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Affilliation
There’s fraggin’, and then there’s puzzle fraggin’
The past week was filled with rave reviews on Left 4 Dead. Since I already got myself a steam account last week, and since I’m assuming you’ll need Steam anyway to play Valve games, I was considering purchasing Left 4 Dead online so I can finally get my feet wet with multiplayer FPSs.
Two things gave me pause:
- My PC is a bit on the old side (around 4 years now).
- FPSs aren’t friendly to lag. Half a second delay could get my ass handed to me.
I wish the L4D demo was still available so I could test it on my system, but alas, I can’t find it. The game currently retails at around US$50, so if I’m gonna fork out the dough, I better make sure I can play it immediately. I do have plans on upgrading my PC, but I’m waiting for Starcraft 2 to come out before I do it.
Fortunately for me, a nice little option came along.
Last week, gog.com started adding Unreal and Unreal Tournament stuff. I remember Unreal Tournament as the first shooter I really liked because it wasn’t as frantic as Quake was, and it was the 1st shooter that didn’t make me dizzy after prolonged hours of play. Delighted at the prospect of a shooter my system could handle, I decided that the cheap price is acceptable even if the ‘net multiplayer doesn’t work. I can accept US$10 for just fragging a few bots when I’m in the mood. If my ‘net connection can handle the lag, then the ‘net play would be a welcome bonus.
So I made the purchase and started the download. 2 gig don’t download all that fast, though, and I had to redo the download due to a silly thing I did. So while waiting, I decided to check-out what the other digital distribution sites had to offer.
I ended up being intrigued by the new stuff Greenhouse had. Hitherland was added a week or so ago, but the demo was available only recently. Puzzlegeddon was the new game, and it already had a demo available. I downloaded both.
I installed the Puzzlegeddon demo and played a few rounds. I wasn’t expecting much, but it ended up engaging me for quite a few rounds!
Puzzlegeddon’s core mechanic is basically sliding blocks in a square grid to make sets of at least 5 of the same color. The cool thing is that this core mechanic is used as a means to fuel a competitive game between 2-6 players! Making sets fills a meter of that color. The meter is used for various special effects like attack, defense, buffs, and disruptions. Also, you can select among several avatars which give you special bonuses like more powerful attacks, more efficient meter filling when chains are made, etc.
[pic above] A game against 5 bots. Me (12 o’clock, the castle) and Bit Bot decide to simultaneously fire missiles at Probot Hector. The wormhole above Probot Hector is an interrupt I cast, and the ephemeral flexing arms is due to a buff I cast.
One thing that bothers me a tad, and it’s not the gameplay. For some reason, Puzzlegeddon take a while to load, and it eats-up q big chunk of resources. Given the game, I was expecting it to be snappy, but it actually takes longer to load than OtRSPoD:E2! This has nothing to do with gameplay, though, and hopefully an update comes along to speed this part along. In terms of multiplayer, the lobbies aren’t that full right now, but if others like the game too, this will probably fix itself.
The whole concept, along with the fun and quirky art, and the possibility of multiplayer just gave me a nice warm feeling, enough to get me to purchase the thing!
And so, I now have two new competitive games, a nice old game where I shoot people, and a nice new puzzle game where I shoot people! 
Grab Good Ol’ Games from gog.com!
After installing Freespace 2 yesterday afternoon, I spent the rest of yesterday just having a blast (or rather, several blasts)! I’ve never really played much shooters and space sims, but my experience with Freespace 2 has been generally good. The action is fun, the controls take some getting used to but are workable, but you really do feel like you’re in a spacefight with wingmates. I haven’t gotten very deep in the story yet, but it’s quite intriguing even if I haven’t played Freespace 1.
The astute reader would have noticed that this post was written on 2008, and Freespace 2 was released pre y2k (1999 actually). You’d be hard pressed to find this game around, and even harder pressed to figure out if it’d still work in this era of XP and Vista.
So how come I’m wasting my time on a game that’s almost a decade old? Basically ‘cozI’ve been hearing some space sim fans say it’s a “good old game”. Incidentally, that’s where I got it.
gog.com stands for “Good Old Games”, and that’s what they serve. The site aims to be the Steam or TotalGaming.net for the old stuff that a lot of geezers would still want to play, and what younglings of today should seriously take a look at. In those years, my rig was never up to snuff, so I missed a lot of those “good stuff”. Pretty much any average modern PC these days can play the games they offer, in fact, there’s a bigger probability that the game is so old it won’t work with the newer Windowz…
… but they worked on that too! The good people at gog.com reworked the games to make sure they work in our modern operating systems, and they’ll probably try to keep it working for future ones. You can pretty much rest assured that your old childhood companion Fallout will work. If in the off change it doesn’t, gog.com or it’s community should give you a hand.
Perhaps you’re leery of how much you’ll have to pay for a trip down memory lane. Fortunately, it’s not much, everything they offer is pretty much dirt cheap as far as video games go. I got Freespace 2 for US$6 (technically, it’s US$5.99, but c’mon, who are we kidding?). Fallout costs the same. The most expensive items are US$10 (US$9.99), around the cost of the cheapest games at Steam.
Currently, the site’s in beta, so you’ll still have to signup for a beta key before they open-up to the general public. After creating an account, you choose a game and select your payment methond among the supported credit cards or through PayPal. After purchase, the game will be avaliable for you to download, either as a typical download, or via the gog.com Downloader (which uses Adobe AIR, don’t know why they decided on that). Aside from the game itself, which is already patched to the last stable version, you’re also treated to a number of extras like wallpapers, soundtracks and manuals (depends on the game, I assume).
How about games that require a CD to play, or games that phone home to check your installation? What if I want the game on my laptop which isn’t always online? You won’t have to worry about that ‘coz all the games they offer are DRM free! Yep, you heard me… they be DRM free, folks! The gog.com guys talk about it here and here. Coming from a country with its share of problems regarding piracy, I believe that the gog.com approach is the way to go.
Give yourself a dose of nostalgia and head on over to gog.com! If you weren’t old enough to have enjoyed these games before, now is your chance! You might get pleasantly surprised that your old man was right when he yaps about the things he played in the good ol’ days.
As for me, I’ll enjoy Freespace 2 for a while. Afterwards, I’ll probably go find out for myself why people were raving about Fallout 2 back in college. 
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