When was the last time you bought a game without community / fanbase / journo consensus?

DunDunDunpachi

DunDunDunpachi

Banned
No reviews, no Let's Plays, no careful reading of all the threads and OTs about the game. Ya grabbed it (or clicked it) and bought it. When was the last time you did this?

How did it feel to live on the edge?
 
Picked up Top Gun on the NES after seeing the awesome box art in the store.

Made ten year old me feel like I was Maverick (y)
 
Both Ori 2 and Doom Eternal, just this year. I loved the first games in both cases and didn't wait to see what anyone else said about them before I dove into each. Loved them both and played the hell out of them.
 
Last month: Stranded Deep + Pure Farming 2018 + Ion Fury

Only thing i knew was that Ion Fury is build engine and i only regret 1 of the 3 purchases. Guess which....
 
If we speak about pick up a game without any knowledge even from friends etc... It's probably Metal Gear Solid for me.

My father wanted to buy me a game, we went to the supermarket. I didn't really know what to take. I saw this game, looked the back of the box. It read like a movie so I took it.

My father : "You sure you want this one ?"
Me (not so sure) "Yeah yeah" .

Was blown away just with the intro. It changed my vision of video games...

There is probably other I took without much knowledge but can't be 100% sure (mainly old stuff like Half-Life, FFX)
Nowadays I don't necessarily check heavily each game I buy, but I usually always check a bit of gameplay to get a feeling.
 
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DelireMan7 said:
If we speak about pick up a game without any knowledge even from friends etc... It's probably Metal Gear Solid for me.

My father wanted to buy me a game, we went to the supermarket. I didn't really know what to take. I saw this game, looked the back of the box. It read like a movie so I took it.

My father : "You sure you want this one ?"
Me (not so sure) "Yeah yeah" .

Was blown away just with the intro. It changed my vision of video games...

There is probably other I took without much knowledge but can't be 100% sure (mainly old stuff like Half-Life, FFX)
Nowadays I don't necessarily check heavily each game I buy, but I usually always check a bit of gameplay to get a feeling.
Click to expand...
What a tremendous game to stumble upon.
 
I bought Agents of Mayhem pretty recently, to continue playing through the Saints Row-verse. I'll play it soon. Currently on Xenoblade Chronicles 3D. Wow, portable Xenoblade Chronicles. Yep. What a novelty, to play Xenoblade Chronicles on a portable system. Only on 3DS.
 
DunDunDunpachi said:
What a tremendous game to stumble upon.
Click to expand...

And that's an understatement !

Now that I think about, it was a bit the same story for FFX (supermarket, my father...) but I knew the Final Fantasy from reputation (never play at that time) so it was not a complete blind buy. Still was also blown away and play it for several hundreds of hours...
 
All the time. I don't watch gaming focused YouTube at all anymore but I've never watched anything other than trailers anyway, this is the only gaming website I visit and I generally only look into an OT after I've picked up and played a game to see if its worth replaying.
 
Just this morning on Humble Bundle I got the Cities: Skylines bundle since it was 18$, so that would be it as far as the most recent. I typically like city builders and the new SimCity hadn't been doing it for me so I jumped in with Skylines and it turned out to be pretty fun.
 
DelireMan7 said:
And that's an understatement !

Now that I think about, it was a bit the same story for FFX (supermarket, my father...) but I knew the Final Fantasy from reputation (never play at that time) so it was not a complete blind buy. Still was also blown away and play it for several hundreds of hours...
Click to expand...
Shogun: Total War was that game for me. I liked the RTS genre but I had soured on a few duds (this was the late 90s/early 00s when the RTS market flooded with mediocre cash-ins) so it was a gamble. The only thing that really drew me to it was the samurai theme, and it looked cool on the back of the box.

Played it for months and months. Even my dad got into it and played through a few campaigns (I remember peeking upstairs very late more than one night and hearing the menu sounds and battle noises lol).
 
