By Alec Meer on October 23rd, 2008 at 6:42 pm.
At last – Good Old Games, the lovely, cheapie, DRM-free (DON’T SAY A BLOODY BORING WORD ABOUT BLOODY BORING DRM) download service specifically dedicated to olde worlde classics of PC gaming – and often out of print ones at that – has finally thrown open its doors to the whole wide world. It’s no longer a closed beta, but an open beta – by which it presumably means ‘actually launched but “beta” sounds cooler’. Nonetheless – woo!
The beculted likes of Fallout, Sacrifice and Hostile Waters remain the headliners, but opening day brings with it some new sign-ups: publishers Strategy First and Piranha Bytes. The former most notably brings Jagged Alliance, and the latter the original Gothic. Oddly, Strategy First have also thrown the first Sacred in there, which is actually quite a new game by GoG’s standards. Still no Planescape: Torment though, sadly :(
The prices remain delightful: $5.99 or $9.99, which is practically nothing. Well, enough for a home-cooked meal. Or a fancy hat. Or a fortnight’s worth of cat food. But really not a lot.
The site is, of course, over here, and there’s a press release fulla factoids below.
GOG.com Open Beta Embarks; New Companies Climb Aboard
Everyone Now Able to Buy Value-Packed and DRM-Free Classic PC Games
Warsaw, Poland – October 23, 2008. GOG.com, or Good Old Games, the digital distribution site with DRM-free PC classics, today opened its doors to the public as it moved into its Open Beta phase after a highly successful Early Access Beta that saw tens of thousands of gamers satisfy their deepest desires… for classic PC games, you sicko! Additionally, GOG.com announced that two new companies have taken up arms in the battle to bring classic PC games at low prices to the masses. The award-winning worldwide publisher, Strategy First, is bringing hit titles Sacred Gold, Jagged Alliance, Disciples Gold and more to GOG.com, while a deal with Pluto 13 means that classic-games fans will have the opportunity to play Piranha Bytes’ acclaimed RPG, Gothic.
With Strategy First and Pluto 13 joining Codemasters and Interplay, the GOG.com Open Beta will expand in the coming weeks to offer more than 50 games from the 90s and 2000s, all optimized to work on modern PCs and packed with bonus content. Also, the games are inexpensive, leading to a minimal impact on international credit markets; GOG.com is doing its part to crush the current economic recession.
“We’re elated to welcome these new companies to the GOG.com catalogue. It’s a great demonstration of their commitment to gamers, and we’re sure that our extremely devoted community will welcome Strategy First with open arms, and will have a great time revisiting the immersive world of Gothic as the Open Beta begins,” said Adam Oldakowski, Managing Director of GOG.com. “The success of the Early Access Beta showed us that there is huge demand for DRM-free classic PC games, and it helped us to prepare the site for the public launch. We are endlessly grateful to the users for their support and assistance.”
Strategy First games will begin appearing in the GOG.com games catalogue with the release of Disciples: Sacred Lands Gold Edition on October 28, the same day that will see the launch of Piranha Bytes’ Gothic. More titles, as well as announcements of additional publishers, will follow in the coming weeks. Go to GOG.com and dive right into the world of classic PC gaming.
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About GOG.com
Backed by CD Projekt, one of Eastern and Central Europe’s largest publishers and distributors, GOG.com – or Good Old Games – is the ultimate destination for classic PC games. The site offers gamers some of the greatest PC games of all time for a low price and free from copy protection. GOG.com is much more than just another digital distribution site, featuring an extensive community component that allows players to rate, review and discuss their favourite PC games, as well as insightful articles from respected games journalists.
About CD Projekt
Founded in 1994, CD Projekt is one of Eastern and Central Europe’s largest game distributors, with offices in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, and employs more than 250 people across its diverse businesses. The company has used innovative marketing and distribution practices to invigorate the Polish games market and to position itself as a leader in the localisation and publishing of world-class games, having brought such hits as the Neverwinter Nights, Diablo and Warcraft series to the region with great success. CD Projekt Group includes the publishing and distribution companies in Poland, Czech, Slovakia and Hungary; the dedicated Localisation Centre, which is the leading provider of cross-platform porting, quality assurance and localisation services in the region; CD Projekt RED, the development branch responsible for the hit role-playing franchise, The Witcher; Metropolis Software, currently developing the anticipated multiplatform sci-fi shooter, THEY; and GOG.com, the ultimate online destination for DRM-free classic PC games. More information about CD Projekt can be found online at www.cdprojekt.com.
$6.99? I’m getting an offer of $5.99 for most, looks like you’re being robbed blind Alec!
