First of all, before I start the game, I check if the Internet access is blocked, to make sure nothing phones home.
Then I switch off all visual effects which harm the sharpness or visibility in the game or shake the screen like chromatic aberration, bloom, depth of field, motion blur, bobbing, ...
On the first try of a game I usually reduce the difficulty to the lowest available setting.
And I lower the volume of the in-game music.

Mainly, I will try to head over to the settings and change the subtitles option to on. That is if I did remember to do it. What happens most of the time however is that I only change the subtitles option to on after I've started the game lol. As for the rest of the settings, I don't really mess with them that much.

As for the graphics settings, I would have those tinkered only after I had started the new game and experienced an unstable fps that's not to my liking.

Might I offer something with a form factor you may like, but would allow you to eliminate step 0?

* Rumble off.
* Screenshake off. Flashes reduced if slidable (but not off unless I find them bad during play).
* Set to borderless windowed mode if available. If not, just windowed mode.
* Set music down to around 50%, sfx to around 60%, ambient to around 70% UI to around 80% and voices to max..
* Subtitles on.
* Disable "make it look like it was made with a movie camera!" crap like chromatic aberration, depth of field, etc.
* Adjust resolution to match what I have if possible. If not, go lower.
* Check input mapping. Curse developers that don't include it. [I *will* quit a game that forces use of WASD and leave a nasty note to them.] I usually won't change except WASD -> numpad until after I start playing though.
* Make sure "invert" is not on. (up means up damn it!)
* Read what analytics there are and consider carefully if I want to leave them on or not. Default to off.
* Set autosave to quite frequent intervals, but with a low max kept range.
* Disable intro movies, etc? [Including searching config file manual edits or file deletions to eliminate logos and whatnot]/
* Check UI options/alert options and usually increase them to max information. (I often will lower later, but sometimes I'm baffled as to why certain ones are off!)

Of special note, I don't change graphics settings not listed above until I start playing and see what it looks like and adjust after an intro/tutorial area.


SO PEOPLE: A lot of us are very consistent in here for many of these. Too consistent to be just a GOG thing. Why the heck to developers spend time and resources on some of the shit that everyone turns off?

What if the game's only initially available difficulties are "Easy" and "Normal"?

Of course, this could cause problems if the game has any critical functions that, by default, are assigned to the number pad.

(Then again, if a game requires the number pad, and it's not possible to change that without using the number pad, then the game will be unplayable on keyboards that lack a number pad (like many laptops).)

One other thing: For games where controller support isn't present or isn't optimal, if there is an option to play with just the keyboard (no mouse), I will choose that option.

Change Keybinds

and turn film grain OFF because my eyesight is naturally grainy like bad film grain already!

It is like the bad film grain of the Evil within always (although I couldn't see a difference!)

Cause little kiddies like it!

I always go through all the options before playing a game.

Try to balance graphics, this is even needed if the device is a low power one, like my bedroom minitop or a tablet...
Music turned on but very low level, voice low level unless it's a Rally game (kinda obvious).
Colorblind mode on, if available.
Disable any kind of post processing, unless it's a old game. Trully some games need Anti aliasing, even at native resolution. As an exemple, Dirt rally is annoying to play without AA.
Turn the game to English.
Usually only set controls to my preference after playing the game for a little while.



V-sync is very game specific, most of the time I play with V-sync on. However I find some games unplayable with V-Sync, like CS-GO or Richard Burns Rally, they create so much input lag isn't even fun, those games also benefit imensely being run at very high fps.
There is a game I've played a few years ago, that V-sync create a lot of input lag, but there was not any benefit to being run at high fps's, so I just lock the frame rate in RivaTuner. Can't remeber wich game though...

These two are great suggestions that I'll keep in mind. I hate voice acting in games since I read much faster than they speak (obviously), and listening to characters drone on and on takes away from the gameplay time.

