I am not sure if this applies here but I will post a little wisdom I have accumulated about gaming purchases.
Back when Aliens Colonial Marines was announced and then up for pre-order I was totally overjoyed. Gearbox software, creators of borderlands, was making every Aliens Fans dream. A chance to go back to LV426, a sequel that followed the last true alien movie. I pre-ordered instantly, there was no hesitation. Well we all know how the game turned out, it was an epic disaster, Gearbox had cheated customers as they where not even the principle developers on the game. Controversy ensued, gamers raged, even going so far as filing a class action suit against Sega and Gearbox.
The day it released and I played it I learned a valuable lesson. Since then I refuse to pre-order any game. I treat the game industry like the automobile industry, I would not buy a car that I had never test driven, and only seen early pictures of. Since that day when I said “never again” I have avoided many situations I see fellow gamers in. This game was another case of “OMG this is another X-COM and by some of the original team, how can I not pre-order it”. However I did not pre-order and instead waited on reviews, gameplay videos and posts about bugs and issues. I also saw that they where going to have this game on microsoft game-pass. So I waited and then finally installed it from gamepass.
I fired up the game and was unable to play it because of the shoddy programming bug that prevents the UI from scaling properly on ultrascreen monitors. Boy am I glad that I have adopted a new philosophy regarding how I purchase games.
My new philosophies are this.
-
If I must purchase the game I wait on reviews, watch game play videos, read about bugs, and look over post by gamers who have purchased the game. I then purchase with this in mind “if they never fix the games problems is it worth my money in its current state?” I do this because there is no guarantee problems will be fixed. So if I can’t tolerate specific bugs or gameplay issues then I will not purchase on the “hopes” it will be fixed. Let’s face it there are 1000s of games already released that have had bugs since day one which have never been fixed and, at this point, never will.
-
Another option is to use gaming subscription services. Your typical game costs 40.00 to 60.00 dollars retail, your typical game pass service cost anywhere from 5 to 15.00 dollars a month. Reassigning that money to a gamepass service gives you anywhere from 2.6 months and up. In the case of a 40.00 dollar game and a 5.00 subscription service that would be 8 months. In the case of Phoenix Point and Microsoft gamepass you would have 8 months to play this or any other game. So when you found bugs that make you mad or break the game you just install another game from the subscription service. This has the advantage of the once popular rental format. The days long ago you would go to BlockBuster and rent a game. If that game sucked you just took it back and was out only the rental cost!!
Take my opinions as just that: MY opinions!!