Your game purchasing strategy

[squid5580]

I tend to look at the box art and purchase what looks cool. I never buy by popularity.

I used to do that back in the NES days. It worked out surprisingly well. Dragon Warrior, Zelda 2 (hey I loved it, didn't care for 1 though).

Nowadays I am usually pretty informed beforehand on what games will appeal to me and what won't long before they hit shelves. The new system doesn't work so well though. Been alot of disappointments.

 

[Julianking93]

I look at user reviews and how long a game is.

If a game gets good reviews, I wait for the price to go down to match how long it is.

Say a game is 15 hours long, but I can get 30 hours of entertainment out of it, take 30, multiply it by 7, then that's how much I usually end up paying for it.

Same goes for any game.

Perhaps I'm missing the point entirely but... 30x7=210. You're not talking about dollars I'm sure, are you talking about stretching the game out to 210 hours? Even that doesn't sound right to me

Wait, I missed a step. I use it the same way movies are priced. A regular movie is 2-3 hours and the price of a movie (at least where I live) is 7 dollars, so just use it that way. For every 2-3 hours of entertainment I get out of a game, I pay $7. So a game that is 12 hours, would be worth about $27 for a good 12-15 hours of solid, fun entertainment.

I think its reasonable but some people dont

 

[Aggressor and Usurper]

I buy when I have money. That sounds ridiculous but most of the time I'm so broke about 3-4 games come out and I can't afford them, so I'm currently saving up for Borderlands or Fallout 3. Which is quite annoying.

 

[Ryuk2]

When i was younger, i bought what looked cool on the box. TMNT and other stuff. It worked out pretty well always.
Now I'm very informed about games that come out. Basically, if the game is in a genre, i like, i will take a look at the first info of the game. If the info is good, then i will keep checking it for a while and see if it's any good. Some games look really great, they look really fun, like Borderlands. Some games make me interested by interesting settings and cool gimmicks, like Fallout 3 with it's VATS. If the game is released and i see no reason to not buy it, then i'll buy it.
Probably that's the strategy of knowing what your buying.

 

[katsabas]

Well, there are several steps here: 1)check to see what kind of game it is.

2)What does it add that is new to the genre.

3)Check a few scores, notably IGN and...well, here. Apart from the reviews wrote by Susan, John and Russ, I also try to take what Yahtzee says into consideration. If I like the franchise, I buy it no matter how much Yahtzee says. If it is about a new franchise and Yahtzee approves it, I buy it. That is not always the case however(hence, Brutal Legend which I will buy and COD4 which I didn't)

4)I try a number of stores to find the best price, which is pretty easy since I am in a small city.

5)If the game is subject to timed exclusivity, such as Fallout 3 when it comes to the expansions, I wait. Most of the times it pays of.

6)There are also seldom bargains, like the fact that I found Psychonauts for 6 euros. No-brainer.

7)I avoid sports, MMORPGS and point and click titles. Again, with some exceptions(Diablo II)

8)I never let expectations get the best of me. One of the reasons would be Spiderman 3.

9)Spoiler free. One example would be Fallout 3. It is an approximately 1 and a half year old game and I still do not know the ending.

10)Buying on launch is almost always a huge, huge mistake. Unless it is for de facto titles like Street Fighter 4, I wait for it.

11)If there is a game I like and it is both good and old enough for my PC to run it, again no-brainer. PC titles are always cheaper.

12)Lasting appeal. I am still playing RE4 and Burnout 3.

 

[Skiftnycklar]

The basic idea for most games is that I pirate and play them for a while to see if they're any good, then buy them if they're good / uninstall them and never think about them again if they're bad. Supporting the right people, y'know.
Edit: The games I don't pirate I look up info, comments and sometimes videos of to get the basic idea, and make my decision out of that. But that gets me a game I don't like 90% of the time, so I don't like doing it that way...I much more prefer the test, then buy strategy.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

What decisions/strategy do you take when deciding to buy a game?

Me, I look at gameplay videos as soon as they become available to judge whether I feel I can enjoy playing it myself. I don't take the words of reviewers as complete truth, but I do take into account when most reviews lean toward negative or positive.

Also, I almost never buy a game on the release day, I usually wait a week to a month to gauge the public's view on the game. My only exceptions are sequels to games I enjoyed thoroughly.

My strategy:

Developer loyalty is responsible for 95% of my first-day purchases. Very rarely something will come along that interests me enough to drop money for it on the first day.

Other games usually come after a price drop. The general concept behind the game and screenshots usually drive those. Gameplay videos really don't tell me much. If the game is good enough, the developer might even move up to a day-one purchase.

Reviewers.... 75 or less will scare me away, but even a 95+% on metacritic/gamerankings doesn't impress me.

 

[T-Bone24]

I look at user reviews and how long a game is.

