Seems it's weekend promo time around these here interwebs, and while Steam tries to make the craptastic Aliens vs. Predator more appealing, GOG has graced us with a fantastic deal on two amazing adventure games: Sanitarium, and The Longest Journey.
But don't take my word for it! Read some other dudes word! Here's a damned good site review for the wonder of Sanitarium by Chackan:
"It's premise is very simple: You control the character, talk to npc's, use items to solve puzzles. The camera is in isometric view, and the graphics are, even if dated, aging really well. Nothing easier and this review could very well be about any generic adventure game out there.
But when you start the game and realize you are in a very uncommon sanitarium, Angel statues become living, deformed children play in a city where all grownups are gone and you can become a comic book character, that's when things start to build up.
You start as an amnesiac male, waking up in one of the most weird and disturbing places i've seen in a videogame. Not knowing who you are or where you are, you start talking to other patients only to realize that there is no one sane...but yourself.
This part serves only as an introduction. The real game starts when you travel to a small town and have your first "chit-chat" with the local children. Not wanting to spoil anybody, let's just say you are in for a really insane experience."
Indeed. Sanitarium was a bit of a sleeper hit, but The Longest Journey was pretty big when it came out. Here's a review by wamu:
"The Longest Journey is a point and click adventure game from the end of the nineties. The story starts with an introduction to April Ryan's life. This 18-year-old protagonist is an art student living in a large futuristic city. After wrestling through the seemingly boring but necessary storyline of meeting her friends, visiting her school and realising they're facing with the same adulthood transition problems of present life, the story gets a lote more interesting.
Ragnar Tornquist, producer and designer, has shown through this game that he is an excellent storyteller. And although the game is set in the future, you can clearly detect references to today's world. Stark, for instance, devoted to science and technology, could easily be a reference to capitalism, while Arcadia, devoted to magic, is a place that only exists in our dreams and heart's desires. These two worlds, which were once united, are in chaos as the line between the two worlds is growing thin. April soon learns that she can shift between these worlds and that she is prophecised with the difficult task of restoring the Balance between these two worlds before it is too late.
The Longest Journey is an original game that has excellent character voices, ambient music, interesting locations and fascinating characters. It's no coincidence that this game made it in the PC Gamer UK's Top 100 games and IGN's top 10 list of point & click adventure games."
They really are both fantastic games and you can grab both of 'em now DRM-free for just the price of takeout. Plus you get the soundtrack for free. So go, buy.
Yea, so I guess we have ourselves a newborn section here what with all of the deals that have been floating around lately (and all of the post titles including the words "don't miss out").
This one is BIG, and fairly well known already, but if you miss it you'll probably feel such powerful regret that you'll kill yourself. So to prevent mass suicide, I feel I must warn as many as possible.
For serious guys, simply check any number of games in the catalog they have here (make sure it's an even number) and get them for half price. Thinking about picking up Fallout for just $6? Get Fallout 2 for free. Thinking of diving into the awesome Descent series? Get the entire series for just $6. Already have those games, no worry, there's 33 games on the list. Surely there's at least 2 fantastic games there that you haven't played.
Let's do some math here. That's 4 games for $12, 6 games for $18, 10 games for $30. 10 for $30 is the same as the amazing Steam sale that happened a few weeks ago.
Or just think, for the price of one crappy AAA title ($60) you could have 20 PC classics.
"BUT Backdoorangel!!!11!!!11!11!!! how do I know if these games are good?"
Seriously? did you read Bobbicus' testimonial? The games are also rated by the community, so you can know that these are some of the best games for the best price. Ever.
There's only about 4 days left to grab these games for this price. If you're going back to school, this is your next 2 months of procrastination. If you're not, well, the point is go and buy some sweet games.
Good Old Games is hosting yet another great sale, this time offering two of Ubisoft's finest entries - Beyond Good & Evil and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time at 30% off. If you buy the two together, it's a whopping 50% off. If you enjoy video games in any way, shape, and form and don't already own the GOG versions of these two games, then you must take advantage of this offer.