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Actually, I’m just blind. Fixed.
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I took part in the closed beta and was very impressed with the service.
Not many games that I want to get yet, but I did finally get around to playing Sacrifice.
Roll on SS2.
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Battlechess! Castles!
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There is no excuse now. Everyone buy Sacrifice. I will be, even though I have my original one right here with the box. Buy it en masse. Buy multiple copies for your friends. Just about any PC can run it on high settings now. Did you know that you can install ‘spawn’ copies of it’s multiplayer off just one disc for epic LAN battles? Do it.
We may yet see it: Sacrifice 2, with HDR and Havok physics. If you BUY IT this time.
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I think I may have asked this before, but do their version of Fallout/2 support the hi-res patches?
Also, they need to use magics to find a way to get PS:T on this mother sharpish.
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Meat Circus: Or I could just pirate it and hope my vote gets counted.
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Was funnier before the censorship kicked in.
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Die by the Sword and Limb from Limb expansion!
Uncoordinated chuckles here I come.
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Quick question: is Die by the Sword any good? I know it isn’t asking much to part with $5.99 for two games, but I’m seven kinds of broke right now and any expenditure is unwanted expenditure.
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I have downloaded Giant Citizen Kabuto, or something alike (forgot the name). I don’t plan to really play it, as is a very old game.
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@Meat Circus
Yes, I can say that their version of Fallout supports the hi-res patch. It means you see edges to areas that would normally be obscured and the HUD’s text is a bit eye-squinty, but that’s to be expected.
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Ooh. I like their terms. Shame they don’t have System Shock or Syndicate in their catalogue. :/
Meat: they actually state the patchlevel of the game you get; for Fallout 1, it’s 1.1.
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Sacrifice, from what I read, seems awesome, so I’m pretty sure I’m going to get that.
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Die by the Sword there?! Epic multiplayer.
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LionsPhil: I’m not entirely sure how legal it is, but I’m pretty sure you can get Syndicate as abandonware; but then don’t take my word for it, abandonware is always a hazy issue.
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@Diddledoo:
I would never pirate these games. GoG seem to be the very embodiment of Internet Lovely, and I want to smother them with my money-kisses.
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GOG is such an awesome idea; I’m surprised something like this wasn’t created sooner. Hopefully strong sales of existing titles will encourages more publishers to sell their back catalogs through GOG.
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Pags: I loved DBTS at the time, I’ll know in a while if it’s aged well.
Shogo!
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The only tragedy is that the dollar is currently soaring in price…
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@Tei
Apologies if you’re kidding, my ability to tell goes downhill day by day. If you’re not: play Giants. It’s fantastic, and there’s been very little of anything much like it. Ever.
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@Dolphan: I lied a bit, I am on the 3th level (level?). It seems awesome big, and I think I have all the tools (reads: not). My companion (Tel?) is crazy.
Now, to give suggestions back. If you havent not played Sacrifice, get it. Is awesome RTS gameplay with cool graphics and coool ideas.
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What is Sacrifice and why are lots of people telling me to buy it?
My retrogaming time is currently taken up struggling through the X-COM pack on Steam.
Flip me, it’s hard.
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And still no digital distribution services have prices other than dollars. Come on, get with the freakin’ program.
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I really hope gog is a roaring success but I think I may have discovered a flaw in their business strategy – I already have most of the games in their catalogue :( . That said It probably worth spending $5.99 to get their “guaranteed to work on a modern pc” version than trying to install and patch from my original copy (floppy disks???). Their forums are a great place to discuss older games – I have already done my best to toot the horn for Sacrifice.
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DRM-free download! Manual! Wallpapers! Soundtrack! Guaranteed XP + Vista support!
Steam should be this good; and I’m a big fan of Steam. GOG is the best thing that’s happened to back-catalogue games.
So I now own Fallout, Fallout 2, Freespace 2, and Descent.
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Tei: Enjoy! Giants is one of my all-time favourite games. I’m glad you were joking about not playing it!!!
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Sacrifice:
It’s a bit like Chaos – in that you have a character that exists in the game world and you fight battles by magicing up units and casting spells. But not turn based. Or 2D.
It’s decidedly weird and whacky and very super. Enourmously replayable too – you get to pick which battles you fight, which in turn determines which units you get (you get new units by beating other gods – or capturing them in combat, I forget). And it has earthworm Jim as a god. And another god who has a helium filled balloon for a head.
Typing this is making me want to play it again…
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One of my great sorrows is that I could never get my friends to pick up Sacrifice, so I could never play them in it.
If only I had badgered them harder!
