Red Box Game Rental Impressions

Games are here

 Just recently, the vending machine-style video rental service, RedBox, started offering game rentals in their rental kiosks which are just absolutely everywhere these days. In my area alone, there are about five RedBox kiosks in a 5-mile area.

Now, I've never tried RedBox before because of my Netflix subscription that satisfies all my rental neds, but once I heard that RedBox was trying out game rentals in select markets I was excited at the prospect of renting games on the cheap.

Now that game rentals are at RedBox, here are my impressions, yo.

 More after the jump! Click "Read more"

Its not you, it's me

The rental process is the same as renting a movie DVD, except that the rental fee is $2 plus tax, which beats Blockbuster's $9 for five days if you end up with a game that you can beat in a day or two or a game that is just terrible *coughDukeNukemcough*. This also sounds like a better deal than what Gamefly has to offer if you just need a quick rental to play over a weekend.

Availability may vary

Availability of game titles may vary from each kiosk, which is the only weakness of the Redbox game rental service. However, you can check what's available in a kiosk near you on the official Red Box website where you can also reserve a title and pick it up later. The selection for their titles consists of popular new games, basically it boils down to two categories: the action games like Call of Duty and family-friendly games like Cars 2. Sorry, you won't find games like Shadows of the Damned here.

Great renting for picky kids like my nephew

I chose to rent a copy of the new Transformers: Dark of the moon, which was made by the same people who did Transformers: War for Cybertron., the copy of the game I got was brand new and didn't have a single scratch on it. It just makes me wonder how Redbox will deal with scratched up discs which can be rendered unplayable, which are possible with XBox 360s.

I would definitely recommend this for gamers on a budget, you can try out the latest games for a couple of dollars. I'm also hoping that they would expand their selection over time to add variety. The renting process does require a credit card just like all other game rental services such as Gamefly or Blockbuster, but its painless simplicity of just swiping your card once saves you time and money

Red Box is just one of those services that prove that if you make something simple enough and hassle-free, people will choose to use it. Goodbye, Blockbuster. Well, except when I want to try out badass niche games like Shadows of the Damned.