About a decade ago, Ubisoft approached Jordan Mechner, the creator of the original Apple II Prince of Persia game, about reviving the series, but made the rather unusually decision of giving him full creative control. The result was a massive hit in 2003 that lead to two sequels, a rather lame "re-invisioning" game and an upcoming movie - and for good reason. SoT is one of the single best gameplaying experiences I have ever had, second only to Planescape: Torment. Unlike that title, which requires a massive investment in time and emotion, SoT is lighthearted, simple, and completely forgiving.
For those who have never heard of the game, you play as a Prince (naturally) who is accompanying his father to visit a nearby sultan. Along the way, they realize they've forgotten to bring a gift, and in order to avoid a rather awkward faux pas they raze a nearby kingdom to the ground and steal its valuables and women to present to the Sultan. In doing so, the young prince loots the Dagger of Time, a powerful artifact that allows the bearer to rewind time. Once the caravan arrives at the palace, a traitorous Vizier tricks the prince into unleashing the Sands of Time, turning everyone in the palace into Zombies. The rest of the game consists of the prince parkouring his way through some pretty awesome scenery and acrobatically slashing sand zombies into tiny pieces. Best of all is the rewinding time feature - at any time you can rewind about 15 seconds into the game. This one feature means that most of the frustrations of a platformer simply disappear - if you miss a tricky jump, there's no need to replay a section, simply rewind and try again! It's fun, it's fast, and it's broken into manageable chunks.
SoT also benefits from the fact that Mechner is a professional screenwriter. It's tale is incredibly well crafted, with believable characters who actually grow, humor, and an overall sense of completeness that's missing from most games. Buy it. You won't be disappointed.
Beyond Good & Evil, on the other hand, serves as a poster child for how poor marketing can kill a product. Ubisoft released this title with little fanfare in the Christmas rush, pretty much guaranteeing that it would be lost in the deluge. Which it was. Which is a shame, because BG&E is one of the most imaginative, heartwarming and joyous games I've ever played. That may sound strange, especially with a plot involving conspiracies, abductions, and some fucking scary aliens, yet BG&E goes about its business with such goodwill and enthusiasm that it's infectious. If you do not feel charmed by Hyllis, then you have no soul.
As for the game itself, the best way to describe it would be Zelda grown up. Much like that venerable series, the game is an action adventure that sees the player traversing a fleshed out world exploring, fighting, and collecting. Unlike the Zelda games, the protagonist is one of the best written characters in videogame history. Not to say that the gameplay isn't entertaining (because it is) but Jade, and her interactions with the other characters, is what makes this game. Even if you don't consider yourself a gamer, or don't really play games, I encourage you to purchase this one and try it out. How many action games have their protagonist wield a camera instead of a gun?
Finally, both these games have kick-ass soundtracks, and when you buy them from GOG you get that as well! Also keep in mind that GOG games do not have any form of copy protection whatsoever, and come in a convenient downloader that installs perfectly on XP or Vista. Buy them. Seriously, do it. It's 10 bucks for two of the best games of the last decade that are easy to get into, even for a non-gamer. You don't even need super duper awesome hardware - these games are 5 years old, and scaled well even when they were new. Buy them, or you are not my friend. You have until Monday.
Wow, Steam's been going crazy with these weekend deals lately, I mean, what with the indie deal last week, and now this.
So yea, I feel like a dirty promo salesman, but this weekend Steam is selling every Half-Life game for %66 off. meaning you can buy EVERY Half-Life game (including Team Fortress Classic) for $17. OR you can buy them individually for the %66 off.
The only real bummer about this promo is that it's likely you already have most of these games (hell, these games are usually the only reason people installed Steam in the first place). Still, this means it's a good time to gift if you know someone who's never played Half-Life 2 (you can get it individually for just $7).
Of course, if you don't have any of these games, get them. There's no doubt they are of the highest quality. I mean, the Half-Life series is Valve's freakin' crowning achievement. You can get the entire Half-life 1 anthology for just $5, so they've obviously accounted for the fact that you'll have some/most of these, but geez, these are GOG.com prices on what must be the most critically acclaimed PC games ever.
So get out there, get your H.E.V. Suit on, and kill some combine.
This post is partly inspired on Jake's excellent writeup about Pokémon. Actually, it's sort of the flip side - instead of talking about how outside knowledge can make you appreciate a game more, I'm going to cover how games can bring you outside knowledge.
