I used to play PC games, not so much any more...
At one point the console games seemed to be surpassing the PC in quality and game experience, from what I read in this thread apparently PC gaming hardware has come up to snuff in the past couple years and pc gaming quality is surpassing the consoles again?
Maybe you avid and long time gamers can offer me some advise. I maintain LAN pc's that provide public access to the internet for a group of people, and used to provide some games. As gaming consoles became more popular pc gaming seemed to fall off a cliff and I kinda gave up on it. There were all sorts of issues with public pc gaming that became more of a problem as games got more complex, all the online accounts, passwords, serial numbers, and protecting them from be stolen and distributed by the public pc users became a bit tough to deal with. As time has gone by my computers have become outdated and at this point they wont run the newest games (like Battlefield3). The pc's have 1-2 gig ram, dual core Pentium or Core2Duo 2.0-2.4GHz and Radeon video cards around the HD3400 generation.
Recently I ran across a couple slightly old school games that are completely free and running on legacy platforms that play fine on my PC's, Track Mania Forever and NEXIUZ 2.5.2. Although older, these games are pretty fun, I am wondering if you guys have any suggestions for other similar free games that will run on slightly older PC's? I need to focus on games that are most fun to play in a multiplayer LAN or online situation, I need to lean on the multiplayer aspect because there is a gaming console right next to the computers that have better graphics, but there is only one of them.
If you guys have any suggestions for other free games that I might try out I would appreciate your input....
Those are certainly outdated computers. You can get 8 gigs of good RAM for like 40 or 50 bucks when it's on sale.
PC's have been the superior machine for the last two or so years. It's probably going to be a cycle. When the next generation of consoles come out around 2014, they will become superior again. The companies typically lose money when you buy a console. That's how it worked when the current gen came out. They then make the money back from you buying their games and their services like xbox live.
for 600 bucks you can make a PC run at decent settings any game out today. For 1000 you can go "ultra" on any game.
But as for suggestions on competitive games, there's quite a number but here's a few.
The new tribes ascends
https://account.hirezstudios.com/tribesascend/
A sequel to a highly competitive game. It's free and will remain free and has the option of microtransactions. If you want to try it, you can easily get a beta key by "likeing" them on facebook. At lower settings you should be able to run it
Dota 2 or Heroes of Newerth are highly competitive and free
. Dota is in beta though so you need a key for that. These are very hard to learn games and not very forgiving. The community also sucks, people aren't very willing to help most of the time. Still manages a large playerbase. I'd suggest playing against AI for a while. But even then it won't prepare you enough for online. Just a warning.. I personally play dota 2 all the time despite what I said. It's just hard to learn it. League of legends is another option but I don't like that one..
Umm... I have to suggest Terraria.
A bit like minecraft but more combat, armour, decorative things, exciting happenings. It's so much fun! You can buy a 4 pack for 30 bucks or 10 bucks per *purchase*. On steam. With enough people you can have teams and build castles and then decide to assault eachother.
I can't think of other free things. Maybe it'll come to me.
Halo C.E. Still remains extremely fun for LAN parties though.
Oh how I miss the days of halo LAN's.
I had a good 'stick with the rudder control option, but it died some time ago. I've been looking to replace it for a couple of years, but for those in-between years no one seemed to make one that way.
