Including DLC, micro transaction purchases, etc. If you got a game for free, please also list your non-infinite next best.
For me it’s Team Fortress 2. $100 total spent on hats and the Orange Box back in the day, 4200 hours plus of fun, meaning 2.3¢ AUD per hour. Initially I thought DotA2 would be my best but it turns out I’ve spent a lot more money in that game than I thought…
My worst is God of War: Ragnarok. Bought it full price for $95 AUD, only played 2 hours and hated it, meaning $47.50 AUD per hour.
Most…probably Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Bought it when it first came out, and as soon as I beat it, when the credits finished I created another character. I must have beat the game over a dozen times on OG Xbox, 360 and Xbone (I still have the original disc).
Least? Maybe Bioshock Infinite which I bought full price at launch and probably made it less than 1/3 through before I put it away and never touched it again. That or Returnal, I bought a used copy for maybe under $15, played a couple hours before throwing the game away because of how much I hated it.
I have tried so hard to like Returnal. But the constant starting completely over EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME just gets so old.
I’m with ya on that one. I tried to like Returnal I really did but it got so irritating and boring and I never felt like I’d made progress.
Most: Factorio, by far
Still playing to this day. Looooove it and the modding community
Minecraft is obviously up there, as is TF2 like you. Factorio is very high for me, relatively low cost and many hours sunk into it.
My current worst is probably Baldur’s Gate 3, I bought it to play with a friend but we’ve only done one session so far.
I had the same experience with BG3. It feels more like a single player game in a way, in multiplayer it felt a bit awkward with the story moments. My partner kept skipping cutscenes, and making weird story choices that often led to genocide. Which I suppose is peak chaotic neutral murder hobo DnD behaviour, but the game really isn’t balanced around murder hobo 😂. I kind of was just held hostage and had to sit there while they talked to people and I had no idea what was going on. I’m planning to try again in single player eventually.
Playing a game like BG3 in co-op sounds utterly absurd to me. You’re supposed to have a gripping narrative with your character (which for a lot players will be a self insert, making it even more personal) with lots of text to read and digest and process. How are you supposed to focus on all that if you’re on a call with a friend??
It was in person so it was even worse lol. Couch co-op chaos did not go well with BG3.
It was good in Divinity: Original Sin 1 because in that game you can kind of just ignore the entire story and play it like an action CRPG, which we enjoyed a lot. I got my MC and Jafar (not his actual name but it was a funny running joke because we couldn’t remember his name), my partner got their MC and the two handed sword lady I also forget her name. It was a running joke like, FFS Jafaaaaar C’mon! Because he would constantly fall over and get crippled by every CC that got near him. Like his toe would touch one molecule of frozen floor and he’d just comically fall over for 3 turns… then fall over again as soon as he got up and tried to walk out of it. Classic Larian.
But yeah it didn’t work for BG3 because the story actually matters
Probably CSGO, because I made at least 100€ playing that game for ~500 hours, and even mostly enjoyed it.
As for the worst, kinda tough to say, since I bought so many games and it’s probably one I can’t remember. Only one I can think of right now is Monster Hunter 3 for the Wii, which I bought the collector’s edition of, only to realize I really don’t like Monster Hunter games.
bought CS:GO a decade ago on sale for like £3 and I still play it (ignore the cost of the cosmetics i bought)
Least: The two I bounced hard off of I think was the '24 version of Microsoft flight sim? Loved Century of Flight in the past, but felt like the navigating the UI was oddly arcane and just couldn’t be arsed to learn its eccentricities. Also GTA V. Do not get it, man. I really enjoyed San Andreas and the old Saints Row games, but GTA V was just boring for me.
BG3 was another that I didn’t get a ton out of… Act 1 was great, but it fell off a lot after that imo. Every session felt like a slog (I actually like 5e, but it tends to get more slog-y by itself at higher levels imo). I just watched the rest on YouTube and didn’t feel like I missed much in terms of experience. I get where people got into it though, the voice acting really was a treat and I did enjoy Act 1. But I felt like I went way over my usual dollar to fun ratio.
