I am currently without a gaming rig! First time I have not been gaming on the reg, or at least semi reg since about 1996! First time I have been without a gaming PC since 2000! Long story short, I have moved to a new country to be with my lovely g/f.
In fact, so lovely is she that she has bought a new laptop. It has some sort of onboard graphics, and I was not expecting much. To my surprise it runs Bastion really really well, I also tried Defcon and that worked a treat. I'm gonna install Half life 2 to see how that goes...
So, good people of the internet, please recommend me some good games so I can fly the flag! I'm talking great indi games or classics from yester year. Torchlight and System Shock 2 spring to mind, both of which I own.
My copy&paste list of suggestions for whenever a topic like this pops up. Hope you'll see something you'll like.
Well if you're into everything, guess I'll just recommend my personal favourites from the gog site.
First of all, I consider this series pretty much mandatory for any rpg fan: Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2. In my mind Biowares finest work to date and the pinnacle of what an rpg should strive to be. Solid narrative, great characters, surprisingly vibrant 2D artwork even today, entertaining tactical combat, absolutely massive open world... I seriously can't think of any real major flaws in the series. It's absolutely brilliant. And then when you consider there are mods out there which combine BG1 and 2 into one cohesive game as well as improve and tweak the experience towards perfection, then really you just can't get any better. Though other rpg try such as...
Planescape: Torment. You might've heard of this game and there's good reason for that. Bluntly put this game has by far the best fantasy story and one of the most unique styles and setting in any game, regardless of genre, ever. It's not disputable, it's fact. In terms of story, setting and character Planescape: Torment is one of the most in-depth and provocative games ever made. If only the combat and the basic gameplay mechanics were more solid it'd probably be my number 1 pick for rpg ever. But as it is it comes a close second, which considering how many rpg I've played, is still damned impressive methinks.
Stepping a bit away from pure rpg we've got the absolutely spectacular Heroes of Might and Magic 3. It's a hard game to describe to someone that might not be familiar with this sort of game, so I'll just say it's brilliant and that everything this game does, it does exceptionally well. This is another of those 'I can't think of any real flaws' sort of games, so much so that despite being well over ten years old, I've introduced this game to kids who hadn't even been born when it came out and seen them enjoy it! Now that's the sign of a solid, long lasting experience!
If you wanna give the old Point & Click classic PC adventure games a try, my personal favourite is The Longest Journey. Despite all the gushy mushy love I just gave to Planescape above, this is the game which in terms of story and character really stole my heart. Planescape is deeper, more in-depth and covers a number of more touchy subject but The Longest Journey... well, it's got soul. The main protagonist is my favourite of any game and her journey throughout the games length is enthralling. It's like a really, really nice book for me that I like to re-read every once and awhile for that fuzzy warm feeling of nostalgic happiness. Even nostalgia wont blind me to the shit puzzles and gameplay, but screw that, use a walkthrough if you have to. The story is worth it in my mind!
And as a final suggestion for something more actiony if that's you're thing: Freespace 2. The space sim that was so good it killed the genre... or at least I like to think so. Simply put the story is solid but the gameplay so awesomely intense that you'll be suffering from shellshock and probably need to have your fingers pried from the joystick (I bought a force-feedback joystick exclusively for this game. So worth it!) with a pair of pliers when it's done. Not only that, but of all the games I just listed, this is probably the easiest to get into since a couple of years ago the developers released the games source code online, and as a result the community has been improving the engine ever since to such an extent that it still looks fantastic today. This game is so good at what it does it's become an entire genre unto itself, with so many mods and even total conversion that buying this game is like buying the last ten years worth of amazing space sims all in one. I kid you not!
And there you go! Between those five games (Technically 6 since there's 2 BG games!) that's enough PC gaming goodness to keep a normal human occupied for... hell, well over a year especially if they take the time to play the games fully and explore the communities which have sprung up around each game.
I don't know what operating system you have but you can figure out what kind of guts your lap top has, should tell you. Once you post what your specs are, its pretty easy to then figure out which games it can handle and ones that can't.
So, good people of the internet, please recommend me some good games so I can fly the flag! I'm talking great indi games or classics from yester year. Torchlight and System Shock 2 spring to mind, both of which I own.
