Here's a question...

Does anyone know if the Open Beta client is the same as the production Jun 19 release game client? Is it worth it to download it now if you're not going to participate in the open Beta Weekends? Or will you just have to re-download another client come June 19?

Check this page:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Radeon-Xpress-X1200.3775.0.html

For notes and comparisons on your video card. Looks like you'd be able to run HL2 at 800x600 on low to maybe medium settings. You'd be better off sticking to games that are pre-2004.

How 'bout Nexus: The Jupiter Incident?

I've never tried it myself, but I've read a lot of positive stuff on it in forum's and reviews...

Perhaps a better thread would be:

Least scariest game that was actually intended to be scary...?

or

What game failed the worst at its stated goal of scaring you?

I put other because they're so amazingly two-dimensional. I brought this up to a friend who's a big WoW fan and he jumped all over me saying how amazing the game world was and how it was totally three-dimensional.

Well I'm not talking about the game world. I'm talking about the entire MMO experience as a whole. It's incredibly lifeless and two-dimensional. You can't drop your items into the game world. The quests are lifeless and repetitive. In fact, when I stop to think about it, MMO's are nothing more than those old text-based adventure games where you had to type in "TURN LEFT" "PICK UP SWORD", etc, with a nifty 3-d world pulled over the text interface to blind us to the truth: that we're running around someones text based MUD and paying them monthly to do it.

Thing is my friend DarKre, is that I can go back to those games, albeit remembering how to solve all the adventures/puzzles etc. but still be engrossed in the story and gameplay.
Judza

I know what you mean - I just recently unearthed (pun intended) my old copy of the DIG and played through it. What a cool game - Now I want to go find a copy of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis... :D

I'm running a Dell XPS M1710 - 2 Ghz Core Duo, 2 Gigs of RAM and 512MB Go 7900GTX. It will run all of the games out there with the possible exception of Supreme Commander although I don't own it so I couldn't say for sure. It cost me $3600.

I am avoiding Vista like the plague - I'm running XP SP2 and will not upgrade until a game comes out that I absolutely must have and it will only run on Vista. And let me tell you, Halo2 does not qualify... ;)

Indeed, if you buy a new laptop, make sure you have a copy of XP to blast onto it. I should have mentioned that in the original post....

Unfortunately when you start talking about "good" gaming laptops you start talking about a couple of different price echelons and the first one starts at about $1500. Gateway has the most optimal price/performance system in the NX860XL. It has a base price of $1700 but every two months or so, they run a sale where they drop $200 bucks off the price. For $1500 you get a Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, 2 Gigs of System RAM, and a Discrete NVidia Go 7900GS graphic card with 256MB memory. At this point it'll run 90% of the games out there at a decent frame rate.

If you are determined to spend around $1300 then you might consider E-Bay - only be careful - probably 75% of their "high power gaming laptop" auctions are bogus.

Good game depends on what you like:

FPS - S.T.A.L.K.E.R., F.E.A.R., Halflife 2, Chronicles of Riddick
RTS - Warhammer 40K, Rise of Nations
RPG - Oblivion, Vampire: Bloodlines, Neverwinter Nights 2
Action/Adventure/RPG - Gun, Titan Quest, Dungeon Siege 2

Crysis is XP compatible.  As for Halo2...  well, MS has a perfectly good OS in WinXP SP2.  At the moment, there's very little reason for anyone to upgrade to Vista.  Not corporations, and particularly not gamers.  Outside of the (relatively) small technophile group that has to have the latest of everything that comes out the most likely scenario is that not many people will upgrade, at least not in the numbers that MS is wanting.

What to do, what to do...  Well, take what's ostensibly your most popular game and port it to the PC and then make sure it runs on Vista only.  Now your average gamer who loves Halo2 and wants the PC version has to upgrade to Vista.  It's not quite as simple as "problem solved", but by making Halo2 "Vista Only", MS has probably raked in at least a quarter million more sales of Vista than they would have otherwise...

If memory serves, the technical reason is that Halo2 takes advantage of Vista's "Tray and Play" capabilities - ie you can pop the DVD in for the first time and be up and playing the game within minutes of inserting the disc.  ie, somehow, you can play the game at the same time that it's installing...

Do we care?  No.  But MS cares about the quarter million extra Vista sales...  ;)