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Being able to play any of my GOG games WITHOUT an internet connection is a HUGE reason why I love GOG and I only "tolerate" STEAM for a few games. I travel a lot for work, so when I get stuck at some work site, 40 miles from the nearest town, and then have to wait 2 days for some inspector to show up and sign-off on our work, those 2 days go a LOT faster when I have some GOG games on my laptop to keep me busy. My STEAM games require that I log-into STEAM ….. NOT gonna happen when I am 40 miles from the nearest internet connection. GOG beats STEAM once again!
And speaking of STEAM's network, every time you play any game on STEAM, they record WHAT you are playing, WHEN you are playing, and HOW LONG you are playing, and every thing you DO in the game. Oh, but people want those "achievements" ….yeah, sometimes, but with GOG I have the choice to play through GOG GALAXY and keep track of all those stats and achievements (and more), but I ALSO have the choice to play OFFLINE, so that there is no permanent record that shows I played INDIANA JONES for 200 hours that year, and my wife wants to know WHY I never have time to paint the back desk, and my boss wants to know WHY I won't work more overtime, and OMG look at all the hours this guy wasted on video games! I like that I can keep my gaming time PRIVATE on GOG, by just playing OFFLINE, and NOBODY is keeping track of ANYTHING I do. SO NOBODY can use it against me later!
ALSO with GOG, you often get TONS of EXTRA FEATURES and supplements that you can NOT get on STEAM. GOG often includes the game's complete soundtrack as Mp3 or FLAC or BOTH; you often get artbooks, early concept art images; interviews with creators; additional in-game equipment or perks; PDF versions for manuals and reference guides, and Strategy Guides —- and TONS of stuff you usually do NOT get when you buy the EXACT SAME game through STEAM.
ALSO with GOG, you get TONS of free games, and some high-priced premium games are handed out for FREE several times each year for various promotions. I've got several $40 games that I NEVER would have purchased, but since they showed up on a FREE promotional give-away, I decided I'd give them a try.
I have tons of games on GOG, and only about 7 on STEAM, because the ONLY reason to buy from STEAM is if that particular game is NOT available on GOG.
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Here's a few examples of issues you can expect:
– Star Wars Jedi Outcast (I do not recommend the game itself, by the way!) works on Windows 10 but requires a few simple changes in a config file for decent visuals. This is absurd since it is so easy for GOG to include these changes with the installation!
– Dungeon Keeper runs in DOSBox (GOG supplied and configured) but the CPU core speed is set too low, so I increased it.
– Dungeon Keeper 2 runs at a lower resolution with a GOG supplied fix. Being unsatisfied with this, I ran the original game executable using compatibility settings and found that the GOG supplied fix was unnecessary! I managed to get DK2 to run at 1080p, but the camera was too zoomed in (the zoom limit is hard-coded apparently). Looking around on the Internet, there appears to be a fix for the zoom but I haven't tried it.
– Titles such as Quake, Quake 2 and Doom will require third party enthusiast-made software to play (i.e. Doomsday engine for Doom – it's great and free!).
– Blood 2 does not run at all on Windows 10 and I can't find a fix for it.
Needless to say, these issues are totally unacceptable for a site that, as its name implies, specialises in old games (GOG is short for Good Old Games). Put simply, GOG.com is a missed opportunity to innovate with old games, and you don't know what you're buying will work well or work at all.
One more piece of advice: ALWAYS check a few pages of negative reviews out when deciding whether to buy a game (or anything, actually). Certain games will not be as good as you remember as a kid and, as I've mentioned, there could be various technical issues with a game.
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