Picture a time when you didn’t know anything about games other than what you read in a magazine dedicated to video games, and you were okay with that. A time when you had to take a chance on a game based on the cover art and the blurb on the back of the box with a couple screenshots. What kind of experiences would you have in the game space? Did you live through this time from our very recent past? I miss it.

Sites like Metacritic are great to get a general idea of how games are, but most people focus on the numerical values, not the content of the reviews. Numbers are easy to view and only take a moment of your time. I don’t blame people, because it’s understandable that they only want to buy something worth their while. But the people that review games a) likely have completely different tastes than you and b) have different interpretations of what the number means. I’m certainly not the first one to say this, but the numerical values are broken. People think a 7 is a bad score, and anything lower is atrocious. It’s likely ingrained in you because of the academic system, as anything below a 70% is failing for many people. Thing is, a game can be a 5 and still be worth playing. I remember renting Kya: Dark Lineage on PS2 because it was scored a 9 in a magazine – that game was absolutely terrible. So what if you didn’t know about review scores and had to just choose based on what you saw and from word of mouth?

Prior to me having a video game magazine subscription, I had the NES, Genesis, Game Gear, and PlayStation (first subscription started a few years into having the Sony platform). To be honest, there is an assortment of games on those that we had that I likely never would’ve played if it weren’t for my older brother picking them up, and they were fantastic. Or at least, my experiences with them were. Some of these included Ikari Warriors, Little Nemo, Chakan: The Forever Man, Psychic World, Gran Turismo, and so many more. The first game I ever bought was Kirby’s Adventure for $10 at Toys R Us, and I had zero knowledge about it – I just thought it looked neat. I didn’t have anyone to talk about the games with other than my brother, or perhaps my friends that came over and played with me, so I didn’t necessarily have anyone pointing out flaws that I didn’t see. Is it important to point out flaws in something like a game? Sure, it allows for the developer to learn from their mistakes. But when pointing out flaws turns to something like the debacle surrounding the finale for Mass Effect 3, I really wonder how entitled we feel as players. I think of it like this – critique the art as you will, but don’t force the artist to change their product. Would you ask Leonardo da Vinci to change the Mona Lisa because you didn’t like it? If so, do you think he would? The only reason I wanted to speak with game developers when I was younger was because I wanted to thank them for creating something I enjoyed, or to thank them for getting me through hard times. These days they get borderline abused because we didn’t like a story beat or the way a game controls.

Outside of today’s review space, there’s the auction and buying space. You can find pretty much anything nowadays online to purchase, which is cool, but that takes away the excitement of going to a store in the hopes of finding something special. I can recount the time I went to Best Buy and saw The Misadventures of Tron Bonne – I didn’t know this was something that even existed, and I regrettably didn’t have any cash on me. I came back the next day having absolutely loved Mega Man Legends, but it was gone. It was my white whale that got away. I searched for that game over the course of the better half of two decades before it became available digitally, at which point I finally added it to my collection. Whenever I searched for it online I was able to find it, but it was far too much money. You can’t go to an auction or yard sale anymore and find a selection of games that people don’t know the cost of – it’s all available online, and they price it that way. Going to a rural area where parents are getting rid of all their kid’s games for a few bucks are few and far between now. You may as well purchase the game from someone across the country because it’ll likely be in better shape anyhow. The closest you can get to this nowadays is following forums like CAG or even Craigslist ads to see if games are on deep clearance or going to be available to purchase, at which point your mileage may vary. I did the clearance store shopping for about a year as it was a new thing to enjoy, but after finding only about 5% of the offers I’d attempt to take advantage of, I stopped taking part in it as it was more disappointing than anything.

It’s certainly nice that you no longer have to worry about the stock of a game, as there are essentially an infinite number available via digital download, but part of the joy for collectors is not having that sort of access at your fingertips. It’s why having P.T. on your PS4 is cool – it’s one of the few things in the current age of games that you can no longer acquire. Yes, you can argue that collector’s editions are pining for this feeling, but you can often find them on clearance several months after launch – they’re far from rare. Of course, the internet has been great for people to be able to communicate about things that they love with others they likely would never meet, and that’s huge for people that live in the outskirts and may not have any friends with similar interests, but as mentioned previously, it also leads to piles of hate for things that they find less than satisfactory. Quite honestly, I miss being able to go to a store with the wonder of what I’ll end up finding. When my wife and I go to Target, I’ll still wander over to the games section to see if there is anything special every now and then, but it’s usually just a game I didn’t expect to be on clearance that brings any sort of excitement. The last time that happened was Dark Souls on PS3 for $10 a month after it launched. And no, I didn’t know about that from looking online. Zero expectations mean a much bigger surprise and sense of excitement.

This sort of excitement is still able to be found in other media, such as vinyl. My friend has been spending a large amount of time visiting various record stores finding records he’s been meaning to pick up for years. And any games that don’t have digital components can still be found at used game stores, but you probably won’t be finding any killer deals like you used to be able to. With the limited access to advertising, were games forced to be better back in the day, or is the market so saturated now that you have to rely on others to know if you should play the game? Admittedly, with more than ten games launching a week, you’re probably going to play a few duds not knowing anything about them other than a summary and a few screenshots. Chances are you’ll also end up not liking a game that the critics loved, or falling in love with one people seemingly didn’t like (Nier: Gestalt for me). It’s certainly possible some hidden gems would get lost in the market without any sort of review coverage and the developer would have to quit because they didn’t make any money. But I think there’s a sense of pure, unadulterated joy that comes from finding something wonderful on your own, not having it be tainted by others – especially when you find it in the least likely place.

So what are your thoughts? Do you miss the days of mystery when it came to buying games? Or do you prefer being able to find exactly what you are looking for, regardless of the price, with full deconstructions of the games before you even play?