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“And it has earthworm Jim as a god. And another god who has a helium filled balloon for a head.”
Sounds good to me. I’ll have to try it :)
I’ve already downloaded Freespace 2 from GoG, and applied the community patches. I just hope GoG becomes successful and lots more old games are added to this service.
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What’s the verdict on Fallout Tactics? I remember it getting pretty good reviews, and Metacritic seems mostly positive. How does the story/atmosphere/etc hold up? I’ve tried so hard to get into Fallout 1/2, but just couldn’t get over how awfully dull the combat was, so I figured Tactics (and 3) are the best way to get my fix of post-apocalypse. :)
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Been on GoG for almost a month now, it’s awesome. The site spanks Steam and any other download service, it’s just extremely well implemented.
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Awww, this was my one chance to make mention of DRM in a positive post and you’ve ruined that for me. Thanks a lot.
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I agree with others here, ive been in the beta for over a month – its slick, easy to use, has lovely extras (soundtracks, wallpapers etc. with each purchase) and really seems to listen to their users (so faR). It gets 9/10 from me (just needs more games! and maybe prices in £s so that the value doesn’t start to drop now that our currency is in the crapper)
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While I’m downloading it, may as well ask, who wants to engage in clumsy and comical swordfights with me in Die by the Sword?
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Swordfights against Gary Busey?!? I think not!
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You’re overcome with fear I see. Fear. F. E. A. R. That stands for False Evidence Appearing Real [/busey quote]
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I was in the “closed” beta, but didn’t buy anything. They just didn’t have anything that I wanted to play that I didn’t already own.
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Odd question, but any ideas on how it runs on the Linux platform? As many of these games are old I’d imagine that the performance hit is not major but if anyone’s had the experience then, you know, it’d be cool to know.
Well saying that, I suppose a few of these run on DOSBox anyway? Here I begin to show my ignorance.
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Given that the downloads are apparently self-extracting EXEs, Linuxry would (as ever) be a faff; but once unpacked, unless they’ve seriously been meddling, DOSBox’s compatability is pretty good these days.
Bear in mind that many of those (e.g. Fallout) are Windows games, though.
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So I now own Fallout, Fallout 2, Freespace 2, and Descent.
Actually not, you only own a licence to play them!
Dear lord, did I just take pedantry to a new level?!
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This is the Internets—pedantry overshot that long ago. Just you wait until someone gets you for using two punctuation marks, when you clearly meant an interrobang.
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Independence War 1 working on XP omgplz omgplz omgplz
I loved Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos, but I never found the first game. Did anyone here play it? Is it as good as I want it to be in my mind?
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Down Rodeo, I haven’t tried myself yet, but this thread should help. :)
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OH SHIT
I’M GOING TO WASTE ALL MY SAVINGS HERE
They have kingpin!!!
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Bugger. RPS, I am in my first year of university and you have so far made me buy in the few weeks I have been enlightened by you: World of Goo, Fallout (Had FO2, never occured to me for some stupid reason to get the first), Sacrifice
World of Goo was brilliance, but onto the topic at hand, goddamn, Sacrifice is fun!
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I-War 1 is in some ways better.
You are the commander on a corvette bridge so to do things like target missiles at locations, you switch to the weapons officer’s screen. Most things can be done from the main pilots seat, but it’s a nice touch and the only game to ever get close to that starship captain feel. It makes it harder to play though :)
The game consists of highly scripted missions, and not the Elite-like open exploration. I like that sometimes.
The shield system is punishingly hard though.
I just brought my I-War1 CD back from the UK with the intent of trying it again, and finally finishing it.
Also brought back my original PS:T CDs too :)
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I had Sacrifice and enjoyed it. Don’t think I competed it though. Might be worth a reply.
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On Die By The Sword:
It had a completely unique sword scheme where the 9 Num pad keys (Or Mouse?) corresponded to where you wanted to move your sword to in space, so swipe right/left, you pressed 6 – 4.
Swords didn’t pass through objects so you actually impacted enemies, and realy blocked, and limbs could be chopped off.
The game modes were deathmatch, deathmatch vs the computer, or Tomb Raider-like story mode.
All sounds good, and once you got the hang of things you could be a bad-ass, but death came quickly (a beheading is a beheading with 1 good hit), and no matter how good a player you were you *always* looked like a spaz*.
* Or modern PolCorrect equivalent.
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If they manage to get hold of Omikron i’ll freak.
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Muchos gracias RPS comments thread! That link’s great Kismet, according to the posts there the ones that work with DOSBox are pretty damn good while the self-extracting files work fine under Wine. So that makes me a happy camper, albeit one who will spend too much money and not do enough University work.
