Factorio. Spent a total of €52 and have 1,600 hours. €0.03/hour

This edition of PC Zone Magazine cost £4 back in 1995. The cover CD had 1,000 Doom levels and IIRC a bunch of modding tools. I probably got 1,000 hours of entertainment out of it and often think back marveling at the value for money!

Of course all this stuff is available for free online nowadays!

I got Rollercoaster Tycoon on the front of a Cereal box. I’m still playing that copy decades later… i think I’m working on dollar per decade rather than dollar an hour here

Most enjoyment per dollar: I want to say RimWorld, but that shit’s expensive at over a hundred dollars for the base game plus expansions even during the rare times it's on sale.

So I'd have to say Terraria, which I bought for maybe fifteen bucks back at release when it had like three bosses and IIRC ended at Skeletron. Fifteen years of massive free content updates later, it's a sprawling randomly generated Metroidvania with dozens of bosses and an endgame that barely resembles its beginning, and I've probably done a dozen full playthroughs over the years.

That's not even getting into the mods, with tModLoader being given the official seal of approval and letting you swap between a multitude of content overhauls from within the game itself.

Least enjoyment per dollar would probably be Caves of Qud. It's not a bad game, but I went in with sky-high expectations that it couldn't possibly meet and I couldn't bring myself to enjoy it for what it was; instead feeling frustrated at what it wasn't (and didn't try to be). It didn't help that I regularly play freeform games like CDDA and Dwarf Fortress and the comparatively static structure of CoQ felt extremely restrictive in comparison.

Least enjoyment per dollar had to be Fallout 4. I bought it full price on release, roughly $60, and got the PC version, because I didn't have a working console at the time. I can only game on PC with EDSF, not WASD. But that game hardcoded Use/Action to E while also allowing E to be mapped to move forward. So everywhere I ran, if there was an action to do it would automatically do it. I kept opening doors to hiding monsters, opening crates, doing whatever when I just trying to walk around. I probably only played that game for 10ish hours before giving up.

Most enjoyment per dollar has to be NES Tetris. I have no idea how much my parents paid for that back in 1989, but I still plug in my NES and play it occasionally. Even accounting for buying a second NES in college, multiple replacement controllers, a replacement cart reader tray, and a used copy of the game off ebay far later, I am probably only in for $200. And I can't even make a guess at how many hours I've played NES Tetris. I would skip full days of school in 8th grade to play. I would play for hours in college. I still play a few hours per year now.

Most number of hours is WoW, but at $15/mo plus $60/expansion times probably 6 expansions I've probably spent over $1000 on it for a rough estimate of 7200 hours played.

Probably Cyberpunk 2077...

Got it on sale, after they had taken steps to correct the horrendous launch, coupled with a handful of QoL mods and now I've gotten $.05 per hour out of it.

Price: ~$20 USD

Logged time: 436.5 hours

Edit:

Forgot least... uhhh... hell, probably Ff7 rebirth. Can't really count hours, since it takes a stupid amount of fucking time to do anything, but I really can't overstate how just fucking awful this game is. Just....just fucking terrible.

While Minecraft doesn't have an hour tracker, I almost certainly have over 1000 hours for £15. I have nearly 700 hours in The Binding of Isaac, which is currently £1.09 on Steam.

I’m leaving out free games I’ve spent thousands of hours in because they were zero dollars…

So the answer would be Java Minecraft. Got it before beta started and have been playing ever since.

Worst would be rise of the robots. Fell prey to the marketing back in the day and that game is as bad as they say.

Vampire survivor. $4.

1000+ hours. Of just staring at pretty colors.

Bought every single DLC to continue supporting them.

Probably either:

Warframe - played for free for 500 hours, felt guilty and bought a $20 plat pack to thank them for all of the good times before quitting the game.

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate - bought for $10 on the eshop, 1000 hours later still going strong.

