Can you recommend me some games with relatively low system requirements?

All in the title. Can anyone recommend me any good games that have modest system requirements? My laptop's specs are in my sig.

As for the requirements of the games, hopefully the maximum would be along the lines of FarCry and Oblivion since my laptop manages to run FarCry and Oblivion with most of the eyecandy turned on (especially with FarCry) at 1280x800. Running games at 1680x1050 or Shader 3.0-heavy games is just too much. I reserve that for the really old games. I tried many of the newer games. Mass Effect, COD5:WAW, GRID, etc and they were all too much even at lower settings. Thankfully, Red Alert 3 runs butter smooth at mostly medium settings and low shader at 1680x1050. I'm guessing it's because it's not using Shader 3.0. COD4 runs really good too when forced to run in Shader 2.0, but oddly enough in COD5, you can't force it to run in Shader 2.0, thus the horrid performance.

Any recommendations? I can't afford a laptop upgrade yet since I'm only a student.

Many thanks,
Alphonse

Edit: BTW, I don't run any of my games with AA or AF. At most, it's just 2x AA supersampling. My current drivers are Forceware 181.00 from LaptopVideo2Go.

 

Have you tried the Halflifes episodes? these are not too intensive compared to the likes of COD4 and Crysis and will run on fairly low spec computers, they have a lot of settings to adjust to make it run well.

 

Half-life 2 is a good place to start. Plus all of the older grand theft auto series (gta3, gta vice city, san andreas) counter strike 1.6, counter strike source, call of duty 1.

 

Oh, yeah. I was guessing you'd expect me to have played Half Life already. Yes, I've finished the original HL and HL2 Ep 1 and 2. Right now, I'm eying some of the hidden gems in the bargain bin.

Edit: If you can recommend me good games outside the mainstream, I'd be really grateful. I'm not so fond of the GTA series though I do enjoy sandbox games. I got sick long ago of CS in LAN parties. That was the sole purpose of my laptop back then. =/ BTW, are Brothers In Arms games any good? I'm getting tired of the CoD series.

 

I googled it and found something here: http://wikibin.org/articles/list-of-computer-games-that-require-pixel-shaders.html

 

How about solitaire or minesweeper

 

Left for dead's one of the newer games that isn't too demanding, me being able to run it on my system with any of the settings on high says sumthing

 

How about the C&C3 and C&C: Generals series? If you can run RA3 well ehough, those should run better.

 

This is getting harder than I though. =/ Well, I've already played all the games you've mentioned except for Left 4 Dead, which looks fun from the YouTube vids I've seen. Requirements are very light too. Similar to HL2.

 

First of all; good choice of music you have

Secondly; check out Deus EX with the HDTP mod and maybe try Dark Messiah - it's pretty cool.

 

EA sports F1 series is gr8 fun! You can try and get F1 challenge 99-02.

 

if you like strategy both Civ 4 and Gal Civ 2 are excellent choices. RTS wise Rise of Nations is an absolute gem. Raven Shield and UT 2004 are good shooters. Then there are the classics like Heroes of Might and Magic III, Morrowind, and Prince of Persia SoT. All of these games should run well on your laptop.

 

Thanks for the recommendations guys! I'm torn between Rise of Nations and Empire Earth for my RTS pick. The Civilizations series isn't my cup of tea. I saw some reviews of Deus Ex and the gameplay looks good. Then again, I also saw this game called No One Lives Forever which also had good reviews. Any feedbacks on this game? I'm buying several games this time only because they're from the bargain bin.

Regarding the F1 Challenge, I've played it before. It's quite difficult. Anything along the lines of hardcore racing sims like GTR and R-Factor are a no-no for me. Sucks though there's no equivalent of Forza or Gran Turismo on the PC. Forza particularly to me in the perfect balance between arcade and sim. Those guys who think Gran Turismo is a racing sim are way over their heads.

I've decided to purchase UT3 as well since the demo was surprisingly optimized. Funny thing is that UT3 looks much better than Mass Effect and it runs so much faster too. My FPS doesn't go below 30. Settings are 100 Screen render, 5 Textures, 2 World Details, 800x600, Vivid Postprocessing. In Mass Effect, even turning everything down and setting it to 640x480, my laptop was struggling to even reach 30 FPS.

Can anyone give me feedback on Empire Earth, Rise of Nations, and No Lives Forever?

 

max payne series is always a good one,

pretty old now though, you should be able to pick them both up cheap enough and run them well

 

Did anybody suggest Empire Earth 1&2 ?
Ran fine for me on a weaker laptop.

Anotehr idea to look into - World in Conflicht (may be borderline)
Anno series - at least 1602 wont run, and 1503 may (under Vista, will under XP) - 1701 may be borderline

Setlers - whichever, see specs - older ones shall run fine, I had version 3 running on less...

 

age of empires 2

loving this game for the past 10 years .. lol-ness

 

UT3 is on sale at steam....get it while its hot!!

Not sure if you already played, but you can also look into Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy (also on sale at Steam).

 

You mentioned NOLF? Excellent game. Incredibly funny. I'd highly recommend picking up both the first and second ones. They'll run flawlessly on your rig

Also, as streather said, Max Payne is a good choice.

 

Double ditto on that. Also give Warcraft III a try. Warcraft III The Frozen Throne, and last but not least the DoTA mod for War III. Much fun to be had there.

 

Freedom force is a great game (and it still looks pretty good too).

 

I second freedom force, a tragically overlooked game. Psychonauts is another one not a whole lot of ppl mention (its more of a platformer). Can't believe that i forgot to mention the dawn of war series the first time, it was the first RTS to really suck me in.

