What good games can I play on a quite crappy computer

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Yongtheskill

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#1  Edited By Yongtheskill

I recently found an old laptop that has an Intel core 2 duo 2.4 GHz processor(It says centrino 2) 8GB of ram and no graphics card. It would be nice if i could get any decent game on it. Any recommendations?

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BeachThunder

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Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.

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Mirado

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#3  Edited By Mirado

What genres are you interested in? With that kind of power, we're talking mainly indie games, so in that vein I've had fun with Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, and Enter The Gungeon (although the latter might even be too taxing if you really just have whatever Intel Graphics HD thing is integrated with that old core 2 duo).

Edit: You could also look into emulation of old titles (SNES, NES, Genesis, etc), but the requirements depend on the emulator you are using and the system you wish to emulate.

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nightriff

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Doom 1 and 2

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sagesebas

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Undertale runs on like anything

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Anthenagin

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Stardew Valley is great if your into that genre of games. I'll also agree with sagesebas and say Undertale is worth checking out

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NTM

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#7  Edited By NTM

@yongtheskill: Not always perfect, but use the site Can You RUN It. Look for a game on Steam, and if it interests you, check to see if you can do recommended specs, then if you think that it may be correct, go for it. A game anyone can run, and if you're into good game stories with a beautiful soundtrack--admittedly, not that great of gameplay, though it's fine--play To The Moon.

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deactivated-629ec706f0783

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@beachthunder: Thank you for this being the first and correct response

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Cagliostro88

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FTL and Gunpoint

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Bmode

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You can probably run a lot more than you would expect with a centrino 2, SNES emulators included.

I would also look at capital R Roguelikes, which will run on almost anything. Stone Soup is both super accessible and quite deep. Nethack is a classic for a good reason, I like the Slash'EM flavor.

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ArbitraryWater

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I'd recommend going on GOG or something and checking out all the old stuff that can basically run on anything. Heroes of Might and Magic II and III come to mind.

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FinalDasa

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You can probably run a lot of older games which are pretty easy to find on GOG, or even Steam.

Luckily they're also pretty cheap, or at least they get pretty cheap when they go on sale.

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capshot

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FTL and Gunpoint are two great games that I don't remember being that taxing. As for newer things, Devil Daggers runs extremely well on my sort-of-bad laptop, so I imagine that'd run on just about anything.

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TheManWithNoPlan

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#14  Edited By TheManWithNoPlan

Terraria and FTL were my go to when I had to use my old laptop before I built my pc. I think spelunky ran fine too.

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LeStephan

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FLYWRENCH

(My laptop stutters like crazy with everything I do, cant even watch streaming video with it properly anymore, even dos games preform so bad I cant play em. Flywrench fucking works somehow though.)

FTL is absolutely lovely as well.

Lastly Ill add 'king of dragon pass', look it up, you'll probably immediately know if its for you or not.

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shiftymagician

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#16  Edited By shiftymagician
  • Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight
  • 1001 spikes
  • Chronicles of Teddy
  • Flywrench
  • VVVVVV
  • Jamestown
  • Wizorb
  • TIS-100 (he he he)
  • Volgarr the Viking
  • 140
  • Gemini Rue

I owned and played them all. Highly recommend them (except maybe TIS-100. I love that game but you kinda need to understand some high-level assembler coding concepts to truly enjoy it)

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sparky_buzzsaw

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#17  Edited By sparky_buzzsaw

I have a similar laptop, and the biggest problem is that a lot of games released on Steam from the last two years -including relatively spec friendly games like Stardew - require very specific graphics card drivers in order to work, something you can't get from older laptops like these.

My recommendation would be to hit up GOG.com and browse anything released before 2012 or so. The most techincally powerful game I'm capable of running on mine is Civ V, but in the later periods, it's a slog. Try Civ IV, Command and Conquer Generals, Sid Meier's Pirates, the Heroes of Might and Magic series (probably up to about V), LucasArts adventure games like the Secret of Monkey Island remasters, Telltale's games up to roughly the first Walking Dead season (Sam and Max and Back to the Future, specifically), Anachronox (silly older RPG that has a great sense of self awareness), Knights of the Old Republic I and II, the Baldur's Gate games (the originals, NOT the remasters for technical reasons), Wizardry 8, and Jagged Alliance 2.

