Carp Posted January 19, 2008 Report Share Posted January 19, 2008 I'm 35 and have never played an on line game. In fact the last game system I've played was the original Nintendo "Legendary Wings". I have played a couple PC games (Jedi Outcast II and Enter the Matrix). My out of town friend and I would like to get involved in on line gaming, but don't know what system requirements are needed, what equipment is necessary, and what games to play that we could play together. I'd also like some information on low, middle, and high costs to get set up. If there's any other good friendly gaming forums out there known please share. I appreciate any responses that would help. Carp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gecko Posted January 20, 2008 Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 I don't do a lot of online gaming but I have been playing Continuum 1.40 since it was Sub Space 1.01...great 3rd person shooter based on the physics from asteroids. I have play'd on and off for 10-12 years. Oh yes and it's free Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDY_2_Carve Posted January 20, 2008 Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 Are we talking PC games here? If so go get "The Orange Box." Team Fortress is an awesome game and it scales very well if you don't have a high end video card (meaning it will run decent on lower end systems). You also get Portal and both Half Life's with the box. If we are in fact talking PC games then you should post your PC specs so it's easier to tell you what to buy. Many of todays games require a pretty high end system...at least the latest and greatest games. The other thing that would be good to know: Do you want to play shooters, role playing types, or strategy types? As far as upgrading your PC I can spec you out a system on Newegg for whatever your budget is. I've been building PC's for the past 10+ years. It's quite easy actually. My last PC upgrade cost me less than $800 and that included a very nice 19" widescreen LCD (Samsung, 2ms). Actually the only thing I re-used was the case from my old system (not even the power supply was reused) and I can play all the new games out there. The only thing I don't have is a DX10 card but even those are cheap now. I did my upgrade in April 2007 and I don't plan on upgrading again until 2009/2010. I might buy a DX10 video card but I'll wait for them to come down a bit more. I only have one DX10 game right now (World in Conflict) and I don't have Vista installed anyways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carp Posted January 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 My system is a Dell Dimension 8400 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 processor 1GB RAM (going to be doubling that soon I think) 512M video card Dell Flat panel display I don't have a lot of hard drive space in the tower but I do have two external drives one for about 150Gb of music, and the other for personal/business files so space shouldn't be an issue. I was thinking that for these online games you needed to by 2 PC games; one for me and one for my buddy. Then I thought you needed to subscribe to the online gaming service? I think there's a way to play on line with Jedi Outcast II, maybe even Enter the Matrix but will have to check what's necessary and if it's simply connecting to the others IP via Radmin or some other sort of remote access system. I've not built a new machine but I've replaced RAM, updated video & sound cards, replaced and reformated hard drives and set up small personal and business LAN's. Most of my networking experience is at AT&T working on their project lightspeed Uverse network build. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fleaman Posted January 20, 2008 Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 most games you buy at the store that have online play are free to play , you have to set up their software on your comp and it will go to a lobby where you will pick your game room to play with others. You can create private rooms if you want to play with your buds. Some games have voice chat so if you have a headset with a microphone, you can talk to each other too. One way around the chat is to use an IM program with voice chat. I used to do this with Rainbow6 with my Brother and it worked fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pow Posted January 20, 2008 Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 id suggest an Xbox, a subscription to Xbox live (gold), you have to plug it into the internet via ethernet cable (you can probably figure out a wireless setup, i never tried). For the games, halo 3 and call of duty 4 are great (as long as you dont mind getting called a f@&&ot by 10 year olds every 5 seconds) for PC, homeworld and homeworld 2 are my favorites (3D strategy type games) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willywhit Posted January 20, 2008 Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 we used to play alot of online car racing on PC when broadband first came out, we even had a gaming room at one point with a LAN in my friends basement with force feedback wheels and pedals by Logitech and Momo. Really fun stuff. I just got colin's gamertag on xbox the other day and might subscribe to gold for 3 months. I cringe when I hear all the smack talkin kids online. Now, it's all plug and play to get online gaming. Online gaming with PCs was something special back in "the day" :rolleyes:6- 7 years ago. we were always craving the faster vid cards,cpu's etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carp Posted January 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 How much is this all going to cost to get it set up? I'm looking for the most bang for the buck as I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have to dedicate to gaming. As much as I'd like