So you've managed to reach basic proficiency in a language, and you want to get better. You also don't really live in an area where your target language is spoken. Reading books and watching foreign films are popular ways of expanding proficiency, but it turns out that quite a few highly regarded games come with built-in translations. Beyond Good and Evil, for instance, allows you to select English, Spanish, French, or Italian each time you play. Evil Geniusis available in English, French, Spanish, and German. The original Command & Conquer has a fan made patch which not only expands the resolution to 1024x768 but allows you to select English, French, Spanish, or German as the installed language (plus, it's free!) Stalkerand its sequel feature Russian writing and dialogue from all the ambient characters, though all the plot and game dialogue is in English. It would be unacceptable for me to leave out X-Com: UFO and X-Com: Terror from the Deep, classics which are playable in English, French, and German (TFTD also allows Spanish.) Finally, Valve and shows off an overlooked advantage of Steam by allowing you to download any Steam game in any language it was released in. Half-Life 2 has English, French, Spanish, German, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Portugese, and Italian. Left 4 Dead even allows you to switch languages on the fly.
While there are translations available for almost every game out there that sees an international release, the previously mentioned titles have it built right in (and are usually much higher quality.) I managed to get my hands on a copy of Rouge Alert II, for instance. Good times.
In my experience, videogames are actually superior to other forms of media for learning languages. First, there's a lot of repetition involved in a game. In X-Com, every time one of your soldiers fires a gun, you have to click on the icon and be presented with the options "Aimed, Snapshot, Auto, Throw." Over the course of the game, you will see those words hundreds of times. Same instance with C&C, where your units say little confirmation messages when you click on them, give them orders, etc. Memorizing words requires repetition, and most games are all about repeating tasks over and over again.
Second, animated games, especially those with in-engine cutscenes, don't suffer from dubbing issues. Beyond Good & Evil, for instance, doesn't match lip movement to dialogue that well in any language, but it doesn't matter, because we're not pulling all the insane detail out of the low-poly models that we normally do out of a real-life, nuanced, human face.
Third, the vocabulary and speech you are exposed to in a game is specialized towards your interest area. If you like science fiction things, and play alot of games in a science fiction setting, you're going to be picking up sci-fi vocab, which you probably won't find in a traditional textbook. More importantly, you're hearing it in context, something you can't get out of a dictionary. Also, since you're interested in the subject area, you're more likely to absorb it and use it.
Finally, Valve wins again with the Source engine - not only can you turn on closed captioning (which is incredibly thorough - it was designed to allow deaf players to enjoy the game - but the Source Engine's lip-syncing capabilities are prettydamnimpressive.
Of course, the best games to play would be those produced by and for your target language/culture. Jake's lucky in this regard, as he is a fan of JRPG's, which are (obviously) written in Japanese first for a Japanese audience and then translated, so the Japanese versions contain all the subtlety and cultural identity that tends to be lost in translation. I'm a bit out of luck, since the Arab gaming is pretty much nonexistent, as are Arabic translations of games.
Best of all, every game mentioned in this writeup is of outstanding quality, so even if you don't understand exactly what's going on, you're still having a blast. So if you're serious about learning a language, turn some of that down time into study time by playing an awesome game in a foreign language.
Yup, tomorrow is the day. Telltale games (the guys who made the new Sam and Max season 1 and 2 episodic titles) will, after almost 10 years of a dead franchise, release the first of a five part episodic series: Tales of Monkey Island.
Now, I'm as scared as you, because this could be a total franchise killer. I mean, monkey island 4 (and many would say 3) wasn't very good. The humor lost a lot of its wit and most people didn't like the new style. If this game turns out to be a bust, I can't see the Monkey Island series going many more places. Especially since it hasn't been anywhere in 10 years.
But, if anyone can do justice to the franchise, it's Telltale (no, not LucasArts, as they're too busy churning out yet another Star Wars title). This little developer-that-could scored ultra-cult-big with their new Sam and Max games, proving that they have the stuff that old LucasArts was made of. They've also wowed plenty with Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (though admittedly that one was a love-it-or-hate-it game, but so is HomeStarRunner's humor, so what were you expecting?).
