Games for my little brothers!

So I've just discovered that my little brothers (ages 10 & 12) are both getting laptops for Christmas! How times are a changing, I didn't get my first laptop until I was 16!

My Dad has suggested I get them a game for these new laptops. Any good ideas? Has got to be age appropriate of course! And available on a physical disc, because they are too young for Steam/Origin/Uplay accounts (and also will give me something to wrap up!). Edit: but without needing the disc inserted after install as these do not have internal optical drives.

I was thinking maybe Rayman Legends or something like that. They love Minecraft so uh, whatever that genre is (I still don't really understand what it is!). I'd rather get them something non-Minecraft related to introduce them to PC gaming though.

They're the Acer Aspire 13.3" with;

Intel Celeron N2840 (Intel HD graphics)
1368x786 screen resolution
4GB RAM
Windows 8.1 32bit

Edit: maybe a multiplayer game with good co-op play that'll run on those processors so we can all play together...

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

Rayman is a pretty good game, it can however be brutal, it's sort of a throw back to the older platformers where you needed to be lightning fast. As long as they're cool with having to retry a couple of times before succeeding, Rayman Legends would definitely be a decent game. Does Civilization still come on disc, those are pretty good games, albeit complex ones, but they could get some enjoyment out of it I'm sure. I remember having lots of fun with Sim City 2000 back when I was their age.

Rayman can be played multiplayer on consoles by the way and I don't see why not on PC as well. It's a lot more forgiving and a lot more fun to play as a group too.

 

REVOLT! Still my favorite racing game

 

Sims 3/4 CS :GO
ps: didnt get my 1st laptop before 18 years and a good bachelor mark ! I'm getting old

 

How does the Intel HD graphics in Bay Trail compare to the old Intel GMA 4500? That was my very first GPU and I distinctly remember it being... not so good, putting it lightly. I'd hope the newer GPU is at least a slight improvement.

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

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better but it would say go for s'th with HD 4000/4400/4600

 

Portal 1/2. Second game has an outstanding co-op. Lots of fun guaranteed.

 

Um... sorry what do you mean? I'm not following!

Those would be great but need Steam accounts, right? What is the minimum age for Steam accounts these days?

 

13 I think. If you don't want to "cheat" on their age or make an account and manage it for them you can always try Steam family sharing. Unfortunately you won't be able to play co-op

 

Do the Lego games run on iGPU? I would imagine they would at low settings..

 

Does Steam store have an age-filter? Besides the pointless age check that anyone and their dog can get around. So if I set up accounts for them (and 'cheated' on their age), is it possible to block all the adult titles from even being seen? Even watching the trailer for something like The Evil Within or Metro games will ensure they never sleep again. Can't have that, obviously!

 

I created a Steam account for each of my kids and they're quite young, created them with their name and email (I created for them but they never see) and my age credentials. But I just turn off Steam friends and keep it offline most of the time, except occasionally online to get updates and if they want to play a game together, and they only go into their "games" section. They get games by me buying them on my account and gifting them to them. Steam has some crazy sales and lots of good games for young kids, so not sure why it should matter.

 

I think you have to be 13 years old to make a Steam account. Obviously they don't ask, you just have the EULA screen and two buttons "I agree to these T&C and I'm 13 years old" and the opposite option. Apart from that there is an age filter, but only for 18 yo titles, which can also be easily bypassed by simply putting any date in it, even if most games have age rating thingy on its page. If you really want to restrict what content your bros get, the family sharing thing is your only valid option. You can set up two accounts and then just share those to each of your brothers. Then, once they're old enough you can hang over the controls to them.

 

Like anything with minors, adults can sign for their kids, like going to a PG-13 movie or buying an M rated video game even though they're not at that age. There is no law that says you have to be 13. I sign for my kids for everything, because they legally can't. Even a 13 year old legally can't either. Family sharing is not an option if you have more than one child that wants to play simultaneously. It's something that Steam and other users overlook all the time. What if you have 6 kids, so you're restricted to one account only? That's kinda dumb.

