Looking for good game recommendations for a new laptop

dimejinky99

Hey
i love age of empires and that kind of stuff, i just got a new laptop and i've been away from gaming for years. Just wondering Is there anything like that out there now that you could recommend? I've no idea where to start or where to even buy games for PC..
any help would be appreciated.
thanks

tman

Maybe go for Supreme Commander, or have a look on a site like metacritic and see which of the top rated games for PC sound like your cup of tea...

For buying, check out play.com (there are many alternatives, but play can't be beaten for ease of use)
You could also get steam from steampowered.com if you want to buy games but don't care about having a boxed copy...

SeantheMan

Obviously an RTS man,

Age of Mythology came out, and Age of Empires 3 came out too !!

Otherwise you should look at Company of Heroes, Red Alert 3, Command and Conquer Tiberium Wars, World In Conflict or Warcraft 3

I've always found it best to look between stores, GAME mostly....and sometimes Virgin. But i find music stores tend to be clueless at pricing games..as do PCWorld, just 49,99 for everything....even the likes of Fifa 04 etc,
Otherwise check your local extravision
If you dont care about spendin a little extra, go with STEAM downloads

dimejinky99

thanks lads, they sound great too..i was looking at these
# Sins Of A Solar Empirer that..or me laptop..
# Lord Of The Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth II
# The Lord Of The Rings: Conquest

but age of empires, if its still around, would deffo be great too. Dunno what Steam is but i'm gonna look it up now.
one more question...
Are there any cool Star Wars games without having to do all that online gaming?
not sure i'm up for that, or me laptop..

GothPunk

dimejinky99 wrote: »

# Sins Of A Solar Empire

Are there any cool Star Wars games without having to do all that online gaming?
not sure i'm up for that, or me laptop..

Sins of a Solar Empire is an excellent game, I doubt you'd be disappointed with it. Did you ever play Starcraft by any chance? It's pretty damn old now but I still find myself going back to it now every now and then.

If you're interested in Star Wars RTS games, check out Galactic Battlegrounds or Empire at War. I've only ever played the demo version of them but they seemed alright.

SeantheMan

GothPunk wrote: »

Sins of a Solar Empire is an excellent game, I doubt you'd be disappointed with it. Did you ever play Starcraft by any chance? It's pretty damn old now but I still find myself going back to it now every now and then.

If you're interested in Star Wars RTS games, check out Galactic Battlegrounds or Empire at War. I've only ever played the demo version of them but they seemed alright.

StarCraft...memories ...probably the Best RTS ever, still has 2 !!! dedicated TV stations in Korea i think....they LOVE that game.

Lord of the Rings Battle For Middle Earth is good, I enjoyed the Skirmishes...not the campaign though

LOTRO : Conquest is only a new game out...like Star Wars : Battlefront...where you take part in the epic battles of the series..constantly dieing and respawning as a different class.....in a capture the flag or capture territory 3rd person view style game.

Oh...I didnt mention the Total War : series

You should be able to get Rome for pretty cheap, and Medieval 2 should be cheap enough aswell. Or as its a new laptop..you may wanna wait for Empire : Total War....which is out next month i think ...make use of your gfx card !

dimejinky99

Cheers for the recommendations lads, and especially for Steam! that's a deadly spot, really cuts the legwork out of it..
got Civilisation IV and i'm loving it so far, though i'm kinda clueless as to whats goin on being honest. I'll deffo look at all those others too though.

GothPunk

SeantheMan wrote: »

Oh...I didnt mention the Total War : series

Amen to that! Can't believe I didn't mention those games either, damn they're good.

(Btw: Empire: Total War was delayed until March to add multiplayer.)

Sephiroth_dude

definitly get company of heros,you'll probbly enjoy that lots and forget about every other rts out there.

dimejinky99

pardon my insolence, but who was sephiroth again? the name is ringing a bell but i cant remember why...

Cy_Revenant

dimejinky99 wrote: »

pardon my insolence, but who was sephiroth again? the name is ringing a bell but i cant remember why...

Antagonist from Final Fantasy VII. Very good but generally overrated JRPG.

As for strategy games, I would find it difficult to recommend anything other than the best.

If you like the broad strategic elements, the Total War series is as good as it gets. Specifically Rome, Medieval 2, and when it gets released, Empire. Though my Dad still insists Shogun was the highpoint.

World in Conflict is the epitome of Tactical gameplay in my eyes.

Company of Heroes is the highpoint of the traditional RTS genre. Keep an eye out for the expansions too.

There's other good stuff, but it doesn't get better than these.

Feelgood

dimejinky99 wrote: »

i just got a new laptop and i've been away from gaming for years.

My first obvious question would be did you get an Apple laptop or a Windows laptop??.

dimejinky99

Feelgood wrote: »

My first obvious question would be did you get an Apple laptop or a Windows laptop??.

I got a dell studio..its got paint on the lid. I wasonly ever gonna use it for internet & college possibly, nothing too heavy, i don't know it's specs but it's great so far.

Used to LOVE FFVII!!!

is Zelda avaialble anywhere for PC? favourite games ever. Deffo will check out all the ones mentioned here too, thanks lads.

Wossack

didnt see dawn of war mentioned

no zelda games for the pc afaik

L31mr0d

if you get steam, download Darwinia and Multiwinia, both great games.