The design director is Dave Grossman, who created the first two games along with Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer. Sure the whole team isn't back together, so Grossman's child-friendly humor is probably much more prominent, but hey, one is better than none. In addition to Grossman, Telltale's got what looks like a mighty fine line-up of writers, designers, directors, and programmers who all got their chops from the old classic LucasArts adventure games. Check out some gameplay, it seems pretty decent at least:
Anyway, even if this turns out to be a total bust, LucasArts is remaking the original (how like them). So if this one sucks, you can always play that. I'm not really one to believe hype, but I'm pretty confident I'll enjoy this game. Though (and this is unrelated) I've got to finish Conkers Bad Fur Day first.
Good Old Games is having a sale on strategy titles until Tuesday. 25% off, in fact. There are a bunch of great titles there, I bought the Castles and Castles 2 bundle mainly because it (and megarace) were the titles I remember renting from my local Movie Time when I was 5. That seems so quaint, now, renting games from a movie store.
Anyway, there are two games in particular that you should pick up: Shiny's Sacrifice and Rage Software's Hostile Waters. Both games were landmark titles that looked at the RTS genre and said "why should I be stuck up here looking at my guys instead of joining in?" Both games have excellent production values, including top-notch voice acting and writing. Both games are well worth your time and if you buy them together (with this week's discount) it won't even set you back 10.
So what exactly are these games about?
First up we have Sacrifice. This trailer actually does a pretty good job of conveying how wonderfully chaotic the game is.
Yeah, it's really like that in game.
So basically you're a displaced Wizard who wanders into a plane of feuding Gods, who all want you to serve them in return for power. Being the self serving sort, you pick and choose which God to ally yourself with before each mission. James, god of earth and generally good guy, might want you to go rescue some of his worshippers for example, whereas Pyro(god of fire and industry) is more likely to send you to conquer more territory for his factories. Each god has his or her own motivations, and none is truly good or evil.
One thing you'll notice is the absolutely stellar voice acting. I could go on an on about this so I won't. Suffice it to say that you should check out the Wikipedia entry on the game and see the voice acting credits. I will say this, though: It's always tempting to do whatever Stratos says because he's voiced by Tim Muthaf***ing Curry.
So during each mission, you run around the battlefield casting spells and summoning creatures. Unlike most RTS games, you participate in the battle on the ground, and your view is locked to where your character is. This is one of the more jarring aspects of the game, but it really works. There are two resources you must control, souls and mana. Mana comes spurting out of the ground and powers your ability to cast all spells. Souls are, well, souls of creatures. Each creature has its own soul count, lower level units cost 1, whereas the "ultimate" monstrosities cost up to 5. When a creature is killed, its soul(s) are left behind. A wizard can reclaim souls of his own creatures instantly, however to steal the souls of an oppenent's creatures he has to cast a "Convert" spell on them.
Oh, and when I said monstrosities, I mean monstrosities.
Take a look at this lovely fellow. This is a mutant. He is an aberration of nature who attacks his enemies by ripping off chunks of his rotting flesh and flinging them at foes where they explode into putrid clouds that both damage and poison their foes. Surely this is a servant of darkness? A corrupt fiend of some kind?
This unit belongs to Persephone, god of Nature, Peace, and Purity.
Actually, one of my favorite things about this game is its aesthetic. I think the best word to describe it is macabre. The game takes pleasure in flipping fantasy sterotypes on their heads. Take, for example, the Phoenix. Everybody picture a phoenix in your mind. Let me guess: big red bird, noble, brilliant plumage, possibly on fire.
Here's what Sacrifice calls a Phoenix:
Let's do another one, shall we? How about an Ent? Ents are great! Mighty tree people, guardians of the fores-HOLY MOTHER OF GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING THAT IS STANDING THERE STARING AT ME
Basically the point is that there is nothing in this game that is not dark, twisted, and brutal.
"Noble"need not apply to Sacrifice. Even the Gods, the purest beings in the world, are scheming, backstabbing bastards who are willing to do anything for power. Your own character, Eldred, is running away from a demon he summoned in order to keep control on his home plane, 'cause he was a tyrannical despot terrorizing the populace (the Demon ate everything instead and is now pursuing him across the Astral plane. Whoops.) Hell, even the game mechanics are vicious - in order to kill a wizard, it's not just enough to reduce his health to zero (he'll come back.) What you have to do is sacrifice one of your creatures on his altar, desecrating it and banishing him from existence. It's black and macabre, and I love it.
