So, here's what I do when I want to buy a video game, this may help some people save money:

Go to a site where they review games, make sure there are plenty of reviews to choose from (ign is where I go, because many damning reviews slip through the company-run ad campaign). Order the reviews in order of rating 0 to 10. IGNORE all reviews with 0 and 10 and close to that like 0.5, 0.7, 9.9, 9.8, etc. These are bots likely programmed by the company that produces the game to add favorable reviews ... if you don't believe me, look at all the reviews in this range and count the number of striking similar or same reviews and meaningless contents of the reviews. Don't trust the press reviews, ever, btw !

So, now you look at those reviews in the range or say 3 - 8 or so, and read them. If you like what you read, read further, if again, buy the game. If you think there may be problems, rent the game or see if a friend has a copy.

It's also useful to see a few screenshots, and maybe look up possible bugs with the game, and maybe also make sure the game has cheats available if you expect it to be hard.

Optional (my personal opinion):

AVOID EA and Ubisoft AT ALL COSTS ! They have not made a single good game in many years. There are other companies that I dislike in general, because their games tend to suck nowadays (Capcom, Midway, Sega even), but this does not necessarily eliminate their games if the reviews are good.

So, there you go, any other tips ?

Download the game through your trusted source of pirate site, install, crack, play. If you like it buy it.

Bah, humbug. None of them are as good as the original Space War on a PDP in the '60's. Play against another person. Flip register switches to change game parameters. High resolution monitor, not matched on terminals or personal computers for a long time. Button box to play the game. Lots of late night hours and competition.

Right ... except, if I do that, I think I'll probably skip that last part about buying it. Besides, better be somewhere where piracy is not frowned upon.

Ubisoft isnt making great games?, if Pasific Fighters/Assasin's Creed/Silent Hunter/IL-2 Sturmovik arent G-R-E-A-T games then what?

If you think they do, buy from them, but I won't be.

Bah! Humbug!! "These kids today..." Why, they missed all the fun and don't even know it.

All kidding aside... "computer games" really were best when they were not (yet) "a manufactured product." Computers were not yet nearly powerful enough to do what is taken for granted today. Therefore, games were by-and-large homebrew, and they required you to use your imagination. Since "being involved with computers at all" branded you as a "geek" and a "hacker" (and you wore both of these titles with great pride!), imagination was no problem at all.

We have, somehow, "lost that." And I don't think we'll ever get it back. It seems to me that "game players, today," are doing little more than "watching TV." Oh, it does require a great deal of manual dexterity ... and perhaps a willingness to do "hula hoop" and "air guitar" after having paid hundreds of dollars for the privilege(?) of doing so ... but, in the end, you are simply doing what you have been "sold" to do.

So... "call me an old-fart if you want to, but..." I was there. I remember it. I participated. And now, it's just gone.

Which goes against both the title of this thread and copyright law, etc etc.

And.... happy birthday H_TeXMeX_H!

Thanks

Indeed, I was assuming legal ways to not waste money ...

It sure is not legal but it sure saves from wasting money.
Ways differ but we all will get there after a while.

That's right. Let's not pay for anything, property is theft after all....

God gives, man takes.

I remember back in the day when EA was Electronic Arts, and had such good games like Road Rash(Road Rash 1 was very fun on the 3DO and Playstation1), Wing Commander, etc. Hell even Ubisoft had some good ones at the very early days, (mostly in the early to almost late 90s). For me the fun ended in the late 90s early 2000s. Very very few games appealed to me then and now, well I may as well forgo it all together.

One other note. I don't know what Ubisoft ever plans to do with the rights to the 3DO IP. Ever since that company went under most if not all it's IP went to Ubisoft. I hate these f'ing companies that like to collect IPs and don't plan to do anything with them, and then go after others legally, hrmm, patent troll me thinks?

I remember back in the day when EA was Electronic Arts, and had such good games like Pinball Construction Set and Archon, but then again, I'm almost 40.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, the Road Rash series was great (at least on the Megadrive), Desert/Jungle/Nuclear Strike, the earlier Need for Speed series (newer ones have exponentially decreased in quality), C&C (Generals was the last decent one in the series, after that the quality plummeted), Medal of Honor was ok, as were the earlier Battlefield series games, and from then on quality of pretty much every game they made is very low. After a point I just stopped buying their games because of this. And recently, weren't they among the first to implement DRM (Spore) ?

As for Ubisoft, they once did make great games too, for example: Splinter Cell (before the in-game ad campaign make me throw that disk out the window), Myst series (it was unique and cool at the time, the first one being the best, then decrease as usual), Prince of Persia (only the first one, every other one sucked, this may have been the turning point or near it), Rainbow 6 + Rogue Spear and earlier games in this series (later ones suck), Morrowind was great I think, and that's about all the good ones I remember. After Far Cry, the later Price of Persia and Rainbow 6 and Splinter Cell, I decided to stop buying from them, it was a waste.