Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
In no particular order….
1. Decide what a game will and won't do based on little evidence. Pre-release hype is all well and good, previews are nice, but nothing is better than a solid review of a game to tell you what it's really doing. Note that publishers will sometimes shell out some serious incentives to encourage you to pre-order a game based soley on the advertising hype they have released, which is an excellent way to fall into this trap. Do yourself a favor: wait an extra week or two and read some reviews.
2. Have no idea what you really like. The point of a review is not to tell you whether a game is good or not. The point of a review is to tell you whether YOU will like a game or not. They do this by telling you how the game works, how well it controls, what kind of bugs are in the game, and so on. None of which will do you the slightest bit of good if you don't know yourself well enough to know what you like and don't like. Whenever you play a game, it's important to take stock and try to figure out what you are enjoying and what's not fun for you. Once you have that down, reviews will help you quite a bit - even reviews from people with different tastes.
3. Don't know your computer system. You need to be able to check your system stats against the game's minimum specs. If you don't meet the specs, don't buy the game. If you aren't sure, see if you can find a demo. (Do NOT pirate the game just to 'test it out.') Once you have the game installed, the first order of business is not to dive right into the game. The first thing you want to do is fiddle with the graphics and sound options. And don't go crazy in there. If you barely meet the minimum specs then you aren't going to max out the graphics. Remember that pride goeth before the fail!
4. Rush through the game. This one really shocks me when I see it. People pay a good hunk of money for a game, then they go right out to the internet to find out what the fastest/easiest way is to get through the game. This is an awful thing to do! It's the same as renting a movie then watching it all in fast forward mode.
5. Fear getting help. Most games are, at their core, a sort of puzzle. Even the hyper-fast shooters require you to figure out some basic strategies like what targets to hit first and which weapons to use. You'll figure out most of the puzzles but some are going to stump you. When you get stumped in a video game, it probably means you're going to find yourself having an awful time progressing or even getting stopped entirely. If that happens, fire up the Internet, head over to some place like gamefaqs, and try to figure out what's going wrong. As W.C. Fields would have said if he had lived an extra 70 years: "If at first you don't succeed, try try again. Then go to the internet. No sense making a damn fool of yourself."
6. Be unlucky. Developers are working hard to make a game people enjoy. Reviewers are (mostly ) working hard to give you an idea of what to expect. You're working hard to piece what you will and won't like about the game. And still you can end up with a stinker. Maybe something about the story annoys you to no end, maybe something about the game doesn't work like you thought it did, maybe the game makes you motion sick… Sometimes it won't work out. See if you can figure out why then move on.
1. Decide what a game will and won't do based on little evidence. Pre-release hype is all well and good, previews are nice, but nothing is better than a solid review of a game to tell you what it's really doing. Note that publishers will sometimes shell out some serious incentives to encourage you to pre-order a game based soley on the advertising hype they have released, which is an excellent way to fall into this trap. Do yourself a favor: wait an extra week or two and read some reviews.
2. Have no idea what you really like. The point of a review is not to tell you whether a game is good or not. The point of a review is to tell you whether YOU will like a game or not. They do this by telling you how the game works, how well it controls, what kind of bugs are in the game, and so on. None of which will do you the slightest bit of good if you don't know yourself well enough to know what you like and don't like. Whenever you play a game, it's important to take stock and try to figure out what you are enjoying and what's not fun for you. Once you have that down, reviews will help you quite a bit - even reviews from people with different tastes.
3. Don't know your computer system. You need to be able to check your system stats against the game's minimum specs. If you don't meet the specs, don't buy the game. If you aren't sure, see if you can find a demo. (Do NOT pirate the game just to 'test it out.') Once you have the game installed, the first order of business is not to dive right into the game. The first thing you want to do is fiddle with the graphics and sound options. And don't go crazy in there. If you barely meet the minimum specs then you aren't going to max out the graphics. Remember that pride goeth before the fail!
4. Rush through the game. This one really shocks me when I see it. People pay a good hunk of money for a game, then they go right out to the internet to find out what the fastest/easiest way is to get through the game. This is an awful thing to do! It's the same as renting a movie then watching it all in fast forward mode.
5. Fear getting help. Most games are, at their core, a sort of puzzle. Even the hyper-fast shooters require you to figure out some basic strategies like what targets to hit first and which weapons to use. You'll figure out most of the puzzles but some are going to stump you. When you get stumped in a video game, it probably means you're going to find yourself having an awful time progressing or even getting stopped entirely. If that happens, fire up the Internet, head over to some place like gamefaqs, and try to figure out what's going wrong. As W.C. Fields would have said if he had lived an extra 70 years: "If at first you don't succeed, try try again. Then go to the internet. No sense making a damn fool of yourself."
6. Be unlucky. Developers are working hard to make a game people enjoy. Reviewers are (mostly ) working hard to give you an idea of what to expect. You're working hard to piece what you will and won't like about the game. And still you can end up with a stinker. Maybe something about the story annoys you to no end, maybe something about the game doesn't work like you thought it did, maybe the game makes you motion sick… Sometimes it won't work out. See if you can figure out why then move on.