xm's randomity on Type-Moon and other weirdness

No, this is not about The Greatest tv Show In The World(tm)*. Rather, I....I don't know if it's just me, but I'm sensing a lot of negative vibes on BL right now. Because of this, I want to counter this negative vibe the only way I know how, with something positive.

Recently, I discovered a website called Good Old Games. Yes, I know, I'm four years late. If you don't know, GOG sells old PC games as DRM-free downloads (no CDs in the drive required!) for bargain prices. Much of their catalog is games from developers and publishers who have gone out of business, but whose licenses have been rescued by GOG. I used to play the demo builds of a lot of PC games back in the day, but couldn't buy their retail versions, either for lack of money, or lack of hard drive space. (My first ever PC had a 1 GB hard drive. This is not a typo.)

I checked out their catalog and HOLY FUCKING SHIT ON A SHARPENED HICKORY STICK! Interstate 76! Panzer General 2! System Shock 2! Theme Hospital! Simcity 2000! Oh, and also, some RPG called Baldur's Gate is on there too. All these great games I either demoed or heard of are on there, and most of them only cost between 5 to 10 US dollars! There's even some games on there that are available for free, like Ultima 4. And so for my first purchase, I got Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I played the demo of it and HOMM 2 way back when they were new, and loved them.

Now, HOMM 3, or as I prefer, "THE GREATEST TURN-BASED STRATEGY GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED IN MY LIFE!" If you don't know, it's a spinoff of the Might and Magic series, where you take a hero, gather an army of fantasy creatures, and raid castles. There's RPG elements, a lot of strategic depth, great background music (even in 1999, MIDI had sure made a lot of strides in quality), and numerous campaigns and scenarios to play. The GOG version includes the two expansions for the game, and aside from being upscaled to fit widescreen monitors, looks exactly the same as before. This means my rapidly aging tower can play it with no slowdowns to speak of.

I won't gush too much more, but one thing I lurve about HOMM 3 is even if you lose a battle, you may not necessarily lose the scenario. Even other strategy games I love, like Starcraft, do this. Lose one skirmish, and suddenly, the war effort is lost, your children are enslaved, your superiors executed, all just because you didn't move enough tanks to the right place at the right time. Fortunately, you don't game over that easily in HOMM 3. For example, one time, I sent an army to fight an advancing enemy hero and army. Unfortunately, I lost that battle. However, I inflicted enough casualties that by the next turn, the enemy hero retreated. He would've stood no chance against my castle garrison with reduced strength like that. In short, you can re-enact 300 as a legitimate tactic if you want to.

So short version, if you like fantastic games, don't have 60 bucks to blow on modern game discs, and don't have a hyper fast rig, look up GOG. And even if you don't like the HOMM games, there's hundred of others to sink your teeth into. I know I'll be buying more from there in the future!

*Disclaimer: I have never seen/read anything pertaining to Game Of Thrones. I'm just repeating what I've heard elsewhere right now.