Netbook-compatible games?

Nushi

Hey,

I bought a Samsung N210 netbook. It has the Atom N450 CPU, 1GB RAM and GMA 3150 graphics. I do realize it's not exactly a gaming machine, but Telltale's games don't require much either, right? OS is W7 Starter.

Now the first and only Telltale game so far I've tried to play on my new netbook is TOMI Lair of the Leviathan (I happened to have the installation file on a thumbdrive during a boring train ride). It wouldn't go past the part where I entered my account info. The process was taking 50% of CPU so I'm guessing HT was on. Nothing happened in two minutes so I terminated it. I tried a bunch of compatibility modes, always with the same end result.

Monkey Island, I'm guessing, is probably Telltale's biggest resource hog so far. Choppy play on any quality level past 2 on an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ and an HD3450 is saying something. So I won't be too disappointed if it's impossible to get TOMI working on a netbook.

So now, which games would work on a netbook, and what kind of trickery (if any) is required to get them to work? I have TOMI, SBCG4AP, W&G and S&M (all seasons).

xbskid

I'm going to assume that even if you could get the game to run, you're going to end up with performance problems the entire way, simply on the grounds that your netbook has an integrated Intel graphics chip. No trickery can fix Intel's graphics chips.

Tor

I would guess that the Bone games, Sam & Max season 1-2 and SBCG4AP would work fairly well even on a netbook. You'd probably get severe performance problems with Wallace & Gromit, TOMI and Sam & Max season 3. I played the former games on a laptop with Intel graphics at 1280x800 and the "High" graphics setting, with great performance. It seems to me that from Wallace & Gromit and onwards the games got a lot more graphically demanding though, so I played those on my desktop computer.

Macfly77

Tor is probably right.
I played all the games released prior to Wallace & Gromit on my (now) 8 year old desktop PC with no problems whatsoever but Wallace & Gromit and Tales of Monkey Island did not work at all (I didn't even try The Devil's Playhouse).

Nushi

Sorry for my late reply, and thanks for the answers! Turns out netbook performance is even lower than I would have ever expected. I installed Strong Bad and even that was a bit choppy. Should have waited for some ION-based netbooks, but I went for battery life instead of performance.

Biggest problem seems to be games that require CDs... I managed to install them from an external HDD with the CD contents on it, but the HDD isn't recognized as a CD drive and I can't be bothered to find any sort of hack around that. This isn't a problem with Telltale's downloaded games, of course, except Sam & Max Season 1 which I bought on CD.

Seems to me like Dosbox is the only way to go when playing games on netbooks... Guess I'll have to hunt myself a copy of Sam & Max Surfin' the Highway!

DjNDB

Nushi wrote: »

Biggest problem seems to be games that require CDs... I managed to install them from an external HDD with the CD contents on it, but the HDD isn't recognized as a CD drive and I can't be bothered to find any sort of hack around that.

Have you tried a USB DVD Drive?

Nushi

I don't own a USB DVD drive, nor am I very interested in getting one. More accessories means less portability, not to mention carrying all those CDs! A virtual drive that can mount images is what I need. I know many pieces of software exist and I intend to try a couple to see if they can make and use images of SecuROM -protected discs.

I wish more people would buy their games legally so games companies wouldn't have to use this kind of copy protection. Ah the good old days when the only games requiring CDs while playing were the ones that had CD soundtracks...