So I just bought an alienware laptop

[Fignuts]

However I have been completely out of the loop in terms of what the good games are for PC, since my last laptop couldn't even handle command and conquer:generals.

So now that I have a laptop with the power to create nuclear fusion, please reccomend me some awesomtacular pc games.

[DS]

I hate to say this, seeing as how you probably just spent $359,283 on your laptop, but you should probably have just gotten a new desktop because the Alienware laptops have a battery life of like 10 minutes. Well like an hour or two due to all the power they suck out.

But besides that what type of games do you like? Sounds like RTS so I would definitely check out Command & Conquer 3. FEAR has a free multiplayer which you'll either love or hate.

Plus Crysis, BioShock, and Spore are all coming out in the not to distant future.

[Ninti the Mad]

What kind of games do you like?

[Silent]

Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, and Command & Conquer 3 are some of the best RTS games to come out recently. Check em out, if that's your genre.

[G]

come on give us specs, pics and the price.

[ClockShot]

Supreme Commander

What Silent said.

[Fignuts]

I hate to say this, seeing as how you probably just spent $359,283 on your laptop, but you should probably have just gotten a new desktop because the Alienware laptops have a battery life of like 10 minutes. Well like an hour or two due to all the power they suck out.

But besides that what type of games do you like? Sounds like RTS so I would definitely check out Command & Conquer 3. FEAR has a free multiplayer which you'll either love or hate.

Plus Crysis, BioShock, and Spore are all coming out in the not to distant future.

I rarely use my laptop without the power adaptor, so no worries there. I do enjoy RTS quite a lot, so Command and Conquer 3 was a given. I'd like to get into the space RTS games, which have huge fleets of ships battling and stuff. Anything thats on xbox 360, I'll probably just get for that, so any PC exclusive FPS games I should check out?

[Requiem]

Do you like playing online games? And a follow-up to that question... do you like RPGs?

If so, check out some of the various MMO's. With a beastly rig, there are several new MMO's that will look beautiful on a gaming PC.

[Fignuts]

Yeah definitly would like to know more about the mmorpg's. I obviously know about WoW, and I plan to get City of Heroes. How is that Guild War game?

[Requiem]

Guild Wars is.. ugh.. It is a very pretty game for how old it is, but it is not a traditional MMO. The entire game feels like a single player game that you can play with other people... except you HAVE to play it online anyways. The creators don't even consider it an MMO.

If you want a sci-fi game like you mentioned with the RTS, try EVE Online. It is an amazing MMO. It has a 14 day free trial, which you don't even need a CC for (I've done like 5 just to try different things). It is -very- complex, and you really need to become involved with a player-ran corporation (guild) to get involved in the bigger and better things such as the giant space fleet battles that you mentioned before.

The learning curve is steep, and you probably won't even get it by the time you're done with a 14 day trial.. but if you subscribe and join a corporation, read the official forums, and -try- to get into it (don't just expect it to fall into place until you know what the hell you're doing), it will be the greatest MMO experience ever.

Don't bother with WoW. CoH was fun for a couple days, but I couldn't get into it because it didn't hold a candle to the other games I had played.

Go to MMORPG.com, look at their game list, and see which of the games appeal to you. EVE is a very well done sci-fi MMO, and there isn't a single other game like it on the market. In fact.. it's one of the only true sci-fi MMOs on the market, since Star Wars Galaxies went to shit. I guess there is Anarchy Online, but the graphics and lag are so terrible that I didn't give it much of a chance.

[Silent]

I guess there is Anarchy Online, but the graphics and lag are so terrible that I didn't give it much of a chance.

Speaking as someone who played Anarchy Online for years, I will say that it is an incredible game. The character advancement is very deep, only really rivaled by EVE (and a lot less annoying, in my opinion.) There aren't really any limitations on what you can make your character do in that game. If you want you can make a total healer but also use a rocket launcher, or a big katana. It opens the doors for creativity a little bit.

