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Games Entertainment

Good Games for LAN Parties? 66

Posted by Cliff from the fine-fun-with-a-hub dept.
An Anonymous Coward asks: "I'm trying to figure out what games are good for LAN parties and especially what games don't require a CD after installation or at least allow multi-player games with only one CD. I'd like to have friends over to play over a LAN without everyone needing to own the same game. Starcraft will let you do this but I couldn't find much info about other games so I thought I'd turn to Slashdot. Which games do you like for LAN parties and why, and especially which games allow a group of people to play if only one owns the CD?"
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Good Games for LAN Parties? More

Good Games for LAN Parties?

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  • Day of Defeat is by far the best LAN experience you will ever have. The person who posted before me took the words right out of my mouth. I used to play Cstrike and TFC until this mod came out and i played omaha, i fell in love right that second.
  • DOOM! Get the DOOM 1 and or DOOM 2 WAD and DOOM Legacy. Can run on Linux, Windows, Macs, Whatever. DOOM is quite old and someone is sure to have one of the WADs somewhere, or just go and find them and DL them yourself. DOOM COOP or DM, Either are good. And if some of you get real board, you can do the 3 display Pan view thing with 3 computers. Should be in the manual.
  • Many moons ago I seem to remember playing quake 1 at a lan party - no cd required except to do the install.

    IMHO its still good, honest, fast, frag-tastic fun.

    Sure the later additions looked nicer, but they required a CD and really didnt add that much extra in terms of deathmatches.

    On the non-fragging front many of the rts games support multiplayer spawning e.g. a very limited install, this does have some downsides but - hey it lets you have a game

  • Counter-Strike (Score:2, Informative)

    by CaptCanuk ( 245649 )
    Like paintball but without the mess/bruises.
    How can you go wrong?
    You can play LAN games with one key and you can just copy over the network the directory once you have a proper install complete. The game is immense fun with 8-12 people and you can guarantee no cheating (unlike online). Since it's like a Q2 engine game, it runs fast on most machines and has a built in communication software (Roger Wilco or Battlecomm like). Then again, if you don't like waiting after you get killed, there's always Quake 3 (and Team Arena).
    • I had a lan party (gathering? it was only 4 guys), and we had tons of Fun playing CS, so yeah, I back you up on that one.

  • Goooo Old School! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FreeForm Response ( 218015 ) <comptonaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday January 01, 2002 @08:06AM (#2770054) Journal
    A lot of older games, such as those from 3+ years back, work rather well at LAN parties for a number of reasons.
    • Often, the game has to be chosen to run on the slowest computer in the bunch; running an older game ensures that everybody can play.
    • Older games tend to rely a little less on flashy 3D graphics and a little more on gameplay, especially team play.
    • Extremely old games (read: those that came on floppies) usually have a trivial form of copy protection which can usually be avoided. Not that I'd ever advocate such a thing. ;) Even older CD-based games with first-generation Safelock and such are easy to copy. Just make sure that all copies are destroyed at the end of the night.
    • Finally, older games are less immersive. I don't mind forgetting myself when I'm playing Silent Hill 2 or something similiar, but I go to LAN parties to socialize. Games with MIDI soundtracks are just asking to be talked over.
    All that said, some of my personal recommendations for fun games:
    Total Annihilation (one of my favs)
    Starcraft
    Warcraft 2
    Counterstrike
    Quake 1 (yes, 1)
    Descent
    Diablo/Diablo II
    Duke Nukem 3D
    Worms 2/Armageddon
    Grand Theft Auto 2

    One final note: go download GLTron [gltron.org] before the party starts. While it's only a 4-player game at max, I guarantee your guests will get a couple of hours out of it, more if you show it on a large TV so everybody can watch. =)
    • No, no, emphasis on "Go Oooold School!"

      Have everybody log into a FreeBSD box running hunt.

    • Re:Goooo Old School! (Score:3, Informative)

      by ASCIIMan ( 47627 )
      Or try Armagetron [sourceforge.net].
    • We had many an hour playing NetMaze. Its a top-down game where you drive your tank around shooting laser or rockets at your teammates.

      There are even different skins available.

      Only needs 486 (possibly less)

      Total size less than a meg

      The skins are actually a PCX file (sort of like winamp skins)

      Written in Turbo Pascal and uses IPX.

