Painkiller, Gothic, The Guild collections / PC – $10 or less

A while back, an Austrian game publisher decided that it would be an excellent idea to take some of their long-running, successful titles and gather up the entire series into one product — like, say, the box set of Godfather I, II, and III. As a result, JoWood Productions brought us ‘Painkiller: Universe’, ‘Gothic: Universe’, ‘Spellforce: Universe’, and ‘Guild: Universe’, each of which gathered two or more iterations of their respective titles into one package.

We applaud this thinking, and wish there was more like it.

Skip forward to today, and DealNews brings word that GamersGate is selling all of those titles for half retail. $9.99 for Painkiller: Universe, and $14.95 for the rest!

Which sounded like an excellent deal, until I found out that two of these titles are available for less elsewhere.

Gothic: The Universe is available at Amazon for $9.45. The Guild: Universe is $9.05 at Mago.

I’m watching you, DealNews.

“That puts each at lowest-we-could-find prices,” you say.

Let me Google that for you, bargain monkey.

So. What’s in these boxes?

Gothic Universe is a compilation of Gothic, Gothic II, Gothic II: Night of the Raven, and Gothic 3. Gothic 3 didn’t sit well with anybody, but the other three are worth playing. Gothic is a traditional fantasy RPG with a deep story in a complex and believable world (81, 79, and 63 for the respective titles at Metacritic.)

Painkiller Universe has Painkiller, Painkiller: Battle Out of Hell, and Painkiller: Overdose. The first and the third were well-reviewed — 81, 65, and 75 at Metacritic, respectively. Painkiller is a first-person demon shooter with a very old-school “kill everything that moves” design and solid AI. “Superbly crafted chaos,” said Computer Games Magazine.

The Guild Universe is a compilation that includes Europa 1400: The Guild, The Guild 2, and their two respective expansions. Europa 1400 got an 82 from Metacritic. The Guild 2 received a sorry 61, probably because of the intense micromanagement. Of the three different ‘Universes,’ the Guild has perhaps the most innovative gameplay. CheatCode said this when they reviewed the series:

Mixing elements of life simulation, role-playing, medieval time, civilization building, and historic real-time strategy, the Guild series has offered a deep, open-ended play experience over the years since it first came out in 2002.

Check ‘em out.