Fresh LAN games needed

[NuurAbSaal]

I have a serious problem. My LAN group is getting more and more bored with 12 hour gaming sessions of WC3:FT and Counterstrike 1.6. We are desperately looking for new games to play, preferably ones that would run on three year old Geriatricon ( ;) ) labtops, so no Farcry or the like (Battlefield Vietnam is just barely playable with some bots and lowest possible graphics settings).
Please don't tell me to just upgrade the hardware as I am not the owner of them, a kind friend just allows me to play on one of them. You could of course donate money to help satisfy my gaming habit ;) :lol: .

Possible genres would be FPS, RTS, racing or some cool multiplayer flight-sim, possibly in space and with ninjas or some such.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Greetings

Nuur

[Guest]

Quake 3 is old (runs well) cheap, and fun. There are also some Half-Life mods that allow you to play in Co-op, which is a lot of fun.

[Drasca]

Descent! Descent I and II in particular. Awesome games made by the now defunct Interplay. I wish I could do justice to the wonder that is descent. Descent III... I am not so sure of, but was also a decent game to play.

Sirian would certainly have a lot to say about Descent II.

[kandrathe]

Unreal Tournament 2 or 3 are fun if you like the Team A vs Team B -- they seem to be very adaptable to lower end environements.
You have CS, so mix in a little TFC or Half-Life for variety.
Try one of the Diablo II mods.
I've been eyeing Sacred and some other variations on that theme to replace the multiplayer FRP gap in my life. I'm done with Dungeon Siege, and Never Winter Nights.
For RTS's beyond WC3, I'm still having fun with an occasional game of Starcraft, Kohan, Age of Empires, or Civ3.
If you are into it, Mechwarrior can be a fun diversion, but I'm not playing it as much as I used to.
IL-2 Sturmovik looked interesting as a multiplayer flight sim.

[Guest]

For RTS's beyond WC3, I'm still having fun with an occasional game of Starcraft, Kohan, Age of Empires, or Civ3.

pet peeve... not really into people mixing up their genres. For the record, Civ 3 is a turn based strategy game.

Remembered Rise of Nations... Awesome RTS. Two hour games, that get longer with more people.

[Artega]

UT2004 is always fun.

Descent and Descent II are also loads of fun, but since they're OLD games, they may not want to run on your newfangled accelerators and Windows XP and crap.

Try some of the scenarios for War3 - DOTA is loads of fun, and so is Footmen Frenzy.

[kandrathe]

Do I care? <_<

I would also be one to get out the miniatures and spend all weekend reenacting a Napoleonic campaign if I had the time.

[Yrrek]

Doom and Doom2.

Wolfenstein 3D.

If I think of more, I'll post. :)

[NuurAbSaal]

Thanks to all who have replied (this is not over! keep 'em coming please!). Lot's of good suggestions.

I will proudly suggest the games you have provided and let them think I came up with them myself, a move all of you will no doubt support :P

mmmmm, Sturmovik, I'm a sucker for flight sims, ever since the good ole days of b/w Fokker triplane. I hope it's not too arcady (is that a word?).

I hope Fragbait won't see this, but I kind of hate the Quake series.


Thanks again
Greetings

Nuur

[Bob]

why is it that every time someone asks for game suggestions a suggestion of Total Annihilation fits in perfectly?, maybe TotalA is perfect...

Other candidates could include the original worms or battlezone.

-Bob

[Juliet Must Die]

It's been awhile since me and my friends threw a LAN-party (in fact it's been years), but there were some games that we just cept playing again and again.

RTS: Starcraft, Warcraft 2, Total Annihalation and Command & Conquor: Red Alert - The Aftermath
FPS: Unreal Tournament, Blood
Racing: Rollcage, POD & Revolt

Can't think of others right now but I'll come back to you if i do.

/Juliet Must Die

[[wcip]Angel]

Hidden & Dangerous + Fight for freedom (Expansion pack) are both great fun. The games themselves are very challenging, but so incredibly rewarding when you manage to outwit the dreaded germans. It's probably the best WW2-simulator I've ever played. Only drawback is you can only play with 3 other people simultaniously.

Playing the first level of doom 2 for hours on end is also insanely fun.

