Limited Gaming

[Ahriman238]

So it's been some years since I did more than the most casual gaming. Last year I got a new laptop for Christmas, and shortly after I picked up Assassin's Creed 1 & 2 for cheap. The first game was fine, but AC2 was a bit too intense for my computer and after two weeks of trying to get it to work I gave up.

This year I got a strategy game pack, Civ5 and X-Com and I'm having a blast but I'm just wondering. A decade ago there were entire shelves of PC games, today, what the hell is there for someone whose internet connection is too unreliable to always play online, who doesn't want to subscribe to anything and can't get a dedicated gaming computer?

[Elheru Aran]

Your best bet is probably Ebaying for old CD's. Almost everything these days requires getting a subscription, even a free one. That said, you could try GOG.com.

[Mr Bean]

Your best bet is probably Ebaying for old CD's. Almost everything these days requires getting a subscription, even a free one. That said, you could try GOG.com.

Second for Good Old Games, lots and lots of quality titles and they don't require an internet connection once you download it.

[bilateralrope]

I wouldn't bother hunting for CDs of old games. For gaming on a low spec machine GOG has lots of old games and they have put in effort to make the game run on modern operating systems. Steam has lots of indie titles that don't need a powerful system.

From memory, Civ 5 and X-Com require Steam for PC. Since they are working, that means your connection is reliable enough for single player games on Steam. So you can always buy more from there, the Steam store is probably a major reason why PC games are disappearing from physical shelves. I suggest you stick a game you like on your wishlist, then wait for it to go on sale. You should be able to get at least 75% off on most of the titles your laptop can run when the summer sale comes around.

Though download size might be an issue.

Interestingly, the minimum requirements for Civ 5 and AC2 are very similar. So either Ubisoft lowballed them, or you're having the same performance issues in both games and have decided that they aren't a problem in a turn based game. Which means you might get a lot of use out of the user tags. Go to the store page for any game, at the top right there is a section "Popular user-defined tags for this product:". Clicking a tag does a search for other games with the same tag.


What are the exact specs of your laptop ?

[TheFeniX]

As said, GoG.com is going to be your goto for that style of gaming. You have to have an account, but it's really no different than having an Amazon account.

The days of cruising electronic stores for PC games is pretty much dead. Many will require accounts/activation either way, such as the (now dead) Games for Windows Live. Skyrim requires Steam, all Blizz games require a B.net account, EA is split across the board with Origin or some other (exceedling annoying) login systems for their games.

That said, Steam is still geared towards your gaming habits. The offline mode can be obtuse, but I've had few issues with it when setup correctly. This will work in the case of you losing Internet for a short while, provided you've run an installed game while in online mode. Origin has it's own offline system, but I don't think it handles Internet down issues.

Steam can always download in the background and if you know how to backup your game data files, you never have to worry about losing them or re-downloading if you swap PCs. This is how I cut a load of DL time off some games like Skyrim (and my mods) when I got my new PC.

There's also abanonware and emulation, but those exist in some sort of legal limbo.

[Elheru Aran]

Personally, I like having a physical CD. If the computer ever goes south, you don't have to sweat recovering the files or whatever, just consider it a scratch and start over with the CD. Plus you get (if you find the right deal anyway) a sweet package with the liner notes, manual, extra stuff like maps and what not...

But yes, GOG is probably the easiest way to go, less compatibility issues there, especially when you consider the issues that older games might have when trying to get in touch with their online support.

[TheFeniX]

There's nothing to stop you from copying GOG downloaded installers onto an external drive or burning them to a DVD. I used to do the same thing by backing up copies of my games (Jedi Knight series in particular), but then you run into the issue of copy protection even though you're legally allowed to make backups of your software. Not to mention dealing with the annoyance of No-CD cracks.

This is why I kind of meter my purchases, which means a lot less now than it used to. I would avoid SP games on Steam in it's early life because no one really knew if valve was just going to be like "whelp, that failed. Shut it down" WRT anything outside of valve games. But Steam isn't going anywhere and all a disc counts for these days is a cheap housing for your data because, like you mentioned, game boxes (outside of collector editions) don't come with shit.

I still have pretty much every CD from every Star Wars PC game I ever purchased, but I keep them out of nostaliga because why bother beating them with a hammer to MAYBE get them installed when I instead could (and did) just buy them all off Steam for $20? Or I could do the same with GOG now.

My only real beef with the "always online" bullshit is the exclusivity agreements publishers get with certain titles. There's no consumer-friendly reason Skyrim isn't available as a disc-only retail sale. It's a fucking single-player game. But I have to load up Steam every time I want to mow down some Bandits and that's idiotic.

EDIT: Though I will say, having it on Steam meant to recover my game on a new PC, all I had to do was copy over the game folder and the AppID file and re-start Steam. That is a nice bonus, but not enough of one to justify it being a Steam exclusive.

[bilateralrope]

There's also abanonware and emulation, but those exist in some sort of legal limbo.

There is no legal ambiguity around abandonware. It's pirated software. The only difference is that the current copyright holders aren't likely to care enough to do anything, but that doesn't change the legality at all.

Emulation, that has ambiguity if you own the game your emulating. If you don't own the game in question, then it's just piracy.