It's not all doom and gloom, though. Sacrifice has a wonderful (if a bit black) sense of humor. There are puns scattered everywhere( The God of Earth is a giant Earthworm named James, while the Stratos the god of Air is a helium baloon wearing a robe. It works, ok?) some hilarious spells (such as Bovine Intervention, in which a giant cow is summoned, shooting into the sky and Swan diving onto a single opponent, obliterating it entirely - destroying its soul) and brilliant dialogue. Charnel, god of death, gets by far the best lines with perfectly dry delivery (Persephone: "Charnel! Death is not the answer to everything!" Charnel: "Yes...Torture also has its merits").
That's all well and good, but how does it play? Quite well, fortunately. You run around, summoning buildings called manaliths to control sources of mana, creatures to do battle, and spells to cause direct damage to creatures or other wizards. The interface takes some getting used to, but once you do its very smooth. There is a gesture based menu system that allows you to give orders, assign formations, and even control the camera with a flick of the wrist. It's a good thing that controls are smooth, because games can be incredibly chaotic, with creatures, spells, and debris flying left and right. This is a game which combines strategy and action in a delightful blend - good tactics will give you the edge in battles, while action skills will allow you to turn your wizard into your most powerful weapon. A good multiplayer battle often has one player gaining the advantage until the other spots an opportunity and seizes it, and the match often oscillates back and forth in a way that's much more satisfying than typical RTS rushes.
Speaking of multiplayer, another part of Sacrifice that I love and wish more games would implement is the spellbook. Normally in multipayer you select one god to ally with, and you get all the spells and creatures of that god. However, if you play through the singleplayer, you can ally yourself with a different God each mission. Each time you perform a mission for a God, you are given one Creature and one spell out of his/her arsenal. Thus, it's possible to mix and match creatures and spells to tailor a spellbook to your playstyle. For example, I like hit and run tactics, so in singleplayer I performed my first mission for stratos. This means in multiplayer, my level 1 units are fast and weak, and I get lightning as my basic damage spell. If I had chosen James, then I would get slow and tough 1st tier units and a rock-based damage spell. In order to prevent min/maxing and ultimate combos, Gods will cease to offer you missions if you've pissed them off by working for their enemies. It's really cool the way you can customize for online play- and you have to earn it, too!
This post is far too long already, and I still have another game to cover, so I'll just say one more thing and be on my way. The top-level spells in this game are Epic. James' spell, bore, removes a large chunk of the world temporarily. Stratos can summon a giant Tornado that can suck up entire armies, throwing the mall over the map. Persephone summons "Meanstalks," basically those giant tentacle dudes from Half-Life, except they throw things around. Charnel summons death, who kills the seven closest creatures - no matter how strong - then leaves. My favorite is Pyro's Volcano, which causes a Volcano to erupt wherever you want, burning away the sky and sending flaming debris across the map. Epic.
So go buy it. It costs less than an overpriced sugary coffee drink from Starbucks.
Next up is Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising. This game is a strange beast. It's one part action, one part strategy, and one part "Heart of Darkness." You control an "adaptive cruiser" which can manufacture its own fighting vehicles sent to destroy a Cabal attempting world domination. Each mission sees you gathering resources from battlefield debris, building units, and either piloting them yourself or loading them with a Soulcatcher chip.
You see, the cruiser you pilot isn't new. In fact, it was just raised from the bottom of the ocean. Its crew were all killed, but their minds were saved and stored on Soulcatcher chips. Thus every autonomous unit has its own distinct personality which affects everything from dialogue to how well they pilot various vehicles. Ransom, for example, is a bloodthirsty pilot who is deadly in a helicopter and prefers close in engagements. Stick him in a tank and he's not so great. If his helicopter gets destroyed, you can just build a new one and send him right back into battle. It's a pretty sweet deal, with one sticking point.
They're all lunatics. Yep, apparently the Soulcatcher mechanism has a ...destabilizing effect on the sanity of those who use it. Some of your soldiers were mentally unstable before they died, others simply resent being kept alive to fight. Some are just very, very, angry. Which makes it loads of fun to stick these madmen (and women) into warmachines and give them very large guns.
