The Best of Black Friday Game Deals

I usually try to avoid the mass hysteria of Black Friday, but in the case of video games, I too fall victim to the beautiful deals and throw myself into the madness with open wallet, and little regard for common financial sense.

Luckily when it comes to games you can find a lot of great deals online that don’t require you to arm yourself and push some fellow human being on the ground to take advantage of. In that spirit, here is just a small sampling of the best online deals available right now.

*Note: Don’t be surprised if some of these are gone by the time you get to them as deals move and sell out quickly. Be sure to act accordingly then and as always consult the great Dealzon for the best finds.

Grand Theft Auto IV Complete Edition, GTA: San Andreas, and LA: Noire Complete (PC Download) – Amazon – $14.99

Have you ever eaten a food that was too rich and decadent? Same thing with this deal. Countless hours of Rockstar Gaming greatness for under $20 is almost too good a deal, as you’re basically forfeiting your life by buying it.

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Dishonored (PC Download) – Green Man Gaming -$22.50

Anytime you can get a game that’s barely a month old for under $25 it’s a deal worth checking out. When that game is one of the best of the year by a mile, you should probably stop what you’re doing right now (including reading this) and pursue it.

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Mass Effect Trilogy (PC Download) – Gamefly – $23.99

I once bought a Rolex watch in Chinatown that was an absolute perfect knock off, but broke later that day. It was a valuable lesson on something being too good to be true, and is the only reason I wouldn’t recommend jumping on this deal. It’s so mind-blowingly cheap, there almost has to somehow be a catch.

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Sleeping Dogs (360, PS3) – Best Buy – $24.99

Lots of great deals at Best Buy on console games, but kind of hard to ignore the steal on this modern Hong Kong crime epic and its bountiful gameplay. A real know a guy, who knows a guy type steal.

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Xbox 360 250GB Bundle with “Skyrim” and “Forza Motorsport 4” – NewEgg – $189.99

If you were somehow waiting to buy a 360 until just the right moment, then getting one for under $200 with one of the best RPG’s and one of the best racing games of all time, would finally be that moment.

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Dead Or Alive 5 (360, PS3) – Gamestop – $29.99

While Gamestop isn’t exactly setting the world on fire with their bargains, there are a few to be found. Definitely grab the best fighting game of the year while you can.

Get It Here

Steam Autumn Sale

Finally it is once again time for the Steam Autumn Sale, which is running until 11/26. With almost too many good games to list, and deals rotating constantly, as well as mark downs of some kind on pretty much everything, it’s the first place any PC gamer should go.

Get Them Here

  

Blizzard Fumbles Diablo III’s Launch, and the Consequences It Could Have

Although its actual development time was considerably shorter, in the minds of most fans, “Diablo III” has been no less than 12 years in the making. That’s how long it’s been since the release of “Diablo II,” and that’s how long it’s been since gamers have been craving a true follow up. 12 years.

And after just two days of release, some gamers are already more excited about “Diablo IV.”

This is mostly due to Blizzard’s controversial decision to have gamers log-in to its servers in order to play the game. What’s irksome is that it doesn’t matter if you’re playing single player or multiplayer; you have to be online. Ideally, this allows for a range of features that should allow the gamer to be in a constantly networked world where gamers can aid each other in their quest, and friends can drop in at any time to do battle by your side, as you smote your enemies with joyful ease.

In reality though, the servers have been having nothing but trouble since launch. The battle.net network has appeared so far to be insufficiently capable of handling the mass numbers of users “Diablo III” has added without doing that annoying crashing thing and rendering the game unplayable in any form. It’s almost as if Blizzard didn’t anticipate that the sequel to one of the greatest selling and most acclaimed games of all time might actually sell a few copies itself, and that a mandatory online account coupled with that could lead to serious server problems.

Of course, the conclusion that just about everyone who isn’t a Blizzard employee has come to is that the game shouldn’t require a mandatory online account. It’s so ludicrously unnecessary, in fact, that as I was booting up the single player for the first time and it asked me to create an account, I couldn’t help but think of the Kramer line from Seinfeld. “Why does Radioshack need your phone number when you buy batteries?”

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