Personally, I like having a physical CD. If the computer ever goes south, you don't have to sweat recovering the files or whatever, just consider it a scratch and start over with the CD. Plus you get (if you find the right deal anyway) a sweet package with the liner notes, manual, extra stuff like maps and what not...

With Steam I just need to remember the email address I made the account with. Username and password can be recovered, though it's best to just remember them. As for the games, I just download the games I want to play with a few clicks per game. Many games also backup your saved games to the Steam cloud automatically.

[General Zod]

Consider looking into Onlive. You need a steady internet connection but you can play some newer games on hardware that's not up to snuff.

[biostem]

GoG.com is probably your best bet. You could also check out Steam, as many of the indy games aren't that intensive. Gamestop.com also has a lot of used PC games available, (you'd have to check compatibility game-for-game, though).

[bilateralrope]

Consider looking into Onlive. You need a steady internet connection but you can play some newer games on hardware that's not up to snuff.

How did you miss the part where Ahriman238 said that his internet connection is "too unreliable to always play online" ?

Onlive is clearly not an option for him. I wonder how many people even have an internet connection that can handle Onlive.

[Ahriman238]

I wouldn't bother hunting for CDs of old games. For gaming on a low spec machine GOG has lots of old games and they have put in effort to make the game run on modern operating systems. Steam has lots of indie titles that don't need a powerful system.

From memory, Civ 5 and X-Com require Steam for PC. Since they are working, that means your connection is reliable enough for single player games on Steam. So you can always buy more from there, the Steam store is probably a major reason why PC games are disappearing from physical shelves. I suggest you stick a game you like on your wishlist, then wait for it to go on sale. You should be able to get at least 75% off on most of the titles your laptop can run when the summer sale comes around.

Though download size might be an issue.

Interestingly, the minimum requirements for Civ 5 and AC2 are very similar. So either Ubisoft lowballed them, or you're having the same performance issues in both games and have decided that they aren't a problem in a turn based game. Which means you might get a lot of use out of the user tags. Go to the store page for any game, at the top right there is a section "Popular user-defined tags for this product:". Clicking a tag does a search for other games with the same tag.


What are the exact specs of your laptop ?

I do have Steam, and should probably investigate their store, thanks.

My machine is a stock HP Pavilion g7.

[TheFeniX]

There is no legal ambiguity around abandonware. It's pirated software. The only difference is that the current copyright holders aren't likely to care enough to do anything, but that doesn't change the legality at all.

Abandonware is weird. The original Star Control 2 source code was released, and even though it's still copyrighted, the creation of the Ur-Quan Masters port is legal. From what I know, you cannot do the same thing with Jedi-Outcast even though Raven released the sourcecode because Lucasrts, now likely disney, owns the Star Wars IP and anything connected to it. But I'm not even 100% on that, I just know it's illegal to DL Jedi-Outcast.

Emulation, that has ambiguity if you own the game your emulating. If you don't own the game in question, then it's just piracy.

Once again, it's some kind of weird limbo. You not only need the game for some systems, but sometimes even the copyrighted BIOS information for something like a PS2 emulator. I don't know if this applies to all consoles and information is difficult to find. I still have many of my old SNES games and my NES collection may or may not be collecting dust somewhere. Does this make SNES or NES emulation legal for me?

Probably the wrong thread for this discussion, so I'll just shut up.

I do have Steam, and should probably investigate their store, thanks.

The nice thing with Steam is that all your games are a username/password away from being reinstalled. Just make sure you run every game you've downloaded at least once to make sure it's available in offline mode. Although, if your Internet is persistent, but unreliable, it won't be an issue either way since Steam does not boot you out of games if your Internet dies, unlike some other extremely shitty DRM.

[bilateralrope]

There is no legal ambiguity around abandonware. It's pirated software. The only difference is that the current copyright holders aren't likely to care enough to do anything, but that doesn't change the legality at all.

Abandonware is weird. The original Star Control 2 source code was released, and even though it's still copyrighted, the creation of the Ur-Quan Masters port is legal. From what I know, you cannot do the same thing with Jedi-Outcast even though Raven released the sourcecode because Lucasrts, now likely disney, owns the Star Wars IP and anything connected to it. But I'm not even 100% on that, I just know it's illegal to DL Jedi-Outcast.

Star Control 2 sounds like one of those exceptions where the copyright holders decided to give the game away. Not the usual abandonware case where the owners don't care about their game.

Once again, it's some kind of weird limbo. You not only need the game for some systems, but sometimes even the copyrighted BIOS information for something like a PS2 emulator. I don't know if this applies to all consoles and information is difficult to find. I still have many of my old SNES games and my NES collection may or may not be collecting dust somewhere. Does this make SNES or NES emulation legal for me?

That likely also depends on your jurisdiction.

Although, if your Internet is persistent, but unreliable, it won't be an issue either way since Steam does not boot you out of games if your Internet dies, unlike some other extremely shitty DRM.

There have been times where I've been doing stuff fine on Steam for a few hours, only to go to a forum and see a post saying that Steam has been down the whole time. As long as the login process worked you'll be able to run your games. Even if the Steam client loses connection to Steam afterwards. This is without offline mode.