      This is all from memory; the last big game was Easter 2000. Nobody seems to want to play now we all have 500+MHz computers with 3D acceleration. :(

      Anyway, its better than Microsoft Hearts, but thats not hard.

    • Yes, definately Warcraft 2 or Starcraft (Starcraft is much better though and runs on win2k which is a bonus)

      I have a small network of 4 PC's in my shared house, Starcraft is brilliant! It's pretty much all that gets played, plus it only cost £10 for a copy with broodwar as well. Serious good value for money.

      You can spawn 3 copies from one CD and have them join in the game (provided it is hosted by the original CD). Seriously good fun, for a very cheap price. The other plus is that you can have co-op play. I've found that this is a deciding factor. In our house some people get their noses out of joint it there is too much DM conflict. Co-op allows you all to discuss the game afterwards and get the nice fuzzy team feeling ;)

  • If your LAN party is going to be a LONG one (i.e., over a weekend, or even an entire day), AND you and your friends like the good old Civilization/Civilization II turn-based strategy games, I highly recommend you play Freeciv [freeciv.org].



    Here goes a quick list of features (shamelessly copied from its website):

    • Generally comparable with Civilization I & II.
    • Up to 30 players!
    • Artificial Intelligence (AI) players.
    • Internet & LAN multiplayer (TCP/IP).
    • Support for a great number of platforms
    • Premade maps & scenarios!
    • 47 units and 61 nations.
    • Modpack support!
    • Internationalization (i18n).
    • In game help system.


    And, of course, it's open source (released under GPL, to be precise).
  • CnC aviable for DOS/95 (orginal series)1-4 players.
    CnC2 Red Alert 2-8 players 95+.
    A little harder to learn than a 3d shooter, much less than Civ.

    Doesn't require much more than a really fast 486 (orginal Dos mode) or P100+ (95+ mode).

    You can play teams, one on one, and all for one. Goal based games, Capture the Flag'ish, best as a basic battle game.

    Games can run from 30min to several hours depending on size of map/resources. Buy the box set WorldWide Warfar @local store it comes with many CDs.

  • Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dunkirk ( 238653 ) <david&davidkrider,com> on Tuesday January 01, 2002 @12:22PM (#2770347) Homepage

    This is an easy question. I just hosted another LAN party, and have thought this through a couple times. There are some places on the net to get info about how to have a LAN party, but I want to preface my comments so that you understand where I'm coming from. We had 11 people in attendance, though I was hoping for 15, so that will give you an idea of where I'm coming from, and we did it from noon till almost 10 pm last Saturday. (Hey, some of use are old guys bringing our teenagers these days. )

    Some comments about the mechanics are in order because it goes directly to the issue of the fun factor. If you're going to play a game that can have a dedicated server, do it. I was lucky to be hosting this LAN party in a big conference room at my work, and had a "spare" quad Xeon with 2 GB RAM and 4 36 GB Ultra3 160 drives striped together as a server. It hosted all of the game servers I talk about below, and never even knew it was working. However, it took me most of a day to get all the configurations tweaked just right. On the other hand, no one person could take down the game because his computer crashed. We pulled a 24-port switch from a wiring closet that gave us less than 10 msec ping times. So, though setting up dedicated servers will be more work, it's more stable, and though switches are a little more expensive than hubs, they give great performance. One more thing, the point of a LAN party is to interact. Get everyone in the same room if at all possible. I've done it both ways (with people in individual offices so that we wouldn't have to move computers). Pack 'em in; it's much more fun. With On to the games...

    We played UT DM FFA with the bonus pack relics to get everyone up and running, then we had a (small) UT one-on-one tournament. Again, the server hosted the FFA room and 4 tourney rooms all setup exactly the same way. UT - as of the latest patch - doesn't require a CD. However, it does require you to use a CD to load the latest patch. After that, you're good to go. You can even copy the CD to the server along with all the patches and bonus packs, and everyone should be able to get to them. I say "should" because Windows domain issues bit us in the behind and made browsing the server problematic. If you don't know what I'm saying, just make a bunch of CD copies for your friends to get up and running. I don't know if this sort of use of UT is legit, but based on the fact that Epic consciously took the CD requirement out of the game as of the 4.36 patch, I assume that they had this in mind.

