Good Old Games (and other nostalgia gaming)

When did Dungeon Keeper 2 get on there? They actually made it run on Windows?

Not initially. But, according to the forums they managed to fix it fairly recently.

Breaking:

It is being reported on Qt3 and elsewhere that installing SMAC from GOG now gives Alien Crossfire.

Oh man, if this is true, I know some people who are having this forced upon them for Christmas.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=3290965&postcount=6877

Just wanted to double-confirm that the new GoG installer for Alpha Centauri does indeed have Alien Crossfire included. Awesome. Thanks for the heads-up, Oz!

They did a press release about it. They're also giving away some wing commander expansions if you already have the base game.

That's awesome news.

Well, sold.

If anyone can't access the press release, here it is in full:

Holiday Update: EA Expansions

Because we like you so, we have a gift for you.

A while back, we started to sell EA games--great classics such as Wing Commander, Privateer, and Alpha Centauri. A few people--just a few!--noted that we didn't have the expansions and that made them sad panda.

Well, panda, be sad no more! As a holiday gift from us to you, we're bringing everyone who bought (or buys in the future!) the expansions for Wing Commander 1 + 2, Wing Commander Privateer, and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri for you today! These expansions are free updates, so just download the new installers for each game from your account and start playing now! Note that these EA games will not be part of any Daily Deal bundle, so go ahead and pick them up now for only $2.99 each.

The expansions are:

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri--Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire.
Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire brings you seven new factions (two that are non-human), new technologies, new facilities, new secret projects, new alien life forms, new unit special abilities, new victory conditions (including the new "Progenitor Victory") and several additional concepts and strategies, making it a "must-have" expansion for the award-winning game.

Wing Commander 1 + 2--Wing Commander: The Secret Missions, Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2 Crusade, Wing Commander II: Special Operations 1, Wing Commander II: Special Operations 2.

The Wing Commander expansions bring new missions, new ships, a new storyline, and an increase in difficulty in The Secret Missions, and in Secret Missions 2: Crusade, we see a whole new alien race, a new challenge, and a mysterious defection all raising the stakes of both the game's storytelling and its combat. In Wing Commander II: Special Operations 1 we see a layered web of deceit, lies, betrayal, and action all bringing that trademarked Wing Commander cinematic feel, while Special Operations 2 sees the player ambushed while escorting a traitor, and soon the player (as Col. Blair) will find himself undertaking one of his most dangerous missions of all: an undercover one infiltrating the very traitors he was escorting in the first place!

Wing Commander Privateer--Privateer Righteous Fire.
Finally, in Righteous Fire the player squares off against a crazy fundamentalist sect called the Retros as the open-ended space sim world's story continues with more action, ships, and missions to keep player occupied for hours.

A special thanks goes out to Paul Barnett and Jeff Skalski at Mythic (@MythicNews) for their help getting these add-ons secured (finally!) and available to you. :)

Alpha Centauri purchased, together with Heroes Chronicles, the only bit of HOMM I don't already own.

That's what I've been waiting for.

Even though I hate Righteous Fire so, so much (MY BEAUTIFUL GUN!), I'm glad they added it. Yay for the rest too. Now if they'd only add the expansions to Dungeon Keeper and Syndicate...

With the sales coming to an end soon, I am thinking of picking up a TBS but don't know which one. I've played the King's Bounty games, and while I did like them a lot I found them too open and without direction.
I also own the Elven Legacy series, but found it very, very hard and punishing. I'm not experienced with the genre so I'm more looking for an accessible game then a deep or challenging one.

I'm looking for something that is beginner friendly, has reasonable graphics (Master of Magic is too dated looking for example) and is set in a fantasy universe.
I've been looking at the various Age of Wonders, Heroes of Might and Magics and Disciples games, but wouldn't really know where would be a good place to start.
I've also been looking at Lords of Magic, and the more modern Fallen Enchantress and Warlock Master of the Arcane (not on GoG). The two last ones are a bit pricey at the moment though, I only have a small amount of spending money left this sale. any help is much appreciated :)

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic and/or HoMM3. Can't go wrong with either. AoW is a bit tougher, but closer in spirit to Master of Magic. HoMM3 is perhaps a bit more accessible, not as deep.

Thanks Tylertoo. Accessible is at the moment more important to me then depth. Can't go wrong with trying a classic I suppose!
How are the Disciples games? I'm always fascinated by the screen shots, I love the Gothic art style.

I dipped my toe into Disciples ages ago but not much. My sense is they're great but a bit more hard core.

I probably put more time into HoMM3 than any other PC game (or on any platform for that matter) in my life. I can't go back to it, because I need something deeper nowadays (and I burned out on it), but I remember it fondly. Tried HoMM4 and 5, and neither worked for me, for different reasons. 3 is a gem.

