You want to play a new game from a series you've never tried. What do usually you do?

Playing through all the previous entries is a must for me. Usually I end up ditching most of them because they're too old, and only beating the latest one or two of them. But I experience all of them nonetheless!

Dependant on the game. I played through all of Mass Effect in preperation for 3, but felt no real need to go through the various iterations of XCOM before I played Enemy Unknown.

It really depends. For the Yakuza series I caught up watching all scenes on YouTube for 1&2.

I'm still getting caught up on the Maddens. Maybe I'll be ready this August, and can play along with everyone else.

I play the old games and get bored of it and then never play the new one. I'm kinda stupid.

I almost always play previous games in the series. I would highly suggest not playing the PS1 Tomb Raider or Resident Evil games. I assure you they don't even remotely hold up. I actually went back and played all the Metal Gear Solid games in anticipation of Rising. They are all easy to get hold of on PS3. The first one is on PSN, the PS2 ones and PSP one are in an HD collection, and obviously the 4th is on PS3 to start. I thought they all held up really well actually. I would recommend playing them if you don't mind watching a game more than playing it. Specifically, the second game has several hour long cutscenes split up by ten minute gameplay segments. Good series though. Awesome boss battles. Story is really convoluted and poorly written at times but still interesting.

Splinter Cell is one I might play. The Xbox ones are really complicated and slow. You have to enjoy memorizing guard patterns and repeatedly restarting a level any time you make a small mistake. They are frustrating games at times. Conviction was pretty fun though. And lastly, DMC. The first game is good. The camera is a little iffy. Watch Brad's video. If you can handle the camera jumps in that then you'll be fine. Second game is trash. Story makes no sense, combat is painfully easy, so much so that I never died a single time in the whole game, and the whole thing just feels super uninspired. Third game is excellent but brutally difficult. Worth playing but don't feel bad if you have to drop down to easy especially if you are just trying to catch up on the story. And 4 is good. Not as good as 3 but still good. Nero's grapple arm is a great addition although I'm not a fan of the character. Basically, I'd play 1,3, and 4 as they all hold up very well and just ignore 2. You aren't missing anything in any way.

I usually go back to play the previous entries of the series, even if it might be as good/polished as later games in a series usually end up being. Having that experience of what's been improved over the progress of several games has always been interesting to me.

Of course, there are a few examples like sports games, games with non-exsisting story, casual games and games which has predecessors that are unplayable.

I pretty much have already played what I want throughout the years. And if I didn't, I end up buying it on Steam and never play it.

It really depends on the franchise. Sometimes I'll start from the beginning, but I'll usually ask around and see if I need to play the previous entries before the new one. For example, I recently started playing Fire Emblem on the GBA, since the positive buzz the new one's getting has gotten me interested in that franchise. Can't afford a 3DS just yet though, so I might as well check out the older ones while I save money for it.

Depends.

When Killzone 2 was coming out I didn't bother to go back and play the first. Same with the upcoming Tomb Raider, no interest in playing the old ones (of course it's a reboot so it's not quite the same).

But when the realization that the Fire emblem games seem really awesome recently hit me like a sledgehammer, I decided to check most if not all of them out.

If it's easy for me to get my hands on previous games, I'll play 'em for a little bit (and obviously keep going if I really, really like them). If not I'll just jump in head-first. Thankfully a lot of modern games find some way to bring the new players into the story (for the better or worse of the narrative and it being condensed, at least it offers that).

I will usually go back and play the previous games first. Excluding if the previous games are on an old console, then I will look for a HD collection or just play the new game, I can't be arsed to get my old system out or download an old game.

For more complex game/series I also like watching a Let's Play of the game as I am playing it - after each session of playing I will go and watch the same sections again to see stuff I missed or how they approach stuff differently and just for some information in general.

Shout-out to Full Vinny Style, the only way to live.

Usually I would go abut it Brad style, but there are exeptions. For instance, I first got into TES with Oblivion. After playing that for hundreds of hours, I felt a longing for more. This made me go check out Morrowind, which turned out to be even better. Then I tried Arena and Daggerfall.

It depends really on how important the story line is to the series. For instance a game like Metal Gear Solid 4 requires you to play the older games so you can understand the story, same goes for Mass Effect.

But on other games it's not that important, for example I played Uncharted 2 before I played Uncharted 1, and while it would help you be a bit more familiar with the characters, it's not too important to play the past titles first because the overall plot is always different in each game.

I tend to start from the beginning. But there really isn't that much left for me to jump late into anymore....

Generally speaking, if I haven't played the previous entries in a franchise that means I am not interested in the franchise and thus won't want to play the latest installment either.

Story is kind of what I go to games for, over anything else. So most of the time I will play an entire series first. It varies, however, and if the previous entries aren't connected really in anything but name and universe, and don't seem super interesting, I'm not going to play them.

I rock it Brad style.