 

I guess my post wasn't clear enough. I guess what I've meant was to actually create 4 accounts. Two proper accounts to do the sharing from and another two they will use now as kids... Kinda handful, but this way Cakefish will be able to do both, block content (store, community, etc.) and allow them online/co-op play. Steam really should work on this family thing...

 

I agree. The family thing is kinda useless at the moment.

 

I've looked at the prices of the physical copies of Portal/Portal 2 and they are put to shame by Steam sales. Makes sense to wait until the winter sale before I go for those.

I think Rayman Origins is a good bet. It's not 3D so should run well while still looking good. And it has up to 4 player co-op play so we can all play at the same time. Rayman Legends is still a fair bit pricier and I already own Origins, it's part of my Steam backlog of shame so would give me the prodding I need to complete it. Though that does beg the question whether a Steam version can play with a non-Steam version, will have to check on that. Oh, and anyone know if it can be played without the disc inserted? Because these laptops don't have internal optical drives.

I've got GOG versions of Psychonauts and Beyond Good & Evil too, though whether those would be too 'old' for them I don't know. Then again, if they love Minecraft one would assume graphics aren't really important to them.

I wish I could give them Half Life 2 but it's most definitely not suitable for their ages! One day...

Thanks for the suggestions. Any cool indie titles that would run well on these machines? Apart from Limbo, already thought of that

Edit: just read that Rayman isn't LAN co-op but local only, which isn't necessarily what I'm looking for.

 

The Lego games

 

No no just buy Legos do not play it on computer please!

 

Minecraft and Skyrim are both pretty popular with my nephews and nieces, who are around the same age.

 

Those Lego games are great fun. They're more kid friendly action adventure than constructing things with Legos. Minecraft is much more "Lego" than the Lego games are.

 

Portal 2 - game for 2 players and this game develops the intellect

 

I am a die hard lego fan, real legos > virtual legos! (Though I didn't play the games, you made me curious!)

 

My wife and I co-op the Star Wars Lego games, they are all fun though. Our friends co-op them with their son 4-5 year old.

 

I've realised how difficult it is to find a game that doesn't require the disc in while playing, doesn't use Steam authentication, has co-op play over LAN and runs well on Intel HD Graphics!

I give up. I shall make them a Steam account each. Seems to be the only way in this modern world of ours! Just will have to explain to my Dad and stepmum how it's pretty much necessary these days.

I've made a list of games to gift them during the winter sale:

- Portal
- Portal 2
- Rayman Origins
- Rayman Legends
- Terraria
- Torchlight 2
- Trine 2
- Worms Reloaded

Those should run OK on lower settings I hope. I read a Digital Foundry article where they said Bay Trail graphics inside an Atom processor designed for tablets can power Portal on high settings at 60fps! Not bad! So the Celeron should be slightly better than that due to slightly less restrictive TDP limitations.

Still want to get a boxed copy so they have something to unwrap on Christmas Day (who doesn't like unwrapping things?). Problem is, all the boxes copies are considerably more expensive than they are on Steam even before the winter sale, because they are mostly Steamworks games and physical copies of these smaller titles are rare nowadays unlike the big AAA titles.

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Oh I bet Skyrim is very popular, especially with all those naughty mods .

I just wish real LEGOs cost as much as their video games. Damn real stuff is really expensive. Still can't afford to buy that LEGO plane I always wanter (I frankly I don't think they even make it anymore)...

If you want I can drop you a Witcher 2 key I got for free during one of GOG sales . Bros will appreciate it . Oh wait, iGPU... Better forget it then...

 

You mean this? Passenger Plane  | LEGO Shop

Yeah right, sure, great game for young kids.

 

Nope, this one:


My cousin received one of these for his 18th birthday back in 2007. Unfortunately that model is discontinued and the ones which pop up on ebay periodically cost a lot. I will better save up some money on one of them fancy Gemini 200 Boeing 737 models.
Slightly on this particular topic, would you look at this, do want:

Spoiler

Well I would be very happy if I received it as a kid .

