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Recommend any old/bargain games for first time Builder looking to get into PC Gaming?

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unreal tourn 2004
sim city 4
red alert 2/yuri's revenge
starfleet command: orion pirates
sid meyers railroads
sid meyers pirates
even the Sims (1) is playable for a few hours of enjoyment.
 
Homeworld
Deus Ex (will probably need a frame rate patch)

Those two are musts if you've never played them.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (a neat little gem which I just recently found through here)
Freelancer has already been mentioned
Ditto for HL2
 
Definitely Crysis or Crysis Warhead. To bring Crysis up to v1.21, it'll be about 400 MB, but you would probably be fine without any patch. I bought Crysis on sale in 2008 for $20.

I would not worry about performance at all. I play both at 1680x1050 mid details with a rig that must be nowhere near yours (AMD X2 ~5400+, 2 GB ram, ATI 4870 512mb).

Also with The Orange Box, there would be a lot of updates/downloading for Team Fortress 2, but the rest of the games probably not so much. If you just wanted to play HL2 and the episodes, or Portal, it wouldn't require much downloading.

Any of the Call of Duty games would be great, although for Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, they won't fit in your bargain category. Heck, COD4 still sells for what $30 normally? I'd probably go with COD4 just for price. It has a great singleplayer campaign, and last I played last year, fairly active multiplayer still. Then down the road as the prices drop, pick up World at War, MW2, and/or Black Ops. All good singleplayer campaigns and good multiplayer.
 
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Smoolean said:
I don't have the fastest internet connection, so downloading gigs upon gigs is out of the question for me.
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1. Buy Steam special sale games at low prices.
2. Start downloads before going to bed.
3. Wake up to finished downloads, or repeat if needed.
4. ???
5. Profit!
 
OP - how bad is your connection? You say you don't want Steam b/c of slow internet speeds...you know it can do all the downloading overnight for you, right? Are you on dial-up or something? :O

Regarding games, I'd say maybe Company of Heroes or Medieval II Total War (strategy), The Orange Box (you do not have to re-download all the games - that is ridiculous), The Witcher (RPG), (not Oblivion - unless you think you're ready for serious modding, then its great), Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare, GRID (racing - use an Xbox controller)...that's a decent start I think although you literally have a million other options.
 
Another Vote for - Freelancer

Minecraft is a new Game(still in Beta, but stable and has Single and Multiplayer), has an Old School Look, approx $20, approx 90mb in size, and is a combination of FPS/Resource Gathering/Crafting/Building game that is tons of fun and addictive.
 
Yeah my download speeds on DSL normally top out at around 600 kB/s, and average closer to 300 kB/s, but it hasn't stopped me from buying a lot of games on Steam anyway. I just let it go overnight.
 
It's a fairly new game, but you can download League of Legends for free and it's a lot of fun. You can play co-operatively with players against an AI or against other players.

Dave
 
Is free cheap enough? though I guess you would have to download them.
You can also check Gamespot or IGN for the top games from 2002-2007 and probably get them for cheap on Amazon. Stuff like Homeworld/HW2 would be great games to play if you enjoy RTS.
 
Original post: 04-05-2011 12:05 AM
Last Activity: 04-05-2011 09:57 PM

Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 96 (0.04 posts per day)

Wonder if he'll ever come back. Maybe his internet really is that bad.
 
Sorry for the delay guys - busy week.

Wow, thank you for all of the feedback!!! There is a wealth of games here to choose from, most of which I didn't know about, thank you so much 🙂

The only internet available where I live is ATT, and they only offer one speed, and it only downloads about 70 kilobytes per second. I suppose if I left Steam on overnight for a few nights I could download a game or two 🙂 I'll wait until I see some ridiculously cheap FPS deals on Steam 🙂

Does anyone know if you can pause a download in Steam, and resume where you left off later? Or does a download have to finish once you start it, or it will start back from 0%?

I'm very interested in the first Crysis, but the cheapest I can find it is still $40.

I like the sound of Cid Meier's Railroads game.

I already play Minecraft and Starcraft2, just looking to diversify 🙂

Thanks again guys, I'm always open to more suggestions.
 
Just Cause 2 is gorgeous.

ME2 is gorgeous, as well. both can be had for cheap these days, and will run like butter on your system.

GTA 4?

