Wastes of time and money

[Claude Delacroix]

We've all been there. Perhaps it was years ago, perhaps moments ago, but we've all experienced the feeling of buying a new book, CD, or movie. The rush of anticipation, the thrill of the unknown content within...

Only to find out the whole thing is absolute trash!

What are some of the most memorable bad purchases you've made in the name of entertainment? I can tell you mine (in no significant order).

Embryonic by The Flaming Lips

I love noisy pop music. I like some avant-garde music. This combines the worst of both worlds. Even on the songs with decent melodies, it is usually ruined by Wayne Coyne's unusually tuneless singing. Damn you, Allmusic, damn you. I should have bought the Aphex Twin CD instead.

Beet The Vandal Buster (manga)

It's like reading a Dragon Warrior script, minus storytelling or an engaging plot. Moving on.

Third by Portishead

This sounds like Daft Punk being molested by Dr. Dre.

Reboot (the PS1 game)

Let me say this: I LOVE Reboot. I HATE this game.

The Invisibles: Apocalipstick

I actually like this comic, but it goes on this list because I stupidly bought it before I'd bought the first trade paperback in the series, Say You Want A Revolution.

Ulysses by James Joyce

Don't crucify me on this one, let me explain! I'm an English education major, but this book is the bane of my existance. I honestuy plan on completing this brick of stream-of-conciousness, but only when my alternative reading materials are my girlfriend's copies of the Twilight series.

[Jessamine Blake]

I'm mostly pretty careful about my purchases, only spending money on things I know will be worth it. Usually, if I buy something that I'm not reasonably certain of, I'll try to get it used or something so it's not such a big hit to the wallet if it turns out badly.

Recent bad purchases DO come to mind however. The first is La Femma Nikita: The Complete First Season. A lot of people say this show is great, better than its descendent, Alias. In fact, I bought it in part because it's supposed to be the forerunner of Alias, and in part because I couldn't find one single bad review of the show online. But it was terrible. Awful. It was a very low-budget show with bad acting and worse writing, a completely unappealing, unrelatable lead character. It looked dated, but this wasn't really the problem. The special effects were cheesy and recalled the early 1990s or even late 1980s. Did I mention that the show was made in 1997, the same year that Buffy the Vampire Slayer came out? Yet it looked at least ten years older than that, not only in the camera and style of the show, but in the costumes and HUGE hair of the characters. Worst. Buy. Ever.

Another poor choice was World of Warcraft. This game has led to my resolve never to buy things that I have to pay to use afterward. Because the month inevitably comes when you don't have $15 to spare, at least it does when you're in college. I didn't have enough time to justify spending the money, and around about level 18 on any given character I always got really bored.

[Seth Ruggeri]

Where to start...

Books
Fragments of Rationality -- Holy @#*! is this book a load of crap. I had to purchase this for my "Teaching Writing" class this semester and it was by far the worst thing I've had to read in quite some time. This book written by Lester Faigley, is more or less one giant discussion on the postmodern perspective and its application to the classroom. The problem here, besides the fact that it's about a subject that no English teacher gives a damn about, is that the author spends most of the friggin book quoting other theorists, several of which have little relevance to the topic at hand, instead contributing anything to the conversation himself. Avoid at all costs.

Writing Without Teachers -- *See the above description but replace the author with Peter Elbow, the subject matter to the place of the teacher in writing and add about 20 more instances of me ranting and raving about how much of an idiot the writer and book are a complete load.

Games
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time -- I bought this game, in a nice collectors box at that, for practically a song. I love the original Star Ocean games and I can remember being rather excited about playing this one. It's made by Square Enix, so it can't be bad right? Sadly, what I got was a boring and bland RPG with what is quite possibly the absolute dumbest partner AI ever. I spent most boss battles trying to get my party to stop running into walls like a bunch of morons. I thought Xenosaga had some long cutscenes, but this game gives it a run for its money. At least Xenosaga didn't spend 45 minutes introducing a village and its townsfolk all of which has little bearing on the plot.