First, anyone with a Mysterious Cities of Gold avatar obviously has great taste.
Do you want games from the late 90s/early 2000s, or some more recent as well?
If we go for oldies, GOG indeed is a good place to search. As for some recommandations, apart from The Madman's great picks, I would mention in the 90s/early 2000s:
- Max Payne 1/2
- Deus Ex
- Thief 1/2
- Morrowind
- KOTOR
- some version of Civilization
- some version of SimCity
- Starcraft
- Warcraft 2/3
- Avernum series
- Age of Empires 1/2
- Dungeon Keeper 1/2
- Rome Total War
For more recent games (after 2005 basically), most recommandations would be indies, since they aren't as resources-hungry:
- FTL
- Papers Please
- Europa Universalis 3 (Hearts of Iron 3, Crusader Kings 2 and EU4 requiring probably too much)
- Amnesia (better check with a "Can you run it?" kind of site to be sure, though)
- Portal (should probably work, but better check as well)
Portal 2 though might be too much for your rig...
I expect you already know and have some, or even many, of these.
I had been wanting to build a Windows 98 rig for a while with all the spare parts I have lying around... But three things stop me...
1. Finding enough WORKING spare parts to match components
2. All of my old CD-ROM games have disappeared over the years so I can't install them anyway
3. DOSBOX basically does the whole thing for me on my current computer... Then again, most of the games I owned were pre '95~ish...
That being said, most of the games listed here are available on gog and will run on any modern computer anyway... So I really don't see the point anymore...
Still, would be great to do it for nostalgia reasons...
If only my 486DX2 still worked....
I have a friend that can run Dragon Age: Origins on his laptop, frequently played it during free periods at his school. It also on sale on Steam for £4.99 for the Ultimate Edition, which is around 80 hours of content, so there is that.
South Park: The Stick of Truth is hilarious, but I'm not actually sure how well this one runs on older systems. There's nothing visually spectacular about it, but who knows what's going on under the hood? I'd give it a shot though, it's a great game.
The game uses the ages old Dungeon Siege engine for something it was never really intended for, and while it works perfectly well, it's still a little CPU heavy. I personally ran it on my old workhorse laptop (a 4Gb RAM, AMD Turion II P520, AMD HD 5470 rig, it's just getting to the point where I'm thinking about a replacement) without a hitch, but I have seen some pretty big CPU usage spikes here and there.
Also, we should really need to see some actual specs. Most people are not even aware of this, but practically all games made after 2010 require shader model 3, which is incredibly basic but a lot of integrated cards simply don't have it (Intel chipsets are especially notorious in this regard). That fact alone can torpedo a whole bunch of recommendations.
Torchlight 2 is currently on sale on Steam (75% off), good for quite a few hours of hack 'n slash fun as long as you don't care about a deep storyline and just like smashing zombies, skeletons, demons and whatnot by the hundreds. Think Diablo 2+, made by mostly the same people as well.
It's also not what you'd call demanding on your PC (1.4GHz or faster processor, 1GB System RAM, DirectX compatible 3D graphics card with at least 256MB of addressable memory) and the graphics style looks pretty good despite all that although it won't blow you away.
There are also tons of mods for it that add new classes and more gameplay, which is nice.
A summer or two ago, I got fairly intrigued by the OG PC shooters. I went through the first 2 Doom games and found that if you play on a hard difficulty, I did Ultra-Violence, the game is actually very absorbing. I had never played Doom past the Shareware version before and with a good port program, I used zdoom/gzdoom and found the whole game really fun despite being so dated. I also downloaded a few mods, Brutal Doom which is always fun but a bit to hard to play through with, and a fairly well done HD Remake, which basically just replaced the sprites with 3D models, it was amusing and helped me learn the maps for doom in a more normal control scheme but it definitely shows why Doom 3 didn't keep the same designs, the sprites look comical when rendered in 3D.
Additionally, after spending a few weeks on Doom I bought the old 3D Realms FPS games on Steam and had fun trying to get the various achievements for Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D. These didn't hold up as well as Doom since they weren't using ports that fixed the free-look but it was still very fun.
