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I say do BOTH!

If a title is coming out from a franchise that you've always had faith in it's a no-brainer that you want to buy it. New Halo game? Scoop! New Final Fantasy game, pre-order, wait in line, buy it, rush home and don't stop playing until someone finds your starving corpse! New Madden game? Yeah, why not?

Now, if you're in-between games like this you might start thinking "what to get next?". With the incredible prices of games these days ($50-60) you know that you don't want to take too many chances of blowing a bunch of money on games that you don't like. This is where renting comes in handy.

Your best bet is to rent a game for about five days and see how you like it. If it holds your attention for at least 12 hours (and you don't beat it!) it'll be worth buying. If not, you're only out the rental fee (and the hours of your life that the game robbed you of).

I found rental to be a nice thing when I was recovering from surgery. I was heavily medicated at the time and just wanted a distraction from the constantly resurfacing pain. So, the wife being the kind soul that she is went out and rented me "Kingdom Hearts". Due to its strong Disney influence I thought that it would be a cold day in Hades before I would actually buy it. It turned out to hold my attention quite nicely (of course, it might have also been the drugs - jury's still out on this one), but when she returned it I was kinda' bummed. So, instead of renting it again, she found a store that sold used games and picked up the game - and the requisite strategy guide. If you combined the price of the used game, the guide, and the rental fee I still came out ahead of what I would if I had bought it new.

Video games are expensive and unfortunately most people don't have the cash to buy new games every week, so renting is a nice alternative - and so are used games!

Find Your Own Pocket Change

Learn more about this author, David Furritus.
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