Greenman Gaming is offering four indie games for free starting on 8th February to the 11th of February. Four games will be free, one on each day at Green Man Gaming as part of The Grand Playfire & GMG Giveaway.

8th Feb: Zombies

9th Feb: Ninja Blade

10th Feb: Unstoppable Gorg

11th Feb:  Superstars V8 [...]]]>

Greenman Gaming is offering four indie games for free starting on 8th February to the 11th of February. Four games will be free, one on each day at Green Man Gaming as part of The Grand Playfire & GMG Giveaway.

8th Feb: Zombies

9th Feb: Ninja Blade

10th Feb: Unstoppable Gorg

11th Feb:  Superstars V8 Next Challenge

Please note that you do need a Green Man Gaming account and a Playfire account, and you need to link those accounts. Instructions on website.

Click here to read the full blog post on GMG website.

Battlefield 1942 is a first-person shooter first released [...]]]>

Planes are in high demand, as proven by the number of campers in the airfield. They range from heavy bombers (B17), light bombers (Ilyushin, AichiVal, SBD-5), and fighters (Zero, Yak9, BF109).

As of writing, Battlefield 1942 is still available for free on Origin – you just have to download it via this link because it is more difficult to find it on the Origin program. Get it before 1 March 2013.

Bring the boom boom pow to your enemies.

Battlefield 1942 is a first-person shooter first released in 2002. When it came out, it represented  a breakthrough in this genre. You know a game is successful when you keep getting the same thing again and again for years – see the Battlefield series, The Sims and Call of Duty.

It added a variety of ways you can have a rampage over your enemies including blowing them up with a plane’s cannons, blow them up with explosives, or just run them over with your jeep. Have a battle on sea, land and air. Work in teams to coordinate artillery fire, or work alone and climb up a mountain to snipe your enemies.

Each class and each spawn point gives you different abilities and vehicles to choose rom

The game is primarily a multiplayer game, and single player merely means playing the game on the same maps but with really dumb bots. On this note, the game is still highly playable because there are still many servers and players online.

The game runs quite poorly, unfortunately, on a netbook with internal graphics. Playing the game at 640x480x16 with everything set at low, and a disadvantaging visiblity of 50 to 75 per cent, you get a framerate of about 5-20 depending on how many people there are and how many objects there are on a map.

On the other hand, if you have a separate graphics processor, such as an ION 2 like the netbook  that I have, you can play this game without much slowdowns. Running on the ION 2, you can play at Medium settings with a 100% visibility and get a framerate of 15-40, again the same slowdowns will apply, especially when there is a lot of action.

The game runs at a 4:3 resolution, so if you do not want to play with a stretched image, follow this link.

Overall, I’d get the game whether or not you have a discrete graphics processor. It is one of the most entertaining game to have on your computer when you are bored – in class with the university’s WiFi or when you are travelling and can’t bring your main computer.

Tanks: from heavy tanks like the TIger to tank destroyers such as the M10, and everything in between.

Like

The pioneer BF1942: still with all its lustre and nostalgia.

A great variety of weapons and vehicles

Dislike

Runs poorly on integrated graphics

If you’re used to the newer Battlefields, the features in this game might feel limited. I see it as simplicity.

Verdict

It’s free – until 1st March 2013 – you have nothing to lose, so get it. If you have an AMD C-series processor or a Nvidia graphics card in your netbook, you will have a good time. It is playable on integrated graphics, but you won’t get a good score due to a choppy framerate.

An excellent game, simple and varied.

Gameplay: GG

Graphics: Great… unless you have integrated graphics

Work needed to get game to play: Plays right out of the box.

Future patches might change it, but as of now, you’re stuck with either playing it on an external display or a different [...]]]>

Faster than Light is not really netbook compatible... this is how the game looks like at a non-native 1152x864 resolution.

Here at Netbookist, I take pride in helping my readers. So here’s something from the get-go: Faster than Light will not display properly on netbooks that do not support at least a 1280×720 resolution.

Future patches might change it, but as of now, you’re stuck with either playing it on an external display or a different computer altogether.

This is how full-screen on a standard laptop screen looks like.

The game is still playable if you really, really wanted to play it on a netbook. The game’s native resolution is 1280×720, which means that on a typical netbook, you’ll have a lot of horizontal resolution truncated. The fix to this, to make this game playable, is to familiarize yourself with the way the game works before attempting to play it on a netbook and playing it at the maximum resolution which your graphics card will allow. More crucially, play the game in windowed mode, so you can move the window around to see parts that are truncated.

Finally, for the majority of netbook users with integrated Intel graphics drivers, it can be hacked to 1152×864. If you haven’t already hacked the drivers, follow this link.

Readers, if a future patch solves this problem, please do let me know!

Quick Review

Faster than Light is a unique game. For ten dollars, you get many, many hours of fun.

The game is basically a point-and-click game, where you have to manage the roles of your party. For maximum efficiency, you have to match certain jobs to certain people. Each space race has attributes that make some better at attacking, some immune to fire and some can repair your ship faster. Your job is to make sure you’re getting most out of your (non-)human resources.