Pretty much every game i buy it's because i have interest in it. I was never one to read reviews to sway me into it. Hell, by the time i got to read reviews in magazines, i already had the games 🤣

Doesn't mean i haven't been dissapointed with some purchases though, but such is life.
 
All the time. I don't pay any attention to reviews. I buy what I fancy, using my own taste, knowledge and experience. Sometimes I get it wrong, but that is life.

Why would I pay any attention to what Kotaku, or Polygon think? Who cares.

Being in the UK eurogamer is my main site, but their reviews are the weakest link of the site.
 
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Monster hunter world. Went in clean with next to no experience of the series (hated mh3 on the 3ds) it was a last minute decision. Me and the guys bought dbfz after a year of waiting and discussions but when the online shat the bed, so we switched to mhw (since it released the same day) just to try it out.

absolutely loved it.
 
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Yes a couple of times but only in the Pre 32.bit days !

i remember one time me and my brothers bought Frankenstein for NES / Famicom without knowing or seeing anything about it
 
Literally every time. I'm obviously affected by critical consensus but only by hearing about it through the grapevine rather than going out of my way to find out if critics love it or not. I usually buy games if I think they look or sound interesting according to personal tastes. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. A lot of the time I buy games based on who made it.

This, by the way, is termed crystallized memory. It roughly states that the older you get, the more stuck in your ways you become, and that you feel more comfortable basing decisions on past experiences rather than new information.

Good thread though. Thanks for starting :messenger_peace:
 
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The gaming community & fanbase are the people I trust to like similar things to me, the Journalists I don't give a shit about, their reviews can be swayed and we all know it.

Enter the Matrix for me 100% no influence, no die fans were gonna put me off that one as I was a hardcore Matrix fan at the time, did not care what a sinhle person thought... :messenger_pensive: whoops.

Sometimes i'll pick up cheap games on a whim if they are less than £3 without opinion, though I do still like to look at the screenshots & official gameplay video to see if it's my type of game, does that count?
 
I buy every game without reviews, most of games journos are complete bell ends anyway. I'll take heed of forum alerts to broken games or Naughty Dog levels of fuckery, though.
 
Sekiro.
FROM + Miyazaki have yet to disappoint me. Until that happens they are the only Dev/studio combo in which I have blind faith
 
I mean it's kind of hard not to have an opinion on everything when you're also browsing places like this shit hole.

Tekken 7 probably. I usually don't play fighting games since Tekken Tag and one day just felt like it.
I have 5 hours played since launch.
 
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i buy things all the time without waiting for consensus. i really don't care what the consensus is, since mainstream media is a bubble, and absolute trash is promoted even more than good stuff. i typically don't read reviews at all.

however, if we are including community/fanbase/etc. then that's a bit tough. games have always been a community thing, ever since i was a kid hearing that "You can fly in Super Mario Bros. 3!" on the playground and me wishing i had an NES instead of a 7800. so even decades before the internet, fanbase/community/hype was driving my gaming desire.

there really is no way to experience games (or any other media product) in a vacuum.
 
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I do that all the time - especially in bundles and sales. I play games for my own enjoyment. I do read user reviews a fair bit though - but not for a "buy/don't buy" perspective. I do so to get a more complete flavor of something I'm not sure about.
 
When I was younger.

Halo
Ninja Gaiden
Need For Speed...
Otogi
Pretty much anything I played I found at a pawn shop or used, except for Halo, and didn't really know anything about them.

Present day. I haven't read a review in a very long time. The only thing I read are performance reviews so I know if I need to wait till bugs get fixed and that's it. I also use gamepass and humble bundle. So I'm trying a lot of games I have never seen before and have definitely not read reviews for. Almost feels like it did when I was a kid again. But without much of the cost...
 
DunDunDunpachi said:
No reviews, no Let's Plays, no careful reading of all the threads and OTs about the game. Ya grabbed it (or clicked it) and bought it. When was the last time you did this?

