I occasionally pre-order games, but only ever through Steam, where I know I can get my money back, no questions asked, if it’s within 2 weeks of release and < 2 hours of play time.
I will preorder a Zelda game or something where I’m pretty confident of the quality and I don’t want to worry about slow download speeds on the day of release. I assume my case isn’t what you’re talking about, but if it is foolish in some way that hadn’t occurred to me, please let me know lol
You can be confident of a number of things based off studio history and baseline level of quality, but you do need a very consistent and strong set of data for that. For instance, I find Monster Hunter to be a franchise that’s relatively safe to pre-order.
As long as you are not a player that’s married to the iterative unique mechanics in each entry and you know you love the base gameplay you can reasonably expect a certain amount of quality, and that’s been true for about two decades now. That being said, you couldn’t say this about most devs or series. I’d also argue for any games released by Kojima as long as you really enjoy his outlook, style, and passion.
You cannot know exactly what each of his games contain before playing, but you can be assured that there will be a baseline level of “they really gave a shit and made something novel and interesting” in his games.
I’m not only going by the trailer though. I’m also going by track record of the company, and particularly how they treat their flagship titles. With that taken into account, I do feel pretty confident.
I think Nintendo games might be the exception here. You can get a physical copy on release day, put it in and play immediately, and the quality is gonna be at least 8/10, probably higher.
Nobody should be preordering, but companies still offer it because too many dumbasses preorder anything and everything.
I occasionally pre-order games, but only ever through Steam, where I know I can get my money back, no questions asked, if it’s within 2 weeks of release and < 2 hours of play time.
Otherwise, I stay far away from pre-orders.
I will preorder a Zelda game or something where I’m pretty confident of the quality and I don’t want to worry about slow download speeds on the day of release. I assume my case isn’t what you’re talking about, but if it is foolish in some way that hadn’t occurred to me, please let me know lol
You can’t be pretty confident of the quality before getting the game via preorder. All you have to go by at that point is trailers they made.
You can be confident of a number of things based off studio history and baseline level of quality, but you do need a very consistent and strong set of data for that. For instance, I find Monster Hunter to be a franchise that’s relatively safe to pre-order.
As long as you are not a player that’s married to the iterative unique mechanics in each entry and you know you love the base gameplay you can reasonably expect a certain amount of quality, and that’s been true for about two decades now. That being said, you couldn’t say this about most devs or series. I’d also argue for any games released by Kojima as long as you really enjoy his outlook, style, and passion.
You cannot know exactly what each of his games contain before playing, but you can be assured that there will be a baseline level of “they really gave a shit and made something novel and interesting” in his games.
I’m not only going by the trailer though. I’m also going by track record of the company, and particularly how they treat their flagship titles. With that taken into account, I do feel pretty confident.
I think Nintendo games might be the exception here. You can get a physical copy on release day, put it in and play immediately, and the quality is gonna be at least 8/10, probably higher.