Sid Meier's Pirates! is a definitely one of the very old-school games. Which is to say, if you actually want to prosper in the game, it'll be nerve-splittingly hard. You just can't sell old games to newbies these days - fortunately, the game industry has learnt to actually provide us games with a sensible difficulty curve and you can no longer sell a ridiculously short game under the guise of unforgiving difficulty. But this time, the difficulty doesn't mask a game you can just stroll through in ten minutes with infinite health. And this time, the difficulty level won't mean that sunday gamers won't be getting anything out of the game. I think that has always been the brilliant part about Sid Meier's designs - he makes games that have actual depth to them, and games that have something for everybody. (For comparison, you can be the suckiest strategist ever in Civilization series, and still have tons of fun.) So here we have a game that doesn't really need a lot of explaining. A jolly old pirate romp - nay, the mother of all pirate romps on personal computers! You start with a small ship and barely anything at all. Be a good guy, hunt pirates, or become a privateer. Be a bad guy and plunder frigging everything. Capture ships, assault towns, do epic cannon battles and fence your way to victory. You can either care about what's going on, or not. It doesn't matter, because a pirate is free, you are a pirate.</meme> I didn't actually try out the original DOS version included in this bundle, because the first version I played was the C64 one, and I doubt the glory is the same. But the Pirates Gold remake is absolutely incredible - great graphics style, good music, and an appropriate amount of "arrrrr!" sound effects make the game feel sufficiently modern in every way. So support *true* software piracy today and get this incredible game! Final breakdown of the stars: 4 stars for the concept, -1 star for a *slight* unexplainable feeling of they-really-ought-to-have-modernised-this-further, +2 stars because in the end of the day, it's *just that much fun*.
Ultima series thrived on innovation. The previous parts of the series practically invented everything we take for granted in CRPGs these days. Games like Ultima VII and U7SI set the standards for CRPGs for the decades to come. Ultima IX tried this. It succeeded on technical merits, and it was, indeed, an interesting attempt at making a 3D RPG. Too bad almost everything else failed hilariously. There is a lot to like about U9. The user interface with its "3D ragdoll" idea is interesting, and the dialogue system was a good attempt at making dialogues cinematic. The overall game system is pretty smooth and logical - the game basically takes Ultima VIII's concepts and improves them. It's a good attempt at transforming Ultima VIII-esque game system into 3D - which led to some unfortunate conclusions. But there's also a lot to dislike about U9. The most obvious problem is that there are a lot of bugs, and getting the game to run properly is an adventure, even with GOG's best efforts. The voice acting isn't very good, which obviously jarred people because *not* having voice acting in previous parts worked great. Dialogue gets a bit dumb. The quests aren't *that* interesting. Oh, and I didn't even mention the game basically contradicts most of the stuff in the previous games for particularly dumb reasons. While the 3D models and terrain sure were pretty at the time, the world is incredibly tiny. (Kids who complain about Skyrim haven't seen a darn thing, I say - that game is absolutely colossal compared to U9.) You don't need to play the game too far to get the distinct feeling that this just isn't a great big masterpiece of video games. Ultima IX stands in the point of video game history where the competitors just sped past it. Games like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind basically came to the scene of disaster and fixed everything that was wrong. Origin was living in difficult times and they didn't manage to produce a great game, under so much pressure from both the gaming public and especially their higher-ups at EA. There's just no way around it: this game failed to do what it promised. The bottom line is that it's still a very interesting and even engrossing game to play, *if* you can get over the bugs. Don't treat it as a true Ultima title - it's better to just laugh at the plot in so-bad-it's-so-good manner, and laugh at all of the inevitable bugs and problems. Simply put, it's not bad enough to stop you from playing it and from enjoying it if you have the right mindset - the game parts actually work surprisingly well. If you want a *real* RPG from this era, with actual writing and everything, you can always go back to Morrowind. It's a good thing Ultima IX has been priced in the $5.99 bin, because at $9.99 you'd be horribly ripped off. At the lower price, however, I feel that you should *definitely* grab it for chuckles and fun, but only if you don't take things too seriously.
