{"id":494,"date":"2006-11-25T19:00:02","date_gmt":"2006-11-25T23:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/11\/25\/will-it-work\/"},"modified":"2006-11-25T19:00:02","modified_gmt":"2006-11-25T23:00:02","slug":"will-it-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/11\/25\/will-it-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Will it work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend asked me for another game last week<\/a>. After his experience with Pirates!<\/em> (which he eventually got working), the first thing he asks me is whether any game I recommend will run on his laptop.<\/p>\n

He picked up Medieval II<\/em> on his own. He loved Rome and was really looking forward to Medieval II<\/em>. No go.<\/p>\n

He asked about CivCity: Rome<\/em>. I told him that Caesar IV<\/em> was a better game in almost every way, so he downloaded the demo. No go.<\/p>\n

He asked what the best game I’d played in the last month was, and I quickly answered Company of Heroes<\/em>. Not a chance it will run on his machine.<\/p>\n

Integrated graphics for the loss.<\/p>\n

So, he came to the only reasonable conclusion for a casual gamer who wants to play cool stuff but thinks it should run on the computer he bought from Dell only three years ago. “I’m going back to my Playstation.” So I recommended Bully<\/em> based purely on word of mouth. He’s a teacher; he’ll appreciate it.<\/p>\n

And those of us with new, higher end systems designed for gaming aren’t off scot-free. Neverwinter Nights II<\/em> runs like a lame horse even when not turned up to its shiniest. I was playing an indie game for my latest column that kept crashing my IRC program running in the background.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, HPS wargames have minimum requirements stuck sometime in 1992. 500 MHz processor, DirectX 7, 128 MB of RAM. I know that these will run on my friend’s computer, and he might even like them. But as I age, I know that I want more immediate gratification in games I stumble upon, so I doubt that Defending the Reich<\/em> will do it for him.<\/p>\n

So my friend is giving Civilization IV<\/em> another try – he couldn’t get into it the first time – but I’d like to turn him on to something new and exciting. Fill the comments with a recommendation or two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend asked me for another game last week. After his experience with Pirates! (which he eventually got working), the first thing he asks me is whether any game I recommend will run on his laptop. He picked up Medieval II on his own. He loved Rome and was really looking forward to Medieval II. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-7Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}