Yes, you've been hunting for this game for AGES, seeking it everywhere, dreaming of it, but at the time you didn't have the money, or it wasn't distributed near you, or you didnt have the required machine, BUT HERE COMES GOG, at least, you can fulfill this dream, the game is here, you bought it, you installed it, you RAN IT, FOR THE FIRST TIME.

And no.

It's too late. You're too old to invest into its learning curve or its too deep gameplay, or the game itself has aged, its mechanics have been ridiculed since by better design, its graphics don't dtrike your imagination as they would have in the old days, its interface is so frustrating compared to nowadays' standards... it is too late.

You weep over the hollow dry corpse of a game that you failed to meet during its lifetime. The love is gone, the love that had been promised.

I think it is happening between me and the Quest for Glory sequels, especially the 4th one. It's probably happening between me and all sierra-on-line adventures. Maybe it's also why I can't enjoy Alpha Centaury either. And Spycraft ? It made me giggle and rolleyes for three minutes and I didn't get back to it. I don't know hy these ones. But I feel cheated. Cheated of my long wait for Quest for Glory IV, which would probably have been my favorite back then. And what about Ultima 3, after a whole life spent on Ultima IV. Why don't I feel anything ?

Have you suffered from these dead-at-arrival impressions, on GOG ? What games ? And did you manage to pinpoint why these ones and not some others ?

Sometimes I had a different experience. I wanted to play a game badly when I was a kid, and I had a demo of it. But it was too complex and hard for me, and my english was poor then, so I didn't enjoy the game. Even hated it.

But I remembered it. And when I played it again after 10 or so years, I felt in love. Passionate love without using contraception.

I buy a lot of old RPGs from before my time that I try to get into but can't for one reason or another. Might and Magic, Ultima, whatever... it's just hard for me to go backwards from my starting point, which was Baldur's Gate.

Also adventure games with text parsers.

I had the same feeling trying to play Larry 1. I've switched to the VGA release almost instantly and sometimes it still feels weird. Oh well... I still love them, the old chumps (old games). They are part of my teen years. And even if they suck compared to today's gameplay and graphics, thay can be still a lot of fun. So +1 to GOG. I hope to see one day Imperium Galactica II here... and maybe War. Inc (though this one is also on some abandonware sites).

Did you beat any of the Ultima games after IV?

Raged quit 5 because it was hard, 6 because it was clunky and the screen was to small, VII because enemies were badass, combat is hard to tell because I cannot tell if I am doing a lot of damage and damage on my characters and overall all clunkyness.

Despite all those problems I am still willing to try and conquer them.

For Alpha Centauri the solution is simple - Watch a Youtube video of someone good at it playing from the beginning, the first 20-30 minutes or so. Learning games like this is always easier if you see a "veteran" doing it, and then it looks easier. That's how I learned to play some older, dated games that I never picked up when I was supposed to.

Well, I'm afraid that's all I'll fell (or not feel) for the classics I've bought from here. Don't really think I'll have time to invest in playing the first 3 Ultimas, for example...and I'd look for the maps anyway, don't have the nerve to draw them myself xD

Ah well, I guess I'll see how it is when I get to them. I just hope I'll enjoy the relatively newer games, like Torment and Baldur's Gate :P (which is why I came to GOG in the first place!)

The only two I tried for a long time were VII and VIII, but I couldn't get very far in either. I might try VII again at some point, but like I said it's hard for me to play something older than what I started with.

I feel that way with a lot of the games here. I'll play a small amount of the games I buy through, but the rest are more of a 'see what I missed' where I go in never expecting to play more then an hour or two.

I know that feeling.
Most games from GOG i have bought for nostalgic memories and after installing them and have a short look they lay around.
I loved playing them than. Because they very a new experience. Playing them again? NO!
Wine or Whiskey mature and adds flavor if handled carefully. Old games are just old games.
Its a good think that gaming has evolved.
Thats not saying i regret buying them again....and i have bought a hell lot of them here....no not at all. I even would
buy them boxed.
Its sometimes real funny to see the reaction of a young player confronted with old games ;-)

Actually that would be an interesting idea for an angry-video-nerd-like series. A young nostalia-free player getting angry not at bad old games, but good old games, beloved classics that have aged badly. This would be horribly controversial, and would attract a lot of flames from older gamers, especially as it would require to unfairly decontextualise some old milestone classics, but I would still enjoy watching this.