Not sure about what's least. Technically any game I've bought that I haven't played yet, I suppose, but the game I felt worst about buying was Quest for Camelot for Game Boy Color when I was a kid. I went to the store with my parents to spend my birthday money on a game for the new Game Boy Color I'd just gotten, but they didn't have any good GBC games. I knew that I should just wait, but I really wanted to buy a game. So, I caved and bought it even though I hadn't even seen the movie, and it was predictably terrible, and I've never forgotten it.

I've regretted that purchase for almost 30 years now.

Best is either Minecraft, Counter-Strike or Mirror's Edge. I've got 3k+ hours in the first two, but also something like 600 hours in Mirror's Edge which is nonsense for a game that's 4 hours long on the first playthrough.

Worst is almost certainly PUBG. Bought it to play with friends, realized I hated the entire concept.

I have to parrot the minecraft claim: ignoring that I've bought it for at least 4 friends now and own it on multiple platforms, it's still easily the one I got the most enjoyment per $ on.

as for least enjoyable? I regretably was an early adopter on Amazons New World. I played it once during the EA period, wasn't impressed but my morals at that time didn't allow me to request a refund on it as it felt dirty to buy a preorder then refund it for not liking the game itself. I easily paid 40$ for a game I played a whole 12 minutes of as it didn't vibe with me, and now due to the servers being shut down at the end of the year, is basically a digital paperweight.

Most...probably Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Bought it when it first came out, and as soon as I beat it, when the credits finished I created another character. I must have beat the game over a dozen times on OG Xbox, 360 and Xbone (I still have the original disc).

Least? Maybe Bioshock Infinite which I bought full price at launch and probably made it less than 1/3 through before I put it away and never touched it again. That or Returnal, I bought a used copy for maybe under $15, played a couple hours before throwing the game away because of how much I hated it.

Minecraft is obviously up there, as is TF2 like you. Factorio is very high for me, relatively low cost and many hours sunk into it.

My current worst is probably Baldur's Gate 3, I bought it to play with a friend but we've only done one session so far.

Most is Slay the Spire, and I don't even think it's close. And I say that having bought it twice, once on Steam and once on mobile.

Least, I'm tempted to day League of Legends or Overwatch, both of which I bought extra cosmetic stuff for and neither of which I play anymore - and I'm not sure I even liked either of them much when I was playing.

But not knowing (and not wanting to know) how much money I've spent on either, I'll instead say either Imperator: Rome or Victoria III. I preordered both with extras, and ended up only putting around 40 hours into both before giving up. Compare that to other Paradox grand strategy games, where I can easily have 500+ hours played, and I really feel like I didn't get my money's worth.

Most: definitely Guild Wars 2 - paid around 100 GBP for 5000 hours of fun over 11 years, so that's £0.02 / hour :)

Least: the ~540 bundle games in my Steam backlog I haven't played yet, bc I'm playing GW2 and Genshin instead 🙈

Probably CSGO, because I made at least 100€ playing that game for ~500 hours, and even mostly enjoyed it.

As for the worst, kinda tough to say, since I bought so many games and it's probably one I can't remember. Only one I can think of right now is Monster Hunter 3 for the Wii, which I bought the collector's edition of, only to realize I really don't like Monster Hunter games.

Most: Cyberpunk 2077. base game + expansion and I've clocked in hundreds of hours on it. I replay it from start to end doing every single thing every year. I've done all the endings, done so many different builds, and yet I keep going back.

Least: I will admit Star Citizen. a few years ago I fell for it. I will also admit I "pledged" just over $200 for a ship. biggest gaming mistake I ever made and still to this day I feel like an idiot for falling for that scam.

Dwarf Fortress.

Thousands of hours played; $0.00 paid (Legacy version).

But also $10 for the Steam version which I bought after all those hours in the Legacy version when it was on sale.

Excluding free/infinite, I'd have to say my best is Morrowind, probably, but it could also be Sim City (Classic or 2000), Starcraft, Half-Life/TFC, Team Fortress 2, Super Mario World, or Mario Kart.