Let's get the game review out of the way first: Neverwinter Nights is one of the greatest RPGs ever made, and I've probably played it more than any other PC RPG (with Ultima VII coming as a very close second). The simple reason for this is that the game delivered what was promised to be its greatest selling point: an awesome toolset for creating single- and multiplayer adventure modules. Sure, it comes with decent enough campaigns, and this package also has some of the premium modules (excellent work as far as I can tell), but they're not really the major attractions here - there's just loads and loads of custom content for NWN that's nothing short of amazing. And at this point, it'd be good to point out that I haven't even bought GOG's version of NWN yet. And I goshdarn well wish I had. You see, if you try to get the original CD version running these days, you'd better prepare for some minor headaches. The last patches for NWN fortunately remove the CD check, but you'll be a little bit confused on where to even find the patches these days. NWN's automatic patcher is just busted, Bioware's website has been redesigned and they deferred the support to Hasbro, who gleefully offer old patches. I was happy to find the final critical rebuild patch after quite a while of searching from Neverwinter Vault. So, obviously an all-in-one downloadable installer that helpfully says "patched to 1.69" looks like an *incredibly tempting* purchase. In summary: This is a true RPG classic and one of the best games Bioware ever made. It runs nicely on Win7, with some minor gotchas. If you want an easy and painless way to get the game, then based on the promises and my previous experience with GOG, this looks like your ticket to awesomeness. Grab it and get playing - this really is your ticket to incredible adventures.
"Hatht thou tried to avoid copy protectthionth, Garrett? It ith motht fruthtrating thpectacle, rendering your pricelethh game unworking on netbookth. And nothing was ever built..." Thus lamented the gaming public, and GOG answered - a nice copy of Thief II that's quite easy to install and run on modern optical-media-less environments. =) Thief II is basically more of the same after Thief: The Dark Project / Thief Gold. The environment evolves, the City has become a little bit less dark place in style - but as should be easily apparent, even in the elegant luster of the Metal Age, the shadows are still dark and deep. Mechanists, led by Karras, put the same nastiness of the Hammerites in a shinier jar. And Garrett does the same thing he always does: skulks in the shadows, swipes everything of value into his pockets, and no one is none the wiser. Oh, and he incidentally saves the world. Again. And this time, it's personal. The missions are bigger and more varied this time, and it takes some good time before the plot even picks up at all. We get more steampunk stuff - steam robots that react badly to well-aimed water arrows and completely freak you out. We get bank robberies. Most importantly we get the most epic stealth mission in any game ever, past, present and future - rooftop infiltration mission into Karras's tower of mechanical luxury. Along with its previous part this is stealth gaming at its finest.
If I said this game is "influential", hoo boy, that would be the understatement of the day. Thief: The Dark Project, without any exaggeration, perfected the stealth game play on one fell swoop. You get FPS-style controls, with new "leaning" controls to peek around corners... and you're told to sneak, *not* bop everyone you see in the face with an arrow. And sneaking is what you will do. Keep in the dark, keep your eyes peeled, mind your steps. As long as you remain in shadows, you're practically invisible. You can sneak through every level in the game on the hardest difficulty, killing *no one* - leaving behind empty chests and blank spots on mantles where tacky silver vases used to be. If that proves too difficult, you can knock out most guards with a blackjack, so you still kill no one. Oh, you do get a sword and bow, but trust me, you're usually only going to get killed. The bow is incredibly handy with the other interesting arrow types, like water arrows that can be used to put out pesky torches and rope arrows that, uh, let you attach ropes. And all this happens in an *incredibly* atmospheric, well-detailed, and well-thought-out dark fantasy-steampunk world. Opulent manors of rich fat cats who are clearly asking for it! Grim cathedrals! Zombie-infested tombs! Nasty prisons where pious religious orders make criminals die 'neath righteous punishments! Lost cities of ancient mystery! Utter, sheer horror that is forever unrivaled! Drunk guards! Slithery pagans! Cowering civilians! Gibbering idiots! Places of utter weirdness! (Also: You get Thief Gold, which adds even more weirdness.) Thief is an incredibly immersive and atmospheric game that rewards exploration and thinking rather than reflexes and speed. The only recent game that comes even close is Skyrim, and they got there by practically ripping off the sneak mechanics from Thief series. (Didn't I say this game was influential?) I'm glad they took it from the best, because frankly, there's *no way* Thief can be topped and more games should be doing it. This is just how sneaking works, guys! Game developers should start realising that sneaking just isn't going to work any other way! The only slight problems are that the game may have some small compatibility problems with modern systems, but luckily, there's a thriving community of people out there who have conjured a fix for just about every minor annoyance you may encounter. GOG's release ran perfectly on my Win7 system as long as I remembered to run as admin. (Another small hitch was that the bonus MP3 soundtrack has some *weird* ID3 tags, like song titles all set to same. Tsk, tsk, minor sloppiness.) But I wouldn't deduct any points for these - the game has aged well, all things considered. Tiny flaws, completely inconsequential in face of the colossal greatness of the actual game. So heck, if you haven't played it, get it so you know where all of the awesomeness in today's games stems from. Video games were just awesome before Thief, but this is where the video games became *totally* awesome.
