Roger that :P Windows 8 stinks!

The only thing that interests me about Win8 is the fact that it doesn't use Aero desktop, so apparently you don't get the problem with older Windows games that use directdraw and have these messed-up inverted colors.

Can anyone confirm if this is true or not?

There is an additional compatibility flag "8-16Bit Mitigation" in 8 that helps work around the messed up colours problem.
This reminds me of a post on Neowin a few days ago, one guy was crying how 8 sucks because 0 games work on it... turns up he didn't have any drivers for the GPU installed. How he managed to remove the basic built-in drivers is beyond me.

Doesn't matter. OP said it's either Win8 with GOG or Win8 without GOG. How on earth is that hard to understand?

Pick a game, and explain what happens. Will do my best to help.

Im so glad when i bought my new computer in December that it was a Win7 leftover special. At first i was disappointed that it come with Win8, but now i realize what true blessing it was that i got Win7.

Personally I haven't had any major issues with Windows 8 myself. I'd even go as far as claim it as the best Windows version released.

People love to complain about the lack of start menu, but personally I don't miss it all. It has never been funtioning as it should have been and using start menu has always been pretty ackward operation in any Windows version after you've installed more than 10 programs. Sure, the metro view has it quirks, but as such it functions way batter than start menu ever did, especially when you search or list programs.

And ofcourse there's room for improvement, I won't be denying that. For an example on any machine that doesn't have touch screen navigation needs some getting used to, but personally I got used to it pretty quickly.

He should uninstall Windows 8 and switch to Snow Leopard.

/facepalm

So, the "hate windows 8" crowd wants the OP to purchase $100 version of Windows 7 and try to install it. For some people it's not that easy to install a windows OS. And going from a Windows 8 OS, down to any other OS usually has a couple of other curveballs thrown in (ie locked bootloader)
I don't like Windows 8 any more than most, but having someone spend $100 just because you hate the metro interface is a little silly. There is always Classic Shell or start8 if you do not like the metro interface.
Besides most of the the programs from Windows 7 should work on Windows 8. I wish I could help, but I do not have any of those games or Windows 8.

A fine suggestion although personally I am very happy with Mountain Lion and looking forward to Mavericks. :D

Installing OSX on a perfectly fine computer? That's like the computing equivalent of infecting yourself with an STD on purpose.

It's "so hard to understand" because he didn't say it like that. You did. That's a difference, you know? What you read into his words is not necessarily what he meant nor what others read into them. (If you can interpret his words to your pleasing, why shouldn't others do the same?)

But probably that is moot anyways. Since the OP seems to have left this thread shortly after opening it. :-) At least he didn't reply to any of the suggestions.

Exactly this. As far as I can tell, downgrading from preloaded Win8 to Win7 is not always quite that straightforward, unless you know exactly what to do. In the ASUS ROG forums there are lots of those problem stories trying to downgrade from preloaded Win8.

And overall it just shouldn't be necessary. I _think_ Haegemonia Gold is now the first game I've tried which works on my Win7 installation, but flatly refuses to run on Win8 (I have a perfect setup to test the compatibility between Win7/Win8, as I have both installed side-by-side on the same PC).

Since it apparently "works" (but asks for CD-key) if you skip the GOG (wrapper) installation part, it suggests that GOG just has to change something in their wrapper. Or in the worst case, they are using some unofficial crack for the game which has some odd issue with Win8, in which case it might not be so simple.

I've seen some minor quirks in some other games, like in GTA 3 (Steam version) I have the odd "invisible menus" bug which does not appear for me in Win7. But there is a simple workaround for that (pressing "Print Screen" button repeatedly brings the menus opaque for some reason, LOL! I just came up with this workaround accidentally.), and I also saw on Steam forums someone reporting the same problem also on Windows 7. So it might not be specifically a Win8 issue anyway, even though I only see it there.