    After the UT stuff, I had everyone warm up to the Quake 3 engine in an Excessive Overkill [planetquake.com] DM FFA. If you haven't seen this, it's really neat. It'll wear you out, though, so don't plan to spend all day with it. Although it's available for UT as well as Q3, I like the Q3 engine slightly better, and that's what I went with. We only played it for about an hour before moving onto Threewave CTF [threewave.com], and that's what I really want to talk about. Threewave was the hit of the day. (I must point out that Threewave has been available for Q1 and Q2 as well, and though I have no experience with the Q1 version, I like the Q2 version just as well.) Once again, the dedicated server hosted both of these games as well. Once again, you can serve up the CD and the patches for your friends, or make copies of the disc. id Software made the game such that you can just ignore entering the CD key, and unless you want to play on a public internet server, you're fine. It was designed to play on a LAN like this.

    I must change course here and talk about administrating the games: Q3 wins over UT. Although I have thought for a long time that UT was better, I got my opinion changed at this LAN party. Yes, UT has a web browser interface for administrating the server, but that - for me - means going somewhere else to do it. I don't want to tempt Windows 98 fate by Alt-Tab'ing over to a browser to make changes. (Hey, I had everything setup to play under Linux, but my hard drive ate it that morning. Besides, you can't Alt-Tab at all under Linux anyway.) So I wound up walking over to the server to get rid of the bots under UT FFA when everyone got up and running. On the other hand, changing something on the server with Q3 is easy with rcon. Yes, you have to know the command you want, which takes some learning, but you can just get a console in-game, do your thing, and get on with life.

    On a related note, with UT you can use the in-game setup to configure your server and then launch in dedicated mode. On my particular server, with no 3D video card, I couldn't do that with Q3. However, setting up a config file for a dedicated Q3 server actually paled in diffculty compared to getting the command line correct for launching a UT server without the aid of the game engine. (I didn't realize till later that the UT engine tells you what command line it's using to start the game in the console. Grrr.) So, even though UT looks easier to setup and admin on paper, Q3 wins on both in actual usability in my book. And being able to change things on the fly for the group is a huge win. (For example: although Threewave allows you to call votes on lots of things in-game, most people aren't die-hard gamers like you and I, and don't understand how to respond to vote requests. Being able to hit "~", type "rcon capturelimit 7", and move on is really great.)

    Some people say Counter-Strike is great, and I would agree on principle, except that I couldn't get it to work with a single CD-key. I tried this on a previous LAN party, and we seemed to be limited to 4 people on it. It was goofy for me, and I gave up trying to make it work. I didn't have time to set it up this time around, but I had planned on trying Strike Force, which is a Counter Strike-like mod for UT. It seems to have a few bugs, but being that it's based on UT, you wouldn't need CD's or keys for it at all.

    We also have a sub-group that likes to play Rogue Spear. While I'm not a huge fan, I appreciate that we need to play it so that everyone gets to have some time on their favorite engine. However, this is one is definitely not LAN-party friendly. You have to either make copies of the disk or use a crack. Of course, we all had legal copies of the disc, and so were just fine playing this game. ;-) One bad thing about RS is that there is no dedicated server for the game. And it's the flakiest game I've discussed here. So, when the person hosting goes down, everyone stops. Get the person with the fastest, most-stable machine to host.

    Lastly, we have some goofballs that like to play Starcraft, but play it at its fastest setting. To me, that takes all the strategy out of it, and I won't play it that way. YMMV. To me, using a strategy game like this in a LAN party is ridiculous becuase you have to sit out so long between rounds. Counter Strike or Rogue Spear are bad enough, but when a game can last for 30 or 45 minutes, that's just boring, except for the last two guys in the game.

    We don't play it, because I really dominate in it, but I still love Quake 2 Lithium. You can tweak it to your hearts content, and I still think it's the best DM ever. Really fast-paced like Excessive Overkill, but not so senses-numbing. If you can get away with it, try it. You'll love it. And no CD's or keys, either.

    dk

    • And then you got fired for misusing company resources, right?
    • Let me just tell you how amazing Threewave CTF was for Quake 1. IT WAS THE BOMB. Binding the right mouse button to alternate Rocketlauncher and Grappling hook was the key to success ;) Oh those were the days...
    • Just a note on Half-Life and Counter-Strike at LAN parties: Get a hold of a Half-Life key generator and it'll work fine. LAN games don't authenticate to WON, so keygens will work for LAN parties. It won't work online, though.