to do the whole Xbox thing I'm thinking a PC type set up would be more cost effective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjl Posted January 20, 2008 Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 I'm 35 and have never played an on line game. <snip>M y out of town friend and I would like to get involved in on line gaming When you say "an online game" do you mean like one of the massively multiplayer games (World of Warcraft, etc.) where you are online with hundreds/thousands of other players, but you would mostly be playing with your friend, or do you mean smaller arcadier games (12 vs 12 Team Fortress) or even 2 player cooperative games, where you are trying to get through the game together (Halo2, Gears of War, etc.). If you are just interested in smaller games where you can play with just your friend and not be bothered by jerky teenagers, you might, as Pow suggested, just get yourselves xboxes. I am personally a PC gamer, but there's a little bit of overhead to keep your machine up to date with the latest drivers and esoteric incompatibilities that you invariably run into. The XBox or PS3 will just automatically download updates every once in a while and you don't have to think about anything. Though these days it is pretty easy to get online with either the PC or consoles. The hard part is setting up your router (and that is also pretty easy) - the PC or console will generally just work now when you plug it in. but don't know what system requirements are needed, what equipment is necessary, and what games to play that we could play together. I'd also like some information on low, middle, and high costs to get set up. As a nice starting point, I usually check out the latest "Gaming Box" and "System Guide" guides at arstechnica (Their latest were summer of last year, so it's a little out of date, but they're still a good jumping off point: http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200708.ars and http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200707.ars) They spec out systems at various price points (~$800 - ~$3000) and it'll give you a general idea for prices and brands and that sort of thing. If there's any other good friendly gaming forums out there known please share. Hah, yeah right ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chubz Posted January 20, 2008 Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 I started with Starcraft (Blizzard) -new version coming out soon Moved onto Battlefield Vietnam then Battlefield 2 Call of Duty Series Of all of them, BF2 takes the cake for me. It allows you to play smal to large maps with varying team size, up to 64 players. I like it for some of the following reasons you can choose several different classes;sniper, engineer(repair things and landmines), medic (heal and revive), assault, support (ammobags), antitank (taking out armor) and spec ops (c4 the heck out of equipment and armor) you can make or join squads, if you have the proper combination of skill sets in a squad its great to roll thru maps working as a unit. you can even get headsets and talk to you fellow squad members . if you are commander, you call in artillary strikes and support squads all of you stats are track so you can see how well you perform. only drawback is that it tracks your total hours played and I think I could have earned a few doctorates or built a neighborhood of houses in the time on BF2 I also like Pc based games better than console b/c my old brain gets confused with all of the controller buttons. Dont forget the tanks, vehicles, jets, choppers that are basically simulators on how they drive, handle and shoot. I play with a guy I use to console game with when we were in college. Now that we are 6 hhours apart we still get a gaem in once in a while, good fun, playing the same server and working together while that far apart. As far as a system: its tough becuase new stuff comes out continuously. I built a new stack a few years back and basically went to alienware, and voodoo, looked at what they had in systems and then just went to newegg.com and bought the parts and built it myself for half the price. Adding on to a new system is beyond my scope right now it has been so long since reading into it and learnign whats out there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carp Posted January 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 Downloaded a game called EVE (trial). WOW!!!! The graphics, story, community, weapons, galaxy, ships, etc. are SO amazing. It seems a little complicated as I'm thinking I'm only about 1/2 way through the tutorial which is cool in and of itself. If some of you regular gamers could take a look at the trial version and let me know what you think. I think the monthly version is $20/mo.? There's a lot to learn and remember but still pretty cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjl Posted January 20, 2008 Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 nerd out alert: I think EVE Online would be considered by most gamers to be a pretty hard core online space game. It's massively multiplayer, and I believe you end up mostly playing with and against other players. You would probably end up sinking lots of time into it. The people who end up liking end up loving it I think. EVE is a little unique in being basically a lawless wild-west outside of the newbie areas, which is where your tutorial is taking place. If you go into unpatrolled areas, it is totally fair game for any other player to blow you up and take all your stuff, so the only real way to survive at all is to join a corporation (a team of other players), which leads to a complex political landscape of rival corporations, smaller groups of pirates and bandits, and wars and skirmishes that last months or years. There have been 2 or 3 hugely epic events (epic enough that non-EVE