TerrorFirmer

you might want to list your specifications, the Studio laptops range from basic integrated to mid-range dedicated cards. the weakest of which is still enough to play most older games pretty decently, but newer games would be out of the question, as would many moderately recent games (even for example the mentioned company of heroes, on the weakest video card available in the Studio range, would only run at very low settings.) No point firing off game recommendations when your machine could either be at either end of the spectrum...

Cunny-Funt

Yep, what TerrorFirmer said. You seriously wanna look up your laptops specs.

Right click 'my computer' and hit properties for your CPU and RAM.

For your graphics card. Right click on your desktop and click properties then hit the settings tab. Name of your card should be there.

GothPunk

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

you might want to list your specifications, the Studio laptops range from basic integrated to mid-range dedicated cards. the weakest of which is still enough to play most older games pretty decently, but newer games would be out of the question, as would many moderately recent games (even for example the mentioned company of heroes, on the weakest video card available in the Studio range, would only run at very low settings.) No point firing off game recommendations when your machine could either be at either end of the spectrum...

Just FYI, I have a Studio 1735 with an ATI 3650HD (256MB) and it can play Left4Dead, BioShock and Mass Effect on high settings. I output the video via HDMI to my TV so it's only running at 1280x720 resolution (native resolution is 1440x900), so this graphics card seems to hold up to everything I've thrown at it so far if I drop the resolution a bit. If he has this card he should be alright. Sins of a Solar Empire win run for sure anyways regardless of which card he has, I don't think it's the most demanding game at medium settings.

SeantheMan

dimejinky99 wrote: »

I got a dell studio..its got paint on the lid. I wasonly ever gonna use it for internet & college possibly, nothing too heavy, i don't know it's specs but it's great so far.

Used to LOVE FFVII!!!

is Zelda avaialble anywhere for PC? favourite games ever. Deffo will check out all the ones mentioned here too, thanks lads.

You can get FF7 for the PC ...i know its not zelda..but hey

You could try an emulator though, im sure theres ones for N64 and Zelda if tahts the one your after

TerrorFirmer

GothPunk wrote: »

Just FYI, I have a Studio 1735 with an ATI 3650HD (256MB) and it can play Left4Dead, BioShock and Mass Effect on high settings. I output the video via HDMI to my TV so it's only running at 1280x720 resolution (native resolution is 1440x900), so this graphics card seems to hold up to everything I've thrown at it so far if I drop the resolution a bit. If he has this card he should be alright. Sins of a Solar Empire win run for sure anyways regardless of which card he has, I don't think it's the most demanding game at medium settings.

Yes, but he could also have a Studio with the Intel X3100, on which none of those games would run, at any settings....people are too quick to assume their new laptop will play games really, you see threads all the time about 'why won't crysis/far cry/oblivion work on my new laptop'!

GothPunk

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Yes, but he could also have a Studio with the Intel X3100, on which none of those games would run, at any settings....people are too quick to assume their new laptop will play games really, you see threads all the time about 'why won't crysis/far cry/oblivion work on my new laptop'!

Yeah that's very true, that's why I love my laptop, it actually plays games Anyway if you read what I said again I didn't say he should be able to play all those games (L4D etc), only that regardless of what graphics card or integrated chipset he has Sins of a Solar Empire will run. I doubt the X3100 would get you through a good game of L4D!

I guess the point of my post is that if he has one of the high end Studio series laptops he could squeeze a lot out of it, especailly if he drops the resolution down from 1440x900. If he has one of the lower end models, Sins of a Solar Empire (it was designed to run on a wide spectrum of different PC specs) and most of the Total War games should run fine.

Soby

How bout a blast from the past bit of grim fandango or monkey island;)

dimejinky99

hey
ok im a bit worried now cos i've no ieda about this stuff..
but ive got
intel pentium(R) dual CPU T3200 @2.00GHZ
Memory RAM 2.00GB
32 bit OS
138 GB OS
9.99 GB recovery

this ok?

also, i'm not loving civilisation at all. Kinda over me head to be honest. there's just way too much going on and the turn based thing is a wreck the head.

GothPunk

Right what we need you to do to find out what video card is to follow these steps and then post what you find.

1. Type 'dxdiag' into the search bar on the start menu, and click on 'dxdiag.exe' that appears.
2. When DXDiag opens, click on the 'Display' tab at the top.
3. The 'Name' category in the Display tab lists what graphics card you have. If you can post here what you find we'll have a better idea of what games you can run well.

Don't worry too much, RTS games tend to be less demanding so are more likely to run well on a laptop. You should be fine with a 2.0 Ghz Core2Duo processor and 2GB of RAM, but to really give you solid advice we need to know what video card you have.

Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, if you experience any slow down issues: When you're in a game if you access the video or display options and set the display resolution to 1024x768 or 1280x720 games might run a bit faster.

thebman

Try this site to see if you can run a game, tells you if it will run well or not too and gives you a breakdown of what meets specs and whats holding you back on performance.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

Overheal

+1 for Sins of a Solar Empire. As far as space RTSs go, you will be amazed at the scale - its ****ing huge.

Also No Steam Account is complete without purchasing The Orange Box.

dimejinky99

it's an ATI mobility Radeon HD 3400 series

GothPunk

dimejinky99 wrote: »

it's an ATI mobility Radeon HD 3400 series

Awesome, that's pretty good That's one of the better graphics cards that the Studio series laptops come with, so you should be able to play most of the games mentioned in this thread without any problems.