netbook games

Well, I finally finished playing World of Goo. The fact it took so long is no reflection on the quality of the game. When the weather’s nice, I simply don’t play games at all. But now that winter’s back…

This cnet article on 20 netbook playable games was great although how they omitted WoG is beyond me. I decided to check out some of the titles on the list. I wasn’t really interested in looking at the older games on the list but more the recent low system requirement titles.

The first one I checked out was Plants vs. Zombies. I’d actually heard of this one already…I guess there’s an iphone version of it. I played the web version of it a bit and proceeded to download and install the mac version on my wind since it was one of the few games offered for mac. It’s easy to pick up and a lot of fun…great for casual gamers. I’d say similar to WoG but a little less ambitious.

Next, I took a look at Quake Live. This is an innovative, browser plugin-based implementation of multiplayer Quake. Sadly, the plugin locked up my browser/computer before I could even get my controls configured properly so needless to say, this was uninstalled.

Next up was Torchlight, a D&D style RPG. I tried out the pc demo of it but only gave it about 5 minutes before uninstalling…it seemed a little childish plus I did not really have the patience to invest in figuring out the inventory management system.

Lastly, I took a look at Alien Shooter 2. Again, I gave the pc demo a test drive. Initially, I feared it was bound for the same fate as Torchlight but I quickly got into the mindless action, wandering around blowing away hordes of aliens. This one’s a winner. It reminded me a bit of this CGA/EGA game called Electrobody that I played on my first computer, a 286 Toshiba laptop with a monochrome screen, primarily because of the main character’s Robocop outfit. (I found a video of Electrobody here)

One thing I noticed when looking at these games is how many of them are available on Steam and additionally, that they are invariably cheaper there than on the publisher’s website. I guess if you don’t mind the drm that comes with steam games, that’s the way to go.