Everyone knows the real reason anyone uses a computer is to play games (or at least a close second… but not everyone watches porn). With that in mind, here’s a few games that I have enjoyed investigating.
Still haven’t got StarCraft to connect to Battle.net, so no fix to pass on there.
PlanetSide — I right-clicked the link on my desktop and then used the “Troubleshoot Compatibility” option and it chose XP SP 2 and then launched up something I hadn’t seen before that I couldn’t actually use to get into the game. Then Jon reminded me of the incompatibility on Vista, and the fix. I navigated over to planetside.exe and followed the instructions on the aforementioned link and it got up and running all pretty like. Well… at least it got to the login page popup that then scans your computer.
Then it errored out saying “Please start PlanetSide using the LaunchPad”
So then I went and set LaunchPad.exe to run as Win95 (like the link told me too and I ignored thinking Windows 7 knew better…) and the launcher and login page came up, and then I hit play and… I hear sound… and start to see some of the initial screens, but when I go to use Fn F7 to mute it, it goes back to the desktop and shows a black screen, so uh… don’t do that. Task Manager, End Process Tree again, and try to start it again (this time with headphones plugged in, so it doesn’t serenade everyone).
And again with the back to desktop with the black screen. Music still playing though, until it wasn’t.
I’m going to rule this one a no-go on Win7
Guild Wars -for a quick and easy install, here’s a tip: if you already have GW installed somewhere else, you can speed up the install by downloading the tiny client install, run it and it will start to download, feel free to kill it as soon as it shows up on your Start Menu. Then grab Gw.dat from another machine and copy it over, then no more download necessary (presuming it was already up to date). Also, if you want to skip ever having to download in the middle of a mission/party, you can run this before you start playing:
"C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\gw.exe" -image
and it will download EVERYTHING, including those expansions you have not yet purchased.
I played Guild Wars for a bit and have to say it runs pretty darn smoothly. Loading the non-instanced areas take a little bit of time, but I generally don’t need to find anyone who isn’t an NPC, so this isn’t a problem (as they load first).
Recently, DDO announced it was going free to play, so I might have to give that a shot once more. Jon and I played it a while back; he as a Cleric and I as a Rogue (a class that apparently does it from behind). When it comes available August 6, Jon and I will have to try it out.
Win7 comes with a number of games, more than just Spider, Solitaire, and Minesweeper of old. Mahjong, Spades, Hearts, Backgammon, Checkers, Freecell, Chess, and Purble Place. The last one is the only one I had no clue about. Seems to be a kids game.
Jon had a good suggestion, which is to explore Portable Games as a source of other games. The premise here being that if it works on a thumbstick it will work on an Eee.
One last place of note, Kongregate. This is a nice flash site and one of my favorite online game sites. With the smaller screen factor, you will need to utilize F11 (aka the full screen key) to be able to get the most out of your gaming experience.