No bars so far.

I would guess that would vary by game, but I know that at least Fallout, Disciples 2, Jagged Alliance 2, and Citizen Kabuto do fine with widescreen. They've actually been writing code into games for a long time that would let them adapt to wider screens and sometimes even to higher resolutions while still looking reasonable. Part of what GOG does is write the DOSBox and installation "wrapper" that installs and tweaks the game so that it can figure out how to display optimally. Their forums also have tips posted by users and staff, but usually the process is invisible and, from my reading the forums quite a lot and own small experience, successful.

Made my first purchase, Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive. Really solid, bulky (it seems so far), and fun adventure game. Those cheesy FMV days weren't as bad as we thought, there's definitely plenty of good stuff from then. The acting is solid, and you'll definitely want to see as much as possible of certain characters. The game is somewhat non-linear - there are a large number of locations available to you right off the bat, but you can get through the first couple of days without even visiting many of them or solving any of the puzzles.

The game opened in widescreen and does not look distorted. In those "Graphic mode options" in the GOG menu, what do they mean and what are you supposed to choose?

I was wondering about something - is it better for GOG from a business standpoint to give us as many games as possible as soon as possible, or better for them to trickle them? If they trickle them, there is a small dedicated GOG fanbase who will find something to buy every so often no matter what, so this is a good way to milk them. Having a large variety and number of games would bring in more people and give you a bigger customer base, but your less popular games would never sell.

For a series like Tex Murphy it is almost certainly better to wait a while in-between each release.

Cant recommend Jagged Alliance 2 enough.

Hours of gameplay, and the game keeps introducing new weapons and items so it stays fresh. Has a bit of a steep curve on it, it flatens out, then the enemy tools up and it gets tough again. Just looted my first mortar and cant wait to use it on the enemy.

AI is very good. Just had a battle were it lit up my uber stealth troops with UV headgear with a throwable light source then nuked them with a rocket launcher.

Interactions between the mercs you hire are perpetualy entertaining.

You cant go wrong for 10 bucks.

If you're at all into pinball, Pro Pinball : Timeshock is a pretty awesome game. I bought it a couple weeks ago and have gotten a fair bit of play out of it since. It seems to attract a lot of claims such as "best PC pinball game ever," so if that's your cup of tea, it's $6 on GOG.

They have some pretty recent racing games with good graphics on GOG for cheap too. There's an off-road one that I'm thinking of getting before it gets taken out of GOG's rotation on Monday.

The collapse of the market for vehicle sims is a very sad thing for the market, but probably does GOG and its customers a lot of good in the long run, as it will likely bring newer sims than many other genres to GOG quick and cheap.

So far I have Fallout, Rainbow 6, and Ghost Recon (Last two were on sale together, sale is off now though)

Fallout doesn't seem bad, you move around kind of slow and it seems to be very open ended (My mission right now requires me to go somewhere and when I get there I need something I don't have to proceed. Apparently I'm supposed to go to a place they never told me about and find the item there.)

R6 is pretty good once you get making your own plans down. Still struggling in terms of going in rooms, guy will always be aiming at the down and it's game over.

GR I couldn't figure out how to get my other squads to do anything, but it's a pretty good looking game.

I picked up Descent I and II from GOG.com. They're still awesome games. Unfortunately, the mouse doesn't work very well. It's super sluggish - even after modifying the .conf files for DOSbox. It's kind of annoying to have to drag the mouse across the pad three times in order to turn around. If I could figure out a way to fix this it would be the perfect deal.

All in all, for 6 bucks it's worth it to spend a few hours reminiscing with an old favorite.

does increasing your mouse's dpi help?

Have you posted about it in GOG's Descent forums?

Last day for Collin McRae Rally 2005, a very well reviewed off-road racer. It's five bucks, but GOG's rights to it are expiring and it is going to be dropped from their catalog.

Increasing the settings in the Windows didn't help.

Chess games are on sale for the weekend.

Oh, I suggest getting Lords of the Realm Royal Edition (Pt 1 and 2). It's a mix of Civ and Warcraft.

they just came out with the settlers 2

guess im gonna be sitting in front of my computer all day

WOOHOOO! One of the two old games I joined GOG with the greatest hopes of getting a working Vista (and non DRM) version of just came to GOG, Heroes of Might and Magic 2. It is packaged with its expansion pack, HOMM2: The Price of Loyalty, for ten bucks, and the manual and separate soundtrack, and some high-rez wallpaper come with the purchase as downloadable extras.

