I played through Hardwar at the time of release with my niece, and she loved it so much back then, when I moved to Seattle back in 99, I left the CD with her, and I’ll never see it again. She’s moved on in the intervening years and just like everyone else doesn’t play joystick games anymore (I worked so hard to foster the joystick love!) but plays games like The Sims. Damn it. All that hard work!
And, to top it off, I don’t have Hardwar anymore, so I can’t check out that mod. Did they make it look prettier? I remember it looked pretty rough, even back in 1999. But mostly I just wanted more to actually DO in that city. There just wasn’t enough to do in Hardwar. Luckily the spiritual successor to Hardwar came out a few years later and had plenty to do in the city!!
(GTA 3).
I’d love to go back and re-visit Hardwar though. I found the game through ATFW, Brian Rubin (who was a frequent acquaintance over ICQ back in those days, we talked about Space Sims a lot), and the Space Sim community, as tiny as we were even in those days.
Squee
1803
The “Fan patches” (Done by a developer after the company went tits up, if I remember right) added some more to do. Namely, you could hire other mercenaries to assist you, give them orders, and make your own stores and factories in the city which AI pilots would buy goods from/trade with. Nothing new as far as missions were concerned, but it made the game world an even bigger sandbox to play with. On top of that it supports persistent world servers, so if you have a group of Hardwar buddies and get a server running, it behaves like a mini-MMO. Freelancer did that as well, but didn’t have the depth of Hardwar.
Actually, one of Hardwar’s original developers (from the long-defunct Software Refinery) came back some years later and created a couple of patches. The community’s got it from there.
Hardwar should be solid GoG material.
DTG
1805
Realms of Arcania 3 - Shadows Over Riva… is up.
I played the first 2 back in the day, bought this one, and never could get to it. Time to do it.
Nawid_A
1806
So the Ground Control games are listed as requiring 1.8 GHz processors on GOG and 800 MHz everywhere else. What’s the deal? I want to buy the promo deal of both from GOG but I have a 1.4 GHz processor.
I think GOG have it wrong. Here’s the back of the German version on MobyGames (other versions were illegible), which states “800 MHz” as part of the minimum requirements. The recommended ones are 1.5 GHz, so you should be okay.
Nawid_A
1808
That’s what I figured. Oh well the promo’s over but now I have to decide about the new promo? How’s Gothic 2? I mean sure it seems great for $7 but considering I can grab the PS3 version of Oblivion for not much more, is it worth it? Also considering The Nations Gold, Spellforce, Panzer Elite, and the Guild.
And I’m definitely buying Painkiller.
Awesome and you should buy it immediately (it is much better than Oblivion, which I also loved and spent 96 hours in).But before clicking new game and then whining about controls, PLEASE dedicate two minutes to changing to controls to your preference (WSAD + mouse is ideal).I don’t know if I would be able to handle another person complaining about controls without ever bothering to change them.
What about the difficulty curve? I heard the Gothic 2 expansion breaks the shit out of leveling or something like that.
Expansion makes it more difficult, but I finished it and do not remember being stuck anywhere.But I would probably suggest playing either as paladin or mercenary, mages have it hard in this game.
Gothic II is awesome. Better than Oblivion? A matter of taste - I’d say so, but not everyone would. However, Oblivion is something you should wait to play until you can snag it for PC and run it properly. Even if you can tolerate the unmodded game, the mods bring -so- much to the table. The Guild is also pretty nifty and I’d say well worth whatever discounted price GoG is charging. Nothing else quite like it (except for the sequel, which is apparently significantly more broken).
Talorc
1813
Just picked up Gothic II on the back of enjoying Risen so much :-) First game I have bought from GOG, I must say the web interface is very slick.
I’ve also grabbed The Guild Gold. I bought it at retail when it came out, but never had the expansion pack. I love buying games online, I am pretty sure I will never buy a game at retail ever again. Steam + Impulse handle new releases and GOG is the replacement for the $10 bargain bin :-)
I’ve actually come around on this. I wasn’t a fan of digital distribution at first because I liked having the physical CD and such. But actually, thanks to GoG, I’ve totally come around, and now only buy games on GoG, Impulse, Steam, GG and D2D. ^_^
Spect
1815
Exactly. This is what I do now too. GoG, Impulse, Steam, and D2D. I also have Gamefly for console rentals that I don’t plan to purchase, and Gametap for all the great stuff they have over there. I doubt I’ll ever see the inside of a B&M video game store again.
Agreed, especially since so many of them are now more console-focused and barely have any PC games to speak of. I’m so glad that PC gaming has found another way to thrive. ^_^
Well, I don’t go to retail stores (except Target, where I’m more going for groceries) anymore really, but I’d generally still rather buy a physical copy through Amazon or other online retailer than do digital distribution unless the digital version is much cheaper or has other benefits beyond the basic “download anytime, no disc check” model that all of the DD services I frequent use. GoG’s well out ahead in that because of the cheap prices, extras, and streamlined install for DOS games.
So I bought Gothic 2 this week, but I keep getting a corrupted download. I’ve tried using the GOG downloader and downloading directly through the browser; doesn’t make a difference. I’ve donwloaded it 4 different times now I think.
Any else experience this? I tried posting over at the GOG forums, but the only response I’ve received has been to try using a different internet connection, which doesn’t help a whole lot.
Nawid_A
1819
Had a similar issue with Painkiller Black. As it turned out there was like three downloads and I was corrupting them before all of them downloaded. Dunno if it’s the same case with Gothic II. I’m going to purchase Gothic II so I’ll see.
I also had a couple of corrupted downloads (Operation Flashpoint and Gothic 1, I think), but I’d downloaded them on an office system, copied them to a thumb drive, put them on my file server, and then installed over a network share, so I’m not exactly sure where the corruption crept in… They were fine after redownloading them, though.
What’s the SHA1sum on your setup_gothic_2_gold_edition.exe file? The one I have is 6331e934ea6dd49ae138d67340143e2c66ded1be, if you want to compare.
I have no idea what sH1sum is, but I’ll check it when I get home. I guess I can download to my work laptop and then copy it over the my external games harddrive when I get home and see if that makes a difference. Hadn’t occurred to me to try that.
