Aquanox 1+2 are a steal, gameplay maybe okayish but it has some of the best, if not the best, underwaterworld ever seen.
Especially try to play Archimedean Dynasty first as it's the first game in the franchise.

Wether to determine to buy games, the most important factor is time.
Do you have time to play or will it just sit in your backlog, possibly to be forgotton for a very long time.
It's a criterion I should have taken into account a very long time ago.

Doing screenshooting isn't always easy, but if you like that kind of game I would definitely recommend it to you ;-)


I don't really care about those free games - I would rather pay for something more with value, but I read official reviews, user experiences, any problems/bugs, physics/game mechanics, how the story is (if it's that kind of game).

Screenshots rarely makes me say "oh, that looks cool", more like "hmm, might be interesting", I usually want to see the actual gameplay before I make up my mind.

Yeah, time can also be a factor. Many games demands several hours to delve and explore and I might not always have the time for that.

And then I usually wait for a sale, but so far my limit is about 15-20USD. The game has to be REALLY big and enticing for me to pay more than that. My most costly game is Hexen back in the 90's but not no other :-P

The screenshots don't have to be brilliant, they just need to be informative. If they are too dark for instance they only inform you of darkness.

But it all depends on the game really, and I assess based on the merit of each. If it is not a photogenic game, then it still needs to be informative, and that's all I am after really, a sense of the game ... which might be a graphic style I am not interested in playing. You should never be attempting to hoodwink a buyer to gain a sale. Be open and honest and show things as they are.

For me, games come in all shapes and sizes. I can forgive bad or outdated graphics, if the story is great and the game play is acceptable. But I want developers to be open and honest with me and informative. If it seems like they are hiding something, then negativity comes into the equation.

It is one thing to say, it is damn cheap, so I will just buy it, and then do that.
That's a big NO for me. I have plenty of other things to spend my money on (other games even), and I never like wasting or spending even a dollar foolishly. So if a Developer or Publisher want my money, even just a dollar or so, then do the right thing. Because that's the other thing ... I refuse to encourage doing the wrong thing, by paying that dollar etc.

I've seen a few comments now, about how difficult it can be to get a good screenshot. Well, yes it can be for us players. But for a developer, it should be as easy as pie. Gawd, they have full control over their work environment when developing a game. Anyone who has built game levels before, like I have done, would know exactly what I am talking about ... and developers have even greater access.

As they say, a fool and their money are easily parted. Some have more money than sense.

P.S. On a related note. We live in a terrible throwaway society mentality now, where Rubbish Dumps are a huge problem. Most of that is down to the semi-rich and middle class, who want something now, and so pay for it, not taking into account they discourage things being fixed or reconditioned. So it has become more cost effective to just toss something out. In many instances, products barely have anything wrong with them ... but it is now too expensive to fix them. The poor mostly pay the brunt of this stupid selfish mentality, but in reality, we all do ... even the super rich who are more careful with their money (why they are super rich). And it is not just about Rubbish Dumps either, it is about wasted and dwindling resources etc.

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I grabbed both when I first come here to GOG.
Not played the wolves one yet, but Shadow Warrior is one of my all-time favorites, and what brought me to GOG, via a friend who told me it was free here.

In fact, GOG and all those who made money from me buying games at GOG, can thank Shadow Warrior Classic for that. Been more than 500 games now, in just over a year ... most of that playing catch-up, after being out of the game scene for something like 9 years ... though I have been a regular observer of my kids on Xbox and PS3 etc in that time.

Once a Gamer though, always a Gamer. :)
LOL ... there is always one ... maybe two or more even. Ha ha!

I've never really felt like mixing alcohol and games ... that seems un-intuitive and counter productive even.

But hey, each to their own.

Back in the day, playing Goldeneye with friends on the N64, may have occurred after consumption ... I forget. ;)

Thanks for the recommendation ... to both you and a few others before you.

However, a recommendation or review is rarely enough for me.
As I said earlier, they are always subjective and need to be seen in the context of the likes and dislikes and experience of those giving such. They can certainly be helpful for sure, but are only part of the complete picture.

I don't care about backlog .... my backlog is humongous.

I care about variety, and having something to grab when I am in the mood.
I don't intend to or even care if I don't play everything I have, before I leave this mortal coil.
I do however care about feeling rich and empowered ... which collections does give one a sense of.

I will never be rich or middle middle-class even. Lower middle-class is all I can even hope to achieve realistically.
Unless of course, the Universe bestows an amazing gift on me.

However, I do have a sense of being rich ... at least in some areas of my life. Areas where I do feel I have some control over a few things - Games, Books, Movies, Music, Software ... some hardware, etc.

But then, I choose to spend most of my money, that is not required for essentials, on things like fair priced games, movies, books, music, etc ... instead of on expensive versions or alcohol, smokes, fancy food, takeaways, cinema, nightclubs, restaurants and such.

I do spend a small amount occasionally, on alcohol based drinks, fancy food, restaurants etc ... never smokes. I can't be a complete saint (sic). I am just mostly sensible about my excesses .... live & learn as they say ... though some clearly don't.

But hey, each to their own ... whatever floats your boat. :)

I have no qualms about pirating a game that doesn't have a demo in order to determine if it's worth buying it or not.

My own stance, is that I don't support, encourage or engage in Piracy.

However, I used to be a bit that way.

And I've always entertained qualms (blame my conscience) ... though I have also always been somewhat philosophical about things.
That philosophy being based on the fact, that many of us (maybe most) do create things, but rarely if ever get paid for our creations. Just because you create something, doesn't mean you should get paid for doing so or should have an expectation of such. Life guarantees nothing. However I am a great believer in a fair return if you share something with others, especially in a relative sense to how much hard work and or expenditure you put into something.