players like me heard of it) that happened over the past couple of years involving massive space wars, the infiltration of a corporation by a rival mercenary corporation (which took literally over a year of real life time to effect) and the theft and destruction of what amounts to some huge amount (hundreds of thousands of hours or more?) of player game time, and stuff like that. Sorry for nerding out, but I find EVE fascinating to read about, though not play: Since in-game money takes a significant amount of real-life time to generate, it has an actual real-life exchange rate (i.e. you can buy X number of in-game credits for Y number of dollars) and an fully functioning economy. A while back, some guy started up an in-game bank (offering interest rates and loans and insurance) and 4 months later, scammed everybody and stole all the money, which is apparently worth >$150,000 USD. Uh, but to get back to the point; EVE is supposed to be pretty harsh. If you like the adrenaline rush of flying a spaceship that took you 3 months of work to get across the galaxy with the possibility of some rival corporation's players seeing you and blowing it up, it might be for you, but if you're not OK with being set back 3 months, you should probably skip it.... It's definitely not for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Posted January 21, 2008 Report Share Posted January 21, 2008 How much is this all going to cost to get it set up? I'm looking for the most bang for the buck as I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have to dedicate to gaming. As much as I'd like to do the whole Xbox thing I'm thinking a PC type set up would be more cost effective. Buying an Xbox 360 would actually be cheaper than building/buying a new system, but maybe more expensive than upgrading your current system. Consoles are kind of nice because of the plug-and-play factor: the whole thing comes in a single box, it's good to go right away, and the online component (Xbox Live) is pretty accessible (that is, easy to use. Can't do anything about the foul-mouthed 12-year olds though). Also, you probably have about 3-4 years until they come out with the next Xbox, so if you buy a 360, it will be "current technology" for a fairly long time. Not sure about upgrading your current setup. A RAM upgrade is an awesome cheap way to get a little more oomph out of your current machine. After that, presumably you can put in a beefier graphics card, but you're probably at the point where the processor will be your bottleneck...and chances are you'd need to buy a new motherboard to upgrade to a current processor. Bam, suddenly you're talking about pretty much a new computer. (you could re-use your drives and maybe the power supply.) Having said all that...I'd check out PC games, see if they run OK on your current setup, and see if you find anything you like. I second the recommendation for the Orange Box...it's supposed to be the Second Coming, though I haven't had the time to pick it up yet. It's also something like 3 complete games (depending on how you count) for the price of 1. If you're finding that stuff doesn't run well on your current setup, I'd encourage you to think about consoles - will likely be cheaper than a new PC or heavy upgrading...as long as you can find the game experience that you're looking for on a console. Do you have a sense for the genres that you're interested in? -Driving -Flight sim/aerial combat sim -First-person shooter (Quake, Doom, Half-Life) -Adventure (Tomb Raider) -Real-time strategy (Starcraft) -MMO (Eve, World of Warcraft) Consoles are pretty good for the first 4, not so good at the last two. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gleb Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 I don't do a lot of online gaming but I have been playing Continuum 1.40 since it was Sub Space 1.01...great 3rd person shooter based on the physics from asteroids. I have play'd on and off for 10-12 years. Oh yes and it's free no s@$T!! I used to play that years ago and loved it! I also used to play ARC (attack retrieve capture) but sierra is trying to kill that community but we're not letting it die! And also Uniball, but I sucked at that game. I play a bunch of PC games but hackers are really pissing me off lately. I mostly play Counterstrike (the old one since I have NO graphics card), and a few others here and there. I like console games waaay more because of the less likelihood of cheating, the plug and play (for PCs, you gotta really worry about computability issues with many great games) and I like playing on a TV more. I do like some PC games better due to the ability to be able to customize maps and the ability to have mods for games. I used to play alot of games and I even got to beta test Battlefield Modern Combat for PS2 (got the Xbox version when it actually came out). They didn't listen to any of the problems we pointed out. Too bad I don't have time to play anything now. Just waiting around for the Wii to become available, then gonna get a PS3 when GTA4 comes out. That game is gonna be sick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