Tyler is 100% correct. Heed his advice. ;-)

I'm going to put in my vote for the Disciples series. It's my favorite TBS series of all time. I never really got into Age of Wonders though I tried a few times. And I bought HoMM3 on GoG a few months ago and still haven't had a chance to try it. But I have 100s and 100s of hours in Disciples. The learning curve is a little steep on Disciples if you go in blind, but it's really easy to pick up if you play the right group. You already have the link to my getting started with Disciples post too :)

Where?

Yes, I bookmarked that link, thanks! The art style keeps tempting me, and having an expert at hand might help. I might just pick up both.

Edit:

Oh, duh, I should share that link: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=793433&hilit=disciples knigh

I'm always willing to help people with Disciples questions because it's such an awesome game that more people should play. I just remember how intimidating that first try at it can be though. I didn't get it at all my first attempt (tried the demons) and put it away for a while. Second try, I went with the Empire and here we are hundreds and hundreds of hours later with saves across three or four PCs now for all the races, all the hero types, all the campaigns.

So everyone ask away!

Probably Ultima III: Exodus. Ultima II was fun, but Ultima III is kind of where Garriot got his shit together. Ultima IV was the pinnacle of the series, but I wouldn't start with it. I'd suggest Ultima III, Ultima IV, Ultima VII unless you have insane amounts of time on your hands and endless patience.

With the last night of the GoG sale, I'm debating over the belated Halloween set (Gabrial Night) and one of the Bioware games on sale. For the Halloween set, how crazy are those games in terms of adventure game logic? As I bought the quest series and I'm set in terms of puzzling games. As for Bioware, I've never played either Icewind Dale game and was wondering if they would be good for someone not familiar with the DnD brand.

The Icewind Dale games are by Black Isle, not Bioware. Do you want a dungeon crawler? If so they're good for that. It's DnD, there's nothing hugely complex going on, you'll figure it out.

Gabriel Knight is quite a tricky point & click, though for generally the right reasons as I recall. I think there are a couple of real stumpers in there though.

Cat hair moustache

That's not Gabriel Knight, that's the second or third game.

The first Gabriel Knight is pretty fair, if tricky, with a few instant-death moments. It's also got a great cast (Tim Curry!) and a legit creepy story. If you can handle Sierra-style point-and-clicks, it's definitely one of the best ever made.

Dude, Troy, I told you guys to wait till April 1st to release Daikatana. Too soon, man! Too soon!

Looks like GOG is repricing some 30 games. They're branding this as a "Pricing Experiment," and have the following to say about it:

They've got a lot more to say about this experiment, and if you want to read it you can click this link to visit the announcement page. I'm not sure if these changes or permanent, or how this is different from a regular sale, but if you've been holding out for one of these games, this might be the opportunity you've been waiting for.

I wonder how well this will work. There are a few games I'd buy if they dropped a buck or two because that hits my arbitrary impulse purchase point (sadly none of them are on the list above).

Constructor for $4 is kinda tempting in a way that it wasn't at $6.

Turns out I already bought just about everything in that list tempting to me :-)

I don't have a problem

Skip I-III. I and II are cool from a "wow they just sort of crammed in everything didn't they?" perspective. III was revolutionary (first CRPG to feature a tactical combat arena), but unless you are charting the secret history of the 20th century there's no reason to return to them.

IV was like nothing that had come before. CRPGs did not have complex stories. On the contrary, they not only had simplistic stories but the games tended to sort of ignore them except at a couple of points. Further, CRPGs tended to paint the PCs as heroes, however they frequently rewarded or even required unheroic behavior. Garriot's dawning realization over this, as well as some outside factors, lead him to IV. It's story still isn't complicated, however it's a far more interesting game than what came before, rewarding the player for being the kind of person most games suggested you were supposed to be (and punishing the player when you were acting badly). It's still very dated technologically. I can't stress enough that it was amazing for it's time, but it's skippable. By the way, it's not so much that the interface is "difficult", it's just that Garriot wanted you to be able to do lots of things and decided the best way to do that was map a command to every key. (q)uaff a potion but (r)ead a scroll. (e)nter a town or dungeon. Etc. Its not hard to keep track off as long as you obtain a list of the commands.

V is amazing. It has a deeper story and a far more involved gameworld thanks to techonological improvements. It also features a basic premise that involves everything about the previous game being subtly perverted (Lord British has gone missing while exploring the underworld; Blackthorne runs things in his stead, but the Virtues start being corrupted. And then there's the fact that when you show up, you get attacked by these strange apparitions). The story, minimally told, is very interesting. The Ultima graphics were always sort of iconic but V's had a charm the series had lacked previously. Same interface as last game, though there are some innovations here. It's one of the first CRPGs to feature a "party inventory" where items are centrally stored (and then used or equipped individually). V is the first time the game took place in the same world as the one that came before. It was fun watching how it grew. IMO the game is worth checking out.

