There are some awesome games in this promo. I decided to skip MOO 3, since the reviews are bad and the price would be the same even with the additional 20% savings.

I had all of these except for Total Annihilation: Kingdoms and Master of Orion 3, which I purchased for their soundtracks alone.

It's one of the most notoriously, infamously awful games ever made. The comments about it here aren't surprising at all.

I've never player MOO3, but these comments almost make me want to buy it out of morbid curiosity.

Yeah, pretty good deal. MOM, MOO 1&2 and TA are rock solid.

TAK seems decent too.

I could never get into MOO 3 however (I tried to like it), but given that the rest of the deal is golden, can't complain too much. Maybe with all the patches and mods, its playable now...

Anyone who doesn't have Total Annihilation and doesn't buy it now is missing out on one of the best games ever made, and one which is still great fun today.

Is TA:K is as good as TA?

This is an argument against buying more games in general, not just strategy games. It's a good and interesting one, though.

I tend to like to have two settings for the game types I like -- fantasy and futuristic. Sometimes I also like "more or less" historical takes on a genre. So I enjoyed Age of Empires but also Total Annihilation, and would be easily tempted to buy the other if I had only one of them. And I was easily tempted by Company of Heroes, which had a more closely historical flair to it than did Age of Empires.

I can still be inspired to buy new games, though, no matter how good the games I've already got are. That is especially the case when multiplayer capability comes into the picture. The ability to play against (and with) a vast community is very exciting and key to my experiences of playing RTS's and FPS's, as well as MMORPG's. In fact I am leery of buying any games in certain genres, even ones that might be great, if there is a good chance there will be no one to play them against.

If you are not satisfied with the eventually predictable AI in your games, then you can't, after all, test your wits against a non-existent community of players. So as older games lose their player baser, I have to find new games.

One of the bigger questions for me is whether I have time to get the comfort and in-depth understanding I will need to enjoy a new game. There is only so much time in life, and the older you get, the less you want to squander it. I love the new, but the question for me isn't so much whether to get a new game as whether to do something besides play a game. A really good game can easily take many weeks out of my life. Would I want it to?

Well, in a way, but for me it feels different with strategy games in particular. For you, multiplayer is the reason to get new games. I don't play much multiplayer, because I suck at most games (which is funny, since I've been playing games for more than 20 years - one would think that I'd get better at some point), so that isn't the big thing for me. For me it's mostly about story.

When it comes to games that are really heavy on story but light on gameplay, like adventure games and certain RPGs, I don't feel like I've gotten to a point where I have enough. If I have for instance Gabriel Knight and I've played through it already, there isn't as much to gain from playing through it again - the story and characters will be the same. So then I can get Sam&Max and play it instead to get a new story, and that feels like a good purchase to me.

Strategy games are a different matter to me. They usually have a story too, and sometimes it's compelling, but the main draw of those games is the gameplay. Once I've played through the single player campaign of Starcraft I can still play skirmishes or even play the campaign again, because I care more about the gameplay than the story. Getting Warcraft 2 would just give me a similar experience, and not add as much as adding another adventure to my pile of adventure games would.

But I do agree that whatever the genre, we do have less and less time to spend playing games as we grow older. Which is unfortunate, since I can finally afford to buy the games I want now, unlike when I were a child. Especially now with the cheap games on GOG and the frequent promos, the amount of games I can comfortably buy has far exceeded what I actually have time to play.

Just picked up Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, since I already own (through GoG) the other games on the list. I have it on the original CD ROM, too, but don't want to mess about trying to configure it properly when GoG has done the work for me (and for a pittance at that).

I'm 39 years old, and sympathize with the other older members here who lament how one's remaining time grows more valuable and scarce with the progression of age. But think of it: if retirement's on your horizon, then what better way to spend it than reviewing your entire GoG (and Steam for good measure) catalog and keeping senility at bay by exercising your brain on some of the more difficult puzzles?

I don't have any of these, but I really don't want MOO3, due to its look and the obvious bashing in the reviews of the game. I wish they would have an offer where you can get 50% off if you buy over 50% of the titles.

Again, that's a no. It's not bad, per se, just not all that good. Get it if you've played the original to death and are curious, but if you've never played the original game, make sure you at least get that one. You won't miss much by passing on Kingdoms.

I agree. As much goodwill as GoG buys with the whole no-DRM thing, this practice really leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Every time I see one of these offers in my inbox that has prices listed as "from $x.xx", I basically ignore it on principle and delete the email. It should just list the individual prices, along with a "or buy them all for $x.xx, a YY% savings!".

I think that GOG offers are both honest and interesting. It is always - buy single items 30% cheaper or all of them 50% cheaper. It's a simple deal.