Attention Gamers!

[BikerBabe]

For years I've been a member of ign.com where I find cheats, walkthrus, etc. for the games I buy. They have grown and have many divisions now and I heard about one that got my interest very quickly.

http://www.direct2drive.com/ Once you have an account with them, or if you already have one with any of the sites under the same umbrella, you can put the game (or games) you want in your cart, then go check out. They will keep your debit or credit card number on file inside your account so you don't have to type it all out each time, you only have to enter the security code (3 numers) on the back so they know it's really you.

I surfed the site once hearing about it while reading on ign.com and found 2 games I'd been wanting, but couldn't find locally because we don't have any stores near us that sell a lot of games. Target and WalMart have a very small selection. Both of the games were the same price I'd pay at a store for them, except there is no tax added on due to it being an online, download purchase.

Once your card goes thru, they send you email and then you can go in, log into your account, go into your personal account section and you will see the game or games you purchased waiting for you to download them. There is also an activation number there that you will need to make them run. Just like with a game bought at a real store! You may burn a copy to CD for backup should you wish (make sure to keep a copy of the activation number too), but once you buy a game from them, you can go back into your account at any time and redownload the games again. Each time you do that, you will get a new activation number, for your safety and theirs.

There are slight differences between a purchased game CD at a store and a digitalized game you download. Patches you have to get from Driect2Drive, as they are made a little differently for some digitalized games. They do their best to get patches on their site, in a patch section, just as quickly as you will find them on a game's maker's website for a CD game from a store. Any games you downlaod will already have all the latest patches already on them. You would only have to go check for patches if more would be released after you downloaded the game from Direct2Drive.

Am I impressed? VERY. I got 2 games I'd wanted for a couple months and couldn't find locally, at a great price and I was playing them a couple hours after buying them. (I was getting 520. KB download speeds on cable for the geeks reading this.) The 2nd game I bought was almost 3 gigs in size and it took 1 hour and 15 minutes to download it. Setup is the same as with any game and after that I was playing the game. It was nice to sit here last night in my bathrobe and get the games. LOL, couldn't go to a store dressed like that!

I wanted to pass this site along to all the gamers here. If you don't mind the concept of a direct download to your drive instead of an install from CD, then check this site out. They have a nice selection and even a budget area of older games all selling for under 20 bucks. (Although I did see some 10 buck games not in that section in other ones, so I'm assuming that is the normal price and those games won't be moved into the discount area until they are older.)

They have very clear directions for you to read (and please do read them), so you will have a flawless download and can be playing your new game in a very short time. For those that hate going to the store and looking thru racks of CD/DVD cases, go surf this site and enjoy the games you find and purchase.