 

If u like driving i think Test Drive unlimited, which i think is the greatest driving game of all time, shouldn't be too hard to run either coz it's a couple of years old.

 

@ voodoofreak

Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather have the physical copy of the game itself. Besides, UT3 is one of the games that doesn't have those crappy and utterly useless DRM like the ones in Bioshock and Mass Effect. Seriously, I'd just go get the pirated version just to avoid all that 'connect to the internet for verification' crap.

@ goodspeed(TPF)

I've really, really, really had enough of DOTA. Nobody in my place plays the regular WCIII anymore. -_-

@ Mr. Kubelwagen

What's NOLF?

@ ramyk

Played TDU already. It's a good game for passing time. Sucks though I don't have a racing wheel and the only racing wheel I want is the Logitech G25 or the Porsche Racing wheel which are both over $250. =/ Bah.

@ the others

Already played Max Payne and Freedom Force on my Xbox. In fact, it's sitting on my Xbox's hard drive (I made a backup). Hardly use it anymore though. Just using it because of Xbox Media Center.

So, does anyone have comments regarding Empire Earth, Rise of Nations, and No One Lives Forever?

 

I play it with an Xbox Controller, it's really good, the G25 is waaaaaaay too expensive lol but still anything's better than a keyboard

 

Age of Empires 3, and possibly the Witcher as an alternative to Oblivion.

 

TRAIN SIMULATOR!!!-Just love it!

 

Unreal Tournament 2003 scales brilliantly with older systems. In fact, any FPS made with that generation of the Unreal engine will run great on older systems. I can get 30fps on a 7-year-old crappy desktop computer with an integrated graphics card.

Also, World of Warcraft scales well with older/low-end machines if you're into MMORPG's at all.

You shouldn't have a problem playing some of the classics like Doom3 and HL2 on lower resolutions, especially 800x600.

In fact, looking at your specs a little closer, you should even be able to play Bioshock on lower resolution. Spore is another one that you could probably handle no problem. The games I mentioned first are way above your system now that I looked at your specs, so just consider that a tip for other people who might come across this thread with a lower-end laptop than yours.

As with anything, I'd say always download the demo first before you buy it, since you can't return software. Or if you're p2p-savvy, "borrow" a full copy to try out first via BitTorrent.

On a final note, Fallout 3 was coded exceptionally well. My laptop is older and not as powerful as yours, and I can run Fallout 3 on low settings at 1280x800 (at 25fps).

-Josh

 

I would recommend Evil Genius. Brilliant games with a unique idea. (What a shame the developer is gone)

 

Evil Genius is a tragedy. A brilliant idea with extremely poor execution. The horrible ai of your minions and lack of basically any direct control makes the middle/late game a godawful experience in frustration.

 

No One Lives Forever is a GREAT series!!! If you don't have it, GET IT! Love both 1 and 2, along with Contract Jack, which uses the same engine but is a different story line.... definately buy No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 if you can find them, you'll love them.

~As a side note, thanks for the tip on running COD4 with Shader 2.0.... just tried it and greatly improved my performance for this game on my tablet, now get 50+fps at 1024x600... was running 800x600 w/ lower settings at 25ish fps before.

 

Thanks for the recommendations guys. I already went to the store and bought a couple of games. Namely... Unreal Tournament 3, No One Lives Forever 2 (they didn't have 1), Empire Earth, Rise of Nations, Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed (my friend told me to get this, I have yet to install it though), and Serious Sam 2.

Still stuck playing UT3 and NOLF2. Great storyline from NOLF2. Sucks though I couldn't get NOLF1. I'll probably get one off some torrent until I can find the game.

@ anarky

I got Bioshock before. It ran like crap on my laptop. Even at 800x600 with everything low, it barely reached 30 FPS. Same with Mass Effect. I can't understand why those games run like crap when UT3 has so much better graphics and runs like at champ at 800x600, screen rendering set to 100, textures set to 5, world detail set to 2. I can set it to 1024x640 and set the world detail to 1 and the game still never dips below 30 FPS. The only difference I see from world detail 1, 2 and 3-5 are: 1 - no bloom lighting, 2 - no parallax mapping, bloom enabled, specular mapping enabled, 3 to 5 - parallax mapping enabled (real performance killer), everything else enabled, better shadow and lighting quality at 4 and 5. Even at world detail 1, it beats the crap out of Mass Effect and Bioshock in terms of graphics and it runs so well.

@ be77solo

No prob. I find it ridiculous that my laptop only ran COD4 at ~30 FPS at 800x600 max textures, no shadows, normal model and water quality, medium dynamic lighting, small amt. of corpses, specular on (doesn't make a diff. in FPS even if it's off), volumetric fog on (same as spec., doesn't make a diff. in FPS even if it's off). I magically switch it to Shader Model 2.0 and I'm running the game at ~45ish FPS @ 1280x720 with everything turned on high, even with shadows enabled, except for corpse amt. still at small (they're a distraction IMO). The only thing missing now is the specular lighting, even if you enable it in the options, it doesn't appear in-game. Before, if I enable shadows when using Shader Model 3.0, it drops to a sluggish 15 FPS.

Anyway, thanks for the great recommendations guys!

Many thanks again,
Alphonse

 

CoD4 scales incredibly well. It pretty good too. Very addicting.

now try out Crysis Warhead Ultra Config at 2560 1600.

That should run Perfect

 

@ rot112

You being sarcastic?

FYI, Crysis Warhead doesn't have an 'ultra' config. Crysis Warhead runs fine at 1024x640 with mostly minimum and mainstream settings. Crysis, however, doesn't even run past 10 FPS with everything low.