Leading the nuthouse into battle is great fun. You can hop into any vehicle at any time and take control of it, or let your AI's take care of buisiness. You can issue orders from the cockpit or from a strategical view which pauses the game. Each mission has unique objectives, although most involve mass destruction. The enemy has production facilities which can crank out reinforcements on most levels, you can either destroy these or destroy their oil wells to cut off the flow of resources. Taking out AA cover will allow your powerful air units to wreak havoc almost anywhere on the island. Some of the weapons, like the warhammer mortar, have incredible ranges, allowing you to use a stealth buggy to act as a spotter while your heavy guns pound away from a distance. There's loads of strategic options available, and the action is solid, too. It's fun to pull an "Apocalypse Now" moment every once in a while and create a massive airforce of attack helicopters to lead into Epic Battle.
The game also has some really...different cinematics. It's hard what to make of them, they're really well done and acted, but its a tad jarring to go from a game that's all about large explosions and mass destruction to a the following cutscene:
The story is pretty engaging, and as you move deeper and deeper into the island chain strange things start to happen. My favorite cutscene follows. There's a minor spoiler, so don't watch it if you want to remain 100% surprised.
There's no multiplayer in the game, and it's not terribly replayable unless you want to relive some of the bigger battles. However, it's well worth the $5 and a remarkable piece of gaming history.
So what are you waiting for? Get both of them for $9, DRM free with as many downloads as you want.
I've got a netbook, the Asus Aspire One to be exact. It's a handy little thing, much easier to haul around than my old gateway. It's been a lifesaver on long train rides, allowing me to watch movies and play games to my heart's content instead of staring whistfully out the window.
Speaking of games, I keep hearing and seeing complaints about the Netbook's graphical prowess. This is true. The netbook platform is utterly useless for gaming - recent games, that is.
I've found that anything from the 20th century works wonderfully on it, as do most games from 2001-2002. The beautiful thing is, this correlates perfectly with the Golden Age of PC Gaming.
I also have the SSD version, which has its good and bad points. On the good side, it gets wonderful battery life and is lightning quick with everything except Firefox (rather ironically.) On the minus side, it's lacking in hard drive space and web browsers hiccup every time a new page is loaded.
So my ability to load tons of games is rather limited. Instead, I'm keeping one or two games per genre at a time. So my little netbook now has on it:
System Shock 2
Duke Nukem 3D
Heroes of Might and Magic
Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm
Grim Fandango
Alpha Centauri
Roller Coaster Tycoon II + expansions
Fallout
If I get bored of any of these, I just swap them out. Say I want to rock some Black Mesa action - I just install Half Life. If I use more than 6 gigs for games, I just take off whatever game I'm not really playing. This doesn't include all the LucasArts adventure games and NES, SNES, and GBA roms that I have on my GP2X.
But there's more to life than gaming, and the Netbook handles movies and music just fine. I find the keyboard pleasant to use, and I use a USB mouse instead of the touchpad. All in all, it's a fine little computer that complements a powerful desktop very well.
So I'm going to begin a weekly tradition: Every Friday, I shall bring to your attention something Awesome. Most likely it will be game related. For the inaugural episode of Cool Thing of the Week, I would like to direct your attention to Good Old Games (linky) If you haven't heard or stumbled across it already, I highly suggest that you go check it out. Essentially, Good Old Games (GOG) is what it says on the tin: High quality titles from the past available for sale inexpensively.
"But Bobbicus!" some dolts cry, "These games are old, and easily obtained from Peer to Peer trading networks of dubious legality. Why should I lay down my hard earned cash in order to purchase them from this site?" To them I say "Bah! Your entitlement mentality disgusts me. Leave at once and stop dribbling all over my carpet. I shall address you in a post on Piracy at another time." Others, after perusing the GOG.com catalogue, have a more valid point. "I already own several of these games. What possibly benefit could there be to purchasing them again?" Excellent question! Here's your answer:
A)NO DRM
Now, I'm not one to fly into an apoplectic rage whenever DRM is mentioned, as I feel that anyone who produces a work has a right to attempt to protect their investment (once again, I'll elaborate more in an upcoming post on Piracy.) However, I much prefer games without DRM, as it's really nice not to have to deal with it. The process for purchasing a game from GOG is as follows:
1) Sign up an account
2) Buy your game
3) Download your game
Easy as pie. You can even repeat step three as many times as you want, at any time, on any computer. Each game comes packaged in a stand-alone installer, which brings us to...
