This free fpsmmo (first person shooter massive multi-player online) is kinda addicting. It is a fast pace shooting game with a bunch of guns and swords. Gunz The Duel installs pretty much instantly, first run for the update takes forever it downloads the update way too slow. It only uses 199MB of your hard drive space. The game loads fairly fast and runs smoothly at around 30-50 fps.
I just love that sword.
The game doesn’t seem to support 1024×600 which sucks considering how well it ran. After a bit of practice playing with the touchpad is really easy.
The awesome
Quick install
Reasonable game and level loading time
No lag high fps around 30-50 fps
199 MB space required
Playable with touch pad
The not-so-awesome
Long first update (Due to it downloading update from torrent)
I wasn’t able to find my copy of Jedi Outcast but found Jedi Academy instead. The game installed really quickly, it takes up 1.14 GB. The game starts and loads levels reasonably quick.
The sabre cuts through anything, yet wont go through that door.
The game ran fine at default settings with 800×600. I tried messing with the config to get it to run at 1024×600 but it didn’t seem to do anything in game. Running at 20-40 fps there was pretty much no lag, on the occasion it went down to 10-15 fps but was only for a split second. It didn’t affect the game though. Playing with the touch pad and default controls was quite alright, might take a little to get used to the pad though.
Found my dusty old Sim Tower cd and decided to give it a whirl. It installed pretty much instantly coming in at a 20 MB. The game starts and runs very fast.
It supports any resolution because it runs as windows rather then full screen game. Fairly easy to play with the touch pad. Doesn’t seem to have any graphical problems.
The biggest problem is the sound there seems to be an error at the beginning of the game saying about no sound. I am unsure whether this is just because the game is old and running on windows xp, my xp is nlited or just because of the Eee. I have to do further testing on another computer to see whats to blame for the error. It doesn’t affect game play you just have to click “ok” to two errors on start up and have no sound in game. If anyone knows a fix please let me know I will post a fix and give you credit.
The highs
Quick install
Quick game load time
Small size
Supports any resolution
Playable with touch pad
The lows
Two errors on start up
No sound due to errors
Playability: 8.5/10 (I like my sound, 10/10 if sound worked)
I had seen a few videos of Grand Theft Auto Vice City being played on the Eee so i decided to try it myself. It was fairly quick to install about 5-10 minutes. I chose to install the radio stations to increase performance. This brought the game to a total of 1.46 GB. The game started fairly quickly as well as levels loading pretty fast. All settings were left as default except for changing wide screen to on and resolution to 1024×600.
What happens next is limited by your imagination… and the game engine.
Game play performance was great with pretty much zero lag while playing. The only lag was on the occasion when there was a heap of people on the screen. There were a few small graphical issues in the game sometimes after a while the textures for the environment aren’t there. They would take a few seconds to catch up, this mainly happened when driving fast on long straights. A loading sign comes up for about half a second at times as well doesn’t seem to affect game play. This isn’t the island change loading screen in the video below you can see near the end what it is as it appears for a split second.
Playing with the touch pad is quite easy its a little hard to aim right on sometimes but only a bit of practice is required. You might want to change the default keys a little though, one that I changed straight away was sprint to left shift rather then right shift.
Games that I have tried to install and play which have failed completely or partially.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002
Install time took about 40 minutes (15 minute install + 25 minutes to decompress the cab files). Took forever which lead me to disappointment when it didn’t run. On running the game it said there was a 3rd party plugin “traffic.dll” and asked did I want to continue with it. I selected “yes” and the game crashes to desktop. I run again same message this time selecting “no” game starts to load then crashes to desktop. I repeated this a few times and crashed each time. I might look into it more later on I have four other Microsoft Flight Simulator games to try out (98, 2000, 2004, X).
Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator
This took an alright time to install about 15 minutes. This one I got into the game and it even supported 1024×600. I got as far as to the airplane, started the engine few seconds later it crashes to desktop. So I tried multiple times at different game settings and it always crashes about 10-20 seconds into the game part its self. It was fine throughout the menu system. I do have Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3 around here somewhere so I will try that later.
Driver
This game was perfect, quick install time about 2 minutes. It had really quick start and level loading times. Didn’t support 1024×600 though, no worry though 800×600 is fine. In game it looked pretty good as well. Until you start driving the car it is perfect. For some reason the keys stick, for example I press the “up” key (accelerate) and then taking my finger off the key. The car is still screaming ahead and doesn’t stop. I tried with all other keys and they get stuck as well I had it driving in a circle without holding the keys. It seemed this problem was throughout the whole game including the menu system. The game takes awhile to react to the keys pressed.
I downloaded a patch for the game but this didn’t fix it at all. In fact it made it worse I lost most of in game text where it was meant to say “damage” it said “missing???/no_mission????” something of that variant. So because of this problem I pretty much gave the game a 2/10 playability rating. I will look into it some more later down the track it might be able to be fixed.
There are still a few games I haven’t completely tested yet that you might see on my desktop in either screens or videos. Don’t worry I will get to them soon. If anyone finds any fixes to these problems drop me a comment.
