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.
Fallout 3 or New Vegas. I can’t remember which cause they’re both pretty close in overall hours played.
Vampire survivor. $4.
1000+ hours. Of just staring at pretty colors.
Bought every single DLC to continue supporting them.
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.
Diablo 4…
Garry’s Mod, 10 dollars and 6000 hours logged.
I have wasted so much time in Satisfactory. Bought it on sale in 2020 I think, whenever it came to Steam.
Now get your downvotes ready, because the game that has been a waste of money for me is No Man’s Sky. Its just… not fun. Its repetitive. Im sure there is some obvious thing somewhere that I’m missing that makes the game fun but so far it’s hidden behind hours of grinding.
I think NMS is excellent, and not for me. I love logistics and puzzles. NMS is mostly exploration and combat. Their attempts at logistics and crafting are paltry, despite showing huge promise. Oh well. Maybe some day.
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).
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
Hmmm…
There are a few but my time tracker are all off for various reasons.
Minecraft, Skyrim, Conan Exiles, Rimworld, Baldurs Gate 3, XCOM2, Fallout 4, Civ 4. Cyberpunk might be in here.
Lots old games without trackers are likely in here. Final Fantasy Tactics has got to be really high on this list… Maybe FF3/6… Mario RPG?
All of these are easily at about 1000 hours now. I’ve played them for actual enjoyment. The best deal is likely Minecraft as I got that during my Indev… Skyrim I may have bought twice so that might be the worst deal of these.
As for the worst, hmmm. Maybe sometime like one of the more recent farcry. I guess a franchise game could count. Like ones that never really improve anything but I play cus friends or something. Like Forza Horizon. It’s not complete dogwater, but I have giving them money for it.
Most…is probably The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. That game came out when I was 3, I still have the original cartridge and it still works, and I still play that game to this day.
Least is probably going to be Where The Water Tastes Like Wine. I discovered the soundtrack first on Youtube, and then decided to try out the game. It’s a dialog heavy game, they put a lot of emphasis on the presentation and voice acting, and it’s idiotically slow. It puts a page of dialog up that you’ll have read before the voice actor starts talking. If you open the pause menu and Quit the game, IT TALKS MORE. I hit Alt+F4 and haven’t looked at it s ince.
I had bought two games at the same time, I played one of them for a few weeks before getting around to looking at WtWTLW, so I couldn’t refund it.
No Man’s Sky. Seems like getting good RNG is the difficulty of the game.
Most: Terraria on PC. I paid $5 during their first big sale on Steam and have like 500 hours in it so $0.01/hr (1¢/hr )
Least: Spawn for the PS1. I got a special launch version that was $60. I hated it after 20 minutes and was full of regret. That’s $180/hr
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.
Most, probably Skyrim. Across all platforms I’ve only spent around $80, and have around 5,600 hours in, so about 1.4¢ per hour.
Least is far harder. There have been several games I’ve spent $80 on that I played for a bit, didn’t like, and never touched again.
Honorable mentions for most:
Hitman: World of Assassination: 7.3¢/hr
Forza Motorsport 6: 5.2¢/hr
Fallout 4: 3.3¢/hr
Assassins Creed Odyssey: 4.5¢/hr
Oblivion: 10¢/hr
Halo MCC: 7.8¢/hr
Halo Reach: 8.2¢/hr
Rest of the Halo series is probably around 10¢/hr each if I were to guess but I don’t have hours tracked for the rest of them
Minecraft: 5¢/hr at a guess
For cheap games that I got a ton of enjoyment out of but maybe not necessarily a ton of playtime: Gunpoint, The Silent Age, Celeste, Limbo, Inside, Stanley Parable, Monaco (I do actually have a fair amount of time in this one but don’t have hours tracked, maybe 20¢/hr but those hours were thoroughly enjoyed), Little Nightmares. Probably more I’m forgetting at the moment.
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.