B) IT WORKS
Anyone who's tried to play older games on modern systems has inevitably run into this issue - modern hardware simply can't run some older programs without a lot of work. Well, buy a game from GOG and you don't have to worry about that. All their games are fully updated to be compatible with both XP and Vista. And this isn't some bunk like EA pulled with The First Decade (which basically amounted to clicking the "run in windows 95" mode box.) GOG actually gets their hands on the code and makes it work. For some older games, they package it with DosBox already configured and tuned for that specific game. And in the event that you do have technical issues, they have absolutely amazing customer service. I have contacted them twice, both times receiving replies in less than 12 hours. Pretty impressive, considering that they're based in England. Also, the fix they provided worked. I think it's the first time I've ever had tech support fix a problem completely. The level of care they provide is crazy, especially considering...
C) IT'S CHEAP
Now come on, are you really going to tell me that $6 is too much money to spend on a classic game that will get you hours of enjoyment from, PLUS tech support for as long as the company is around, on as many machines as you want? Even the pricier games ($10, there's only two price points - $5.99 and $9.99) are less expensive then an entree at a decent restaurant. Add to that the fact that GOG has weekly 25% of sales (this weekend it's a sale on Stronghold) and you really can't go wrong. And you really can't complain about price when...
D) THE GAMES
Are so damn good. Seriously, go look at their catalogue. Now.
No, really. Go.
I'll wait.
Now, I find it hard to believe that anybody with an interest in gaming could look at that list and not find a single game that they remember fondly (or rabidly,) hear about constantly, or recall reading about as being the "best (insert genre here) of all time." Fallout, Freespace, Duke Nukem 3D, Earthworm Jim - these are classics. And not just older ones, either. With Ubisoft joining in the fun, you can now get modern innovators like Far Cry and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. There's also games that you should have played but haven't, buried gems like Beyond Good and Evil or Sacrifice. There's something for everyone. There's even a thread in the forums where people do a "game swap." Person A posts the games they own, and Person B gifts A a game they think A would like and A returns the favor. Everyone explores new horizons, and usually goes home happy. Finally...
E) IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO
I don't mean to be preachy, but seriously folks. Here we have a company that's defying the status quo by trying to sell old games nobody wants to support without any form of copyright protection. It's what everybody is always saying they want - a company that sells titles based on quality, relying on their customers to be honest enough to support them. It's the antithesis of the draconian DRM schemes and me-too sequels pumped out in large amounts by the mainstream industry. Buying from them not only signals that DRM-free games can be profitable, but it shows that there's a market that goes for quality over graphical fidelity. Last but not least, it shows that games can have an extended shelf life (I'll probably cover this in more detail later, but I think the short shelf life of a retail game is the #1 most detrimental aspect of the industry.) If you like any of GOG's games, even if you already own them, it's not that much to just buy one or two of your favorites to support them. I've always said that nothing happens for moral reasons, only financial, and no amount of Angry Internet Man bleeting about sequel-itis or DRM is going to change how EA or UbiSoft operates until you convince them (through voting with your wallet) that it will make them money to innovate and not lock down their products. If you care about these issues and have the means there's no excuse not to support this company.
Good Old Games. Check it out.
Good Day All! My good friend and former hallmate BackdoorAngel has graciously invited me to join the ranks of contributors to the mighty The Tartar Sauce. My shtick here is videogames. Reviews, reminiscences, rants, commentary, and anything else I can think of about the medium. Just so y'all can know where I'm coming from, I started 'gaming' on my Packard Bell PC with a copy of Duke Nukum (that's not a misspelling, Apogee called him Duke Nukum '\because they thought 'Nukem' was copyrighted) that my godfather gave me. I remember quite clearly receiving that first floppy, with the homemade label on which was neatly written "DN1: Property of CK." That and the sound of the floppy drive as it accessed the disk. For those of you who haven't played it, the original Duke game was a sidescrolling shooter in which our tiny orange-skinned pink shirted hero battled the nefarious Dr. Proton in Shrapnel City.
