Recommend Games for my Non-Gaming Laptop

[Aztech]

I bought an HP tx1000 model table PC. It's right for my needs and it wasn't bought for gaming. But, I'm taking it with me on my oceanographic survey for 2 months. I'll need some entertainment out there at sea. Please recommend me some games with low system requirements that are still good and worth playing. The basic specs are:

AMD Turion 64 2.0 GHz
2 GB RAM
onboard video
Vista Premium
1280 x 800 resolution

Ooh, also recommend me a place to download games, either free or pay, I don't care.

Thanks!

 

[Harabec]

Everything with the Infinity engine - Planescape:Torment (I still can't believe how good this game is), Baldur's Gate series, Icewind Dale etc. Basically no graphics reqs.

 

[Aztech]

I should've mentioned the types of games I usually like or don't like.

Like:
1st person shooters: I've actually never played Half-Life and most other big name games. Any good place to download these...
Simple time killers: I like the paddleball type games, bejeweled, etc...


Usually don't like or never tried:
Strategy (I think) games
RPGs

 

[clarkey01]

Age of empires 2

 

[Harabec]

I'm afraid I can't really help, then...I have no idea how much horsepower your integrated video packs.

 

[Eeezee]

Post the specs on your integrated video. For instance, the Intel GM965 is a lot better than I expected (on my laptop, woot for free work laptops)

I can't play Bioshock (first thing I tried), but I can play Evil Genius and Fallout. Have been meaning to try Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (which crashes on all of my desktops except one old one), but Evil Genius is just so damn addicting.

Also, if it's Intel, they post list of games that they have tested for each of their graphics chips. For instance, they say I can play Company of Heroes, but I haven't tried it yet; just bought it in fact, I'll get around to trying it eventually.

Try anything from Age of Empires, Fallout 1+2, Dawn of War series I expect should work (not graphic intensive, but might lag). Try Fallout at least once, even though you typically don't like RPGs it is just a fantastic game overall.

You mentioned you have never played half-life? I would expect your laptop to play that for sure. Go download Steam, the original HL should be on there. You can try installing the Orange Box, see if it works

 

[Calculator83]

I'm in da same boat, as i am stuck at my college apartment for sum class which just ended. So i have the lenovo x60 with centrino duo, and GMA 950,, I can run Typing of the dead,, hehe.

u think i can run fallout and that evil genius thing.?

 

[imported_protoz]

The Fallout series for sure.

Arcanum and The Temple of Elemental Evil.

I hope you like classic RPGs because that's going to be the majority of responses.

Also: Starcraft, Command & Conquer Red Alert 2, emulators, Half-Life 1, Quake, Tribes. Most games published before 2000 should work well.

You can buy a good chunk of these games from Steam and then put it into Offline mode when you out at sea.

Tribes is free but online only.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

You could get some emulators for the SNES and NES. Mega Man 2 hasn't gotten any worse.

Anyway, what specific graphics card do you have? The new HP tablets have HD 3200s which can actually pull playing new games.

 

[BladeVenom]

Galactic Civilizations 2, it can be quite the time killer, and can be purchased and downloaded from Stardock. http://totalgaming.stardock.com
Gametap.com is a subscription service; Sam & Max series have low system requirements.
Just get older games, like more than 3 or 4 years old, and most should play.

 

[nova2]

max payne 1 may work well for you
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/maxpayne

Soldier of Fortune 2: Double Helix

splinter cell 1 and 2 (pandora tomorrow) might run good enough, they are older.

hitman 4: blood money (your vid card might be ok for this on lower settings)

No One Lives Forever (NOLF): 2

rodents revenge (cats + cheese + blocks, you play as a tiny mouse)
http://www.google.com/search?h...s+Revenge+&btnG=Search

Raiden II (1993 seibu kaihatsu inc.)
http://www.google.com/search?&...ibu%20kaihatsu%20inc.)

half-life 1 the specialists mod (can play with bots!)

