H4xlike

Yes, but probably not in the way you're thinking. I've bought games I was going to buy anyway, got TF2 stuff, booted up TF2 one night to see it.... and well they got another 5-10$ from me. Valve is pretty smart with using cosmetics in completely free games to get you to spend money.

CSS or cs1.6. Mount and Blade Napoleonic wars.

It depends, is this purely a gaming machine? You could get better value elsewhere, like with a 144hz monitor or a nice mechanical keyboard/new mouse. Personally I'd get 144hz monitor over ssd any day, but you may be playing games where the 144hz monitor isn't that big of a deal.

Solid state is amazing but still very expensive, and it's not really a 'gaming' upgrade. If you're limping along on a budget it may sting in a year to see prices.

I didn't think the AI was that bad I felt more like the play style exposed the bad AI. People bring up ME2 for the facial; well the AI in that game was awful but you never noticed because you mow down enemies as soon as you saw them and barely used your squad.

Borderlands works as a multiplayer game because its fundamentally Diablo: The FPS. The way that ES is set up doesn't lend itself well to co-op, there are rarely groups of enemies that would require a group to take on, or properly built gameplay environments. If its an MMO that would tickle one's fancy, what attachment does the ES series offer? Its not like the lore is super fabulous, you could go to one of the other generic fantasy MMOs available. I'm not against the idea of a ES experience, but why would anyone want it?

It got stale a lot quicker then I expected.  Probably because I've played other blizzard RTS's so much.  Now I'm trying to get back into it and I don't feel like investing that much time to learn how to play again.

@blueflame8 said:

"http://gameolosophy.com/games/15-reasons-why-skyrim-will-be-awesome-latest-news-on-skyrim/

"Howard noted that the eight original character attributes from previous Elder Scrolls games have been condensed into three: magica, health, and stamina."

This is exactly what I did not want, it is too simplified. R.I.P Bethesda"

...but when so many of the old attributes in these games are hard to discern from one another, does it really hurt the overall experience that much.

Sacrificing number-crunching for some honest-to-god gameplay is hardly a sin.

I will be buying Skyrim.

You just have to get comfortable cooking.  Buy a cookbook and start by following that to a T.  Eventually you'll know how to make all the basics off the top of your head, from there you can make anything. 

For the uninitiated, what kind of game is Dungeon Siege 3? I've heard surprisingly little about it.