Best games for LAN party? also tips for setting one up?

[alfa147x]

My best friend will be on leave from Japan for one week. He's asked me to set up a LAN party with our high school friends.

8 - 10 players max
If a server is needed I have a Mac Mini I can donate to the cause.
I'm guessing my best bet is to find around 5 games? Is that enough for an evening?

One of all time favorites was SWAT 4. So FPS are generally what we like.

Networking wise I'll be using a HP Procurve 1810-24G and a DD-WRT router as a DHCP server.

What am I over looking? I probably should aggregate a list of machine being used. This will better allow me to understand what games we can run.

Thanks for any help. This is my first time setting something like this up so any tips are great.
Alfa

 

[wsaenotsock]

Low-end games (Any computer made in the last 10 years should run these fine)

Half life 1 engine
dod 1.3
cs 1.6
natural selection

Other engines
quake 3/2/1
Unreal Tournament (original)

Low/Medium-hardware:

Source based games, such as
L4D
TF2
HL2DM
UT2k3/7


Also, RTS games are pretty fun on a lan, even if people aren't very good at them.
You can make even teams ect.

Warcraft 3, Total annihilation, Starcraft 1 will run on almost any hardware




For setting up your lan, have the best computer host obviously, and make it have a static IP address so everyone can connect to it easily manually.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

8 players max. Anything more than that really starts to limit your game selection.

I have hosted a few lan parties in the last two years and the games we always go back to are:
Call of Duty 4 MW: So intense, it is incredible.
Age of Empires 2: Silly beyond belief
L4D2: 4v4 on a lan is incredible. Balance the teams correctly and it is hard to beat this multiplayer experience.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Unreal 2004

 

[alfa147x]

Sweet. Thanks! Any newer games? Just incase all 8 players have newer machines.
The host will probably be my current build or my new Ivy Bridge build.

Current:
Intel i7 2600k
Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3
16 GB RAM
Dual MSI N460GTX HAWK

Ivy Bridge:
Intel i7-3770K
MSI Z77A-GD80
16 GB of DDR3
680GTX (If I can find one)

 

[shortylickens]

I still think UT is the best LAN game.

 

[alfa147x]

I didn't really play UT on the pc. But I agree.

Also Halo Combat Evolved!

 

[Texashiker]

Unreal Tournament
Quake 3
Quake live
Serious Sam
Left 4 dead 1 & 2
Counter-Strike

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

An oddball choice:

GTA IV's multiplayer is amazing when you can play it without lag. Ideally you'd have more than 10 players but playing the objective based games should keep things interesting. Having an entire city to play in maxed out with pedestrians, cars and cops can make for some very intense driving and gunfights.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Make sure you have all the hardware you need otherwise people can find themselves sitting out, obviously enough power extenders to fit that many PCs in, enough ethernet cable to make sure you can reach all of the PCs from your switch/router. Enough ports on the router to get everyone on the same network, you can daisy chain routers with a switch to extend the number of ports, a 100mb 8 port switch is a real cheap way to extend a home internet router.

Config wise the router needs to be able to hand out enough DHCP addresses so everyone gets auto assigned onto the same subnet, default settings are usually fine, everyone needs to have their network settings to retrieve IP from DHCP, again most likely already set.

A dedicated server isn't really necessary as long as 1 PC there is quite powerful, it can run listen servers for 8-10 people with ease, try and run that on something decent like an i7 CPU 4+ Gb of RAM.

As for games, these are some of our regulars:
CoD:UO - usually played DM while drinking
CoD:5 Zombie mode - 4 player only
SWAT 4 - good sensible/coop need coordination
Flatout 2 - destruction derby/stunts (good laugh)
Serious Sam - Of all flavours, most recently SS3 BFE

 

[Chapbass]

Company of Heroes can be good fun, Rise of Nations as well.

Ghost Recon / Rainbow Six?

Team Fortress 2

 

[alfa147x]

Make sure you have all the hardware you need otherwise people can find themselves sitting out, obviously enough power extenders to fit that many PCs in, enough ethernet cable to make sure you can reach all of the PCs from your switch/router. Enough ports on the router to get everyone on the same network, you can daisy chain routers with a switch to extend the number of ports, a 100mb 8 port switch is a real cheap way to extend a home internet router.

Config wise the router needs to be able to hand out enough DHCP addresses so everyone gets auto assigned onto the same subnet, default settings are usually fine, everyone needs to have their network settings to retrieve IP from DHCP, again most likely already set.

A dedicated server isn't really necessary as long as 1 PC there is quite powerful, it can run listen servers for 8-10 people with ease, try and run that on something decent like an i7 CPU 4+ Gb of RAM.

