no doubt. But while the combat looks great, I just wasn’t having all that much fun with the game – and I finished it in something like 7 hours of playing time. Reviews I read cautioned that it was a short game – “something that should take the average gamer only about 15 hours”. I’m no speed demon, so maybe I’m above average. My mom thinks I’m special, at least. That’s a big difference between 7 and 15 hours, at least in my opinion. Not a ton of replay value for me, either. I could have definitely benefitted from a rental on that one – I would have played through it in a weekend and returned it. However, the local Blockbuster never has anything new or anything I’m interested in playing, and I’ve had great luck with Netflix, so something like Gamefly seemed like the obvious next step.
I’ve been using Gamefly for about two months now, and I’ve been very happy with it. I haven’t had any trouble with shipping time, but I do live in Los Angeles where the shipping center is, so that likely helps. Turnaround is usually about 2 days for me.
The selection is good, the service is good (again, perhaps helped by my proximity to them), and the price seems to be very good, compared to what I would be spending a month renting/buying. The thing I like best is that it’s allowed me to rent a slew of games that I’d probably never otherwise play, if I had to rent them for $6 or buy them for $40 or $50. Some of them have been crap and returned right away, but others have been great little finds. For example, I’m not much of a real-life tennis fan, so I’d most likely never have picked up Smash Court Pro Tournament Tennis. But it got added to my Gamefly queue for the hell of it, and I gotta say, I loved this game!
So, my personal experience with Gamefly has been very good. I’d recommend it.
I like it a lot. I do agree that the turnaround time can be pretty long (like 2 weeks from the time you put one in the mail 'till the next one arrives). For reference, I’m in Dallas. This doesn’t bother me though because it could easily take me two weeks to get through a game, so I can be playing one while the other is in transit.
I wonder if some of these reports of “lost” games are really instances of people thinking the game is lost simply because it takes so long to do a turnaround? I know the first couple of times I sent something back I got pretty worried. I’d put something in the mail on Monday and not hear anything for days. By Wednesday I was sure the game was lost, but then on Friday, I’d get the notification that they’d received the game. Then repeat the process in the other direction: they tell me they shipped on Monday, nothing by Thursday, getting worried, game arrives Saturday or Monday.
I’m used to this now, so even that doesn’t bother me. The game will get where it needs to be - no worries.