New LAN Party Game?

[Starion15]

Greetings,

Me and my friends hold frequent LAN parties. We have played Starcraft and Counter-Strike to death. We're looking for a new game. I was thinking some sort of fly and die game, like an air combat game. Does anyone know of a good one? I havent played one of these type of games since "Terminal Velocity", so I'm not really not sure whats good at the moment. I would also be glad to take opinions on other types of games too, whatever you guys play.

We've tried new games, but one of our problems is "aging" technology. Some people have 2600+, while others have 400mhz k6-2, and everywhere in between. So our options are kind of limited on where we can go with new games. Most people are going to be upgrading/getting new computers over the summer though, so we should be ok soon enough.

We just need some good, new games to play. We are all tired of the current games.

Thanks


p.s. If anyone is ever South-West Missouri (U.S), send a private message and you can come play.

 

[confoundicator]

Get Freelancer and use a dedicated server. There's a <cough>crack</cough> available on kazaa, along with the <cough>full version</cough>. It's a space shooter with a huge explorable universe and upgradeable spaceships and lots of dogfighting.

<font color=blue>-Freelancer fanboy.</font color=blue>

 

[Mortallus]

I was a big fan of Descent3 in it's heyday. It's a bit dated now but it's system requirements are reasonable and the graphics arent bad at all. I think it fits the "fly and die" category pretty well. If you're not familiar with the Descent series, it's basically just a FPS in badass combat ships. Weapons, shields, fast flying, etc.

http://www.interplay.com/descent3/fss.html

Just an idea.

 

[Starion15]

Freelancer looks like a cool game, but how does it fair in LAN multiplayer? Descent3. . .maybe it just has one of those names/ I could swear that I have played it before, but I dont remember anything about it.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[skligmund]

Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3 is pretty kick ass, but you need to somewhat an aviation guy to play it to its fullest extent, otherwise you lose.

Try the Day of Defeat Half-Life mod, way cooler than CS, when you get used to it.

Water cooling is for the weak. Get liquid nitrogen.

 

[Esso]

Favorite lan games:
Rainbowsix 3 (ravenshield)
Serious Sam 1 and 2
Carmageddon 2 (only for win9x though =[ )
Total Annihilation (w/CC addon and a few extra balancing units)
UT (assault)/UT 2003 <-- these do get old after a while.
War3 (p.s. class sucks, you gotta go with the still beta expansion)
BattleField 1942

i'll name more later if i remember. =)



comments:
-freelancer was fun as hell when i first started playing, but after you've exlpored all the world and got a 1337 ship, there's absolutely nothing else you can do.
-cs? geez you guys still play that? hehe.

 

[Skipper007]

Descent 3 rocks in multiplay, althought the single player was pretty bad. Runs a steady 30 FPS on my K6-2 450 with 256 MB RAM in multiplay, singleplayer needs higher. Runs awesome on my dad's Athlon 1200 (becomes mine around the end of June). But you will need a joystick with a good feel to it. You don't need anything fancy, though.

 

[Starion15]

Lol, yea, we still play CS. Actually, most of us have been playing it for less than a year, so it is kinda new (to us). I just. . .obtained. . .Freelancer. As far as I could get, its been fun (kept crashing and getting a driver error, hopefully 3.4 will fix it). I'm not sure how it will do as multiplayer though, not so much because it wont be fun, but because too many people are really lazy, and probably wont want to learn new game. Someone tried to introduce Tribes 2, and the response was "Blah, this too hard, me lazy, me play CS until all brain cells go away"

I'll keep playing Freelancer, and try and force it down their throats.

I've seen that in several THG reviews, Serious Sam is used, I may have to give that a try. We have also tried Battlefield 1942, with mixed results. It had a lot of crashs, it only worked on about 3 of the 20 computers, so it was tossed to the way side, for now. WarIII, I tried the beta, but I couldnt get it to load, so I never actually got to play it. Maybe when it comes out for real.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Starion15]

Is Descent 3 part of the Freespace series?

 

[Skipper007]

Descent: Freespace had nothing to do with decent except for some members of the development team.

