>> 2. Wait a couple of weeks for real gamer reviews
I know it's hard to do if everyone you know's playing the latest hotness, but if you can wait a few months, you can usually get the game heavily discounted in one of Steam's (or Humble, Green Man or other Steam key sellers) quarterly sales.
I used to buy my games on release date at or near full price, but these days I try very hard to wait as long as I can for them to get heavily discounted. When you pay much less than full price, the sting is lessened if you chalk up too many hours to get a refund.
To be honest NMS is the only game I've paid for prior to the release date, and even then I only paid for it a week beforehand.
I'm not a huge gamer (with the exception of dipping into Eve Online no and then). But NMS was hugely attractive to me, less so from the gamer/press hype, but from all the things Sean had talked about and demo'd.
That'll learn me.
Last month I bought Dishonored 2 for £10 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for £8, roughly six months after release (when they were £60).
THIS. I posted my own comment, but I also suffered from the same crash/hang refund issue. The game was so unplayable I gave up, and shut down my Steam link. Unbeknownst to me, it was still running and therefore Steam refused my refund, and didn't reply to my follow up.
Cough, ahem, No Man's Sky...
According to Steam I'd played around 40 hours, but in reality most likely <10 hours active and stupidly left the game idling a couple of nights which racked up the hours.
I tried to get a refund from Steam and was refused, I then tried a charge back from PayPal and Steam stepped in and more or less told me that if I continue down this road I'll be locked out of all my games.
A few lessons learned:
1. Don't pre-purchase games
2. Wait a couple of weeks for real gamer reviews
3. Avoid Steam/digital distributions for higher value games.
This has certainly soured me from buying anything costing more than a few quid on Steam.