I’m hauling my computer over to a friend’s house for a few days and at various times we’ll have 3-5 people networked up to play games. I want to find a wide variety of games to fill long gaming sessions.
Old stuff works too - I remember playing games like Worms Armageddon which weren’t that great alone but made fun party/lan games. New games are fine, we should all have pretty up to date computers.
Need For Speed 3: Hot Pursuit had a multiplayer mode where some players played cops and some played fugitives. Do the newer games in that series (Hot Pursuit 2 and Most Wanted) have a similar game mode? Actually, any racing games that aren’t the hardcore shaving .1 seconds off your lap type would probably be fun - I’m thinking of getting flatout 2.
Mods/total conversions can also be good. We found a mod that’ll let you play the original half-life 2 game in coop mode that should be great. Coop games in general are better at lan parties.
I’m looking for a lot of variety - everything from the latest shooter to 10 year old novelty games (if they work on modern systems) is fine. What have you had fun playing with at lan parties?
We (A bunch of college friends who get together annually to play board games and UT2k4) like Unreal tournament 2004. We play Onslaught all humans against computers (we aren’t very good so we don’t have to crank up the AI level very high to be a challenge)
Absolutely free, absolutely wonderful. It’s an incredible fight between the greatest races in the world. It’s only in beta version right now but it is certainly playable. It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.
Also, if you want some fun games, Warcraft III Defense of the Ancients is pretty sweet.
We spent a great many hours playing Aliens vs Predator on the lan. A great many. 'til 3 or 4 in the morning.
This was some years ago and the game I’m talking about is in no way is related to the recent crappy movies.
We have a soft spot for Powerslide. There are two things that make it fun multiplayer:
The first is that it has a speedup mode which when turned on means that people lagging behind get more speed and people ahead get less. This keeps it close, and let’s face it the fun in these games is when it’s close.
The second is that you can shoot other cars, causing them to spin off. So whoever gets ahead tends to get their ass shot up, causing them not to be ahead anymore. Which is both fun of itself, and fun because it keeps things close.
Neverwinter nights and any of the 10,000+ adventures available for it on the nwn vault. A lot are designed for multiplayer and there is a lot of variety in terms of play time.
RTS
Supreme commander is great fun, but has high system req.
The original starcraft doesn’t look very good, but it’s the. best. RTS. ever. Atleas until Starcraft II ships.
I’m also looking forward to Sins of a solar empire coming out… today! HAHA! (incidently this game lets two people play on lan with the same key, so you only need one copy per two players.
FPS
Unreal tournament. 2k4 is great fun, the latest UT III, is also really good, but has high system req.
And of course there is Team Fortress.
Go to the vault (nwvault.ign.com) and go to the nwn files section and select “hall of fame” then “modules”. You can’t go wrong with any of these. And I believe you can filter by recommended number of players.
I haven’t been to a lan party in ages. But I played Powerslide the other day just for the hell of it, and let’s face it compared to modern games it sucks big time. However, it still has the features I mentioned, and it is still consequently a hellava laugh to play multiplayer.
HALO holds up very, very well and it’s dirt cheap nowadays. I did that just last month. Just for kicks, try playing 2 or 3 or even 4 against 1- we call it “Hunt” and it’s a surprising amount of fun and not anywhere near as unbalanced as it sounds because the prey has so many targets and doesn’t need to do any better than one kill per death.
UT 2004 is also a spectacular amount of fun at a LAN party, especially playing “Onslaught” or “Assault”.
I’ve never done Diablo II on a LAN, but it can probably be had cheaply if anyone’s missing it and I think it would be fun, especially if you do this regularly and can keep a sense of continuity. And especially if you can get one player on each character type. Or else you could each play as a Paladin and each pump one specific aura. Actually, that sounds really strong.