Direct 2 Drive www.Direct2Drive.com

Immediately after purchasing this game, the site advertised it for $20.00 less. They refused to match their own price! Customer service is a joke - they do not even read what you write, instead they have a list of selected answers designed to just further frustrate you and never resolve your problem. I would never purchase from them again.

I buy most of my games from them, and have been doing so for over two years. I've never had a problem downloading or using a game. I've uninstalled and then reinstalled games, and have transferred all my games to a new computer. I haven't had to deal with customer service yet, as everything has worked as advertised.

For many years right up until last year I refused to even consider the idea of downloading games off sites. I thought I just couldn't live without the nice shiny discs and lovely box artwork.

But, I was wrong. Direct2drive.com (or .co.uk as I am with) is the ultimate solution for those like me not interested in paying appalling high street prices, whilst at the same time wishing to download games legally.

The pricing on Direct2drive is 'interesting' shall we say. Some prices are appalling - sometimes actually about £10-£20 more than you'd pay on the high street. Not exactly a selling point for legal downloads. But there are a LOT of bargains to be had, and the very, very big advantage for UK residents is the fact that Direct2drive list games that were never even released in the UK as a physical product.

All my worries that were left concerning "what do I do when I upgrade ? Will they only let me download it about 3 times?" were quickly quashed after a quick look around the site - once you buy a game from Direct2drive it is very much yours - and you can download it as many times as you wish - without question or any silly e-mail confirmations or suspicion that you must surely be running a massive games pirating warehouse off the M25.

This brings me to the download method itself which really is impressive. You get a small download app which facilitates the download of your game from their servers direct to your computer. On average it hovers around in excess of 200kbps. The downside to this is that the downloader is a SERIOUS bandwidth hogger - don't expect much else to go very fast (like streaming video for example) while your game is downloading. But the upside is that you are free to pause it and resume as you wish. When you pause it you can even restart your machine and the downloader will pick up where it left off next time you load it up which for system builders like myself is extremely reassuring.

In conclusion I would say, as a total sceptic originally, try this service out. Perfect for those times when you just have to have a new game "NOW!!".