Worst is even trickier, as I'm very careful about my game purchases (excluding Humble Bundles that are technically infinitely bad because hours played is zero, but don't count because I paid to get some other game and/or donate to charity). It'd probably have to be some old early '90s game my parents bought for me, not anything I've bought for myself. I remember a couple of DOS games with horrible magenta and cyan CGA graphics (even though my computer could do VGA, BTW): one was some kind of helicopter game that I couldn't figure out how to play, and the other was some kind of side-scrolling platformer or beat-em-up (maybe Ninja Gaiden, or a rip-off of it?) that I also couldn't figure out how to play.

Least - Hogwarts legacy: I bought it on sale mostly to "own the libs." My personality did a 180° in that same year so never opened the game again.

The 2-3 hours I spent felt like one huge tutorial, dialogue options just didn't matter, and also game didn't run great.

Most - Blade and sorcery: Modded the hell out of it daily. Also there was an update some time ago that doubled the native content.

The Most: Hollow Knight Silksong. My second best purchase ever.

The least: a horror indie game so badly optimized I couldn't even play a single minute of it. It was just like $1 or so, but it still hurts.

Most playtime per buck:

Either Minecraft or Overwatch (the first one, before the content draught and aggressive monetization with OW2)

A close contestant is also Super Mario 64, which still is kind of a comfort game and gets a replay every once in a while. But that one was way more expensive IIRC.

Worst...

Hard to say. There are several games still on my pile of shame which make them technically infinite. OW2 was a free upgrade, and I never bought a season pass/loot box/..., so in theory the same "infinite" negative, though it's the closest to "hated/disliked game" for me.

Then there are a few games that are great, but just didn't "click" with me, so I somewhat regretted buying them. On the other hand, I supported the devs of generally great games that just weren't made for me. It isn't completely fair to list them here, but they're most fitting... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In this category: Witcher III, Hollow Knight, Subnautica.

Most: Vampire Survivors or Balatro for low price Indie games. Destiny 2 for AAA where I must have had close to 3000 hours at the end of The Final Shape (TFS).

Least: Anthem. I don’t remember if I pre ordered this game or not but my Destiny teammates definitely pressured me into getting it day one.

This was the game that convinced me live service games are a dead end. Just an absolute skeleton of a game you could tell was rushed to release. We played the 8 hour or so campaign and did a few of the post campaign missions and that was it. During all of that the game constantly crashed and the gameplay loop was DOA.

I always comment that Anthem made all the same mistakes that the original Destiny made with lack of content, story, and gameplay loop… 5 years after Destiny 1 released AND 2 years after Destiny 2 fumbled its launch.

Destiny 2 at least got a few more really good years out of it up to TFS then went off a cliff and was all but shut down this year. Kind of proves my point that live service games are a dead end.

Grim Dawn, paid around 50€ for it plus expansions, played 2400 hours for a bit over 2 cents per hour.

On July 27 Fangs of Asterkarn, the new GD expansion gets released! I'm hyped lol

The worst deal i got is One Step from Eden, a mix of rythm game and deck builder. I had to realize that i am not capable of playing this game, because i can either do one or the other, but not both at the same time. While trying to git gud i crossed over the 2 hour playtime for a refund.

Least enjoyment would just have to be whatever is the most expensive game in my endlessly growing backlog. The other half of this question is more interesting, so I want to give multiple answers.

1. I've got just under 4,200 hours in Terraria and it's still my favorite game! For the $10 it cost me, that's 420 hours per dollar. Nice.

2. Minecraft would be a close contender. There's no way to track my hours in it, and I don't play it so much anymore, but I have to have at least somewhere close to the 4k I've got in Terraria, if not more. This game shaped my entire childhood back when the Xbox 360 edition first came out.

Those two are great, but they're also some of the best selling games of all time so I'll note some more niche ones as well.

3. DLC and all, Melvor Idle is a game I spent $25 on (edit: though the full base game is completely free if you don't mind playing through your browser) and managed to put just under 3,000 hours in. Now admittedly this is an idle game, so a large chunk of that time was having it open in the background while I do something else. But it's surprisingly interactive and I'd like to think at least 1,000 of those hours were me either actually playing or planning.

