Welcome to a new series here at Gear Diary! Called the Netbook Gamer, this will allow me to share two of my loves – playing computer games and exploiting my netbooks to deliver whatever performance I can squeeze from them. In this series I will look at games released over the last decade that might have pushed the boundaries of what was possible when released, but still work on a modern PC and will run smoothly on a current release netbook.

In the title I will identify the game, the year it was released and the genre – expect these to be heavily FPS (first person shooter) and RPG (roleplaying game) centric. I will do a review of the game and also look at how it works in the context of playing on a netbook. I will look at whether it requires a CD to play, if the controls are re-mappable, if the game supports netbook-friendly video modes, and so on. Naturally any screenshots I use will come directly from my netbook unless otherwise noted!

Of course I am always open to suggestions in terms of games to review and anything else netbook-specific you’d like to see, so feel free to chime in the comments!

Welcome to the first entry in the new Netbook Gamer series! In the fall of 1997 LucasArts delivered into the hands of gamers something they had wanted since they first saw one twenty years prior – a lightsaber.

Dark Forces brought the Star Wars universe a new level of immersion through the first person shooter perspective. The story brought in classic settings abd characters and introduced a new hero – Kyle Katarn. Former Imperial Academy hero shaken by the discovery of the nature of the Empire through tragic events, Katarn is joined by his partner Jan Ors as the pair serve as mercenaries in the hire of the Rebellion. Dark Forces was an amazing game that delivered a visceral experience and new technical advances to the new first person shooter genre. What it didn’t give gamers was a taste of what it felt like to be a Jedi.

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Given that my first love of gaming is first-person shooters (FPS) based on my love of the original Castle Wolfenstein back on my Apple ][+, it is somewhat surprising that I was ‘late to the party’ on Unreal by nearly a year. But hey, gimme a break – I had a three-month old colicky baby when it was released in late May of 1998. Yes, that is right: Unreal is well past the celebration of its tenth birthday … but in terms of my ownership it has just passed the decade mark, so I guess that counts for something! You know what that means? Netbook Gamer Retrospective time! I am going to take a look at the original game and also touch on the other entries in the series as it has moved to being one of the premier online shooters. And as usual I will put it all into the context of how it works on my netbook.

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There are many games from the history of computer role-playing games that deserve the attention of a full retrospective, looking back in depth at what made the game great and putting it into modern context. However, for every ‘Ultima IV’ or ‘Arcanum’ there are a hundred games like Hexplore – minor releases that added something at the time but were not significant enough to merit much attention even a year after they came out. Certainly I had never heard about it until recently when it was mentioned in a thread on a PC RPG forum. As part of my love affair with my netbook, I am seeking these games out, playing them and will be writing about them here. Continue Reading

Context is everything. I hadn’t touched SiN since replaying SiN Gold when it was released for the Mac in 2000. Then they released the first ‘episode’ of SiN Episodes, called ‘Emergence‘ in 2006, which came with a Steam copy of ‘SiN 1′ as it was called. Naturally I played some then as I waited for the release of the episode, but didn’t make it all the way through. Since it is now more than ten years since the original release, I thought it only appropriate that I should do a Retrospective for a franchise that has spent its’ life in the shadow of Half Life. Continue Reading