Also, Butler` (My backquote key is set to open a terminal, just like in games, you’re not making this easy for me :P):
From their “About us” page. I hope they’re not lying.
Oh crap, I’ve brought up DRM haven’t I? Sorry guys…
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Darn, they don’t have Trespasser. I think the key is in the service title, I don’t think it’s a ‘good’ old game.
However, I played the demo years ago at the time, and never found it for sale.
I really liked the full physics simulation and the fact that even your gun was an in world solid object which made it hard to swing around a rifle in cramped conditions etc.
Does anyone have it? How would it seem now when we have HL2 etc. Is it worth playing now for the novelty of it, or has it been made almost obsolete?
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From what I remember of Trespasser it wasn’t very good when it debuted, let alone with the passage of time.
And my word, gog.com looks amazing. Signing up for an account now. How are the download speeds for those who have tried it?
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Well, it has dinosaurs in it.
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A few points:
1. They have a wishlist, where you can vote for games you’d like to see in the future! http://www.gog.com/en/wishlist
2. Kingpin! So underrated – very glad to see it there.
3. Trespasser is not *really* worth playing. In my opinion, it’s not terrible… but it’s a barely finished game… some good ideas, lots of incomplete ideas, some horrible level design. It’s an interesting experiment… but I can’t say that’d I’d recommend it.
4. (Vote for Pathologic on the wishlist)
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@hydra9: interesting how point 3 and 4 kind of contradict each other.
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@Pags:
Even as I typed point 4, I knew someone would pick up on that. What can I say? I’m a sucker for experimental games. Some work better than others, and results may vary depending on who you are.
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Gods, they’ve got Die By The Sword? I think I’ve still got the original discs around somewhere, but at $6, I think I’m down for a rebuy. Crazy fun, though it could definitely use a facelift.
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I get you. I would definitely say Pathologic is certainly the more interesting of the two anyway; Trespasser was a game with a lot of good ideas for how it should play, whereas Pathologic was a game with a lot of good ideas as to what it should be about, rather than how it should play. If that makes any sense.
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Mr. Busey, I think that makes sense, but I’m blinded by your teeth so I can’t say for sure.
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I have many other pearls of wisdom: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=amIh-Jovulw
Also, I see Outcast on the wishlist. More people should vote for that because that game was incredible. Honestly one of my all time favourites.
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I’m proud to say that I am the one who added Pathologic to the wishlist.
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It would be great to see Omikron and Anachronox on that site.
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Omikron! Another of my all time favourites. God I love games sometimes.
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I’m definitely going to be picking up Sacrifice. I enjoyed the demo when it came out, but couldn’t afford the game. By the time I had a mind to buy it, there weren’t any copies available.
“If you’re not: play Giants. It’s fantastic, and there’s been very little of anything much like it. Ever.”
Indeed, although if you played MDK you’ll feel right at home- unsurprisingly, given the heritage. It’s also properly hilarious.
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I can’t wait to finally own Giants and Sacrifice (and maybe, one day, Anachronox, Syndicate, and a functional version of Dungeon Keeper. Plus the old Lucasarts adventures). I have a feeling I’m going to be catching up on a lot of games I should have played and never got around to. My habit just got cheaper. Definitely a place to direct my friends with crappier PCs who need some quality gaming experiences.
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Am I missing something, or do they only have an expandalone for Jagged Alliance 2 that they’ve had since the closed beta began? I’ve been curious about Jagged Alliance for a long time, but I don’t want to start with 2.5, which is why I didn’t buy it when I bought Shogo a month or two ago.
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Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri plus SMAX would be a fitting addition to GOG, don’t you think? I actually still have both on disk, but in a freaky, mangled, half-german, half-english version. It actually switches languages mid sentence. “I have no time for your ökologischen Wahnsinn” and so on :D
Anyhow: SMAC. It’s good, and it’s old. One of the best games ever made, I’d venture. Go gog!
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It has Freespace – does it support the source code modifications? (and should I thus start modding for it again, in the vain hope of some small flicker of interest?)
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SHOGO! Excellent news. Now if I could just get my (bloody) hands on Blood II: The Chosen… :)
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Aldo: Yes, the Open Source mods are fully supported. And utterly gorgeous.
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YES! Voted for Anachronox, something that I urge you all to do!
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Devlocke: Yeah, they don’t have JA 1 or 2, just the expansion for 2. I’m pretty sure they’re getting JA 1 & 2 at some point.
Also: People, vote for the Wizardry series. And Duke Nukem Forever.
