Posted October 8, 2003
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| Want to see the Gamefly packaging close up & personal? |
It's been a little over two weeks now and my free trial is up and I haven't torn my hair out yet, and I've spent a bit of bleary eyed time gazing over Gamefly's website. Before I talk about actually receiving the games and crap, it appears that they've tightened up their site a bit. I can see review ratings, and rate games myself! Now, it's the lack of a rating system that I previously did not see, and to this day I'm not sure whether the system was down, not established or whether new users just can't see ratings and rate games. My only qualm right now is the utter reliance on pop-ups when you add games to your queue, for technical assistance and so on. As an Opera user, I have to manually turn pop-ups on in order to properly use the site. They still haven't fixed the bug where if you have pop-ups disabled, you click to rent a game and then select 'continue browsing', your browser window is closed down leaving you wondering what happened. Other than this problem (which I ranted about before, and can only be fixed by enabling pop-ups in your browser) I prefer Gamefly's site over Netflix's recent redesign.
For those of you familiar with Netflix you already know that your DVDs arrive in a relatively flimsy sleeve, complete with a return envelope. Gamefly does the same, but includes an additional cardboard sleeve to help keep the game from getting busted before arriving. As a result the package is a bit bigger than your standard CD/DVD slip, which makes it all the more comical when you shake a tiny Gamecube disc from one. Concerning delivery, I received my first set of discs within three days (I set up my account late Thursday night and come Monday my discs had arrived) which was a pleasant surprise, especially after receiving emails stating my discs had shipped late on Friday. The games were in good, clean condition and played just fine. The only hitch was that instead of receiving Futurama (which at the time was scheduled to be shipped to me) ended up getting listed as a 'Short Wait' so they shipped Simpsons: Hit & Run instead. No biggie.
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| Continue? Oh, what trickery is this? |
To put it bluntly, the turn-around time is pretty sad and as a result the "ten day trial" sucks. Sure, it gives you time to get your games, play them a bit and send them back but you can't judge the turn-around time or support. I can understand how they would be reluctant to allow a month trial like Netflix, but ten days is hardly adequate. 15 days I can see - but ten? This is why having a three game plan would be excellent - at least then I could stagger my returns to make sure that I have something new to play, but only having two out at one time is a bit limiting if you even rented one dud. And if both are bottom-feeders? You are out of luck.
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| But who knows who handled this disc before me? |
Will I continue using Gamefly? Yes, the poor turn-around doesn't detract from the excellent breadth of games they have. Is it perfect? No, but hopefully as they grow the distribution centers will multiply and they'll add in a three game package. There's no comparison between paying ~$22 a month for eight or so games from Gamefly and paying $50 for a clunker of a game, or walking down to your local Blockbuster and finding out that they don't have anything in stock.
If you would like to sign up for Gamefly, go to Gamefly. Or, if you have had experiences with Gamefly, Red Octane or similar game rental services and would like to comment on them, feel free to use the form below or email me directly.