VI is more advanced from an engine standpoint (and radically different graphically) though there is one drawback to this IMO; it features the same basic UI Setup of the previous games and suddenly the viewing area started to feel scrunched and too small. It also simplifies the famed keyboard UI (which had a use for every key!). You no longer needed to know that you (z)apped wands, but (r)ead scrolls and (q)uaffed potions and (p)eered at gems. You just (U)sed stuff. Also, the game world is seemless; no more "world map" and separate town maps. This was cool on one hand, but on the other it sort of breaks the sense of scale IV and especially V so majestically created. It still features that familiar turn based combat. The story is more involved than V, and is a worthy followup.

VII fixed the some of the "view display" issues of the VI by going minimal while radically overhauling the engine. The story is like VIs, maybe a little more involved, and very interesting. It has probably one of the worst combat systems in the history of CRPGs. The series moved to real time but the pacing here is insane; many fights will end before you realize they had started and you will frequently party wipe without realizing precisely why. It was insanely buggy on release, and features one of the quirkier easter eggs in the history of gaming. And the UI. . . in some respects the minimalism was great. But they went too far, and lost previous innovations. Now we're back to individual inventories for everybody, and encumbrance is "carry weight" (V introduced encumbrance as equippable weight; the series had ignored it alltogether previously), but rather than pick from items in a list you literally open a character's back pack and there's everything in a huge fucking pile. Have fun picking through it to find that key. And while the series had long required you to feed everyone, this is the first entry where it didn't happen automatically. VII is a really fascinating game that a lot of people, justifiably, love. It was incredibly ambitious, offering unparalleled detail (since, other than being a paragon of virtue, there is nothing stopping you from walking over to that table and picking up that one particular fork and taking it with you). But it had a lot of shitty design. Worth checking out, as are the expansions. Though I seem to recall that the first (Serpent Isle) was better received than the second (The Silver Seed), in part due to relative state of disrepair.

You can stop there, for the main series.

Wow I did not realize I was replying to such an old post. Silly me.

Ultima VII. In no other game ever do you pick up tongs to use on an ingot of metal that you had to melt using a fire and bellows and then smash said ingot into a sword shape which you quench repeatedly in water that you had to draw from a well with a bucket and then attach it to a handle and THEN go through a process of infusing said sword with a cocky badass demonic presence that lets you shoot fucking flames out of it.

Great fucking feeling ever.

You can watch the process here, and it doesn't seem as amazing when you watch it, but god damn was it a great rewarding feeling at the time:

Thank you for reminding me why I despise crafting. I fell asleep three times just reading that description.

Personal taste. Not criticizing you or anyone who's into it.

Come on man. That's what real crafting is about. Get the player involved.

This isn't fucking... grind 4 hours collecting Bullshitsweed just to hit a button to sit there and repeat the same animation 50 times in a row so that you can make 5 healing potions that sell for less money than the Bullshitsweed you collected in the first place.

The only part of your post I disagree with. If you stop at VII, you miss out on VII Part 2 -- Serpent Isle. The engine is identical to VII, although with the Silver Seed expansion you get some improvements LIKE A GODDAMNED KEYRING.

Most importantly, playing VII part 2 is a brilliant example of the difference between open world non-linear storytelling (the original VII) and more linear gated storytelling (Serpent Isle). The first is more popular but personally I prefer the second because I find the story MUCH more compelling.

That said, there are some pretty bad bugs in Serpent Isle (like a key NPC showing up way early and sort of breaking the plot if you talk to him too much) but the main story beats are just epic.

I also recommend both the Ultima Underworld games, and Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams. I didn't care for Savage Empire so much but it has its fans.

In general though, yeah, probably best to avoid VIII and IX.

Well, at least you're making something awesome for yourself, I grant you that. But processes like that -- not to mention the process of puzzling out what to do in the first place -- is not for me. Hell, I never once tried a horadric cube recipe. I'd just rather buy my Badass Ruby Sword of Trollslaying for 9000 quatloos (or better yet, have a boss drop it on me) and get on with the trollslaying. I'm never the best dressed or best armed because I just can't be bothered. My daughter mocks me.

As with IV, there are things about VII that were just unprecedented. If I say there's a game where you can pick up the silverware now, you think "oh, some 3d title. Who gives a shit? Unless I can use mind bullets to shoot the fork through some dude's head, in which case I guess it's ok, but you know I always thought Ravenstaad was solid but maybe a touch in Half Life 2 so I'm back to who cares".

Nobody had done anything like that in a 2d engine before, just like nobody had made a 2d game with so many things literally being possible, whether it was forging iron ingots to turn into a dumpy sword that wasn't nearly as awesome as the Hoe of Destruction, or baking bread, or making clothing, or whatever. It gave the world not just incredible depth but sort of it's own flavor of depth, one that had been building up steadily since IV.