 

[clipperfixer]

You could probably run Deus Ex and System Shock 2. Although System Shock 2 is a real bear to get running on Vista though.

 

[Billyzeke]

Some FPS oldies but goodies that run smooth and still look pretty decent on my non-gaming laptop.

Quake 3 Arena
Unreal Tournament GOTY
Serious Sam
Call of Duty

 

[toughwimp11]

get doom 1 and 2. i still find it really fun

 

[Evander]

I also don't have a gaming laptop with similar specs (Intel 1.73GHz Dual Core / 2.5GB / Intel GMA950). I've only purchased 1 game for it so far- Unreal Anthology, which works fine and is excellent value- you get 4 full games, 1 expansion pack, and an Audio CD. I purchased from gogamer.com when they were having a sale for only $5 + s/h. Don't know what it is now, but they have many cheap games- you can sort by price.

I'm considering getting Resident Evil 4- it was only released last year but has low sysreqs.

Spore demo works fine on my laptop, I don't think the full game has been released yet but there's a lot of buzz going about it.

For freeware games there are these:
Stepmania (Dance Dance Revolution clone)
Hurrican (Turrican clone with more modern graphics/sound).

There is TONS of so called "abandonware" available at:
http://www.the-underdogs.info/

You can run emulators just fine. Here are my recommendations:
32/64 bit generation:

Playstation: ePSXe, PSX
N64: Project 64
Saturn: SSF

16 bit generation:
Super NES: ZSNES
Genesis: KEGA Fusion
TurboGrafx: Otake

Arcade:
MAME, Final Burn Alpha, Kawaks, Nebula

And maybe you can run Dreamcast games (which have awesome graphics) with NullDC. There's an older emulator that's really fast but hasn't been updated in years and doesn't work correctly on my system, but I can't recall the name.

 

[angry hampster]

Sims 2, Civ IV (III if IV won't work), Rollercoaster Tycoon series. SimCity 4



Those are my current games on my non-gaming laptop.

 

[s44]

BG, BG2
NWN/expansion and mods

 

[Aztech]

Wow, nice, lots of replies! Thanks fellas!

My video card is the Nvidia Go 6150. How does it stack up in the onboard video world?

Well, lemme start looking up all of these suggestions...

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: Aztech
Wow, nice, lots of replies! Thanks fellas!

My video card is the Nvidia Go 6150. How does it stack up in the onboard video world?

Well, lemme start looking up all of these suggestions...

It's not that bad , I reckon CS 1.6 would run fine on that thing

 

[jonesthewine]

Get one of the Luxor games... they're great time-killers. There are also the games built into Vista - chess etc...

 

[RibSpreader]

I second the Luxor recommendation....or Zuma for that matter, about the same game. Got every iteration of both for my wife to play so she'd leave me and the kids alone to play our games. In the end, the whole family got addicted to them though.

 

[Eeezee]

Have N64 emulators become usable? I remember trying some several years ago, but they didn't work for shit

How about gamecube?

 

[Evander]

I've only used n64 a bit, but I find Project 64 to be quite competent. You do have to configure via plugins though. On my system I've got:
gpu: jaboDirect3d8
audio: azimer's HLE audio
input: Jabo's directInput7

In the old days I was quite impressed with UltraHLE and Corn, but they had limited compatibility and are dead now

 

[Piuc2020]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
Have N64 emulators become usable? I remember trying some several years ago, but they didn't work for shit

How about gamecube?

Every game is pretty much fully playable, I re-played Banjo Kazooie on a 360 controller not too long ago, full AA/AF and a hi-res texture pack, Banjo has never looked better. (until freaky invader zim like not-cure-anymore Microsoft 360 Banjo with an even more freak Kazooie came to town)

Gamecube only works well if you have a 64-bit CPU and the OS to match, a few games like Smash Bros can be played full speed but compatibility is still very limited.

 

[KaOTiK]

Peggle!