Descent 1 and 2 basically involved flying a fighter through mines on various planets to eradicate an alien computer virus that was taking over mining robots. Generally, you had to blow up the reactor and get out, Return of the Jedi style, except your enemies move way slower but get in your way and in later levels are very powerful. For Descent 3, they moved to more open levels and varied mission objectives, which sounds good in theory but didn't work well in practice (my opinion). However, the multiplayer for Descent 3 really rocks, although those who have played before have a major advantage at first.

You should be able to get the game REALLY cheap.

 

[confoundicator]

Serious Sam II has a fun cooperative multiplay, but it's the same thing every time.

Freelancer is one of those games that you need to put a few hours into before it really sinks its hooks in. The multiplayer is IMHO more fun than the single player game.

Check out <A HREF="http://www.lancersreactor.com/t/" target="_new">Lancer's Reactor</A> to see all the fun stuff the mod community has done to it. Enjoy!!

<font color=blue>-Freelancer fanboy.</font color=blue>

 

[Esso]

what's with all the crashing?????

Are you guys running windowsME or 9x still?
Bleh, well i guess if you're forced to, then you should all reformat & reinstall prior to a lan =p

 

[Starion15]

lol, all but a very few of us use Xp Pro. We have a two 98's. But o'well. Freelancer has pretty much run its course with the excpetion of a few late comers. The server was setup on one of our computers as an internet server, so most of us ended up playing at home more than the lan party.

I couldnt get Serious Sam II to take off, so I just deleted it.

I just got Rise Of Nations, so I think I'm going to push that at the next lan party.

Does anyone else have suggestions for games? I've downloaded the Desert Combat mod for BF1942, so we may play that some more, I dont know.

Thanks for the input(s).

 

[confoundicator]

That's interesting about Freelancer, it's pretty much run it's course among my group too. I would like to see a big expansion to the game, we (my LAN group) all agree that some added functionality would make the game a lot more appealling. The ability to keep a garage with multiple ships would be cool (for example). Or have a cooperative mode with a pilot and a gunner. We've found ourselves going back to the old standbys, Diablo2 and StarCraft.

<font color=blue>Build a foolproof system and they'll build a better fool.</font color=blue>

 

[dhlucke]

What about America's Army or any of the Tom Clancy games? I can't believe that you would go back to something as lame as Diablo or Star Craft? How is it possible that those games haven't burned you out yet? LOL

<A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/index.php?act=ST&f=41&t=389&s=1fee5dab901bebe29da7aa1c2658fc6f" target="_new"><font color=red>dhlucke's system</font color=red></A>

<font color=blue>GOD</font color=blue> <font color=red>BLESS</font color=red> <font color=blue>AMERICA</font color=blue>

 

[confoundicator]

Actually I've been playing through the single player in Ghost Recon, which I never got to finish. As a far as LAN gaming goes we go where the fun is. That's usually StarCraft.

<font color=blue>Build a foolproof system and they'll build a better fool.</font color=blue>

 

[Starion15]

So true, so true. The order of the day is still Counter-Strike, though the WarcraftII mod for CS has given some it more life. But its already begining to fail.

 

[the_Prisoner]

Falcon 3.0 or 4.0

oh, and Tribes...

Pris

I'm not a number, I'm a free man! <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by the_Prisoner on 06/29/03 07:20 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[kinney]

I agree, I used to play Tribes alot. I dont blame you for CS, its all about the gameplay.

I dont LAN very much, maybe once/twice a year but have you tried something like Dungeon Siege? I have no idea if its good multi but I liked the game.

Athlon 1700+, Epox 8RDA (NForce2), Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 80GB 8MB cache, 2x256mb Crucial PC2100 in Dual DDR, Geforce 3, Audigy, Z560s, MX500

 

[Starion15]

Yea, actually at a few lan parties, a group of 3 played Dungeon Siege. But that wont work as a real group activity, as everyone else (inlcuding me) "greatly dislike", or rather hate that game. It looks real nice, but I couldnt get into the gameplay part of it. They seem to enjoy it though.

We try and lan every 2 weeks to a month. One time, last year, we had a lan party every weekend for three weeks in a row. . .good times. That was back in the days of Starcraft.