Most, if not all, of those games should be pretty easy to pick up and play from a modern perspective. There are more games I'd recommend, like Planescape Torment, Silent Storm, the original Sam and Max, the first two Fallout games, and some of the original entries to the Might and Magic series (I want to say V-VII?) that would require a bit more know-how to jump into them, but now's the age when that stuff is most accessible. Try a Vampire: The Masquerade or something while you're at it. Or Arcanum, if you're willing to play around with fan patches.

Good luck!

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Mirado

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#18  Edited By Mirado

@sparky_buzzsaw: What are you getting out of Civ 5 with a laptop like that (FPS wise), and at what resolution? I assume you have everything on low, but as Civ 5 isn't the most well-optimized game (or rather it is surprisingly CPU intensive) the fact that you can play it at all is somewhat shocking.

I've got an old Macbook Pro from 2008, and forget it. If a game like that runs at all, it starts to meltdown like an unstable reactor.

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sparky_buzzsaw

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@mirado: Anymore mine heats up like that too. As for FPS, I'm not sure, but enemy turns even with just a few civs start taking close to a couple of minutes by the end game.

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Captain_Insano

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FTL

Stardew Valley

Papers, Please

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe

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gloriana232

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People are going to burn me at the stake for this, but your laptop can actually run Life is Strange (on admittedly low settings). I have a 2.0GHZ laptop with 4 GB of RAM and I played Life Is Strange alongside GBeast's playthrough. The load times weren't great, and the frame rate dipped in certain parts, but I managed to play it all the way through!

Other games I can run on my crappy laptop:
Empire Total War
Spelunky
Binding of Isaac Rebirth
March of the Living
Kentucky Route Zero
Fez
Proteus
Axiom Verge

Notable games I can't run satisfactorily (*or at all)
The Witness*
Firewatch*
Skyrim*
Bioshock Infinite

and pretty much anything equally or more demanding than those four.

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hans_maulwurf

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The Shantae games.

Also, if "no graphics card" means just an integrated Intel one, I could see games like Hitman Blood Money or older source engine games like CSS or HL2 work. I've played those on single core PCs with a fraction of your ram, and also got it to run on a crappy win10 tablet.

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Mirado

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@yongtheskill: One thing to note: wipe that laptop clean. I'm not sure how many eons of accumulated crap it has on it, but a fresh OS install can really breath new life into a PC. Nuke the HDD from orbit, slap a new copy of Windows on there, and things might go from unplayable to...well, probably still somewhat unplayable depending on your choice of game, but it'll be at least a bit better, trust me.

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ColossalGhost

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Some great games that have not yet been mentioned:

Crusader Kings 2 - This game runs on slower machines by making the simulation run slower.

Burnout Paradise - one of the best games of the last generation and contender for best racing game ever made

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic - Star Wars RPG

FEZ - one of the best puzzle game

Psychonauts - 3D platforming with a lot of humor

Dwarf Fortress

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isomeri

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DEFCON.

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Rebel_Scum

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#26  Edited By Rebel_Scum
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thomasnash

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You could probably play Dwarf Fortress pretty satisfactorily on that.

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Yongtheskill

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@ntm: It's a linux so that will not work

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Yongtheskill

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Thanks for all the replies I will go and check those games out. :D

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nicolenomicon

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#30  Edited By nicolenomicon

I've been playing a lot of Sunless Sea lately, which I enjoy. Its browser-based companion game Fallen London is also very good. We Know the Devil may very well be the best thing I've played this year and that's a visual novel so you can probably run that. Danganronpa also came out on steam a little while back and that shouldn't be too taxing? La-Mulana is a very good metroidvania-ish thing that basically any computer can run. TIS-100 is a programming puzzle game that's really hard, but requires very low specs to run.

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Belegorm

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Probably most old games and a lot of indie games?

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BallsLeon

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#32  Edited By BallsLeon

Heroes of Might and Magic III

Darkest Dungeon

Stardew Valley

Devil Daggers

Binding of Isaac

Rogue Legacy

Spelunky

The Fall <--- I think this is $1 right now

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Spankmealotus

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#33  Edited By Spankmealotus

Terraria! I've played this game for about 700 hours and it's only $10 when it's not on sale. Frequently goes on sale for like $3.

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rorie

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I will also say that Spelunky is pretty amazing. Terraria is also fairly amazing if you can get past the first, rough few hours.