With that done, your job is to constantly upgrade your ship so that you can fend off the final ‘boss’, the Rebel Flagship. On you way to meet the Flagship, you will attack lesser enemies who will dispense resources such as Scrap, which is the currency you use to buy upgrades for your ship.

With these two elements – a good ship and a good crew – you will then be tasked to defend yourself against pirates and other aggressors. Combat involves choosing your target and crossing your fingers, much similar to X-Com games. In Faster than Light, you will have to choose discrete faculties of the ship you want to destroy – you can destroy the shield regenerator,  the weapons first, if your strategy is max damage to them, and less damage to yourself.

On the other hand, you can pick an alternative strategy of maximum resource gain, by teleporting your best troops to their ship, and killing the crew in it. Leaving the ship in tact will generally give you more resources per battle.

All these minute considerations might seem unnecessary, but the real test of how well your strategy is will come together when you face the Flagship. And fear the Flagship much, because this game has no save game feature that features like a “backup”. Instead, the save game feature is there only to allow you to pause and resume the game once. A deliberate feature that was annoying at first, but I learnt to appreciate it as a means to keep the game challenging, and to make you keep coming back for more.

The third installation in the Hitman series, Hitman: Contracts is one of the most difficult games to rate. On one hand, it plays exactly like a Hitman game, with all missions requiring you to kill someone, and perhaps retrieve stuff. On the other, it doesn’t seem to be better than the second Hitman [...]]]>

The third installation in the Hitman series, Hitman: Contracts is one of the most difficult games to rate. On one hand, it plays exactly like a Hitman game, with all missions requiring you to kill someone, and perhaps retrieve stuff. On the other, it doesn’t seem to be better than the second Hitman nor as polished as Hitman: Blood Money.

Contracts takes on missions from the first Hitman, some favourites that include missions in Hong Kong and Bulgaria. And unlike the first Hitman, the game has been significantly smoothed out so you don’t get the terrible bugginess. There is also a some original content in the game, such as the missions in Rotterdam.

Introduced in the second Hitman, the scoring system keeps you coming back for the Silent Assassin rating.

With the release of the Blood Money, however, Contracts feels like it offers little to fans of the Hitman series.

I have followed the Hitman series all the way from the first game, and what I noticed is that every game did deliver something special. The first introduced a whole new concept of playing the role of a Hitman, trying to do everything as stealthily as possible. The second was more interesting because of how it was widely varied. The fourth introduced slicker graphics, more realism and a wider variety of ways to kill someone.

Showering: never forget to lock your bathroom!

Contracts seems to be a remix of the first two games, without putting a finish veneer on it. It is still quite a lot of fun, especially if you liked the levels that the first Hitman offered, but didn’t want the bugs.

But that’s pretty much its only strength when compared to the rest of the Hitman series. There isn’t too strong a storyline here. It’s all a series of flashbacks.

Great for spending some time on it, but if you had the choice, go try the rest of the Hitman games first.

The game runs well on a netbook at the lowest settings, although you’d have to be prepared to play it in a non-widescreen format as the game doesn’t support that natively. It does face some slowdowns at times when there are a lot of characters in the game.

Like

Same old Hitman gameplay

Some great missions from the first game now remixed and bug-free

Dislike

Brings nothing special to the table as compared to the other Hitmans

Dated graphics

Verdict

Try Blood Money. Then Silent Assassin. Then Codename 47 before trying Contracts.

Gameplay: Fun… I guess.

Graphics: Dated.

Work needed to get game to play: Minimal.

It’s hard to classify this game. In a sense, it’s a game where you take on the role as a hacker, using programs to crack passwords, your wits to [...]]]>

If you like 'hacking' Facebook profiles...

Uplink is a very unique game. Even up until today, there hasn’t been a game this similar to Uplink, and it has been over ten years…

It’s hard to classify this game. In a sense, it’s a game where you take on the role as a hacker, using programs to crack passwords, your wits to fool authorities into framing someone, and covering your tracks to ensure you don’t get caught for your crimes. You act as an agent of a company called Uplink, which manages its ranks of freelance hackers by providing a central location where you can find jobs, buy programs and read the news about successful infiltrations, arrests and it also serves as a place for you to get a glimpse of the storyline.

The game is a true one of a kind, but it has a moderate learning curve and a really unforgiving ‘game over’ mechanism, you’d be glad you played this game. In this game, you only get one shot. There is no official way of saving the game, so if you were slow in covering your tracks before the Feds come after you, it’s a hard-hitting game over where the only way back into the game is to start all over again. The makers of this game probably were trying to inject some realism into the game… or maybe it’s because the game was created in 2001 when games were tougher.

Missions are varied, and you get more challenging ones as you climb up the ranks

The progression of the game is simple. You start out with a pretty lousy machine capable of doing things at a snail’s pace. With the 3000 credits you start with, you must buy the basic tools such as a password breaker. This allows you to take up beginner missions which require you to hack into a system and delete or copy a file.

