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Comment by mrec | Hacker News Reader

I don't find reviews to be a substitute for demos; there's always a strong element of "if you like games like this then..."

I pretty much only buy Steam games on sale now, not (just) because I'm a skinflint, but because I've learned the expensive way that I'll uninstall most games within half an hour or so or starting them. Even well-reviewed ones. Even ones that won Game Of The Year.

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Are you sure you like video games?

Well, I've been playing them for about 35 years now, so pretty sure.

Of course, obvious side-effects of advanced fogeydom include having less free time, being harder to impress with novelty, and losing the reflexes needed for some genres.

"Liking video games" is like "liking books". Typically people prefer certain kinds of games or books, and may find any particular example enjoyable or not.

Nobody questions whether I "like books" when I say The Lost World was a lackluster sequel to Jurassic Park, right? Because there is no expectation that somebody who enjoyed one particular book should like every book, even within the same genre or franchise.

I was referring to mrec's behavior of returning most games he buys, including critically-acclaimed ones. That's not a case of disliking a certain work, but of either not knowing your own taste or disliking the medium itself.

Or possibly, he knows his taste very well and is extremely selective. Some people may only be willing to invest serious time into games that fit their tastes close-to-perfectly.

I wager you don't like most critically acclaimed books, but that certainly doesn't mean you dislike books. Rather, it's just a reflection of the fact that there is such wide variety of books that anybody is unlikely to like most of them.

Sure, but I like most of the critically acclaimed books that I buy, which is more analogous to mrec's comment.

This seems like a loaded question -- do you mean to imply that to "like video games" you must like "all video games" including inherently broken and ones that promise the world in tech demo/e3 while delivering garbage on release date?

Just because one "likes books" does not mean that they should be forced to suffer gleefully through turds like Dr. Phil's "Self Matters".

As above, I was referring to mrec's behavior of returning most games he buys, including critically-acclaimed ones. That's not a case of disliking a certain work, but of either not knowing your own taste or disliking the medium itself.

I don't return them (except in cases of technical brokenness or blatant false advertising), I just stop playing them.

And I don't quite understand why "reviews not covering the aspects of a game which determine my enjoyment of it" means I don't know my own taste.

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