Arkham Asylum.

if you like the 4x space games, Sins of a Solar Empire is freaking gorgeous if you want to push it. steep learning curve, though. It's the type of game that will seriously eat up your hours, though..so beware.
 
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Forget anything as new as even Crysis, for now, IMO. There are tons of games you could get that won't take days and days to download, that are excellent (personally, I didn't find Crysis to be all that great of a game).

Older games (before the prominence of data DVDs) will DL quicker, so with 70KB/s, IMO, look at age and size, and then prioritize among the older/smaller games, first, leaving the multi-GB games for later. You can get quite a few hours of play out of <$30, and DL bigger games while playing some of the smaller older ones, too 🙂.
 
Smoolean said:
Sorry for the delay guys - busy week.

Wow, thank you for all of the feedback!!! There is a wealth of games here to choose from, most of which I didn't know about, thank you so much 🙂

The only internet available where I live is ATT, and they only offer one speed, and it only downloads about 70 kilobytes per second. I suppose if I left Steam on overnight for a few nights I could download a game or two 🙂 I'll wait until I see some ridiculously cheap FPS deals on Steam 🙂

Does anyone know if you can pause a download in Steam, and resume where you left off later? Or does a download have to finish once you start it, or it will start back from 0%?

I'm very interested in the first Crysis, but the cheapest I can find it is still $40.

I like the sound of Cid Meier's Railroads game.

I already play Minecraft and Starcraft2, just looking to diversify 🙂

Thanks again guys, I'm always open to more suggestions.
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Yah games would take a super long time to download, but like you said over 3-4 nights I'd imagine it would finish. Definitely stay on the lookout for deals. For someone in your position, a big Steam sale like during the holidays would be perfect as you would easily pick up 10 awesome games for not much cost. Then download and play them over the next few months!

I mentioned Crysis as though it's not old or a bargain game, for someone getting into PC gaming with a good rig, it's a must. It's a PC exclusive with incredible graphics to this date and awesome gameplay. Also I mentioned it since you said $10-20, and I bought Crysis at Circuit City in 2008 for $20. Too bad it's still $30 on Steam!

I did look though, and it isn't in stock by Amazon but Amazon now offers digital game downloads, and it's only $15 through that! Also I've never used Direct2Drive or EA Downloader but you can often get awesome deals like Steam.

It's a 5.5GB download from Amazon. I think I remember people having positive experiences with Amazon game downloads, but check to be sure if so, I can't imagine getting a better deal than that except some crazy Steam sale.
 
Smoolean said:
So this may sound like an odd request... let me explain.

So I've never had a good enough computer to play many games before (except a few early Command and Conquers and Starcraft).

I recently ordered the parts for a i5 2500 / HD 6850 rig, and I'd like to find games that are a few years old that you can find for reasonably cheap. They will be brand new to me.

Obviously, I would have already ordered The Orange Box, but I've read that even if you buy the physical box, you still have to re-download the entire game through updates through steam... about 4-5 gigs worth.

I don't have the fastest internet connection, so downloading gigs upon gigs is out of the question for me.

So my request is... any games that are considered "classics" that don't require massive downloads just to play. Preferably games you can install of the original CDs, maybe download a moderately sized patch, and play single player mode (I'm not too concerned with multilayer for now).

So any other amazing single player games that can be found for $10-20?

I've heard that Crysis 1 really only runs acceptably on NVIDIA cards, and since I went with the HD 6850 that seems like a bad idea.

Do any of the older Call of Duty or Medal of Honor games stand out above the rest? I don't have much First Person Shooter experience. I remember hearing about the original Black and White game, that sounded pretty fun. Currently, I play Minecraft and Starcraft 2, just looking for recommendations for other fun affordable fun games, I'm open to most genres. Only limitation is my internet speed (which rules out First Person Shooter games that are primarily multilayer based).
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Crysis actually runs better on AMD cards than nVidia cards, so you are better off with the 6850 than an equivalent nVidia card. I would get it, since it was a very fun and open game (for me at least, and I played it using a 4200+ CPU and 3850 GPU)

I suggest Max Payne, and Max Payne 2 since both were awesome games.

If you enjoy story driven RPGs, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 were both very good.

I am pretty tired right now and am drawing a blank, but I will come back with more suggestions later on.
 
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