4. Barony is a game I've put 650 hours in since 2018, and man has it come a long way. Including DLC I spent about $30 on it for myself, though I've also bought the game or DLCs for multiple friends so its probably closer to like $60. It's a permadeath roguelike with next to zero meta progression. Check it out if you're into the genre, its currently on an all-time-low sale for $2 which is a damn steal.

Best value was thousands of hours in Minecraft for 10€.

Worst was probably something I bought as a child a long time ago for too much money, barely played it and then forgot pretty much all about it. There are a bunch of PSP games that come to mind like Monster Hunter which I just didn‘t enjoy at all.

Gotta be BG3. Bought it full price the day I got my deck, about a year ago. There for a while I played every single day for hours. I still play a little most days, though it's with my wife rather than solo. I can't remember how many hours I have on the deck, and the ps5 version I eventually snagged so my wife could play has to have damn near half the time just from me.

Most: Factorio, by far

I have wasted so much time in Satisfactory. Bought it on sale in 2020 I think, whenever it came to Steam.

Now get your downvotes ready, because the game that has been a waste of money for me is No Man's Sky. Its just... not fun. Its repetitive. Im sure there is some obvious thing somewhere that I'm missing that makes the game fun but so far it's hidden behind hours of grinding.

Terraria, probaby. Got it on sale for $5 (it's almost always 50% off) and I've played many playthroughs with many different friends over the past 15 years. When you factor in the very good modding support, its many difficulty settings, playthrough modifiers like the one that flips the world vertically (hell is up and the overworld is at the bottom), it's a game you can play for thousands of hours.

It's still crazy how cheap this game is for how much you get out of it. The devs are awesome for this.

Garry’s Mod, 10 dollars and 6000 hours logged.

Most - SimCity 4. I don't remember buying the CD but countless hours later I can say it was worth it.

Least is really hard. Like you have to really really fuck up a game for me to not like it. Three come to mind. Cities Skylines 2. Mortal Kombat 1. Starfield. Both games coming after two of my all time faves. I spent 500+ hours in CS1. If you can't tell city builders are my jam. So for me to actively despise a city builder is pretty condemning of the quality of the game. That's my problem with Skylines 2.

MK1 I powered through the story and had no desire to play any other part of it. It was a buggy incomplete mess. The roster was a step back from MK11 IMO. The game play was supposed to address the main complaints of how slow and limited MK11 was. They did that by adding a gimmick instead of going back to the MKX formula. MK1 is just a failed mess of a game.

I would have forgot about Starfield if not for seeing it in my Steam library just now. Mechanically this game fucking blows. I really hate some of the design decisions they made in the game. Like oxygen frequently stopping you from sprinting early game. The menu designs. Space flight. It's all so baffling to me. They really fumbled the ball.

Minecraft : 15€ spent, over 10K hours played and I only wish I had played even more !

Fallout 4 : 60€ spent, it's boring.

(Free) Most: Super Mecha Champions, which was a free battle royale game on Steam that was a port of a mobile game. Best FREE.99 I ever spent, was such a fun game until servers closed.

(Paid) Most: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Literally peak game. It got me into modding and software development, and I still play it to this day. Best $59.99 I ever spent ($59.99 brand new for the 1.0 gold cart in 1998)

Worst: Need for Speed Unbound. Worst $4.99 I ever spent, I turned the game off after the characters in the game couldn't stop yapping in my ear about "police and politicans oppressing street racers." Also the driving physics suck because of course they do, Criterion made it.

Best value for dollar is definitely Elite Dangerous. I bought it for 30 bucks and have around 1400 hours in it.

Worst value game that I bought and have played might be Cyberpunk 2077. I pre-ordered and have maybe four hours total played. I keep saying I need to go back and give it a proper go now that it's fixed but nah.

Hmmm...

