Skip to main content

Holiday Gaming on a Laptop

I brought the a Laptop on holiday primarily as support to my wife's fairly serious photography hobby (total quantity of digital imagery captured during one 10 day holiday: 19 Gb) and also as a means of accessing the internet whenever a signal could be found. Gaming was certainly not a priority but I did install a few games on the machine more as an experiment than anything else.

First decision was what games to bring. My Laptop is fairly new with a Core 2 duo processor, 8Gb ram and a discrete Nvidia 9300M  GS graphics card so it can handle fairly demanding games quite well on its 13 inch 1200x800 screen. I don't expect Crysis 2 to run on it but Left 4 Dead is very playable as is Half Life 2 and its sequels. A more severe restriction was my unwillingness to lug game dvd's around on holidays so only games that were fully playable from the hard drive without an internet connection could be considered. I have in the past resorted to no cd cracks for games I legally own but it never felt entirely safe so this time I decided to experiment with Steam and its elusive "offline" mode. Steams offline mode is not very user friendly but with a little bit of care it does the job, material for another blog post later I think. Anyway here are the games I installed:

Left 4 Dead
Half Life 2 Episode 1
Peggle Nights
Overlord
Torchlight
A Kingdom for Keflings (not a Steam game)
Rome Total War

 All the above games ran well on the laptop but not all were played. I did complete a chapter of Left 4 Dead in offline single player mode and spent a couple of hours playing Episode 1 but I really don't enjoy fps gaming on the laptop. I used a plug in USB mouse and external headphones to overcome the inadequacies of the touchpad and crappy laptop speaker but the whole thing felt very cramped. It is not just the small screen size, it is also the fact that the screen and keyboard are so close together forcing you into  cramped hunched position as you stare down at your left hand.  I actually think a plug in keyboard would solve a lot of the problems allowing you to space out your hands and the screen but who wants to pack a keyboard in their suitcase. A game-pad might be a more practical option.

The more casual games (Peggle and Keflings) actually worked much better  because they can be played without a keyboard. They can even be played using the touchpad giving the option of true lap top gaming with the computer on the lap.

I didn't try any mmorpg on the laptop but I would guess that the keyboard heavy nature of the controls would also make for uncomfortable gaming.

Conclusions: While a surprising amount of games can be played on the laptop I won't be throwing out my desktop gaming machine any time soon.  Being able to play a game and being able to play that game in comfort are two very different things and in this respect the desktop is definitely the way to go for more serious games. The situation is a bit more complicated with casual games that have simple controls. In these cases the ability to play while slouched on the couch or in bed is quite attractive.

Comments

Villas in Bali said…
i will get busy with half life...

Popular posts from this blog

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p

Return to New Eden and a Secret Confession

I feel a growing temptation to return to EVE but having been away from mmos for quite a while I am not quite ready to resubscribe.  Instead I started a disposable character on a free trial to test my resolve.  Knowing that this character will be thrown in the bin in a couple of weeks is actually quite liberating. Freed from the fear of gimping my character I feet no necessity to min max anything. I picked a Gallente because I think they have cool looking spaceships and went from there. First obvious change since I last played is being able to walk around my Captain's quarters. Its a nice idea but hardly a game changer. Can you decorate your quarters I wonder and if so do these home improvements move around with you wherever you go? The second obvious change is the much improved tutorial. I managed to make it through the first steps introduction without having to resort to on-line help or the  chat channel which is a first for me in EVE. Even better once you have finis

Lotro: The Forgotten Treasury

Throg joined a Kinship group for the Forgotten Treasury instance last night. It was an enjoyable change from the solo questing that the now level 55 dwarf champion has been mostly doing so far in Moria. Some members of the group had tried and failed to clear the Treasury before so we knew it would be challenging but we were lucky enough to have a well balanced group with Guardian, Minstrel, Lore Master, Hunter, Burglar and Champion (Throg). Throg (level 55) and the minstrel (53) were both below the 56ish level of the instance but the others were all higher so it more or less balanced out. [SPOILERs ahead] It is a well designed enjoyable instance set in a circular chamber with balcony around. As you enter, a boss absconds to a locked side chamber with his treasure leaving the fellowship to clear trash ringed around the balcony. Once the trash are cleared you have access to a puzzle which must be solved in order to open the locked door. Clearing the (including six mini bosses) also get