How did it feel to live on the edge?
Click to expand...
Since pretty much always? I really don't care much about opinions and the consensus about games, I just follow my instincts.

I need to think the premise is good and once I'm hooked on a franchise I keep buying it. I used mags in the past and nowadays I mostly check out the description of a game at the digital store where I buy them. For example. I saw that racing game sale on Xbox Live a while ago and I ended up buying Xenon Racer. I never heard of it before but I downloaded the trial, I liked it and it was really cheap, so I ended up buying it. Later I found some reviews saying the game was really bad, but I was enjoying it for what it was.
 
I always buy Resident Evil games when they come out. It's now a tradition, so regardless, I'll buy it if it's a main line game or a Revelations. I think the only game I bought last year was REmake2 and this year is REmake3...

In the past I've been a sucker for Star Wars games but I've been burnt too many times with that crap.

Also shmups, anything by Cave / M2 if I have the cash and (I hate to say it) if it's not emulated properly.
 
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I don't care for anyone's take on something but the last I remember seeing and purchasing something on the shelf without absolutely any knowledge was Grandia on PS1. I saw it in our local SPAR and the game just stood out. I got my mum to buy it and I loved it. There maybe something after that but I can't think of anything right now.
 
Noita most probably because i love physics games and i don't care what supposed journos have to say about it.

Also maneater.
 
Every game I've ever brought honestly not trying to be a hipster but I dont understand how anyone could let someone else's experience make them miss it. This goes for all media for me some of my favorite games and movies have been labeled "not good" "stay away"
 
Can't remember the last time I brought a game based on reviews. To be honest I don't know what the review scores are for most big games I just buy whatever I like.
 
Did so very recently and do so with almost every game.

I don't let my taste get dictated or swayed by the media or group think. If I see something that catches my attention, and piques my curiousity, I'll buy it. There's something nice about playing a game untainted by someone else's opinion. Usuaully the game ends up being way more enjoyable and a fun playthrough that way.

Games can be so subjective it really doesn't make sense to me to be reliant on someone telling you want to like/buy.
 
I basically never buy something based on others opinions. I will skip games if a lot of people say it's shit though (Pokemon SSH comes to mind), but in general I just buy what I like the look of.
 
Completely blind? Probably PS2 era was the last time I did that.

I don't buy games on consensus but still do a bit of research of how it plays.
 
War Games. I was lusting for a new RTS and just browsed steam an dfound that gem. It was of course years old by that point and had two amazing sequels. I still play Red Dragon regulalry as it is IMO the best RTS ever made. Never heard of the series other than when it was called Ruse and published by Ubi for Consoles years and years ago. Didnt know it was teh same game until after I had been playing it for a bit.
 
Almost all of the games I buy, the decision was not based on reviews, Let's Plays, or careful reading of all the threads and OTs about the game.

If you mean almost completely blind, where I barely know anything about the game at all, then just games from creative minds and teams that have never let me down.
 
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I don't remember the last one...but I'm pretty sure the best examples of this was Phantom Dust and Demon Souls

Phantom Dust was in the Xbox Magazine back in the day. I didn't frequent forums then so gaming magazines were my main way of getting info about a game. I knew it was post apocalyptic, arena based, psychic powers. At the time, psychic powers were really cool to me. That was enough to make it my most anticipated game of....2005? Don't quote me on that. It ended up being my favorite game of all time.

Demon Souls was not even on my radar. Everybody was swooning over Uncharted 2, which released on the same day. I spoke to one person, a Gamestop employee on the day I was going in to buy Uncharted 2. He asked me if I ever heard of Demon Souls. I told him no. He then began to go on about how it reminded him of the old Nintendo days when games were unforgiving and difficult. I decided based on one person's advice to get Demon Souls instead of Uncharted 2.

I was literally the best gaming decision I've ever made.
 
Any Soulsborne type from FromSoft is instant buy.
No reviews or opinions needed.
Auto buy! In fact i'm throwing my money at my screen now for Elden Ring, but nothing is happening.
 
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