We've been getting a few friends together for small LAN parties lately (4-6 people) - and I was hoping you guys might be able to suggest some good titles.

No one has a particularly impressive machine, so there are a few stipulations...

• Must be able to run on a Celeron 900Mhz machine with GEFORCE 2 video card & 256MB RAM (this is the lowest spec machine of the group)
  
• Should still be fun with only 4 players
  
• Preferably fast, action games - I already have a handful of RTS games, Empire Earth, Age of Empires etc... but I'd prefer the "pick up and play" type games with a short learning curve.

We've been playing Half Life along with the mods - mostly Action Half Life - and it's a blast, but I'm sure we'll get sick of it eventually... right?

starcraft?

Midtown Madness 1 and Re-Volt are fun racing games for LANs. If you want a switch from half-life try UT's CTF with low-grav and instagib enabled.

I was just looking at Unreal Tournament - I might have to pick up a copy, cheers! I also have an old copy of Midtown Madness sitting around... I'd forgotten all about it; we might have to try it!

Counter strike gets boring with so few.

Jedi Knight II works fine on a 900.

Quake I DM is great.

Atomic Bomberman
Worms World Party
Ghost Recon (for co-op play)
Rogue Spear (also for co-op play)

Star Craft gets my vote aswell. some C&C and let the party start.

Heh... it's an old game, but if you can get Death Rally running over today's hardware (and under Windows 2k/xp/whatever), you'll have a blast.

- David Stein

The Descent games are a blast for small LAN parties. I think you can find Descent III for about $10. It's a little bit harder to master than your average FPS.


The Age of Empires games for some RTS action.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs fine on my machine 800mhz thunderbird with a 32MB video card. Aliens vs. Predator is pretty good, too. The gold edition is only $20.

Diablo II is fun for a few people.

Neverwinter Nights is good if you have some serious people who want to really geek out and do some role playing.

[lets see... 4-6 people.. Maybe Qpong mod for whatever version of quake? I think they made if for 2 and 3.. you will just need to find the maps that work for less players, or throw some bots in..

Midtown maddness is great in cops and robber mode I think it's called.. where you chase the car with the $$$.. Just make sure you set the game so that the gold has some weight, just enough to slow the car down. Other wise they get on the freeway and you go 80, he goes 80.. you never catch him.. yawn...

UT is good also, runs on most anything I would guess..

Ya might really think about looking to just grab a ton of mods for q2/3 and HL.. I mean most will play those games ok and the mods + new maps make it close to a new game for every mod.

Maybe some old school mech warrior? I think that has gotten super cheap by now.

Always Worms.. Heard that is a blast if people are into the game.. Even have a 3d version out now... I was not that much into it but some really love it..

UT
Ghost Recon
Age of Empires

UT is a good choice, even more with all of the mods and maps you can download. I play it on the company LAN every day with about 10 of my co-workers during lunch. I even set up a dedicated server in the server room.

Thanks for the responses lads!

Looks like I'll be picking up Unreal Tournament - along with a few mods and we should be set! Anyone know the best mods for UT? I had a look around PlanetUnreal but they're understandably not promoting the OLD mods too much; any opinions?

I haven't played Quake too much, but I'm not fond of the miserable looking maps; they're a bit gloomy for my taste - I prefer bright, outdoor stuff - Action Half Life and Day of Defeat have some great ones...

I tried Counter Strike also, but with only 6 players I'm sure it just ends up with everyone waiting for the round to end while the remaining two players chase each other around the map...

Death Rally? Is that anything like Death Race 2000? I can't remember, man that's been a while - cd dir c:\drally\ (!?!). I think I remember playing that around the time of Test Drive 2 and California games, in glorious VGA...

I was also thinking of picking up RTCW - glad to hear it runs well on an 800Mhz machine, thanks funkyryno.

Another vote for UT. I've been playing mostly sniper servers with the Zark rifle mod lately. Perfect for small LAN partys.

Might want to check out "The Specialists" mod for halflife. It's a takeoff of The Matrix with kungfu powerups and all sorts of "guns, lots of guns"

Q2.

I just tried that out last weekend - great mod! I played online for an hour or so - but haven't gotten my head around all the "power ups" yet... but the Matrix style jumping was cool! From what I saw, when I ran over a slow-down power-up, every player went into bullet time!?!?

Might have to play a few games tomorrow...

Half-Life is still one of my favorites. I will check out the Specialists mod as well.