Quake Live

If you haven’t heard of it … Quake Live is, basically, Quake III Arena with (very) slightly improved graphics as a browser plugin, plus online stats, plus automatic matchmaking (so lower skill levels find servers where they’re not annihilated, too – yay). And the best part, it’s absolutely, totally, entirely free of charge!

Quake Live Screenie

The game is as great as it used to be, funny how id totally nailed the multiplayer shooter over 10 years ago already.

Considering the Quake Engine is open source already (and spawned great projects like World of Padman), it’s a somewhat natural step, but still a great display of appraciation from id Software.

Now, here’s the best bit: I have 5 beta invitations to give out. Comment here to get one of them (obviously your email address, which won’t be displayed, has to be correct). First come first get, the race is on

Oh, my nick is “haslo”, in case you wondered.

Update 2009-01-10 11:11: Yay, 4 new invites! Comment if you want one!

Well, the beta is public now. And they added some more games. So go ahead and knock yourself out with awesome old school gaming bliss!

Also on Joystiq.

GOG Header

Yay! I was watching Good Old Games for some time now, was always looking forward to it since I first saw it. Today, I got the beta access key, a reason to rejoyce and share

First off, it’s awesome because you find games you always wanted to play but never found time to, then it’s awesome because you find games that you never knew were good. Finally, there’s no DRM, and it’s cheap … I’ll let their advertisement speak for itself:

1. We’ve got games your 10-year-old won’t be better at.
2. So you’re cheap. It’s okay – we are, too. ($10 max, currently)
3. You buy it, you keep it. (No DRM!)
4. All games are Vista and XP compatible. (with compatibility hints)
5. Extend the experience with tons of cool and exclusive add-ons.
6. We’re bringing together classic games and a classy community.
7. It’s so easy, your gramma’s probably already playing.

Store Layout

The Welcome Mail

Admittedly, this is a bit of a teaser in another way too, because the beta is only open for those who signed up for it before September 8th, so I’m sorry, you’ll probably not get in. Yet.

The catalogue they have is already impressive by the way. Not only do you find Fallout (both, of course), Descent (all three) and Earthworm Jim, but also underestimated gems like Sacrifice that I’ll love to play again

Now let’s just hope the silly publisher paranoia dies down and they realize that “Help, they sell our games that we don’t sell at all otherwise, and that are pirated all over the web without DRM right now, it’s evil”  doesn’t really make sense.

Or what do you think?

Update 08-09-27 22:34: I played through the tutorial of Sacrifice meanwhile again – gee, that game is really good, even after all this time Sure, the controls are a tad dated, the configuration options could be slightly better, and the graphics show their age, but the game has charme! Something many current-day games sorely lack. And, the payment and download and installation process went entirely smooth, no problems whatsoever – a really good impression the site makes here, continuing in the “no DRM, no hassle” vein Something I gladly pay for.