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So my friend John and I spent most of the weekend just gaming, and trying to get momma to join us.
So we ended up going back to some older games that we all used to play on the LAN together when we lived down in southern Idaho.
We love all kinds of games like original Unreal Tournament, Freelancer, Diablo II, Desert Combat (BF1942 mod that BF2 is based on), Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, Tony Hawk, etc, stuff that is fun to play together on the LAN, easy to setup, has minimal tech issues (like no need to patch the damn thing 19 times and alter ini's etc).
One of our favorites that we keep coming back to are Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, and Tony Hawk Underground 2.
A simple $5 USB gamepad (momma uses some cheapo $5 generic gamepad for it and loves it), or your standard 'better' gamepad (I use a Logitech Rumblepad 2, John uses a Saitek P880, both are dual-analog), and either of these old, bargain-bin games, some internet (or over Hamachi) action, and we got a hell of a lot of fun out-tricking each other.
We especially like a little game called "Graffiti". Everyone has a different color, and when you successfully pull off a trick on say a rail or ramp or halfpipe, it turns your color.
Another player has to come along and successfully pull off a trick worth more points than yours to change it to his color.
So when momma scores an 18,000 point grind trick on a set of rails, they turn her color. To take those rails and make them my color, I have to score at least 18,001 points.
We do 2 minute games, so you have 2 minutes to make as much of the 'map' your color as possible. I don't know if the description I gave is as good as actually playing it, but hopefully it is lol. It is a total and complete blast, and it's easy to get into.
Here's some prices on Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3:
Amazon.com PC version
Another Amazon.com PC version (jewel case, not the cardboard box that normally sits on the shelves)
NOTES:
we are using the 1.01 patch for THPS3.
also for THPS3 we use this Hamachi setting:
Network Name: DFI-Street_THPS3
Network Password: dfistreet
Here's some prices on Tony Hawk Underground 2:
Amazon.com PC version
This also means that at your local Wal-Mart, EB Games, Best Buy, etc, you can find these in the bargain bin for almost nothing...and a cheeseball controller for $5-ish if you don't already have one
We'd really like to get some 4-8 player Graffiti and Trick Attack games going...I think everyone would enjoy it a lot (once you figured out how to actually skate haha).
Another older Retro Game we'd like to possibly revisit is Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, where we at one time tried to get a little "DFI-Street Racing League" action going.
@ Amazon...probably cheaper at your local game store since it's so old
It too has very little technical issues, runs great over cable connections (you can make dedicated servers, and I by-golly have enough machines for that!). You can race with keyboard, gamepad, racing wheel etc.
Anyway, these are fun, friendly games that don't have the bad technical issues that the 'modern' games have like trying to get all 16 of us with BF2 correctly installed and not crashing etc...and it doesn't require the huge server bandwidth that those games require. I've ran NFS:HP2 with 8 players on my 512k up cable easily, and Tony Hawk...easy again. Especially that we use Hamachi as a sort of Private LAN so we can bypass a lot of internet crap lol.
If interested, just give a shout. If you got some other games like this that you'd want to suggest, do so. Not everyone has $50 for a new game and not everyone has enough machine or internet for those games either. Since no one is interested in Xbox/360 gaming, we'll try some PC-Retro gaming heh.