The graphics were alright when it came out in 2001. :p But yeah, like you said, the lag is bad. It's actually because the engine itself is really old and out of date, and actually runs worse on new computers. If they ever revise the engine and make it run smooth, or if they make AO2, I will quit WoW so fast it will make Blizzard's head spin.

Anyway, sorry to get off topic there, but Anarchy Online justice needed to be served. :shifty: I'm such a fanboy of that game.

[G]

come on give us specs, pics and the price.

[94 SVT Cobra]

I really feel that the title of this thread should have been "I bought a laptop that basically can time rifts and saw how we really won the war in WW2....what games should i get?"

[G]

i'm still waiting on how much you paid an what the specs of the beast are.

[Fignuts]

Alienware Aurora m9700
17" widescreen


Don't have the rest of the specs in front of me. All I know is that the price starts at $1999 and goes up the more you add on, or upgrade. I ended up at $2649.

[DS]

Oh no. :( You got ripped off.

[Requiem]

Speaking as someone who played Anarchy Online for years, I will say that it is an incredible game. The character advancement is very deep, only really rivaled by EVE (and a lot less annoying, in my opinion.) There aren't really any limitations on what you can make your character do in that game.

I just kinda cut out the part I wanted to address here, and then I'm going off on a VERY long tangent.

I would say EVE has an amazing advancement system. There are literally no ends to the possibilities of what your character could be (well there are, but there are so many skills that it would be impossible to max all of the skills in the game out during the rest of the game's lifetime)

Characters in EVE advance while you are offline. You don't gain XP by killing things or running missions. Instead, you choose a skill and it begins to train. Think 'skill trees', where you need A skill and B skill to unlock C skill. Then you rank those up individually. Ranking up a skill can take anywhere from 30 minutes to days upon days for the final level in the skill trees. Often people will just skip this final level of the skill and go for others since they do take a while. You can pause a skill at any time and choose a different one (IE - if you are training a skill that has 30 minutes left but you are going to be gone for 4 hours but have another skill that takes 4 hours, start that one.. train it, and then when you get back it will be learned and you can then start and finish your 30 minute skill.

You buy skill books from the market, and train the first level in a short period.. like 15 minutes or so depending on the skill.

To top it off, there are no classes. You are restricted only by the skills YOU decide to choose. Say you want to fly a certain type of spaceship. Well, you train all the pre-requisites to get the skill to fly the ship, and then that skill and you can fly it. There are hundreds of ships in the game, so it all depends on what role you want to take on.

Mining, Pirate Hunting, Mission Running... those are the main "PvE" things to do in the game. But where the game really shines is in its PvP. The game is based on PvP. You are not safe anywhere in the entire game except when docked at a station. You can attack and be attacked anywhere. Now, there are security statuses in each place you're at. If they are above a certain status, Concord (the NPC space police) will warp in and try to defend you if you are attacked. If the area is under a certain status, you are fair game and same as everyone else.

Since the game features Free for All PvP, the best system in any MMO, it allows for interesting 'guild politics' to play out. Politics are a huge part of the game. Huge guilds, called corporations in EVE, run the galaxy. These corporations give roles to their members and they carry out those orders in exchange for ISK (the game's currency) and help with in-game items and ships.

Just to make things sweeter yet, there is only one game server. So far they have topped some 32,000 online at the same time on the same server. It usually caps out around 25k-27k every day, with roughle 220k or so paying subscriptions. Let's not forget that you can buy 30 and 90 day game-time cards from people using your ISK, so essentially once you are farther into the game you don't even have to pay for it.

So with all those thousands of people playing on one server in this galaxy (did I mention the game is huge?), you can imagine these corporations must have a purpose. Well, they do. These corporations can control portions of space that they have conquered and set up stations in. Conquered meaning they either found empty sectors of space to set up shop in, or they took it forcefully from another corporation in fleet warfare.

This is where the RTS comes into play. People in your corporation will most likely be assigned a job depending on their training. Many will be in the huge battlecruisers, etc.. some in Frigates.. everyone will have their role, whether it is preventing targets from warping, actually attacking the targets, or you're the one calling the shots telling people what they do.