I found my copy of this old game along with a bunch of Windows 3.1 floppies. So I decided to install it and see how it ran. It ran quite well as it should have, I was expecting it to run well considering its not a very intensive game (not to the computer anyway). Install time was less then a minute. On first run I laughed at the warning message it gave me.
I hope my Eee has 256 colours.
Runs at 1024×600 fine It basically just runs in a application window so it stretches over the screen. Seems to function properly without any graphical glitches. The only bug I found so far was if you change the computer volume sound stops in game. It sometimes starts up again but only when the current sound has finished. Can be played easily with the touch pad. Sim City 2000 comes in a minor 20.6 MB so I am sure you have some spare room to slip it in.
In game shot of the pre-made Tokyo City.
The Goods
Super fast install
Super fast loading
Supports 1024×600
Easily played with touch pad
Minor 20.6 MB install size
The Bad
Small glitch when changing volume stops in game sound
Tremulous now a stand alone game which is based on the Quake3 engine. Found its way onto my Eee, although with no happy 1024×600 setting it ran at 800×600 (it did have a 856×480 though might be good for Eee 701 users). At fairly good fps, I didn’t notice any glitches at all. All settings were left as default apart from changing the resolution to 800×600 from 640×480. Like other fps’ its a little hard to play with the touch pad, with a little practice it can be used alright.
The install size is quite small sitting evenly on 100MB. It took hardly any time to install, the levels and game loading time are fairly good. This small open source game can be downloaded from the Tremulous website. Tremulous also has a Linux client which works just as well I used to play it awhile back on my main computer (which is running Linux).
The Goods
Fast install
Fast game and level loading
Small size only 100MB
Can be played with touch pad with a bit of practice
So I found this game on a pile of old and dusty games. It was quite fast installing didn’t take up much space. I laughed a bit during the install, first it told that my direct x version was probably sufficient and asked did I want to install direct x 6 anyway. I said no of course, then on the next screen it said it couldn’t find my direct x version and game performance might be lost. It also said I was running windows 2000. Here is a screen shot from the install process.
Game play wise it is good 30-50 fps on the occasional if there is a build up of people it can drop down to around 20 fps. This doesn’t seem to affect game play there isn’t any noticeable lag. You can see this from the video below. The game and levels load pretty much instantly there is no worry on load times. Playing with a touch pad is a little hard with the default controls, you have to use the arrow keys on the right. This can be changed in the options though best to just use “wasd”. The game seems to support 1024×600 from the options menu it was preset to this, all other options I left as default.
In game shot a bit further into the game.
The Pro
Quick install
Quick game and level loading
High fps no lag
1024×600 support
Small install size only 200MB
The noob
Hard to play with the touch pad on default controls
Today I installed and played around with “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” on my Eee. It ran really well through out the time I was hooked to it. Install time was about 5-8 minutes which was good after waiting for godfather to install yesterday. Game and level loading times are quite fast as you can see from the video below.
I died just after this picture was taken.
I ran it at default settings resolution was 800×600 seemed to still look alright on screen. I had a look through it’s config files and found two settings to change it to 1024×600 however it didn’t seem to have any effect in game. It runs at around 35-60fps at times it will jump to 80fps (I wish I got that on my Pentium II at the time I bought the game).
The touch pad is hard to get used to but I think this is just a common thing with all fps’. So get a cheap mouse at your local computer store and start playing.
The Best
Quick install time
Quick to load the game and levels
High fps no lag at all
Only 650MB disk space required
The worst
Can’t really play with touch pad without a ton of practice.
I install The Godfather game to my Eee today. Starters if your thinking of installing this game to play on your Eee put it on then go take a nap. I installed it to the 16GB SSD, it took about an hour and ten minutes to install the game. The game and levels load quite fast though *phew*.
It ran at about 15-25 fps through out (you can see from the video below) even though that is low it didn’t seem laggy at all. Settings were left as default resolution was at 800×600. The settings.ini file located in the “My documents\GF” at the bottom of it you can set the resolution to 1024×600 however it doesn’t seem to have any effect in game. I did notice some screens lagged a little more after changing it, however the visual didn’t seem to change. Even though the 800×600 seems to be stretched a bit to fit the screen it still looks fine.
Picture looks like a square because its 800×600 but it is stretched on screen.
I did notice sometimes the walking got stuck and the guy kept running. Other then the few small things it seemed to run quite well. I didn’t see if there was a patch available for the game so it might help performance if there is one available.
The Goods
Quite playable at lowish fps
Playable with touchpad (little getting used to as you need both mouse clicks at times)
Level/Game Loading times are quite fast
The Bads
Occasionally the run gets stuck and he keeps running
No 1024×600 support
It needs 4.65GB space to install
The OMFG
Install time is extremely slow… Hour and ten minutes for me.
Playability: 9/10
Gameplay video (Audio seems to be a little messed up after uploading it to youtube. Audio is fine in game)