Most: Minecraft is up there, like many, especially for my kiddo. We both really like playing Golf With Your Friends together along with PinballFX. I’m pretty much done for good with it at this point but I put countless hours into New Vegas that I don’t regret one bit. Similar story for Oblivion and Skyrim. Even at the price, RDR2 was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in gaming. American and Euro Truck Simulators, CKII, Civ VI, Subnautica. I really liked Cyberpunk and put a lot of hours in there, but I came in well after the release kerfuffle and had no expectations. My wife plays the shit out of Disney’s Dreamlight Valley.
I got Rollercoaster Tycoon on the front of a Cereal box. I’m still playing that copy decades later… i think I’m working on dollar per decade rather than dollar an hour here
For now definitely Deadlock. It’s free (for now) and no way to even spend money (for now) i played 900 hors for now and i don’t think i’m gonna stop anytime soon.
I really tried to like deadlock, but it turns out I’m extremely bad at aiming. Like I was a Pyro / Demo / Soldier / Medic player for a reason. There’s not really a “low aim equivalent” character in recent online shooters… I still remember lock on beam Symmetra traps, those were good times.
POSTAL 2. I got it for a buck on GOG.
vivid stasis is most enjoyment, as i got over 100 hours of an amazing game for only 0 usd, resulting in NaN hours/usd
the least is probably dracomaton, which i got for 0 usd and it burned my motherboard
First, IMO enjoyment ≠ playtime
If it’s about enjoyment, then Signalis takes the top spot. It was probably the cleanest purchase to end credits I’ve ever had in my life. Saw the store page on steam, bought it for 29.99, played through the game in 3 days. Never touched the game since and it is by a large margin the best game I’ve ever played.
For least enjoyment it must be the recent Warhammer Space Marine 2. Bought it for the Coop at full price (luckily just the standard edition). Extremely short and boring campaign and very repetitive and lackluster Coop mode. Wish I could get a refund but im already 7 hours in. The amount of games I’ve paid full price for in my life can be counted on two hands and this one definetly takes the price for most money and least enjoyment.
Bonus round: There are 2 games that, while I enjoyed at first and put 100s of hours in, have become so unbearably bad that I didn’t even request a refund (even if I still could) but straight up deleted them from my account. Thats Helldivers 2 and Squad. I got both them for fairly cheap but even if I didn’t. FUCK THOSE GAMES. They are the epitome of a waste of time.
Best would have to be PlanetSide 2. It’s not the most hours I’ve put into a game, but it’s up there, and now importantly it’s the game that I most fondly remember my time playing. For a few years I ran ops with one of the oldest outfits in the game, and I still find myself remembering moments from those nights. It was a really cool community (maybe not as a whole, but certainly the people I was hanging out with) and we got up to a lot of really fun shit. I put maybe $100-200 into that game and got out experiences that genuinely changed me as a person.
Least would be Squad. I’ve never been able to make that game click. It’s not like I don’t play similar games, I’ve really enjoyed my time with Hell Let Loose, and Insurgency would be a very strong contender for my most bang for buck. Squad just… Doesn’t work for me. And I don’t really know why.
Nothing will ever match Indar on a Friday night. TR forever!
Best: Minecraft (bought at the Beta price), Counter Strike: Source, Counter Strike Global Offensive (I bought it before it became free), Rome Total War, Anno 1602, Age of Empires 2. I have hundreds of hours in all of these. Technically the last three were bought by my father originally, but I think I re-bought them all on digital platforms later.
Worst: Tom Clancy Division 2 (because it’s shit and full of adverts), Monster Hunter World (because it never worked for me properly), Dragon Age 2 (just didn’t like the style of top down gameplay).
Diablo 2 has been the best value by far, even accounting for purchasing it several times over the years, plus the more recent re-make.
More recently, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Hades 2 have been amazing bang for my buck.
Worst might be Diablo 4. I played for a few hours and just couldn’t get into it.
Garry’s Mod, 10 dollars and 6000 hours logged.