This is such a fun turn-based strategy game. The graphics are bright and somehow inherently cheerful, the music is good, and the gameplay is really fun. Just enough detail in the management to keep you on your toes without bogging you down too much, and great turn-based battles with really fun characters to play. It's also easily one of the most replayable games ever because of the robustness of its skirmish generator. You can create a game that will play quickly or one that will last for weeks, on all sorts of random map types, with different victory conditions, and there are quite a lot of premade maps already in the game if you find some favorites. Of course there are campaigns, too.

This is a huge must-buy for me. I could see playing this game forever.

O JOYOUS DAY!!!!

The e-mail they sent out this morning also said that the complete edition of HOMM3 is going to be released soon, which is the only reason I might not get HOMM2. 3 is supposed to be the best in the series, right?

This is awesome.

HOMM2 is probably said to be the best in the series most often, but HOMM3 has a whole lot of fans too; depends who you ask.

My theory is that HOMM2 is virtually perfect -- and I don't say that lightly -- and so there's not much of an improvement to be made besides graphics. The style of the graphics, though, is unstoppable, so the later games in the HOMM series having slightly less cartoonish graphics wasn't at all a selling point for me. There's something wonderfully "bright and friendly" about HOMM2. Combined with the music, it's a game that leaves you feeling upbeat when you play it.

People who didn't start with the first HOMM, and often people who started with HOMM3, might not feel going backward gained them anything. The game was already perfected in HOMM2. And it usually doesn't work that way when there is a big change in graphics from a more recent game to an older one. People tend not to like going graphically backwards in the same series, but if you started at the beginning and enjoyed a game then, you're more focussed on the gameplay. FWIW, HOMM2 was a far bigger game in its day than HOMM3 was, and got better reviews. It consistently makes lists of best games of all time.

Personally, I didn't play HOMM3 so can't judge. I do recall being told by someone who played all the games in the series to that point that HOMM3 had a strategy or two that broke the game, making it impossible not to win quickly once you gathered a certain army together. I think I recall which one, but am not sure and anyway wouldn't say if I was, because I wouldn't want anyone to be tempted to try it and thus spoil their game fun.

Gamerankings.com has HOMM2 at 76% (based on like 3 reviews though, obv the sample size is off because HOMM2 is a sweet ****ing game) and HOMM3 at like 86%, IGN and Gamespot both gave 3 a 9+, so it must be pretty good.

I'll prob wind up getting both. I already bought HOMM1 but tbh it pales in comparison to 2 (it is ridiculously easy) so I haven't gotten a lot of play from it.

Kind of like IMDB ratings; no sense taking them too seriously. They regularly favor the most recent and purely commercial.

I liked HOMM1 a lot, but played HOMM2 much much more and thought it was a very solid step up. I don't remember what they specifically were, but I do remember being very happy with its improvements over HOMM1, and it just all fell together as a perfect game.

Just got home from work and downloaded the soundtrack, track 4, so much nostalgia

The weekend deal is Beyond Good & Evil and Prince of Persia bundled for $9.99. I played both of these games back on Xbox and highly recommend each of them.

Yea but what about the PC versions? "Vassup" or "isch don't think so"?

picked up empire earth from gog.com. i'd heard about it before but not played it, but the site said it was very similar to the age of empires series. i absolutely loved AoE2 back in the day, so for $6 decided to try EE. very pleasantly surprised for the price.

sure enough, the game is extremely similar to AoE2 - interface, concept, gameplay, etc. if you liked that series you are almost certain to enjoy this game. 4 nice, solid campaigns, tons of variety in the unit types as it actually takes you from prehistoric to futuristic ages, with AoE-style "aging up." obv a really ambitious scope but i think overall the game does it very well.


edit: it's the "gold edition," so it also comes with an expansion pack of some kind. haven't checked this out yet though

This caused me to go back through my giant pack of CDs and dig out my old copies of HOMM3.

Sigh, theres goes a few hours of my life that could have been spent making money ...

Anyone up for a ip/tcp battle at some point?

Beyond Good and Evil is very well reviewed in GOG, on the product pages and in chatting on the forums. Looks like it's probably worth having.

GOG's not carrying HOMM3 yet, but probably will fairly soon, and by that I mean I'm guessing a couple months. That's how long it took them to release #2 after releasing #1.