Cakefish, what about RTS/TBS games, especially older one? Stronghold/Crusader, Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Blitzkrieg, Cossacks, Civilization games, Heroes of Might and Magic games, etc. Whose are quite fun and some require a bit of thinking.

 

Got them each a retail copy of Trine 2 Collector's Edition, which apparently uses Steamworks which is ideal as these laptops don't have internal disk drives so having to keep the external drive plugged in during gameplay would be a right pain!

Still a bit nervous whether it'll actually run OK at lower settings. Wanted to get them Torchlight 2 as that apparently scales down even further on low end hardware but was unable to find a retail copy that was cheap enough to justify getting it instead of a Steam copy. Did contemplate Rayman Origins but wasn't sure whether the disc needed to be in the drive while the game was running. Worms seems good but I wanted to get them something with a more involving campaign component too. Found Trine 2 for a decent retail price, hence why I went for it in the end.

I'll probably end up getting all the games I've mentioned for them in the sale, definitely Portal & Portal 2 now that I know Bay Trail can power Source engine games relatively well.

Open to more suggestions on what gems I can nab for them during the sale (though there is a limit on my budget and how much time they have to play all these of course!)

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Should have bought Trine 1 for Bay Trail. Some goes for Torchlight, get the first one. For T2 you would have to drop resolution and run it on low, whereas T1 runs perfectly on native res and HD texture pack mod (tested myself).
Another Diabloeque game besides Torchlight would be Path Of Exile, which is free. However it does have in-game microtransactions, so that's something to take a notice of.

 

Trine 2 retail copy includes the original game too

Torchlight original doesn't have co-op play, which I think would be a fun addition for that style of game, but I'll probably get them both - I remember them being ridiculously cheap in past sales!

So you have a Bay Trail tablet/laptop then? How do the HD graphics fare in other games?

I've just realised that Limbo is another game I can add to that list. World Of Goo they already own on Wii, but I already have a retail copy with no DRM anyways so chuck in that for free too.

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Noice!
Another interesting game suggestion would be Super Meat Boy.

 

It's a charming game but brutally difficult. I had to give up on it, it was just too hard. Will keep it in mind, who knows they may end up better at it then me!

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When I was around their age, I had more time and patience for games that were difficult, be it intentional or due to the imprecision of the controls at the time. I remember Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels being brutally difficult once you got farther into the game, not sure I would have the same amount of patience and perseverance for that now.

 

Ah yes, that's true for me too! I loved Blinx on the Xbox for example, despite it being crazily difficult. I must have tried the final boss battle enough times to be able to draw a curve on a logarithmic scale

Edit: I know someone suggested Skyrim, unfortunately it's rated a 15 so not really suitable for their age. I'm of the opinion that age ratings get less important as you get older (so like a 16/17 year old would be able to play/watch an 18 rated game just fine) but it's still very important for this age range. 10-12 to 15 is a massive jump in maturity. They're not ready for that yet! Also, I think the HD graphics chip would implode.

HTWingNut suggested some strategy. Good idea! The older one that owns a mobile loves Clash of Clans which is not very in-depth but everyone stats somewhere

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Neverwinter Nights I/II, Baldur's Gate I/II, and Icewind Dale I/II could all be good co-op games and they're all available through Good Old Games.

 

What about this one?
<iframe width='420' height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mB6fq9Aadwk" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

dota 2, trust me, they are gonna love it

 

The pixeljunk games turned up on PC, didn't they? Might be an idea. I don't think the ports are all that great, but they're neat concepts.

Other than that, maybe Prince of Persia(sands of time) and Soul Reaver, that sort of thing. They're both these kind of dark stories with adult themes, but told in such a way that kids enjoy them as well. You know, exactly like fairy-tales. ..and.. almost no games out there are actually like that any more for some reason.

