A couple of interesting bits of news have emerged from GOG today, the first being the kickoff of the Bundleopolis sale, which for the next week will offer a variety of game bundles at up to 80 percent off. The first three bundles on the block are Bit.Trip.Street, the Academy of LucasArts, and Nightmare Avenue, and new deals will be rolled out every six hours.
Games in the bundles can also be picked up individually, although at a lesser discount: The titles in the Nightmare Avenue bundle, for instance, are 60 percent off when purchased separately, but going the bundle route, either by taking them all or putting five or more together in a “build-your-own” package, will increase the discount to 80 percent. GOG also teased a “dark secret, which will be revealed just before the city lights go out.” My guess? All the past bundles in the sale will be brought back for one big “everything's on sale” blowout over the final 24 hours. We'll see.
Sales are great, but even more exciting is the GOG debut of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines, one of the deepest and most unforgettable RPGs ever made. It's been available on Steam for awhile now, but the GOG release includes third-party fixes created by Werner “Wesp5” Spahl, the man behind the Unofficial Patches that have dramatically improved the game over the past decade-plus. GOG also includes a link to the latest full Unofficial Patch release, which on top of fixing bugs restores quite a bit of cut content to the game, at Patches Scrolls.
The only downside to the GOG release is that the only thing in the “included goodies” is the manual; the brilliant, period-perfect soundtrack is nowhere to be seen (or heard, I guess). Licensing issues likely account for some of that (Ministry built the theme song, for instance) but the original music is really good in its own right and it's a shame those tracks aren't included with the package.
Even so, it's great to see Bloodlines available from another site—the more, the merrier, after all. Alas, it's not currently part of the Bundleopolis sale, so you'll have to pony up $20 for it, although I'll go out on a limb here and say that you're not likely to find too many better ways to drop twenty bucks. As for the sale itself, the action is live now and will run until May 1.