      Actually, if everyone at the LAN party wants to play online, it's still possible. I believe if you set up a dedicated *Internet* server on a machine that has both LAN and Internet access, the clients with the generated keys can still join via LAN (no authentication!), but people with valid CD keys can still join from the 'net.

      I recall doing this at my first LAN party. Now we don't have that problem because everyone ran out and bought a legal copy after the first LAN party. :)

      Just a thought for next time 'round.
    • UT - as of the latest patch - doesn't require a CD. However, it does require you to use a CD to load the latest patch.

      Note, there is a version of the 436 patch (the latest UT version) for Windows that doesn't require a CD.. go to http://www.planetunreal.com/files/ [planetunreal.com] and look for the "436 nodelta" patch.
    • just a quick comment on UT server administration...

      having admin'ed q1, q2, q3, and most recently ut servers, i think q3 and ut are rather similar in ease of remote administration.

      contrary to what you indicated in your post, you CAN easily admin the server from any of the clients... "So I wound up walking over to the server to get rid of the bots under UT FFA when everyone got up and running."

      take a look at this webpage:
      http://www.planetunreal.com/game/console.shtml
      go down to " u n r e a l s c r i p t c o n s o l e c o m m a n d s (Can be used by remote administrators)"

      adding/removing bots, changing maps, etc is all very easily done:
      adminlogin your-password-here
      killall bots
      addbots 3
      switchlevel DmDeck16
      etc...

      i'll agree that changing game types and maps is somewhat EASIER from the Web interface, but it is definitely doable inside the game!

      other than this misinformation, nice post...
      wayne

  • Half-Life and its mods (Score:2, Informative)

    by JEI ( 74025 )
    Several people have mentioned counterstrike and day of defeat, both of which are Half-Life mods. About 10 or 12 of us get together once a month for a LAN party and we have found the HL and its mods are best. Once you install HL, you do not need the CD to play multiplayer.

    There are many great multiplayer mods available: Team Fortress Classic, Deathmatch Classic (which recreates Quake 1 deathmatch), FireArms, Day of Defeat, Global Warfare, Counterstrike, etc. The first two on the list come with the latest HL patch and the rest are freely available for download.

    Planet Half-Life [planethalflife.com] has an extensive list of mods.
  • and have them all on a network share ahead of time... hell, build CDs with the cracked executables in place of the originals and just install with those...
  • The theme is akin to the original Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (that's a plug for the book) -- fighting in Armor w/ Jetpacks and very fast paced.

    It's a little on the older side. http://www.planettribes.com/ [planettribes.com]

    Multi-player Actions in 3-D by two or more teams, installs from one disk & no serial number. However I have seen unopened boxed copies for under $10.....

    Mods are all server side and are availible online (Shifter tops my list)

    "Tribes 2" is a bit more complex and has more "entanglements".

    There are no Bugs to hunt so the other team will just have to do. If you don't want to bother with the setup of the Mod yourself, there are plenty of servers open to the public. You can also password protect a server for private games.

    • Tribes has to be one of my fav. games for team play. It's mature and as long as your PC supports some sort of SIMD instructions (AMD's 3dnow or Intel's SSE, meaning K6-2 or P3 and better) it'll run fine.

      A lot of the tribes 2 community still play the original Tribes game.

  • game (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Need For Speed II Second Edition, no need to have another game. It has 'remote installation' option if you only have one CD.

    -qw

  • Driving. (Score:3, Informative)

    by saintlupus ( 227599 ) on Tuesday January 01, 2002 @01:46PM (#2770501)
    Maybe I'm a freak, but I don't really like FPS or RTS games. For LAN party goodness, I'd have to recommend driving games as my weapon of choice. Check out the Carmageddon series in particular -- it's like really fast, angry bumper cars.

    --saint
    • I couldn't agree more! Carmageddon II in "Catch the Fox" mode is loads of fun. But it requires a CD per player, IIRC.

      Movement is difficult in Carmageddon: you can't just flick around 360 degrees by moving the mouse half an inch. The physics model works like in real life, including weight and momentum, so you can't jump around corners by turning in the air or run faster by some clever zig-zagging. In order to actually damage your opponents, you must make physical contact, so camping is impossible. Powerups are randomized, and although they appear in the same places, you never know what you get from game to game. And cars are randomized (optionally) so years of experience driving the Eagle doesn't necessarily mean you're good with the Dumpster.

      All this means that the playing field is even. Newbies can compete quite evenly with experienced players, which is not the case in first person shooters.