And saving, yeah, I miss quick saving every 5 minutes so I don't lose progress, so it's a good idea to always look for the nicest save option.

Most sensible options to change have been mentioned already, so I'll mention a more uncommon one I always change when possible: censorship options. When possible, maximum blood, nudity, foul language, and so on. Whatever option is toned down I'll turn up to 11 if given the chance.

As a side note not directly related to this thread, I do play with the graphic settings more than most.

The reason for this, is that I set a limit to 100W of computer power (not a hard limit though) to play any game that I want on my desktop. I really don't care about the power savings but this help me learn and understanding better what a computer is as a machine. Heck sometimes some "out of the box" mods are needed to attain such limit (including soldering stuff on my GPU).
I do overclock quite a bit but nowadays, non-competitive overclock is dead for the good part and this is way more fun.
A powermeter is a freaking awsome tool to diagnose general computer problems and overclocking, so I always have one connected and play with it...

The same way teceem won't play any game except on max settings, I usually won't play it unless inside my self imposed limit. There are of couse lot's of exceptions, some games I just want to play and don't care about such nonsense...

Well it took me quite a long time to accept WASD controls. I used to go into the key bindings and change it to the cursor keys, probably until about 10 years ago.

As others have said, I check resolution options and go for native resolution if possible (or integer scaling if it's a 2D pixel art kind of game).

EDIT: Subtitles! I turn subtitles on if I have the option for pretty much any medium actually.

Yes, always - if I can. One of my biggest pet-peeves with a new game is when I'm not given the option to set up my graphics and sound options ahead of time. There's nothing worse than excitedly watching the opening cut-scene to a new game ... only to see it displayed in some "compatible" resolution, stretched out and pixelated with zero anti-aliasing, low-quality textures and no vertical sync.

My priorities are:
* resolution (set to my native monitor resolution)
* anti-aliasing (look over all the options and use whatever seems to be the best balance between performance and quality)
* texture quality (I tend to go high since I have a GPU with a good bit of graphics memory)
* vertical sync (I usually enable it)
* anything to do with shadows and reflections (I tend to start conservative and slowly ramp up)

I always scan over ALL the graphics options ahead of time, if I can, to see if there's anything I may want to manually tweak. For example, regardless of my PC's hardware capabilities I usually disable god-rays, depth-of-field, motion blur and similar "cinematic effects". It's not that my system can't handle them -- I simply don't like the appearance of them. And as I mentioned, I usually set Shadow Quality to Medium, then ramp up from there once I get in game. In many games, I find that the higher quality shadows actually look TOO sharp and detailed (unrealistically so) -- and those ultra-high settings also have a very noticeable performance hit.

In general, I tend to go with higher-quality textures but stay conservative with post-processing eye candy.

Why don't you get a netbook-grade computer or one of those MINI PCs that can be had for (last I checked) something like $100 or $150?

(Another idea is to get a computer with broken cooling, or play with the fans off, so that the CPU will throttle if you push it too hard, but then you risk damage from overheating if you're not careful.)

At least the game didn't expect you to watch the game in a resolution that your system doesn't support before giving you the option to change it (in which case there'd be no way to get far enough to even see that option).

Best option, of course, would be for either:
* The game to ask for resolution when first started, or
* The game to start in a low but compatible resolution, with an options setting available from the main menu to allow changes before choosing "New Game"

Ideally, yes. But some older games will display their opening cinematic even before going to the "main menu". Of course, in most cases you can just ESC out of it and watch it again later through some means. But it's still annoying. "You only get one chance to make a first impression," and if I have to abort out of an opening cut-scene because it looks totally wonky on my system, that doesn't leave a good first impression.

This reminds me of Arc the Lad 2. While there are no resolutions (it being a console game), the intro does make the controller vibrate, and you can't enter the menu to turn it off until after the intro.

(It's also worth noting that, like most JRPGs of its time, you can't skil any cutscenes at all (barring things like glitches, if there are any suitable).)