If someone would like, I can go even more into detail with combat, but I'd rather not go into ship fittings (how you differentiate your ship from everyone else's. Differeing outfittings give you different abilities such as warp scrambling, scanning, mining, what type of weapons you're using. And let's not forget the different types of ammo you use that each do different types of damage) and such if not needed.

All in all, EVE is a game that you -need- to get involved in a player run corporation in order to get into it. Otherwise, it is a very harsh existance that can leave a bad taste in your mouth. People will kill you, take your loot, ransom your own life for money.. (IE - You are minding your own business.. a player warps in. Uh-oh, he has -10 security status. A pirate! He scans your cargo bay with a special outfitting he has, and decides to attack you. Who cares if you had anything valuable.. maybe he thinks you're rich. So he attacks you and destroys your ship. Well, now you're left floating in space in your little pod capsule. You just lost your ship and everything on it. Luckily you collected insurance money, so you're not completely lost. Well here's the problem.. you forgot to buy a clone recently. So say you have 2 million skill points now and your clone is only for 1.8 That's 200k skill points that you will lose if you die and have to relearn. So the pirate decides to say to you "Give me 20 million ISK or I pod kill you." You pay him 20 million, and he leaves you alone.. you warp back to the nearest station where you have a ship and go back after him to get revenge!)

That is how things in this game can work on your own. Join a corporation and people will have your back. Join a good enough one and you will be in alliances with several other corporations. Or, join a pirate corporation and do nothing but ransom people and PvP all day. Go kill some miners and steal all their ore. (Mining is another profitable way to make money, and it is how you get the needed materials to build things)

The sky is the limit.. literally. It's a sci-fi game and there is so much more to it than even what I described here. The skill advancement system allows even the most casual player to still be training skills while they're gone so that they aren't left too far in the dust. Yes it is true that you will never catch up to the players that have been playing for years, but that doesn't matter in EVE. Now more than ever it is possible for someone with half as many skill points to kill someone with twice that. It depends on what their skills -are-, and what their ship is, and what their ship is outfitted with. If you specialize in something, where-as someone else may have gone jack-of-all-trades, you will wipe the floor with them because sure they can fly a bigger ship than you, but maybe your guns are 3 times as powerful as theirs, and your ship is smaller and faster.

I could keep going and going and going, but I will just leave you with this.
14 DAY FREE TRIAL!!!!!! (https://secure.eve-online.com/ft/?aid=102321&nogreet=1)

No credit card is needed for the trial. You simply download the game, patch it, and log in. The first 14 days are not nearly enough to actually get into the corporation portion of the game, but those days will teach you the basics of the game. Where you go from there is up to you.




^Take all of that for what you will, but I think EVE is the first truly unique MMO in years. It is polished, with beautiful visuals, haunting music (you can even play your own playlists in-game), and a ruthless existance that makes the game challenging and second to none IMO. Its population only grows every day.

[DS]

What he said.

[Requiem]

Also, to add a quick something here, the player economy is the most amazing one of any game currently on the market. HANDS DOWN. I really don't care what you say is better, it is simply not true. Due to the PvP and harsh world, think of a real life stock market but in the game. Prices go up and down all the time, price gouging happens. Items are constantly in demand due to the fact that items constantly get destroyed. This is where player crafting comes into play. You can research blueprints, perfect them, mine the minerals, and craft the item if you have a place to manufacture it. Essentially you could never fire an actual weapon in your career if you wanted. You could make a fortune on buying and selling things on the market, and that could be your entertainment.

EDIT: Top it off with free expansions (they've never charged for any expansion), as well as frequent patches to add content and you've got a winning combination.

[Fignuts]

Oh no. :( You got ripped off.

How so?

[DS]

You spent nearly $2700 when I'm pretty sure you could have gotten something equally as impressive spec wise and a great laptop for less than $2000.

As long as your happy though then it's no big deal. It's just that Alienware is hugely overpriced.

[Fignuts]

Its not. I don't have time to shop around, and it's not a major purchase for me since get paid quite well.

[Bad Company]

Has it got the dual graphics cards? Woot Woot.