If a game gets good reviews, I wait for the price to go down to match how long it is.

Say a game is 15 hours long, but I can get 30 hours of entertainment out of it, take 30, multiply it by 7, then that's how much I usually end up paying for it.

Same goes for any game.

You would buy a game for £/$210?

 

[blankedboy]

I only buy new, full priced games if, and ONLY IF, they come with shitload of content: in other words, games that I will keep playing for ages (ex: Fallout 3, Modern Warfare 2, etc)

For other games that don't meet that criteria (ex: Assassin's Creed 2), I'll wait for a price drop, or buy it used online.

And of course, I simply don't buy shitty games.

Umm... Assassin's Creed 2 is pretty much a sandbox game. Modern Warfare 2 will keep you going for about 3 or 4 weeks.

 

[Julianking93]

I look at user reviews and how long a game is.

If a game gets good reviews, I wait for the price to go down to match how long it is.

Say a game is 15 hours long, but I can get 30 hours of entertainment out of it, take 30, multiply it by 7, then that's how much I usually end up paying for it.

Same goes for any game.

You would buy a game for £/$210?

No, I had another post where I explained that I missed a step. A movie is about 2-3 hours long, so take 7 dollars for every 3 hours.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, being retired on disability (I used to have an okay job) and having very limited income I still manage to get more games than is healthy by simply planning things out ahead of time. Usually I know what games I'm going to get months ahead of time, and do a lot of pre-orders/payoffs when I have money rather than waiting for them to come out. This leads to long droughts where I don't buy much, followed by blitzs where I think my record was buying like 12 games in fairly quick succession, but that was simply a result of release dates being shuffled around and turning out like that.

Impulse buys from me are rare, but they do happen, mostly when it comes to specials/used copies or independant games. Also once in a while I receive a game as a gift or whatever (this occured with say Red Faction: Gueriella). Truthfully though I can only do this because I currently live at home.

As far as what makes me buy games, generally speaking I'm after RPGs and Action RPGs (to a lesser extent). If I see decent ones coming out, typically I try and put money aside, oftentimes with months (or even a year) of warning. There are very few companies (like say Atlus or Nippon Ichi) that produce titles I'm going to want with any frequency. Most of the biggest games I wind up getting are games that spend years in development hat spend years in development.

As a disclaimer when I mention Atlus and Nippon Ichi above, nowadays it seems they can produce/bring over 2-3 titles in a year that might be decent, compared to say Bethesda, Rockstar, etc... that might release one big game a year.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I use a star unicorn strategy. I got the idea from liking unicorns and I just went from there.

Some games I know I will want to try myself no matter what but there are others that I pick up based on enthusiasm by other people. If lots of people hate a game and ***** about it like bitches bitching about something but there is one person who loves it and can communicate why then I am more likely to find the game worth looking into than if everyone is sort of happy with it.

 

[SquirrelPants]

I'll do tons of research on gameplay, public opinion, and stats and whatnot, and if it looks good, I'll buy it.

 

[J-Alfred]

I cleverly wait a year or so until the public opinion has solidified, then buy the games that people still like.

 

[Snotnarok]

If it's a known good series
God of War
Ratchet and Clank
Ace Combat

I usually buy it without looking up videos because it's yet to let me down and that way I get the best experience when I play.

If it's a newer game series I'll look up just a few vids, think about it and then generalize reviews to see if it really catches me.

 

[Simalacrum]

look at a game before I buy it: generally I know about every purchse I make months before its even released, so I keep a close eye on games I'm interested in. NEVER pre-order, on the off-chance that it happens to be a flop (e.g. Star Wars: the force unleashed). Look at reviews from several sites I trust, check the metacritic average then make the decision. Even then I probably go around town looking for the best deal, whether there are any trade-in deals I can take advantage of, etc.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

If I absolutely must have a certain game, I will get it closer to release. For other games I'm not sure of, I wait until I can find a review. Some games I'm just waiting on a price drop. Only once have I imported a game that was due for release in the states. Another game I imported because it wasn't ever going to be released where I am.

Batman, Dragon Age: Origin, Fable 2, Halo 3: bought these on release day or close to it

Little Big Planet: did some research and ended up getting it later on. Got GotY edition so no discount ^^;

Metal Gear 4: Waiting until the holidays to see if I get that as a gift.

 

[Voodoomancer]

Bargain Bin. Any stuff that looks interesting and/or I've heard good things about, I buy it.

 

[RanD00M]

Ini.Mini.Miny.Mo.

Or just go with whatever looks fun.

 

[Mirroga]

I look at the FULL SINGLE-MODE WALKTHROUGH from youtube to see if it can give me a really unique and wonderful single-mode experience. Then look for its flaws and disadvantages myself. Doing so gives me a low library of single-player games, but at least games I can go back to to get my single-mode fix.