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Broddity

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For what it's worth, I have a similar juggling act to perform with my MacBook Air, which is certainly a later model (2013 or 2014, I believe). That can manage some surprisingly beefy titles, but it heats up like a mother.

Here's a brief selection of games I'd say are a cut above the rest, which run perfectly fine on my machine. Someone more tech savvy than me will be able to comment on whether all of these feasible on your laptop, @yongtheskill, but I'm sure at least a few will do fine:

  • Civ V
  • Invisible, Inc
  • Stanley Parable (and that Dr. Langstrom follow up thing)
  • X-com: Enemy Unknown
  • Minecraft
  • Gone Home
  • Papers, Please
  • Mark of the Ninja
  • Stardew Valley

Like I say, with the lack of an internal fan, the MacBook Air gets leg-meltingly hot on some of the more power-hungry titles - but an Xbox 360 dongle and controller follow it around whenever I travel.

I've also used the Air as an opportunity to revisit some old favourites. Theme Park, Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper are all installed.

Finally -

  • Elite: Dangerous

I suspect this is at the upper end of your machine's capabilities, and might well cross the line, but I wanted to say how impressively this game scales to different system levels. I can in fact play it on the Air, though I definitely need to pull the graphics options down. Even so, the fact I can fly about at all is impressive, so if you're into a bit of space-sim then it might be worth a shot ...

... and if the specs are too much, then TIE-Fighter-me-do!

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Zelyre

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Head on over to GOG.com

Snag Freespace 2. Mod it up a bit.

Torchlight.

Planescape

Baldur's Gate

Fallout 1/2/Tactics

Bethesda had Daggerfall up as a free download. Remember, you can slow fall up, but only if you're friends with a dragon.

And then you have the Blizzard stuff - Star Craft, Warcraft, I played Diablo 2 on a netbook and it ran smooth as silk.

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General_Desire

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Potentially No Man's Sky? If it's good.

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Gigabomber

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I was in your situation a little while ago and I found that sticking to 2d games unless they are very old 3d games, works well.

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duke_of_the_bump

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Thirty Flights of Loving, Eczema Angel Orifice, Sunset Over Imdahl, Middens, Photopia, La La Land, diep.io, Tontie, Nanaca Crash, rRootage, Scorched Earth, Eversion, Gods Will Be Watching, Don't Look Back, Peasant's Quest, Deadly Rooms of Death

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sweep

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#40 sweep  Moderator

FTL was my game of choice for a long time. I'd say any of the big indie hits from the last few years like Super Meat Boy, Braid, FTL, Undertale, Downwell, Gemini Rue. GLHB

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monetarydread

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#41  Edited By monetarydread

Emulators:

  • I have been playing a lot of my old games lately on my PC and it is fantastic. My roommate bought one of those crazy expensive ($600 after upgrades) Analogue NT's and I cannot tell the difference between that and my Retrode connected to my PC.

PCGamer.Com has this weekly article called "Best Free Games of the Week." There are lots of great games that you can find exploring that article.

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Beta379

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I know this is pretty obscure, but have you ever heard of Mari0? Its takes the original mario bros and adds a portal gun into the mix. Its pretty neato, and I'm sure It can run on your computer.

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Vahleticar

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@zelyre: Can't quote on mobile but yes I was going to say Fallout 1/2!

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deactivated-630479c20dfaa

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Planescape torment and Baldurs Gate 2.

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rorie

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Not sure if anyone's said it yet, but Terraria is pretty amazing!

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Yongtheskill

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@broddity: I can run a regular minecraft world at 9 fps :)

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ivdamke

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#47  Edited By ivdamke
@rorie said:

I will also say that Spelunky is pretty amazing. Terraria is also fairly amazing if you can get past the first, rough few hours.

@rorie said:

Not sure if anyone's said it yet, but Terraria is pretty amazing!

Wait a minute.

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Broddity

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@ivdamke said:
@rorie said:

I will also say that Spelunky is pretty amazing. Terraria is also fairly amazing if you can get past the first, rough few hours.

@rorie said:

Not sure if anyone's said it yet, but Terraria is pretty amazing!

Wait a minute.

Confirmation that 'fairly' = 'pretty' on the adjective scale?

I have been labouring under the impression 'pretty' > 'fairly'!

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SlickRick145

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Do you have any nostalgia for Everquest? I have been playing on the Project 1999 server, and it is everything I'd hoped it would be. It can also be run by a toaster.

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daiphyer

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Starbound