There are a few but my time tracker are all off for various reasons.

Minecraft, Skyrim, Conan Exiles, Rimworld, Baldurs Gate 3, XCOM2, Fallout 4, Civ 4. Cyberpunk might be in here.

Lots old games without trackers are likely in here. Final Fantasy Tactics has got to be really high on this list... Maybe FF3/6... Mario RPG?

All of these are easily at about 1000 hours now. I've played them for actual enjoyment. The best deal is likely Minecraft as I got that during my Indev... Skyrim I may have bought twice so that might be the worst deal of these.

As for the worst, hmmm. Maybe sometime like one of the more recent farcry. I guess a franchise game could count. Like ones that never really improve anything but I play cus friends or something. Like Forza Horizon. It's not complete dogwater, but I have giving them money for it.

I have so much time logged in civ5 that it makes me want to throw up lol. New Vegas may still beat it out though. Both bought at full price a million years ago

Most? Stardew Valley. It's my wife's favorite game. The fact that she finds joy in one of my hobbies (that we didn't have in common before dating) gives me happiness when I'm not playing. I know that's not quite what you're asking, but it is how it is.

If I treat all games to yield the same enjoyment per time unit (don't get me started on that assumption) then it's just which have I played most. Probably something in the quest for glory series or chrono trigger. I got a chrono trigger save with max stats once. Getting to level 99 was harder than getting enough tabs.

Least? Idk, state of emergency? That was not a great game

First, IMO enjoyment ≠ playtime

If it's about enjoyment, then Signalis takes the top spot. It was probably the cleanest purchase to end credits I've ever had in my life. Saw the store page on steam, bought it for 29.99, played through the game in 3 days. Never touched the game since and it is by a large margin the best game I've ever played.

For least enjoyment it must be the recent Warhammer Space Marine 2. Bought it for the Coop at full price (luckily just the standard edition). Extremely short and boring campaign and very repetitive and lackluster Coop mode. Wish I could get a refund but im already 7 hours in. The amount of games I've paid full price for in my life can be counted on two hands and this one definetly takes the price for most money and least enjoyment.

Bonus round: There are 2 games that, while I enjoyed at first and put 100s of hours in, have become so unbearably bad that I didn't even request a refund (even if I still could) but straight up deleted them from my account. Thats Helldivers 2 and Squad. I got both them for fairly cheap but even if I didn't. FUCK THOSE GAMES. They are the epitome of a waste of time.

Most: Easily Dota 2. -$5 spent (I sold stuff I got for free), 2000+ hours played

The least: Probably a 20 way tie for games I bought on sale on Steam

Most: Terraria on PC. I paid $5 during their first big sale on Steam and have like 500 hours in it so $0.01/hr (1¢/hr )

Least: Spawn for the PS1. I got a special launch version that was $60. I hated it after 20 minutes and was full of regret. That's $180/hr

Animal Crossing. My wife and I ran that island for years, with thousands of hours on the clock each.

Warcraft 3+TFT I've played the campaigns at least 4 times over the years, I think plus a ton of custom maps plus of course dota 1. Definitely best bang for buck. Other games that are close are path of exile(1k hours), counter strike(800hrs), dota2(1.4k hrs) and wow (way too many hours...but also a lot more money over the years)

For more traditional/offline games:

Gothic 2 I've played at least 3 times over the years , I think. Probably have 400+ hours in it. If they remake it like they did with the first one, I'm definitely gonna replay it.

Mass effect trilogy. Played the whole trilogy 3 times and I got the legendary edition but my first playthrough of that is on hold for now.

Don't remember which number exactly, but one of the older football manager games. I probably have like 400+ hours in that.

Worst value for money? That Warcraft mobile game. For whatever reason I was stupid enough to spend a bunch on it when it came out before I realized how grindy and stupid and pointless it was.

I also have only 22 hours in stalker2 ATM even tho I got it when it came out. It was quite buggy so I figured I'd let them cook some more. I'm sure I'll get my money's worth out of it eventually.