      --Bud
  • ChexQuest!

    (For those of you who don't know, ChexQuest was a very cheesy and nonviolent version of Doom.)

    More seriously though, Worms AFAIK doesn't require the CD to play, just to start, so you could just start all the computers ahead of time running it...

    Or, you could get virtual CD drive software, create virtual drives for every game you want to play, and not have to worry about CDs at all. You'll need a lot of hard drive space, but I can't imagine that would be a problem.

  • Quake3 (Score:3, Informative)

    by WasterDave ( 20047 ) <davep@z e d k e p.com> on Tuesday January 01, 2002 @04:00PM (#2771051)
    I play practically nothing else at Lan's now. Get a rocket arena server up and going (this may take some time, do this the day before), or for a more inclusive game play jailbreak.

    Jailbreak is definately easier to set up and has some unique properties: The score of the team is the score of the middle ranking player in the team - this encourages genuine teamplay rather than individual heroics; The game also presents numerous opportunities for the lamer players to be heroes by rescuing their more gung-ho mates from jail.

    Once you're in to rocket arena though, point of no return :)

    There's also some mileage in bringing a PS2 along for something more chilled out. SSX and beer, for instance.

    Dave
  • I just came back from a LAN party last night that we hosted at my office for a bunch of my friends. It was smaller than most, only about 10 people, but we had a really fun time. I find that games that are made to be played online (read Unreal Tournament :)) usually work best for LAN parties. First, they have really good, solid online/LAN code so that you pretty much know that you don't have to worry about that.

    Also, like someone else said, older games tend to work really well. Unreal Tournament is now getting into its older years, but its still really fun to play. Epic has even realeased a patch that makes it so you don't have to use the CD for playing anymore. That's pretty cool.

    I also find that FPS's are the best for LAN parties. You can play regular fragfest type or play on teams, they are fast paced, you can play more of them, and everyone seems to like em. Unline RTS/RPG games that require hours and hours of play time, FPS's are over quick. Plus, you develop really good hand eye coordination along with fast reflexes and such.

    -Vic
  • Starcraft (and Brood War) is great fun, and you can spawn as many copies as you want. And it's cheap.
  • On Monday night, I and 2 other guys went to a friend's house for a LAN party. We mostly shared files and played PS2, but game everyone played most on our PCs was Quake 3. With one CD and one CD key, everyone can play...so that's what I'd recommend.
  • Well, me and my "crew" have been playing multiplayer games for quite a while.. starting in fact with Doom and Doom 2.

    IMHO the true classics for LAN party gaming are Counter-Strike and Starcraft. Starcraft in particular is very well balanced and offers three distinct races for you to master. C-S of course everyone has played, and is a great game.

    Older games also worth mentioning include Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings, Diablo/Diablo 2, Team Fortress for Quake (I dislike TFC), Total Annihilation and Warcraft 2. All worth picking up and probably available on the cheap.

    Lately though, me and my friends have been getting pretty bored of the old staples and for a while stopped meeting up as much to get our Frag on. However, just recently we started playing Kohan: Immortal Soverigns, and I must say its a pretty excellent RTS. Kohan's multiplayer game is mainly focused on city expansion and finding the right combination between front line and support troops and really cuts down on the tedium of managing peons and micromanaging armies (by treating groups of units as a company). Also it features Experience Points and Ranks/Levels for its troops and heroes, so it actually pays not to just mindlessly send your troops to their deaths over and over. A great game any LANer should definitely give a shot. (Unfortunately it doesn't support spawning, but you can get it pretty cheap now as there is a newer prequel for Kohan out)

    Also I must mention that if you and your friends have MMORPG characters around the same level (such as in Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest, Ultima Online, or even on a MUD) and a fairly speedy internet connection, playing together online with all of your party in the same room is hilarious, especially if you are PKing.

    golem@playonLAN.com
  • Many very good games can be now had for 500 games) with the min/max # of players, game modes (deathmatch, coop, team, ctf, etc), the style of game, and how many players/cd.

    A far more interesting question is how do you players deal with the varying levels of ability at your parties? Personally, I lean towards cooperative games or do ad-hoc handicaps (winner should always use the weakest weapon, etc). 'course, large parties can split up into multiple games and players can play what they're best at...