I just installed Warhammer 40.000 Dawn of war. I haven't tried it yet, but it's an RTS. I can't really recommend it though, seeing as I haven't tried it myself yet.

[JustAGuy]

Yrrek already said it, but it deserves mention again. DOOM and DOOM 2.

If you didn't, or still don't, like the control mechanisms of DOOM before, you can now use free-look mouse, auto-run, jump, and the like. It's all playable over TCP/IP for 16-32 players as well. CO-OP on nightmare is fricken' hilarious and fun!

ZDaemon is a DOOM implementation that was coded using ZDOOM (the de facto standard for DOOM mods now). It incorporates all that good stuff I mentioned earlier, and ZDaemon supports internet play. They also have a ZDaemon network thing, like gamespy, where you can search for games online and what not.

If you have access to the original DOOM or DOOM 2 wads, i.e. own the retail version, you can plop down this new executable and play online. The freelook is usually disabled on multiplayer servers, but it's still incredibly fun.

My friend and I like to do a little Nightmare DOOM 2 during our lunch breaks, frantically running through the levels, trying to get as much finished as possible. It's super hard when you don't "keep" the keys after you die.

[pakman]

A great RTS game to play, if you can find it (I know where you can), is Earth 2150. This game was made some years ago, but still looks incredible. It's made by a company called SSI that is no longer in existence. It can be seen by some as too much micromanaging for an RTS, but the micromanaging is what makes it fun.

You can customize single units to your liking, upgrade weapons, you even have to resupply tanks with ammunition. The environments and level of detail put into this game is simply amazing. If you don't have a problem with downloading games, you can find it on suprnova.org, because it is not in production anymore and if you know German, you can use the support pages.

Another good game could be NFS: Underground.

[Kevin]

Go farther than Descent go to the best space combat sim ever. FreeSpace and FreeSpace 2!

Of course the X-Wing games can be much fun too, but they aren't FreeSpace.

I'm a joystick pilot myself, but there are many a good keyboard pilot out there for FS.

[[wcip]Angel]

Another good game could be NFS: Underground.

If you can stomach the horrible music, the scandalous language, the illogical AI, the lack of tracks, the importance of style and fancy-schmancy colour-scemes on your car, and the general suckyness that is NFS:U, then yeah, it's a great game! Only, not.

[NuurAbSaal]

heh, I see we share the same emotions for this abomination :) .
I only tried it for a couple of minutes at a friend's and I instantly mourned said minutes as lost to the void (a rare occurance, given my gaming addiction).

Thanks to all for the additional suggestions

Greetings

Nuur

[Lady Vashj]

NFS: Hot Pursuit is fun, though, if you don't mind the kinda choppy graphics. Been a long time since I played.

[[wcip]Angel]

Full Spectrum Warrior might be worth trying. I'm currently playing single player, and it's certainly different than the other WW2-games I've played. A combination of Hidden & Dangerous and Knights of the old republic :)

[NuurAbSaal]

Thanks for the input!

We held another LAN party yesterday and tried out Ghost Recon Raven Shield/Athena Sword and had a blast. Despite running sub-optimal on the laptops they are really fun (and a nice change of pace from CS).

Unfortunately it is pretty difficult to find games that are accepted by 6+ people and so a lot of suggestions met a with a "what, ugh, no way" even though I would have liked to try them (gimme flightsims!!).

Somebody brought a WC3:FT Tower Defence game and insisted on us at least trying it. I thought of the "fun" Hero levels with the *barf* Tome shop and was less than thrilled. It was the best WC experience with this group so far :) . We played a co-op version, where we all (8 players) had to defend the world tree against increasingly difficult waves of monsters by constructing and upgrading towers (hellooooo bonus level!). Heh, us eight actually playing together against a common foe! Even though the game turned into a slideshow on the laptops after about round 35 we almost got to the last level, "defeated at round 39" (of 40) and we had a blast. The frantic yelling for backup of the players who could not hold off their monster wave...priceless :) .


Don't be shy, keep the suggestions coming!

@wcip Angel: Hmmmmm, I know that I would love to try Full Spectrum Warrior Multiplayer, do you think we could get it to run on the laptops? 1.2 GHZ + GeForce4, if memory serves.

Greetings

Nuur