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They even have Redneck Rampage, now that was one hilarious shooter. Chickens with a stick of dynamite up their ass being launched from a handheld ballista, anyone?
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So if you’re in the UK do you get the US version of Fallout 2, or the European version that had the children removed (and various storylines compromised) for ratings reasons?
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another game downloader that makes you give up your consumer right to resell what you bought.
another game downloader i’ll be ignoring.
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Ok, I have already added my vote for Outcast, Omikron, Pathologic, Anachronox, SM’s Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire and a bunch of other great classics that should definitivelly be available to everyone.
Now, I ask you to vote for another neglected gem that is being overlooked again by the gamers: Urban Chaos has only 30 votes at the moment. What a shame.
(Oh, and while you are at it, you should all vote for Duke Nukem Forever ;) )
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its not a “downloader”, you just download the games off the site.
But, yeah i guess you dont have the right to sell the games. No bothered myself mind you, I’m a hoarder.
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Morte, you can always mod the children back in if you really need to shred them with a minigun.
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“another game downloader that makes you give up your consumer right to resell what you bought.”
Are you that fricking stingy that you need to resell class games that cost you less than a pint?
P.
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Voted for Urban Chaos, YogSo. Another of my favourites from yester-year, and another game that was ignored by the general public. I think I must be a hex on games or something.
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@Morte:
I don’t know for sure which version of F2 it is, but if it is indeed the UK (censored) version, the only thing they did was removing the children sprites. Yeah, that was their well-thought solution to address the rating problem. If that’s the case, then it is a simple matter of downloading the ubiquitous “Fallout 2 children patch” (that contains said sprites) and you are good to go.
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I wonder if Hyperblade is on that wishlist actually… why yes it is, but with only 14 votes it’d kind of be like voting for the Liberal Democrats. Nevermind then.
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Do your good selves a disfavour, and go through the GOG.com wishlist.
A few of my favourite suggestions, courtesy of the general public:
-Wii Sports. yes.
-Unreal Tournament 3.
-Mirrors Edge (yes, that one that’s not been released yet. A good old game though, right?)
There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding somewhere.
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Oh, another gem:
Whaky Well. It has five votes, and Google can’t find it, which makes me think I might be right in assuming he (and all four others) meant Wacky Wheels.
Don’t mind me, I actually enjoy subjecting myself to the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel types.
Is it a way to feel better about myself? Maybe. Or maybe I just like to grit my teeth and make sarcastic quips about them.
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I signed up yesterday and bought Hostile Waters.
This is bar none the best ANYTHING online store site I’ve ever seen. It totally floored me. There is a communal wishlist, game forums, reviews, extra download material, game-specific support, pre-patched downloads that run on XP/Vista, and no shenanigans.
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Do they do a game called Rune?
Now that was a fun game multiplayer. It was like Die By The Sword, except less buggy.
Giants is fun – Humanlike dudes VS a Giant VS Sea Witches.
Sacrifice is an awesome game and was surprised is didn’t get more credit when it was released.
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Does anyone know if GOG have an alert/email feature for new games? Just so I don’t have to revisit their site all the time.
P.
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I loved Urban Chaos, apart from the lack of in-mission save. That, unfortunately, killed it for me in the end. Without that flaw, it would’ve been a classic.
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They have an RSS feed to keep up with the news. Not sure about the email newsletter though.
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More like Good Old Lames!
Naw it’s awesome.
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too many games to play.. aiee!
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Erlend M: jonfitt mostly said it, but here’s an old I-War review of mine, FWIW.
The I-War 2 bridge was something of a disappointment after I-War. I remember loading it up, and being confused that suddenly one person was supposed to man the thing. Mostly it’s a cosmetic difference, but ditching the weapons station was a significant change.
Personally I love the shield system :) Yet another example of Particle Systems going the extra mile in suspending disbelief. Just make sure you do actually understand it before you play. In combat, it’s very satisfying to use it successfully.
And adjusting for ‘inflation’, I still rate the I-War intro video as the single greatest video game CGI of all time.
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If only these games were psp compatible… wait, I hear my dosbox calling!
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No System Shock 2. What a huge disappointment.
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<3 fallout
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just because your editors seem to get it wrong in every goddamn article, including the Derek Smart one, it’s GOG not gog or GoG or gOg, but all caps, Good Old Games. The lower case “o” is primarily only used for small words that don’t have much meaning like WoW is “of.” “of” is insignificant incomparison to World or Warcraft, which is why those two are capitalized in the name “World of Warcraft” as opposed to all 3 words
in Good Old Games, all three words are capitalized because all three are equally important.
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