These days, if something interests me enough, then I will pay something for it. How much, is relative to the level of interest and perceived benefit and availability ... plus maybe respect for the provider.

If I don't have respect, then maybe I might still do the so called 'pirate' (i would call it something else) ... depending on what the lack of respect is all about. I don't really engage in what I call or understand piracy is. Just because I might obtain something, by what some others call illegal means, doesn't mean I do so to gain an illegal benefit. If I truly like something, and can get it at a fair price, then I pay for it. The only questions really, are how much do I like something ... and why would I keep a copy of something I am not prepared to pay for ... at least at that specific point in time.

The answers are many. But as I don't know how much is tolerated on this subject here, I will leave it up to the conjecture of others.

That's life.

P.S. On the other side of the coin, with respect. If I like or respect a provider of a product, then using that product without negativity is important to me. I also want to be able to respect myself and my values. So it is imperative to me to do the right thing.

In other words, how I can I do something like read a book by an author if the mutual respect is not there? That for me, would mar the experience ... so why would I deliberately engage in that?

Right, I'm with you on that, but I feel like the qualitative merit here is very much down to the genre and sometimes the individual game in question as opposed to being a universally helpful purchasing aid. Text adventures for example wouldn't really communicate anything useful via screenshots and while that's an archaic example, a game like Sunless Sea suffers from a similar problem: screenshots are somewhat informative, but most likely won't be able to convey the strenghts of the game adequatly.
Similarly I think the medium as a whole has progressed enough that presentation doesn't necessarily imply gameplay anymore. For example, if you knew nothing else about the game, looking at Firewatch you'd be excused for thinking that's a shooter, simply because traditionally games had been about a rather limited set of problems to solve and the "shoot bad guy dead" problem over time became the one most closely associated with a first person perspective. Now of course there's still valuable information to be had here. Personally I don't deal well with a first person perspective, so I can infer that I'm to proceed with caution. For other people the same might hold true just for the visual style. However I can't shake the assumption that that's more of an exclusory process. Maybe that goes hand in hand with the sheer number of games we're bombarded with these days and whittling that down to manageable subselections. But I think it's a lot more difficult for a game to convey its positive qualities, once it strays far enough from certain conventions. After all, a screenshot in a vacuum only informs you of visual qualities. Everything else you infer is down to comparison. If every screenshot shows you a steering wheel in first person perspective, you're looking at a racing game and you evaluate that information in comparison to your knowledge of racing games - and subsequently skip the game, if you're not interested in the genre, for example. But let's say the game you're looking at is Euro Truck Simulator 2 and you have something sufficiently different enough for your entire evaluation to be undermined, possibly without you realizing it.

Right, I might have communicated that a bit inefficiently.
I didn't mean to suggest just buying any old wank, once it's cheap enough. To be honest, I cannot with certainty state what I like and I'm going out on a limb here and assume that holds true for a lot of people. When I got into gaming, you had enough technical limitations that games, as a whole, were a lot more formulaic and predictable. If a screenshot suggested an RPG or a plattformer, you generally had a pretty good idea what you were getting into. There weren't a lot of crossovers in genre, either. You see Roger Wilco, you know you're going to feed lots of "Look at x" into a text parser and that's basically it.
That's very different today to the point where sometimes even gameplay footage isn't informative enough to make an educated purchasing decision taking that into account. For example, I like chill, comfy stuff. Turn-based, take your time, indie affairs. The relaxing side of gaming. By all accounts I should not like Hotline Miami. Turns out I do. Quite a lot, actually. I wouldn't have known that from any other source than experiencing it for myself.
Then you have Wasteland 2, which by all accounts (including screenshots) I should enjoy and let's just put it nicely and say I don't.
Games are complex and diversified, so neither of these are isolated cases. Judging potential enjoyment comes with a margin of error and I think that margin only gets bigger the more the medium progresses. Pricepoint is a way to address this and I found taking a gamble on highly acclaimed games that don't look interesting to me at first glance to be rather beneficial. Sure, I might waste a unit of currency here and there, but I'm pleasantly surprised often enough that it balances out in the long run.

Well, there's no profit in you fixing your stuff, of course it's heavily discouraged.
But yeah, you're 100% right.

There is a lot of merit to what you say, but my short answer is ... negatives.

Certain games you have certain expectations, so nothing I say is completely across the board.
The expectation of a text game is very different from that of a 3D action game.
So the types of screenshots would be very different.
Clearly with even a text game, you get a visual element ... and that can still be done bad or good.
That said, I pay more attention to the summary and the reviews for those types of games ... and a mix for crossovers.

What you don't want are negatives though.
And a negative is bad screenshots when there should be good ones.
Or missing elements that could be helpful with your decision making.

One could be excused for thinking very dark screenshots mean a very dark game ... and I am mostly not enamored of that.
Likewise leaving stuff out could be deliberate to hide the truth.

At the end of the day, I mostly just take a gamble.
But I want to feel it was an informed gamble.

If you expect something to be a certain way, but it isn't, then that can lead to unhappiness ... or a pleasant surprise if you are lucky.

On the other had, if you are made aware of the possible shortcomings, but decide to take a gamble anyway, well you are not gonna feel you were scammed. In short you are prepared for the likely reality ... though you still might get a pleasant surprise.

I am not about to buy a bunch of crappy seeming games on the chance one of them or a couple turn out to be gems. I gotta spend my money on more than an elusive or imaginary pot of gold. There has to be some redeeming factor, that I know going in.

Easy.
A game I've been waiting for and that's released without regional pricing = instand buy.
Any game with regional pricing = wait for deep discount. (how deep depends on how interesting the game is)
Uninteresting game = don't buy. No matter how much it's discounted.