Possible candidates that have turned up lately, though: Stacking (Double Fine), Samorost (all the Amanita Design games are good), Waveform(why not?), World of Goo (..I personally like Little Inferno better, but hey), Shatter (by Sidhe from New Zealand, and a really good soundtrack by Module - they're taking the opportunities they have once in a while to promote new talent, and you get something like Shatter once in a while , LIMBO (danish guys made it - it's scary as f***, but it's creepy in a way that makes sense. That it's not unnerving and upsetting without context - so not really a bad game for kids), Broken Age (if DF release their second act any time soon... They're also remaking Grim Fandango, by the way -- an in comparison much better game for all audiences, really), One Finger Death Punch (Canadian stick-fighting arcade game. Brilliant), Transistor (perhaps - this is kind of a game like what Bioware are making: Extremely childish games with adult undertones. But SuperGiantgames actually does it with some tastefulness and story-telling talent, so it's a good game for an intelligent teenager..), Space Run (French developer, I think? Another one of those remade concepts^2 from yonder days, that somehow succeed amazingly), and Retro/Grade (one of my favorite games).

All of those, with the possible exception of Retro/Grade and Space Run, will run well on very modest system requirements. At least might get them off facebuk for a while.

 

All great suggestions, thanks for the input! I'm going to have a large selection to choose from once the winter sale starts - definitely the Portal games first though, such classics

I hope they don't notice the difference between their laptops and my new Clevo too much during our co-op play. I'll be rocking Trine 2 at 4K, ultra settings at 60fps. Just have to remind them that I started out on integrated graphics too, I've already done my time

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Honestly, at that age I wasn't caring much about graphics and more about the enjoyment I could get out of games. Also, as long as it's not the next CoD, etc. that is aiming to look realistic, older games may have aged pretty well. I remember some games from the SNES era and onwards that while not amazing looking have aged decently because of the art style. A game like Okami on PS2 will age much more gracefuly than the Call of Duty like games of that time. Don't be afraid to pull out some of those classics that have aged well enough. They'll have some fun out of them and they'll get to say they played that when people who are older reminisce about the good ol days of Super Mario World and such.

Speaking of which, emulators are a nice way to get them to try older games.

 

Oh yes definitely. I'm sure they won't mind at all

It's looking very promising for the Portal games; here's Portal 2 running on a Bay Trail powered tablet (obviously these Celeron powered laptops will beat the Atom processor in the tablet due to higher clocks and higher TDP limits): http://youtu.be/iDPHwKPR8cM

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Real men always start their gaming careers with integrated graphics... Even I had to do that on my Pentium 4 Dell Optiplex desktop

 

Have fun with that...

 

LOL you laugh at me but tbh, I still enjoyed gaming then.. I was able to play all my MOH titles (even airborne assualt I believe) on high settings @ 1280X1024 and I had nothing to complain about.. Nowadays, with games like Watchdogs etc, this is not practical but still there are older games for kids that can be played on integrated graphics

 

It helps to force you to pay attention to the more abscure indie titles and older classics that you may have overlooked otherwise. I never even considered playing Trine 2 until I found out they were getting these laptops, now I'm gonna give it a try with co-op with them

 

I probed a little today when I met them, asked them what their favourite video games are. Straight away they replied with GTA, Call Of Duty and Assassin's Creed. Figures. One of them even going as far as to say 'i like ones with guns in the best'. I hope they don't find Trine 2 too tame! There's no way I'm going to buy them 18 rated games, even though they said they play all these over their friends houses, I've got to be a responsible older brother!

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Threes no way I would ever let 10-12 year olds play GTA..

 

Ha, my 6 year old was watching YouTube videos and one was just gameplay of people driving the different cars in GTA IV, pretty tame actually, and then he said "I want that game daddy"... umm NO!

 

Yeah exactly! I started playing GTA around 11 years old and whenever my parents walked in, I'd just get into a car and tell them it's a driving game. :laugh:

However, hfm is absolutely right. GTA is not a kids game. I wouldn't let my kids touch it if they were younger than 17. "Do as I say, not as I do."