Mirror's Edge -- This game is the reason I no longer let hype and advertising convince me to buy games. I remember a lot of positive buzz and praise for this game when it was being demoed during tradeshows and everyone thought this was going to be an awesome title with superb parkour gameplay. When this game plays like its supposed to, its very fun. The problem is, most of the time things like poor hit-box detection and cringe worthy melee and gun combat prevent this game from being enjoyable. On the plus side, I did get a pretty sweet and surprisingly durable laptop bag for preordering this game that still comes in handy.

Final Fantasy VIII -- I have enough criticism and hatred for this game to write an essay or two but for now let me just say that this is by far one of worst, most poorly written, and painfully unbearable RPGs in all of creation.

[Claude Delacroix]

I completely lost all hope for the Star Ocean series thanks to 'Til the End of Time. All those childhood memories of getting my face rocked off by Star Ocean: The Second Story? MEANINGLESS. I've become a bitter cynic of RPGs since the Christmas day I recieved that piece of derivitive plastic.

And I'm going to say that Final Fantasy VIII is not THAT bad. It's better than XII, at least. The draw system does suck, though. And the story. And some of the characters are kind of lame... Wait, why do I like this game again?

And a good game that was a bad buy for me has to be Megaman Legends 2. I'm one of 5 people that liked these games, but that doesn't stop me from hating the fact that Capcom decided a cliffhanger ending was needed for a game they never planned to follow up.

[Ethan Ramey]

I don't understand the hate on XII. Other than the ending (and Penelo), the game was brilliant. Sure, it did away with a lot of the conventions from previous Final Fantasy games, but the beauty of the series is its ability to constantly reinvent itself. What is kept and/or discarded should be for the sake of a better game and not tradition.

The story wasn't exactly character-centric this time around, but I loved the shift of focus to a larger picture. The story felt larger and, unlike previous titles, every action in the game (from the moment the characters are drawn into the conflict, that is) felt like part of a bigger picture, and not a small, detached story that sometimes remembers what it was about in the first place.

And VIII was, by far, one of the worst titles in the series. Not without its merits, mind you, but not up to standards, either.

[Jessamine Blake]

It's been too long since this thread was updated. So here's something that was an epic waste of money:

My HP Compaq laptop. $600 in 2007.

Okay, it's not really an entertainment thing, a book, CD, or movie. I bought it for school. But it also served to play some games and movies. And it has by far been the worst experience I've had with a computer since Windows 95. No joking. You can't even begin to imagine my relief when I brought home its replacement: a last-generation iMac, gently used, all shiny and sleek, $300 just last week. I haven't even looked at my laptop since then, despite the fact that it has all my important documents and all my music on it. And despite the fact that I can use it while curled up in my bed, while my iMac demands that I sit at my desk.

But here are a few reasons that my laptop was awful:

-Came with Windows Vista.
-Came without any install disks for the OS, since HP puts their OS installs on a partitioned drive...which is useless if your computer gets infected, because 9 out of 10 times that means your partitioned drive with your OS install on it is infected as well.
-Came with a cheap, flimsy power cord. I have had to replace the power cord for this laptop no less than four times (and I may have forgotten one) in the last three years.
-Came with a graphics card that is manufactured by NVIDIA but modified by HP for this model laptop. HP subsequently failed to offer driver support for Windows 7 for this card, so that when I upgraded to Windows 7 (because Vista was such an epic-failing piece of crap) my display was forever messed up and could not be fixed. Because NVIDIA can't offer driver support since HP modified the card.
-Outside of warranty, HP will charge you even for customer service over the phone, so there was no way to find another solution in conjunction with the company that actually made my computer.

So you see, epic fail on a purchase. My grandmother and I were trying to save money on a laptop, and we got this one because it was relatively cheap and also because it was pretty, and a Compaq, which was once a good brand until HP ate them. And I got what I paid for.

[Allie Johnson]

I read that, Jessamine, and then looked down at the stickers on my compaq and realized that mine is very similar to yours. It is a refurbished one, and I've already had to replace the cord once.

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