Man, this game was awesome. Memorable enemies, great settings, tight gameplay, and best of all no sniggering about a certain overdue sequel (this was before Apogee even became 3D realms.) Good times.
Later, my dad bought a game called Red Baron (packaged with A-10 Tank Killer.) I still regard this as one of the most immersive games of all time, even though it looks like this:
First of all, if you turned on all realistic settings, it had a fairly accurate flight model (I, of course, usually turned off damage to my plane, resulting in many a frustrated pilot blasting away in futility at my invincible ace. In my defense, I was about four years old.) Turning on "Realistic Navigation" was especially interesting - you were expected to navigate by observing landmarks (mountains, rivers, railroads, etc) and consulting a number of maps that came in the box. This was probably the coolest thing I had ever seen. A videogames with paper maps? That actually mattered? Awesome!
Red Baron also had the single best manual in the existence of computer games. Yes, there was the obligatory set-up, controls, troubleshooting, and whatnot, but after that was done there were approximately 50 pages of historical background on WWI, focusing on aerial combat, There were biographies of aces, description of tactics, a detailed timeline of the air war, and best of all, full color diagrams and specifications of all the aircraft featured in the game. I have yet to see anything like it since. It's not just that the manual was thourough and detailed, plenty of sims have such things. What still amazes me is the amount of effort that went into immersing the player in WWI by placing him in the correct mindset and giving him (or her) all the information necessary to think like a combat aviator in the Great War.
A-10 Tank Killer I didn't play as much, mainly because it was complicated and hard. I never quite figured out how to operate missles, so I usually just turned off all realism and went around blowing stuff up with the avenger cannon that never overheated or ran out of ammo while all range of anti-aircraft weaponry bounced harmlessly off me. At times I wouldn't even take off, simply rolling around on the ground like a glorified tank blowing up anything that showed its face.
Anyway, the next major phase in my gaming life was none other than Command & Conquer. I recieved C&C95 Gold Edition from a friend for my birthday , and immediately found that my computer couldn't handle it. I read and re-read that manual over and over again until my family got a new computer (I remember reading the Dell magazines and being wowed at the $3,000 machine that was a whopping one gigahert pentium 4.) My one requirement was that it be a Pentium processor and have at least 100 mb of hard drive space - enough to run Command & Conquer. When I finally could run it, I learned most of what I know about modems setting up dialup games with my friends (for the record, dialing up somebody to play a computer game and then hearing somebody pick up the phone and start asking who's calling through the speaker on your modem is pretty freakin' funny.) When Red Alert came out I bought it and played it. When Tiberian Sun came out, I bought it and played it. I pre-ordered Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge and loved both of them. This series will always have a fond place in my heart, despite the sharp decrease in charm following Westwood's dissolution.
Command & Conquer was my first time in conflict with the ESRB, as it was rated T for teen and I was not, in fact, a Teen, something with made my mother hesitant to allow such a purchase. The second and much more difficult battle was Half-Life. I played it at a friend's house, loved it, but couldn't buy it at home because it was rated M. My mother, God bless her, is one of a very small number of women in the world with enough sense to review the content of the media she buys for her children. At the time I hated it, but now I'm quite glad of having that sense of responsibility drummed into me. Anyway, this introduced me to pirating - I couldn't buy the game, so I downloaded it over my 56k modem over several nights, when everyone was asleep.
Through Highschool I started broadening my interests, exploring lots of classics thanks to Home of the Underdogs and sites like it. I installed X-Com on the computers at my job, bought Mount & Blade when it was in version .650, and played all sorts games. FPS, strategy, God-Games (I was absolutely enthralled by Black and White. Never finished it, but damn it drew me in) Flight sims, RPGs, pretty much everything except Puzzles. Most of my finest purchases were off the discount rack at major retailers - its where I found Freespace, Fallout, Deus Ex, and countless others. Today I mostly play PC games, and I've fallen off the "waiting for next big release" bandwagon and started exploring older games that I've missed.
I think videogames can be art if they are treated as such. Instead of traditional reviews, I'll be offering up 'critiques' of games here, as well as essays on the industry and medium. Occaisionally I'll be firing off a "Check this out!" post, as well. I hope people can derive at least some sort of entertainment from my ramblings, and if not, well, there'll always be pretty pictures.
Until next time -
Bobbicus
