AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Really, the only way to get a good approximation about if a game is any good is to watch LPs and such. It means you have to wait until after launch to buy it, but so be it.

Buying stuff at launch is just asking to get ripped off.

^this. While I liked the bonuses that came with Thief 2014 since I preordered it, in the long run it simply wasn't worth it. I got myself super hyped and it led to a big letdown.

But if you do want to buy a game at launch it might be a good idea to look for various reviewer on Youtube. A lot of companies send out review copies to people like Jim Sterling, ProJared and Jirard the Completionist and those reviews tend to be a lot more fair and objective than reviews on standalone websites.

Just be leery of review embargoes, where the company tells a reviewer that in order to receive a review copy they have to agree to say certain things about the product. I don't think the people I mentioned agree to any review embargoes, but others might. There is some cheddar involved.

I normally hold off on getting games at launch, Mostly because I'm a poor schmuck. Recently though I have bought a couple games. They are from series that I haven't had a problem with like Arkham Origins, Smash 3D, and ORAS.

I almost always get games at launch, because I nearly exclusively buy Nintendo games and those don't have game breaking bugs that later need Day 1 patching to get past the first area. So I haven't really been burned getting a game new like that and being let down.

I think the latest Sonic disasters didn't allow reviews to be published until halfway through launch day?

A good rule of thumb is that if nobody is allowed to review it before it gets released, then it is shit and the developers and publishers and everyone involved know it.

Sonic Boom didn't get an embargo per se, Sega just didn't give copies to reviewers. If they got their hands on a copy they were allowed to post a review, but it was harder for them to source one before release date.

Still pretty shady, but not as explicitly deceitful as Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed: Unity.

Lumiose City would like a word with you
And that wasn't even patched until a few weeks later

Also there have definitely been a few games with day-one patches, most notably Smash Bros. 3DS if you consider the international release

Majora's Mask 3D just got a patch, and that was released like two weeks ago

Can't trust anyone in this industry

There's a difference between a patch that makes minor fixes and "The game bodaciously doesn't work on release." See: Dead or Alive 5 on Xbone.

The second kind is the unacceptable kind. Patching is definitely useful, as you can fix glitches that testers didn't see due to thousands or millions of players having a better chance of finding those things. But developers (or, more likely, publishers breathing down their throats) are starting to focus more on getting a game out the door and fixing it later. That kind of stuff is definitely a reason to avoid day 1 purchases, no doubt.

Nintendo has never in my experience released a game that physically did not work on release. Smash Bros and MM have updates, but they worked fine prior to those. They were minor fixes as opposed to "We shipped a game that didn't work so people would buy it and give us the cheddar to keep working on bug fixes for 2 extra weeks."

You have a point, but as I mentioned, saving in Lumiose City in X and Y's release version could bodaciously break your game. However, some games were not affected and the game worked perfectly fine otherwise, so I'll give you that.

Lumiose was pretty bad, yeah. That and maybe the Skyward Sword glitch that did something similar (although that one was avoidable and harder to initiate than just saving in the game's largest city...) are the worst ones I can think of.

Compared to the majority of what's coming out now, 2 bad glitches in otherwise functional games is nothing.

Super Paper Mario had a game-breaking bug, too, but I forgot what exactly it was. Nintendo did, however, ask people to send in their copies for a replacement disc without the bug.
The good old days where patching wasn't possible... ah...

Oh, I think I remember hearing that one. Something about the cragnon area, in the level where you have to learn a password by SLOWLY TYPING OUT "please" 5 times to a guy, if you tried doing the password without asking or did some things in the wrong order (something like that).

Same goes to AC Rouge. Great game, combined my favorite parts of 3 & 4. It even focuses a lot on the past stories and tying everything together.

Heard about Tim Schafer's pop flyin' Fun Soapbox Time at GDC. I guess he had to come up with another way to distract people from the fiascos of Broken Age's split into two games and Spacebase DF-9 being shuttered. Too bad it involved digging himself deeper into a hole.