Video Games for Crappy PCs

[Mr_Powers]

Original Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament are always fun.

Also if space is the main issue then a ridiculous game to try is .kkrieger-beta it is only 96kb and has very good graphics. It will only keep you busy for about 15 min, and its hardware demands are rather high (the need to be to compensate for the tinny file size), but if you can, it is worth the download (its freeware) just to see how good a 96kb game can be.

 

[btfx]

Thanks guys! This list should keep me entertained for a while.

 

[Optimystic]

One word: Emulation
Another word: MUGEN

Have fun!

 

[Squarewave]

try www.gog.com they sell older games with no drm of any kind for 5-10$ each, outside of some of the newer stuff they have most should work on your system. Most of the games are 6+ years old, modded and tweaked to work on xp and vista, and striped of drm

 

[Da_Schwartz]

I kinda dug Vampire: the masquerade. Try your luck at "alice" as well.

Oh and whats yoru definiton of a "cheap laptop". i mean nowadys theres no need to buy some 6++ grand gaming rig. You can run new games at max setting on a 11-12hunderd dollar machine, no sweat. a little cheaper if you build your own or are just a little savy when you buy it. My pc was about 12 and im runnign anythign i want on it so far. And im running a quad @2.5 and 4 gigs of ram. and dropped a geforce 8800GT OC @512mb in it, which may even be slight overkill. gaming rigs are a huge waste of money. unless you buy into all that tech geekiness. Then i fully understand.. just gotta have it. Still better off with a new cheaper machine every couple years then some monster rig.

 

[Marv21]

You always have...Starcraft!

 

[Incompl te]

Starcraft is an option

 

[bkd69]

Stuff from the budget bin at Target:

Age of Sail II: Privateer's Bounty
It sounds and looks like a cheesy pirate themed 'me too' title, but it's really a decent age of sail sim in the vein of Wooden Ships and Iron Men

Dark Star One
Freelancer
both of these are Elite/RPG/adventure hybrids that date from ca. 2000 that should be fine on a machine of your vintage

Age of Empires

stuff from the intarwebz:

Command and Conquer
C&C Red Alert
both available for free download now, liberated by the publisher

Alleigance
free online multiplayer space shooter/sim, liberated by Microsoft

King of Dragon Pass
unfree tribal management sim set in Glorantha

MAME
but only if you dump ROMs from arcade boards you already own, because piracy is bad, emkay?

hard(?) to find:
(all older things in my library that I can remember off the top of my head)

Fable, Fable II
Alice
Thief
Mechwarrior
Descent Freespace
Blade Runner
Interstate '76/'82

 

[WinterSoldier]

Tremulous

XD

 

[Good morning blues]

My recommendations are American McGee's Alice and the Longest Journey, provided that you can find a copy of either of them.

The latter, at least, is available on Steam.

You can find a great deal of free games that don't have especially high requirements on independent games websites such as IndieGames [http://www.indiegames.com/blog/] and the Adventure Game Studio database [http://www.bigbluecup.com/games.php]. Definitely check out these sorts of sites.

For pay games, GOG [http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/] is going to be your best resource. Check the system requirements, though, because some of these games are relatively recent.

You said that Thief 1 isn't working. This is probably because you're trying to run it on a dual-core computer, or maybe it's just not agreeing with your XP or Vista install. Check this [http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75031] FAQ, and you will probably find a solution to your problem.

As for specific games, everybody's listed all of the ones I would suggest, except for these:

Half-Life - still one of the greatest shooters ever made. Also Opposing Force and Blue Shift, plus the mountains of fantastic-quality Half-Life mods - single- or multiplayer.

Giants: Citizen Kabuto - a seriously underrated action game that's really difficult to describe. It's available from Gog.com.

System Shock 2 - a great, creepy sci-fi action/horror/RPG thing. Bioshock is just a heavily simplified and thematically transplanted version of System Shock 2.

I'm also going to get around to the Baldur's Gate series and Planescape: Torment sometime before I die, dammit. From what I hear, you should, too. (There is a mod out there that lets you play Baldur's Gate 1 in the Baldur's Gate 2 engine, which means that you get to play with all of the improvements of BG2 in the first. You need both games to do this, though.)

 

[Yog Sothoth]

Dues Ex is a great game despite the low system requirements... i'll also throw out X-COM: UFO Defense aka Enemy Unknown in Europe...

 

[Rolling Thunder]

Mechcommander 1, 2 and Gold, all of which can be downloaded for free at www.mechcommander.org

Giant robots- what's not to like?

Other than that, may I reccomend any of the earlier, non DRM command and conquer series games, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Fallout 1 and 2, Rome: Total War and it's expansions...

 

[DirkGently]

Anything made by Blizzard. Really old games like Baldurs Gate, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and the old Fallout games. Also Dwarf Fortress. In fact, fuck everything else and play Dwarf Fortress.

 

[Peach_hat]

Dues Ex or Total Annihilation

 

[Uberjoe19]

Freecell, Minesweeper, and Solitaire are your best bets.

 

[SimuLord]

Try Morrowind for starters, and I'd also recommend older classics like Patrician 3, Capitalism 2, Tropico, Railroad Tycoon 2, and various and sundry bits of abandonware from the 1990s.

 

[Mikaze]

Try Valve games, they scale down very well (I played l4d with very minimal lag on a 1.7GHz proc, 1Gb RAM and a 64Mb GPU) or if that's beyond your PC (really shouldn't be) you alwasy have pre-WoW Blizzard games.

Try Morrowind for starters, and I'd also recommend older classics like Patrician 3, Capitalism 2, Tropico, Railroad Tycoon 2, and various and sundry bits of abandonware from the 1990s.

Ah Morrowind, a game where your hair is actually more deadly than your sword.

 

[Novajam]

Anything for aboot 2003 and earlier sounds like it'd run fine on your computer, so you could search up some of the big titles from around then for a good list.

My picks would be Age of Mythology [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.79290] and Command and Conquer: Generals if you're RTS inclined.

 

[Russian_Assassin]

I would suggest Morrowind If you like rpgs this is the best game you can find for a low end pc!

 

[Booze Zombie]

Well, the original 2 Fallout games and Arx Fatalis should run on almost any crappy PC.
So, those should keep you happy for a while.