I actually always meant to grab this one on console but never did. I thought it looked quite fun too. I had a really good time with The Godfather (the first more than the second), another gangster-movie inspired GTA clone with some very fun and interesting mechanics (extorting shopkeepers into "rackets" with various levels of *ahem* intimidation was a great touch).

It's a real pity. I really enjoyed the first hours of it but then....

I liked what i played of that game. Granted it was a GTA clone of some sort but a good one. And i only played the german version of it (the international one is banned in Germany -.-). But it had real problems working with OS newer than XP iirc....

There's a Windows 8 app for it? I didn't know that but i barely use the Modern UI anyway.
But good to hear that is working again for you :).

I always wanted to play Godfather but currently not legally available anywhere...

No kidding! Did someone end up pulling the license from the makers of the game? No old console copies floating around in game / thrift shops? Will give you an excuse to dust off an old console LOL ;)

Maybe i stretched it a bit far...I actually meant digital availability...sorry ;)

I actually haven't thought in that direction as i mostly play on pc. I have a PS3 collecting dust. Maybe i should look in that direction. Thank you :).

But then...like a popped balloon, flying crazily around the room, making sounds like a banquet hall full of chronic flatulence all the while, until the air's all gone and you end up with a shriveled piece of garbage.

Think I got to play maybe 10 minutes of it on an old XP setup. Didn't have the right system requirements at the time to run it properly.
It would run on this, except for that whole compatibility being a hit and miss disaster since XP thing.
Thanks, Microsoft, you greedy, short-sighted, ultimately worthless fucks. =)

Yes, there is. I didn't know it had one either until the first Silverlight problem.
I use the whole shoehorned W8 touch tile quasi-mobile abortion about zero percent of the time usually.

Additional - found this.
Not sure if Gamestop does international orders, but they say they have a copy at least.

That pretty much described it ;).
I don't know either but we also have Gamestop in Germany. Amazon.de want 90€ for a used copy of it. (Hey Amazon - Willst du mich verarschen? - are you kidding me?)
But as i stated here i only meant digital availability...Apparently there are PC versions available on Ebay and Amazon in Germany (for less than 90€)

EA put it out, so it's probably a mess of licensing and/or other legal problems that keep it from going out digitally.
Figured I'd look around, see if there was a PS 3 copy since you could at least play it without problems on the console, avoid the compatibility problems of a PC version.

Ha! Got Gothic to work finally!

Owrite, wot's all dis den?!

Discussions about the shittiness of the Windows OS? Well to be fair, it has a somewhat reliable kernel ever since 2000.

Anyways M$ days are numbered, unless they manage to reinvent themselves the way apple did.

PFFFFT MWA HA HA HA HAA HAA!

PS: Crow you owe me a review.

Glad to hear it. =) Looking forward to giving that one a try myself.

Nice, I hope you don't run in any more problems.

But, just in case, what sort of rig do you have?

I say that because if it has enough horsepower you could try to set up a virtual XP machine.

Yeah. You're probably right. I think i'll take a look into the local gamestops first and then on Amazon UK maybe..but it's not really on my high-priority list right now. I think my PS3 will collect some more dust ;).

I found a forum entry here on GOG (but via Google) that described that various processes might prevent Gothic from starting properly. The game is "waiting for them". So the way to go is to launch the game, and while the exe lurks in the background, use Task manager to kill processes until the "blocking one" is found. I'm not sure, but I think in my case one of the Logitech drivers may be the problem.

Of course it wasn't that easy, after killing a number of processes I saw Gothic launch just to crash instantly with an "Access Violation". So I googled this one and found an unofficial patch called "System Pack", that not only is supposed to fixed problems like that, but also has numerous other fixes, i.e. more widescreen resolutions with fixed FOV. Installed that one et voilá!

Played until I reached The Old Camp (or whatever it's called in English), no problems so far except for some polygon flickering in dialogues - a little annoying, but doesn't always happen, and even when, only every few seconds.

The reason I wanted to install Gothic is that I want to take a serious take on The Witcher 2. Sound strange? ;-)
Yeah, well my kids love to watch me play RPGs. They always want to play games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Two Worlds (1+2), Divinity 2... But Witcher 2 is too "dangerous". I don't want to combine gaming with sex education... I let them watch me play the first Witcher on my second play-through (after I had read the books), because I knew where the... interesting scenes were and I would avoid them until I was alone.
It's not that I'm prude or anything. But I don't want to have my kids see Geralt and Triss getting it on and a) have to explain what the hell they are doing (kind of takes the enjoyment out of the scenes) and b) have them chit-chat about it school and kindergarten. I mean the time when people lived in community (long-) houses and among cattle and kids learned about the wonders and methods of procreations pretty early are long past...

So Gothic for the kids and Witcher 2 for me. Usually I wouldn't play two big RPGs in parallel, but I've beaten Gothic twice already (many years ago). So I don't need that much concentration on the story. Also, for the first time, the kids will be able to understand what the people in the game are talking about - I'm thrilled to see how that works out.

Totally understandable. There are plenty of games, but that high priority list is much, much smaller.
That doesn't sound strange. You're looking out for your kids, rather than setting them down in front of M-rated titles and letting them have at it unsupervised.