Also, if you have never played it before, get the original StarCraft. If you don't play RTS games, it might seem daunting but the single player campaign is fairly instructive, I learned RTS games from original StarCraft but I still don't stand a chance at Multiplayer but I got pretty good at RTS single-player through StarCraft. To paint myself as a noob, I cannot beat the original StarCraft, it lacks difficulty settings and I have only ever beaten the first 2 of 6 ten Mission campaigns, but luckily the game has some cheats that can give you an advantage or the usual god modes that let you play through the harder missions without frustration. I still maintain that the final few levels of the last campaign in Starcraft cannot be beaten with traditional means, I am sure there is a strict budget you could follow to fight off the invaders but it is just insane if you play it the way I do. Tangent aside, Starcraft is a great game, has a very good storyline that is just as enticing in the sequel. If you can make the sequel run on lower settings it is a lot more forgiving in single player but it isn't technically complete yet, since the final campaign isn't released.
Finally, if you are up to a bit of a learning curve, Fallout 1 and 2 are pretty fun, although I bought them off steam and that requires a fairly large amount of work to get them to run on modern PCs, I hear that Good Old Games sells them in much better states so check them out there first.
These 3 games are very low spec for a pc, and incredibly fun. Personally I didn't like Homeworld 2 as much as the first 2, but it was still a serviceable game.
Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
Fun games that are low spec from many moons ago. And hey, running around as a Jedi badass is always entertaining. xD
Also, if you have never played it before, get the original StarCraft. If you don't play RTS games, it might seem daunting but the single player campaign is fairly instructive, I learned RTS games from original StarCraft but I still don't stand a chance at Multiplayer but I got pretty good at RTS single-player through StarCraft. To paint myself as a noob, I cannot beat the original StarCraft, it lacks difficulty settings and I have only ever beaten the first 2 of 6 ten Mission campaigns, but luckily the game has some cheats that can give you an advantage or the usual god modes that let you play through the harder missions without frustration.
With Starcraft, be also aware that the difficulty goes up significantly (if not insanely) with the Brood War expansion. Having played several times through the original, I've no problem beating it. The expansion is a whole another matter, and I never beat the last mission of 2nd campaign, and still have the last 2/3 missions of last campaign to beat - not sure if I'll try it one day...
About Age of Empires 2, there's also an interesting expansion released with the HD version on Steam. I'm replaying the whole game, and doesn't seem to be far worse than when I played it 15 years ago, but am curious to see how difficult the new campaigns will be.
Mcoffey said:
To The Moon is a beautiful game that will probably make you cry.
Fully agree. It's probably worse than *that scene* in Children of Men, where half the theatre got their handkerchiefs out.
For some time, my only comment on To the Moon was "fuck that game" - and in this context, it was high praise.
Aside from the obvious GOG recommendations (seriously, you can't go wrong with GOG), Doom kinda runs on anything and last time I checked, Brutal Doom is quite awesome indeed. Also the older id Software games run on anything too, except Doom 3 and onwards, belive me, it doesn't get along with old laptops.
Also older Blizzard's games like StarCraft runs in any toaster, Age of Empires 2 is a good one too.
Probably Hearthstone can run in older PC's and even if it barely runs, it's not that intensive to demand higher fidelity or higher framerates.
Final Fantasy VII on Steam is kinda perfect for old or weak laptops too.
Dungeons of Dredmor and The Binding of Isaac are quite awesome for older PCs too, though if you don't mind waiting for the Rebirth edition of TBoI, I'd get that instead of the regular version, it doesn't use Flash anymore, so that makes it better by default.
Besides the other games previously listed, I would add Rise of Nations and XCom:Enemy Unknown to the list as well as Terraria. I use my laptop's onboard card for them and it runs well. You might want to try out Unholy heights for when you just want to kill an hour during lunch or waiting for someone/something. That one is a bit niche in its appeal though.
As some have said, if you gave more details on your laptops' specs that would help but I think you have a pretty good list right now.
Finally, if you are up to a bit of a learning curve, Fallout 1 and 2 are pretty fun, although I bought them off steam and that requires a fairly large amount of work to get them to run on modern PCs, I hear that Good Old Games sells them in much better states so check them out there first.
Although if you go to the forum there, there's a thread with 4-5 patches that solve all of your problems. Well, I don't know about compatibility, but...
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
publisher had them removed.