    I hope that more game companies take after GoD in labelling/featuring cooperative campaign play (as labelled on Serious Sam.)
  • The subject says it all. UrbanTerror (.net) is a great Quake III mod. It is similar to Firearms. Firearms is a great mod for Half-life. Both involve soldiers (or SWAT people, etc) in which you get your weapons in the beginning of each game. StarCraft is a very nice strategy game and doesnt involve heavy graphics, so even slow computers with (shall I even say it) embedded graphics chips can run it. Cataclysm is a version of Homeworld and is also strategy, but requires nice graphics cards and (decently) fast computers (a 500mhz with a TNT2 or so should be fine). Unfortunately, if you are the few unlucky people (like me) who have 2000 or XP and a Radeon, Cataclsym will only run in software rendering mode.

    These were just suggestions based just being on good games for LAN parties, not for their price or CD checking. I have been going to LAN parties for several years, most lasting from 3 days to 1.5 weeks (my friends and I are pretty hardcore computer people). In fact, I am at one right now! If you really want to get good at FPS, play Urbanterror in team survivor mode with you and any other humans on one team and nightmare bots on the other. I have been doing this for a couple days and I have improved my skills dramatically! We (my friends and I) are actually better than the best bots (nightmare). We are much better if we snipe, but only a little better when we assault. Anyway, I'm rambling; I hoped this helped some :).

  • Kingpin makes a great LAN game (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Tuesday January 01, 2002 @10:09PM (#2772236) Homepage
    the most fun i ever had at a LAN party was in an 8-player Kingpin deathmatch.

    You don't need the CD for multiplayer action, and the graphics and sound effects make for a good experience even on older machines (uses Quake2 engine)

  • Check out Quadra [sourceforge.net], you might be surprised after trying it out...

  • Scorched Earth!!!!

    Need I say more?

    Man I wish /. didn't require you to wait 20 seconds before hitting submit. Worse still is hitting back and having to retype the message!
    I wonder if I've typed for 20 seconds yet.
  • Even though it's a little old, I've found Drakan to be a good game at LAN parties - Master of the Dragon is usually pretty cool. It does however require 3D acceleration.
  • For RTS fun on a LAN this one is hard to beat. You can get a good mix of longer running normal games to much shorter defend the wonder and king of the hill games. And if you have an odd number of people you can help offset that by having two people controlling the same civ -- ypically one focuses on resources and the other player focus on military and exploration (or they trip all over each other and die a quick death ;-).
  • Great LAN game. My brother and I do it every Christmas. Great gameplay, lots of variations, allows a no-CD network install, AND works on mixed Mac/PC networks if you run the multiplayer over IP.

    - Freed
  • Its based on points, not kills, which mean that even people who are not sharp shooters and professional Quake players have a chance. Plus, its a lot less violent and dark looking, appealing to more of the crowd - especially women. I know that I and the other girl on our tech team didn't mind playing this, but disliked Doom and Quake.
  • Okay I'm not much with words these days so I'll just stick to names and descriptions. 1. Unreal tournament- this one is a pretty balanced shooter with a lot of options to tweak and plenty of fan mods to make it interesting. 2. Action Quake mod for Quake II- This one adds a little realism to quake. Not Counter-Strike level mind you, but more like it is in the movies. There's nothing like drawing a bead on a guy with a sniper rifle while trying to limp around a corner and being blown away from behind by a sly shooter with a pair of pistols. 3. Total annihilation- If you like starcraft, but feel that it is too limiting, then this is your baby. Massive battles (up to 999 units per team, if you modify your game files), potentially limitless resources for long play and there is nothing that compares to late game "chain" nuclear strikes. Just watching the whole screen shake non-stop as one after another lands home on your enemies (or friends if that is the pool that you play) base is worth all the trouble it takes to build it all. The basic learning curve on this one is deceptively simple, but once you get into the late game stage it can take hours to finally finish off an opponent, and fun the whole time. You can still buy this one off of Cavedog's site, or whoever owns them now, for about ten bucks. 4. Heroes of might and magic series- Yeah I know it's turn-based and who wants to wait those precious minutes for everyone else to make their turn. Well that's why it's perfect for LAN parties. Because while everyone else is making their moves and gathering forces and resources and laying seige etc etc... you can just slip away from your computer for a sec and have a little diplomatic chat with someone; offer up that choice gold mine in exchange for helping take down some glory-holing tyrant, and his little bone dragons too. 5. Grand Theft Auto- steal fast cars cars, vandalize property, burn your friends and plow down a bunch of jogging chrishnas for some bonus points. There's something for everyone in this little package. 6. X-wing and tie-fighter series- If you want a space-sim, there has never been a better one for realism. You've got a "missile lock-on warning", so you dump all of the power from your sheilds and you weapons into spead, outrun the warhead, roll around and take it out with pin-point accuracy. Some of my fondest memories of my highschool years were flying in a wing of x-wings with my best friends while battling the empire for the glory of...well you know...chicks dig pilots. Well I hope this helps you. These were some of the greatest high-rollers to ever grace my hard-drive, and I hope they bring you as much joy.
  • The typical LAN games like counterstrike and Red Alert 2 are great, but for some real gaming goodness pick up a copy of Interstate '76. While the graphics are dated, it's still one hell of a game.
  • I can't say I've ever had more fun gaming than I have with these two games. Giants may essentially be a FPS, but there's nothing else like it. Everyone should try it. The downside to both of these games is they tend to be rather demanding, altho both are still playable in a more ugly form on a slightly aging machine. The other problem is you need to get the CD cracks for them (which I believe are both readily available at gamecopyworld.com).
  • I'm a member of bi-weekly local LAN party, we meet in the basement of a jewelry store. Anyway, here's a list of the games which are good to play and either don't need CD's to run multiplayer or are easily copied to a burned CD:

    -Starcraft (crack for Broodwar 1.08 at Battlezone [agava.ru] )
    -Half-life w/ various mods
    -Quake 3
    -Serious Sam-a doom clone, just run around blasting bad-guys, set in ancient Egypt, fighting against ancient monsters and robots. Good times.

    ...and the main attraction...

    -Return to Castle Wolfenstein...I'm surprised as hell no one mentioned this. Multiplayer Return to Castle Wolfenstein (RTCW) is absolutely awesome. It has great gameplay, fine playability on a LAN, and excellent teamplay. There are different types of gameplay: Objective Mode, Stopwatch Mode, and Checktpoint Mode. And instead of explaining each, I'm just going to quote http://www.planetwolfenstein.com.

    Objective mode Challenges players to complete a series of objective for their team, with the first team to do so winning that round.

    Stopwatch mode Similar to Objective mode, but once one team wins a round the teams switch sides (Axis become Allies, and vice versa) and they replay the map, with the attackers trying to beat the previous team's time.

    Checkpoint mode Has players battling for control of a number of flags scattered throughout the level. The first team to capture all the flags wins.

    Some other differences between single and multi-player RTCW...the bigger guns slow you down when you have them (as they should), barbwire hurts, and some other little stuff :)

    Also, after installation, you don't need the RTCW CD to play single OR multi-player, which is awesome.

    Well, I recommend strongly this game for LAN parties, for its easy transerability (is that a word?) between computers with one copy, great gameplay, and the sheer joy of tracing a Kraut through a sniper scope and then blasting him into pieces by driving a piece of lead through him at the speed of sound. Ahhh, good times.

    • and the sheer joy of tracing a Kraut through a sniper scope and then blasting him into pieces by driving a piece of lead through him at the speed of sound.

      They don't get blasted to pieces, they just fall over. And you don't get to see it, the recoil knocks you back and your view is usually of the sky (completely ruining sniping in RtCW). Medal of Honor: Allied Assault will smash RtCW's short lived and undeserved favored WWII FPS status. Heck, the Day of Defeat mod for HL is better.

      Serious Sam is great and for smaller sized groups, the co-op mode is perfect.

      Q3 and UT are nice as well, with bots to make up for said smaller groups.
      • Oh, I know they just fall over, and I was actually aware of almost lying there, but didn't it make for great writing? That just sure is a nice sentence. Anyway, thanks for correcting me, and I do agree, I don't like how you get kicked back so much by the recoil, but it IS realistic, and I like that... I haven't played Medal of Honor or DoD, but it's on my list, promise. I agree about coop in Sam, and also about Q3 and UT.

  • This mod for UT rocks. I started playing this after I got bored with the chaos of playing UT. This is one of those realism mods that has you pick what weapons you will use before you enter the game. You can load up but beware: the more weapons/equipment you carry the slower your player will move. As mentioned earlier UT and the mod will let you play without the CD once it is installed, if you have the latest patch for UT. The mod is available at

    http://www.planetunreal.com/infiltration [planetunreal.com]

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