For those of you who’ve been keeping up with recent events in the games industry, you may have read about the financial issues Game (and subbrand Gamestation) is having. They already can’t reach an agreement with Electronic Arts to stock Mass Effect 3, with other titles probably (soon) similarly affected – this was the first we saw.

Blockbusters already has a sign up to get Mass Effect 3 there, also reading “Not available in Game or Gamestation”.

Now, as we like physically owning games and thought it would be a shame to see them go out of business, and because we still need more games for this blog, we went for a visit.

Yeah, it was a sale, we wanted bargains, if it saves the company, then why would you complain.

To be honest, when we were in there, the atmosphere seemed quite relaxed. Yeah, the games were cheaper (with some good deals), but there seemed no worry. Having discussed it, things felt moderately positive to us – we theorized that they were more looking to get rid of stock to get some money and consolidate some stores (as they seem to often have two or three closer together, such as our local shopping centre having both a Game and a Gamestation, and a place like Bluewater having two Game stores very near each other).

Still, we would miss the stores not being there – both from being able to do the browsing (having the quick flick through the stacks down to an art) and the bargains that seem common there and make you feel better. Yeah, the instant gratification factor is there… even if it can be a bad thing for our wallet.

So we went and bought a few games for the blog…

As we said to each other – no matter what, whenever this is done, we will be allowed to complain about the store closing, we’ve done our bit – aside from these, we picked up a few other games we were desperate for and wanted to play some day for ourselves.

So yeah, you can try to puzzle them all out – there’s some great games in there – back to Professor Layton and Legend of Zelda, and new series like de Blob, F.E.A.R. and Uncharted… Expect some of these soon, others… probably four years from now. Awesome times!

Of course, to explain, we’ve been slowly adding other games as well, although less at a time so we’ve not mentioned it as much, so we’ll be using PS Move games too and have plenty of other awesome things coming up.

But aside from everything else – if, like us, you also like your physical copies, you prefer a nice box over a downloadable PNG screenshot and you get childish excitement (we get giddy) from going through shelves and finding that special title you didn’t expect, then this is the time to go out. Visit your local gaming store and make use, right now, of the sales that are on in some of these stores. Buy a game or two you like but haven’t played yet, or get a new game you haven’t heard of yet. Get our recommendations and find a game or two from the blog. We know these stores might not last forever and we’ll start seeing less of them, but we can try to at least make sure there’s some. Go for it.

And even if you don’t care about those – most of the prices are slashed far enough that you won’t find these games cheaper anywhere. Surely that would be worth it on its own?