Sure, but there's still a chance of unoptimized gameplay and awful framerates, frequent bugs and glitches, poor mission design (like the rumoured insta-fail stealth sections in this game), lack lustre story, etc. The majority of big AAA releases last year suffered from one or mulitple of these issues. I'm just advocating waiting to hear that this game works as promised and delivers what it claims before throwing money at it. Especially after the negative previews we've been reading.
There's a chance of that, but somehow I doubt it given the recent builds, and comments from the developers regarding the frame rate and (lack of) tearing.
Of course not. I also don't adopt the opposite extreme of believing the publisher's hype and throwing money at something before I have an indication of its quality. That's equally crazy.
But it's nothing to do with believing publisher hype, it just boils down to liking what you see. I like the look of the game, and fancy a third person cover shooter, with cool weapons, set in a steampunk London with interesting lore and characters, and werewolf's. That's appealing to me. Not to mention I really enjoyed the past games made by RAD.
And all I'm saying is if you wait for the review embargoes and it's everything you expect (doesn't have to be universally considered great, just ticks all your personal boxes and isn't broken at launch) then you can still buy on day one (still pre-order and pre-download digitally if the embargo is up before launch day), still support a dev knowing they've earned the cash. The devs lose nothing from that. You're only more informed about your purchase, and avoid disappointment.
Again, the implication here is that I should wait for random journalists reviews to decide if the game is everything I expect it to be. Even though my own subjective opinion and expectations could wildly differ from theirs. It's also very likely many journalists will be looking for completely different things in a game, and have different things that they find fun or appealing.
For example, I suspect a common complaint levelled at the game will be that it lacks innovation or is too run of the mill, and I don't care about that. For me it's more important it does things well, than does things different for the hell of it.
I just think it's crazy that people are still willing to believe publisher hype and throw money at a game in the hope it will be what they expect in a post-Aliens: Colonial Marines, Assassin's Creed Unity, Destiny, Driveclub, Battlefield 4, Diablo 3, Sim City world.
I bought both Driveclub and Destiny, and despite the online launch woes with DC, and the grindy nature of Destiny, I very much enjoyed them both. As mentioned, Driveclub was my GOTY, so I'm truly ecstatic I ignored reviews on that one.
Regarding AC Unity, it's Ubisoft at the end of the day, I sort of expected it to be a bit of a glitch fest. They have a history of over selling and under delivering. I suspect though that if I had bought the game, despite the bugs, I'd probably still have enjoyed it. With that said, generally If online play or micro transactions are involved in a game, I'm usually more wary about pre-ordering.