(And no, I can't do it myself. I belong to the amiga generation, so it would be very artificial from me... )

Me 2.
Writing this i think of Ultima or Wizardry ;-) sorry folks no easy interface...you must memorize dozens of keys ;-)
Or the old games from Infocom

Think graphics has a lot to do with it, when you first played it the graphics were great because that's all there was,
now when you play it again doesn't look quite so good.

You have no idea how literally. Yeah. The corpse. Maybe not dry but definitely a corpse. Like... an undead? Does it qualify? Sure it does, it's a corpse after all. But not dry, definitely not dry. Filled with blood. A lot of blood. And his own. A vampire perhaps? Yeah, that will do. It's just... argh!

I've tried! I promised I've tried very hard. In fact I've tried twice. First - to get the game back when it was released. I failed. And now, quite recently I tried really, really hard to enjoy it. But I couldn't

Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption is lost for me. I know I would have loved it back in 2000 but it's too late. My standards has changed. The game is awfully linear and please don't try to convince me it's not. Yeah, there are three possible endings. Great. I'm so thrilled! But they are based solely on dialog options and I mean - is it so hard to figure out what's the best option (AFAIR there were only two situations when it wasn't so clear but it wouldn't matter even if you chose wrong - there were plenty occasions to redeem your bad deed). I know that in 2000 three possible ending seemed cool enough to mark a game as non-linear but please...

Speaking about dialogs... just how many times Ecaterina shouted: "No! I forbid it!" But Christof always did it his way. I rest my case. As for Christof... the beginning (after he was embraced) was very promising. He felt betrayed by everybody and everything. He didn't know who to trust. That was really promising. But then... it was "oh, my poor, dear, beloved Anezka" over and over again. Will you men up already?! That was just pathetic. The whole game he behaved like a silly teenage girl who cannot keep her emotions under control. The only things he missed were pink ribbons in his hair.

And the the world... it was so awfully inconsistent. At the beginning they were actually asking for a permission to embrace you. Cool! Then they lectured you about the Masquerade. Even better. And then what happened? You are killing hundreds of vampires everywhere! Without any permission, any consequences, nothing. Heck, they even forbade drinking the last drop of blood of other vampire and told you about the dreadful consequences. Do I have to mention that I did it many times and nothing happened? Oh, right! Speaking about hundreds of vampires... I mean... wait a second... just how many people lived in medieval Prague? Was that enough to feed hordes of vampires?

I'm not even talking about numerous historical errors, e.g. Golden Lane was built in 16th century. I can mention several more, but I can turn a blind eye to it.

And my personal nightmare: I was running on the streets (modern times) with two handed swords, chainsaws, heck, eve rocket launchers. One of my companion was Nosferatu and believe me - this guy couldn't pretend he was just an ugly human. And police... did nothing. But when I accidentally clicked on a pedestrian - giving an order to attack - and even though I canceled it immediately so that Christof did nothing wrong yet - I had policemen attacking me from every possible direction. ARGH!

There. Sorry for my rant but I actually feel relieved after I spat it out. I'm not saying it's a bad game, far from that. As I said - I would have loved it then and probably I would now as well due to the nostalgia. But alas I missed it and I expected SO much and therefore my disappointment was so big. I honestly envy you if you can enjoy this game.

If you're talking about the campaign, you're just missing a bad clone of Diablo 2 with cool (at the time) graphics and a interesting story.

The real cool stuff was the editor, very powerful (heck, back then I did the Acropolis of Athens!), and the storyteller mode in multiplayer. I had great times with this game.


One game I still fail to enjoy is Arcanum, but I don't know wheter it's because it is old (can't stand that crappy interface) or simply it's not a game for me.