As for games, these are some of our regulars:
CoD:UO - usually played DM while drinking
CoD:5 Zombie mode - 4 player only
SWAT 4 - good sensible/coop need coordination
Flatout 2 - destruction derby/stunts (good laugh)
Serious Sam - Of all flavours, most recently SS3 BFE

Thanks. Lots of good info.
The HP Procurve 1810-24G is a 24 port managed switch. My two desktops will take up 4 ports due to link aggregation (You must be asking: Why? The answer is: Why not?! ) One for the router / DHCP server. Leaving 19 ports open

Both desktops are i7 (2600k and 3770K) with 16GB of RAM.

I'm hoping everyone has decent machines. GTA4 would be a lot of fun.

 

[alfa147x]

Will make a list and have people vote on what games they want. Just need to narrow the invite list down to 8.

Company of Heroes can be good fun, Rise of Nations as well.

Ghost Recon / Rainbow Six?

Team Fortress 2

Added to the list.

Unreal Tournament
Quake 3
Quake live
Serious Sam
Left 4 dead 1 & 2
Counter-Strike

Added.

GTA IV

Added.

 

[alfa147x]

Current list:

Left 4 Dead
Team Fortress 2
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
Unreal Tournament 3
Unreal Tournament 2004
Call of Duty 4 MW
Age of Empires 2
SWAT 4
Quake 3
Serious Sam
Counter-Strike
Company of Heroes
Rise of Nations
Ghost Recon / Rainbow Six
Halo Combat Evolved
Tribes Ascend

 

[jaha2000]

my best lan game ever was warzone 2100. Which you can now download for free. Some maps are 4v4 and the game is a neat concept.

 

[BD231]

Sniper V2

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Thanks. Lots of good info.
The HP Procurve 1810-24G is a 24 port managed switch. My two desktops will take up 4 ports due to link aggregation (You must be asking: Why? The answer is: Why not?! ) One for the router / DHCP server. Leaving 19 ports open

Both desktops are i7 (2600k and 3770K) with 16GB of RAM.

I'm hoping everyone has decent machines. GTA4 would be a lot of fun.

Ah well dude, you have it sorted then.

We have a nice 24 port Gbit switch for ours which I nabbed from work, I generally host and I'm running a 2600k @ 4.7Ghz now with 16Gb of RAM, handles everything no sweat for our 6-8 man LANs

GTA4 is something we've played a bit recently, it's a good laugh running around shooting each other, the races are a bit boring but holding out against cops can be a laugh, creating a huge barricade in the street out of cars and re-enacting the movie Heat

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Ah well dude, you have it sorted then.

We have a nice 24 port Gbit switch for ours which I nabbed from work, I generally host and I'm running a 2600k @ 4.7Ghz now with 16Gb of RAM, handles everything no sweat for our 6-8 man LANs

GTA4 is something we've played a bit recently, it's a good laugh running around shooting each other, the races are a bit boring but holding out against cops can be a laugh, creating a huge barricade in the street out of cars and re-enacting the movie Heat

The races can be fun, but IMO the most fun can be had from the "Team Mafia Work" and "Cops N' Crooks" modes. They create the most suspense and can benefit a lot from a coordinated team.

I would also add to the list:

Dirt 2 - In particular use Rallycross/Trailblazer class cars on Raid/Land Rush tracks. Most of the skill playing it this way comes down to keeping the cars on the road rather than outright speed, so you can get some hilarious crashes and pileups.

 

[dpodblood]

Back in the day my games of Choice for LAN parties were Serious Sam (Co-Op), Midtown Madness 2, Aliens VS Predators 2, and Total Annihilation. Left 4 Dead (1 or 2) would be a lot of fun as well.

 

[sswingle]

Have plenty of long ethernet cables. People either forget them or bring ones that are a whole 4 feet long thinking that'll work.

 

[PowerYoga]

warcraft 3, starcraft, empire earth also fun.

 

[MrGlobe]

Table/Desk space is another thing that is required but often not the simplest resource to acquire. Sometimes you have to ask some people to bring folding tables with them, depending on your venue

 

[kyonu]

If you know how to play it, Solder of Fortune 2 is baller.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Back in the day my games of Choice for LAN parties were Serious Sam (Co-Op), Midtown Madness 2, Aliens VS Predators 2, and Total Annihilation. Left 4 Dead (1 or 2) would be a lot of fun as well.

Ah, the mention of Midtown Madness 2 and Total Annihilation takes me back, great games!

 

[exdeath]

Unreal 2004

This.

Unreal Tournament 2004 Editor's Choice Edition is the greatest PC multiplayer game ever made.

It has enough unique game modes and content to count as 10 regular games, at least.

And it runs on pretty much anything up to 10 years old on "Hooooooly Shiiiiiittt!" maxed settings.

Perfectly flawless and polished, one of the only games I have ever played on a PC for days on end without a single crash, glitch, bug, or anything.