holiday01 Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 You can't go wrong with online poker, now thats where all the action is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDY_2_Carve Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 More on PC games: If you want to try an MMORPG I would recommend the Guild Wars series. I played it for over two years and it was quite fun. I finally gave up on it as it was taking up too much IRL time and the demands of two kids (and the wife) started to wear on my gaming time. Any MMO is going to drain you...even the ones like Guild Wars that aren't suppost to be a such a "grind". Guild Wars did deliver from that aspect...you can be a casual gamer and play an hour here and there and really enjoy the game (unlike Everquest), but you can also grind it as many hours as you want if you want to be "leet". Oh yeah and the best part: No monthly fees. Also they have some combo going now that gives you the first Chapter with the latest expansion for less than $40 bucks which is a really good deal. That could keep you busy for anwhere between a month to a year (or more). Cryis is unreal if your PC can handle it (the big IF). CoD 4 has a decent single player and one of the best multi-players as of right now. Gears of War is a decent port from the console game, but it is just that, a port, and will never be a truely good online game (just like any other console game, or port to PC for that matter). Playing it online on the 360 reminded me of Halo 2 all over again. No dedicated servers = POS. I hear that might be fixed in the future though. The Half Life series is amazing. Some of the best single player games EVER! The engine used in that series is still being used today to fuel games like Team Fortress 2, Counterstrike Source, and more. Again I will say: Get the ORANGE BOX!!! I recently aquired World in Conflict from www.gogamer.com (sign up for their 48 hour madness newsletter) for a whopping $20 (on special) and it's easily the best RTS I've ever played. I've played a few RTS's starting with the good ole' Command and Conquer to the tried and true Total Annihilation series (which BTW will still bring the latest and greatest PC to it's KNEES) and yes Starcraft as well. The latest C&C is suppost to be pretty darn good but I haven't checked it out yet. I normally wait to get discounts on games (read: < $30 USD per game). Other great games that are "older" now: FEAR, Stalker, Max Payne (woot), Call of Duty series, Battlefield series (amazing), Far Cry series to name a few. Oh yeah speaking of prices that's another plus of PC games. They are at most $49.99 USD and normally you can get them cheaper if you shop around and/or wait a few weeks after release. That really adds up fast compared to consoles and most PC games don't charge monthly/yearly fees to play online either (besides EQ and a handful of others). I don't buy into the "consoles are cheaper" arguement either. Seriously $60 bucks for a game? Get real. $400 for a console vs $1k for a PC? Well guess what you're probably going to own a PC regardless if you play games or not, so fork out the extra cash and buy the same PC with a midrange video card and you're set. Ok so you might not have the latest DX10 card that can run Crysis at 60FPS at 1600x1200 but who cares really. It'll still make the XBox look like childs play and you're not at the mercy of the same hardware for the next 3+ years holding you back. PC's are constantly evolving while consoles remain stagnant. They trick you by not using the consoles graphic engines to the fullest extent then maybe a year or two later they'll start using the shadows and lighting engines and give you the false perception that the console's graphics is "evolving", but you're still always behind the power curve compared to PC's. Don't get me wrong consoles have been great for the gaming industry and I don't want to sound like a anti-console guy, but they are far inferior IMHO. You are at the mercy of what's given to you to include the controller (which is terrible for First Person Shooters for example). Oh yeah you can use a 360 controller on a PC if you really want which is nice for those Tomb Raider games and the likes. I upgrade my PC every three years give or take, and honestly you're going to upgrade your PC that often whether you play games or not. I may buy a video card upgrade in between the full PC overhauls and double the memory or something. I just upgraded in April 2007 and I can play any game avaliable right now (although I don't have DX10 support which is why I might purchase a new video card towards the end of this year). Again I spent ~$800 USD on my upgrade and that included an amazing $200 Samsung 19" LCD and the video card was $150USD. The only thing I re-used was my case (~$50 USD) and the floppy drive (~$5 USD). FYI-I'm running an AMD Dual Core, 2GB RAM, and a NVidia 7900GS...not too great not too shabby, but it's rock solid at getting the job done. I just got the latest PC Gamer and the cover story is devoted to DIY PC building. I believe the entire disc is devoted to it as well with "How To" vids. That would be an excellent start if you are interested. Also check out www.hardocp.com, www.hothardware.com, www.tomshardware.com if you dare. Being an enthusiast can be quite the disease and I've shaded towards a budget mindset to save my marriage and well being. Lastly I checked your PC specs here, and it looks like you're ok for a little while on PC hardware. You're a little behind on the processor, but your video card should at least play most current games. The good news is your PC has PCI Express (x16) so it's fairly current and you can easily pop in a NVidia 8600 GS card for ~$100 and you can run pretty much anything on the current market (with all the bells and whistles turned on mind you). You'll put those 360 graphics to shame. Eventually your memory speed, motherboard (BUS), and processor will bottleneck regardless of your video card, but you should be good for some time if those linked specs are accurate. I would double, or quadruple your memory now. Memory is so cheap nowadays. I recommend Mushkin (brand) as they have the best compatibility with packaged machines like Dells and HP's. It looks like if you invested $200-250 in your PC now you could have a really solid gaming rig. The best choice online for buying PC hardware is www.newegg.com, period. Best of luck. P.S. Give me your Steam ID if you buy the Orange Box. P.S.S. That goes for anybody else...give me your Steam Account so I can add you to my friends list. CS or TF2 anybody?!?! ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 For those of you out there that play TF2 and CS:S a couple other snowboard/geek buddies and I run a TF2 and CS:S server. The main guy (Dr. Him) has been running a CS server forever so we have a good crew of regular people, and we're all in our 30's so we seldom get the annoying teenie's who've never heard of the word teamwork. Here's the link to the website for the IP;s and forums. http://www.drhim.com/ Oh...and Portal is awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willywhit Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 hell yeah with the orange box, downloaded the demo on XBox 360 the other day and uber cool. :biggthump RDY, thanks for typing all that up last night (insomnia again EST) it got me all stoked to get back into it. We've got a store here in Boston , Cambridge actually , and it's a computer superstore, Microcenter. Demographics are MIT and tons of other college kids and techie nerds galore so they have awesome deals. 10 years ago I took a paycut to work at a retail shop, deli style, that built custom PCs and learned alot about hardware.Despite the throngs of unbathed, socially inept nerds there, I learned so much, very fast.It was basically a PC factory churning out 100's of ala carte PCs a week, we even had elves out back banging out PCs full throttle.My boss made a TON of loot. That's where a experienced my first LAN party, playing Tribes with the uber nerds.:rolleyes: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gleb Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 tribes is free now. Not a bad game at all. Eventually they will make a Grand Theft Auto MMO. That will be one to take the cake for any previous MMO ever made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willywhit Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 GTA is fun on PS2 and 360 has postponed GTA IV until this spring. looks crazy tho http://www.gamespot.com/video/933037/6183745/grand-theft-auto-iv-official-trailer-4 http://www.break.com/index/gtaxbox360.html pretty clever, like the chapelle skit. Love the scene with vince vaughn in "The Break Up" when he's playing GTA....c'mon....git sum !!!! ok , that was lame, this better <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avGkMDsavHk&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avGkMDsavHk&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4yx1s-l6f8&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4yx1s-l6f8&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDY_2_Carve Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 Good call on Tribes! ;) Been a while there. I actually own both Tribes. Tribes 2 was never as good as the first one oddly enough. Watching the above GTA vids makes me want to actually plug in my XBox, but then again, nah. ;) I'll favorite the above TF2 server and will join in if there is every anybody on? Looks like both the CSS and TF2 are empty? Maybe later? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skategoat Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 Having been seriously addicted to Battlefield 2 on the PC (I had to delete the game and go cold turkey), I can tell you that first person shooters on the consoles just don't cut it. There is a certain coarseness of control on the consoles that will drive you nuts. You just can't aim. Console FPS games are all about reflexes and button mashing. PC versions require a little more finesse. My favourite online games on the Xbox 360 are sports games and driving games. You can figure out the rules and controls pretty quickly and the controllers lend themselves to the software. One of the best is Fight Night 3. If you're into boxing history, you'll really enjoy it. One of the problems though with console games is that there are so many new titles, they go stale quickly. For instance, I got into Project Gotham Racing 2 and there was a great online community. But, with the release of PGR3, there was a lot more competition in the driving games and far smaller community of online players. It would take 10-20 minutes to find an online race and who wants to wait that long. I quickly grew tired of it and it's collecting dust on my shelf now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted January 23, 2008 Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 Good call on Tribes! ;)Been a while there. I actually own both Tribes. Tribes 2 was never as good as the first one oddly enough. Watching the above GTA vids makes me want to actually plug in my XBox, but then again, nah. ;) I'll favorite the above TF2 server and will join in if there is every anybody on? Looks like both the CSS and TF2 are empty? Maybe later? We play mostly evenings (6pm central and later). It seems the TF2 server goes in streaks. There will be weeks where its full all day, and then others when people are only on at night. We do have a tradition dating back to the early days of CS called "thirsty thursdays" where we all hop on and drink beer and play. Mostly just started as a night when we all knew we'd be on, and now it just happens every Thursday. Right now my rig can barely handle TF2 so I don't play too much, but everyone else is on quite a bit. Drop a post in the forums and get a reserved spot :) See ya online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willywhit Posted January 23, 2008 Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 I hear people can end up in "gamer rehab" for playing too much Warcraft:lol: http://www.blizzard.com/war3/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skategoat Posted January 23, 2008 Report Share Posted January 23, 2008 I hear people can end up in "gamer rehab" for playing too much Warcraft:lol:http://www.blizzard.com/war3/ They don't call it "War-crack" for nothing. I stay way away from it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.