As you progress, you will be up against higher security computers, such as government computers or banks. Hacking a government computer will allow you to change someone’s education credentials, or authorize his arrest. Yes, there are no females in this game. Similarly, if you hack a bank, you can view someone’s balance, max out their credit limit, and (riskily) transfer their balance to your bank account. Mid-level missions usually require you to do something of this sort, although at this level, there are proxies and firewalls to counter against, which require you to buy programs to counter it.

But the chief characteristic of how Uplink makes itself extremely exciting is in the fact that everything you do seems like brinkmanship. One of the most basic programs is called a Trace Tracker, and what it does is it tells you how far you are to being caught. As the server you’ve hacked into traces your footsteps backwards, the Trace Tracker tells you how much time you have left in the worst way possible – beeping like a bomb. In high security computers, you might get traced really quickly, and the constant sound of BEEP BEEP BEEP will definitely put you on your toes.

Uplink runs excellent on a netbook. It runs great, is extremely addictive, and has few problems. The best way to get an optimal experience is to ensure you patch it to the latest version once you install it. Version 1.00 only allows you to play at 640×480, but once you upgrade it, you can play the game at a resolution compatible with a widescreen display, and it also smooths out any bugs.

The graphics are simple, the soundtrack is excellent and the game is extremely addictive. Try it!

Digital footprints... must be destroyed!

Tweak: How to Save Game

The game doesn’t come with a simple ‘save game’ button, so you need to do it manually. In order to save your game, you’ll have to head to your installation directory, and copy the contents of the users folder to somewhere off-site. Remember to always go into the main menu by clicking the ‘X’ button in the top left hand corner while in-game before you attempt to copy the files.

Like

The thrill of being a hacker with the ability to change things

Wonderful soundtrack

Plays excellent on a netbook

Dislike

Some bugs

Extremely unforgiving!

Verdict

Three days, three nights. Prepare pizza delivery numbers.

Gameplay: Keeps you planted at the edge of your seat for hours.

Graphics: Not fancy but functional.

Work needed to get game to play: Get it patched ASAP.

That [...]]]>

A typical tradition of traffic dynamics: ensuring congestion no matter the era

Recently, I’ve been hooked on transport management games. I played Cities in Motion, a game where you have to manage the public transport system in different cities such as Berlin, Helsinki and Tokyo. Interestingly, in that game, people in Tokyo drive on the right, while streets in Berlin look more North American than European.

That said, Cities in Motion was a game I was tempted to try on my netbook, but given that it runs like dung on my proper gaming laptop, it’s definitely not gonna fly on a netbook.

I stumbled upon a really old school game. Not as old school as Transport Tycoon, not as focused as Railroad Tycoon 3, but similar. Similar in a sense you have to manage your business, ensure that you have the cash, and complete goals. It’s an isometric game made in the early 2000s, with an intriguing concept of managing a transport system that consists of vehicles such as trains, trucks, airplanes, blimps and helicopters.

Just like Railroad Tycoon, you have a choice of fetching passengers or cargo. You have to build the infrastructure – streets, railways or airports, and then pick from a large list of vehicles. From thoroughbred horses of the 1850s to electric trains of the 60s to the Boing 747 of the 90s. Yes, Boing 747.

The game pits you in three regions – North America, Europe and Australia. And in each region, there’s a host of mission that takes you through the years. The American campaign starts from the 1850′s, and your role in that campaign can range from amassing a fortune, connecting cities via rail, and supporting the space race by creating an efficient system that allows you to transport raw materials to the value-adding industries, and then sending them to the space station. What keeps you on your toes is that you’ll have to complete all of these missions in a limited time, mostly about 15-20 years.

So many choices...

The game is actually very entertaining when you’ve set up something really efficient, profitable and current. There is a great feeling of seeing the dough come forth automatically, so you can expand your transport networks. The game also runs excellent on a netbook, and you can expect hours of enjoyment on it if you like these sort of games.

The flipside, unfortunately, is also very distinct as you spend time on this game. The game has a huge host of bugs, annoyances, typographical errors and has a learning curve that is moderately a mission to learn.

The bugs are minor but can turn into major annoyances. Sometimes, buttons don’t work. Other times, you can have a route to your station, but the computer won’t recognize it and tell you that the train can’t get there. That gets truly annoying because it means you have to spend cash to rebuild your railroad. Out of the box, the game won’t save properly either – the fix is below.

Learning the game is also quite hard, especially if you’re not the RTFM (Read The Friendly Manual) kind of person. There is no tutorial, although the first few missions are quite easy because you’re only required to manage horses which don’t break nor need maintenance.

The game also has a very inelegant interface. In order to do one thing, you’ll have to make quite a disproportionate number of clicks. For example, to build a railway, you have to click on build. Out of ten buttons on the sidebar, you’ll have to remember which one. Once you click build, you’ll be presented with a number of buttons again for different modes of transportation – do you want to build a horse and truck depot? A train depot? An airport? A shipyard? Click on the right one, and then the cycle repeats again. Do you want a small, small-medium, medium or large depot? Electric or non-powered railway?

The biggest pain lies in the building the railway. To build a railway, you have to join two stations. Usually, these two stations require you to curve the railway. And then here comes the inelegant interface again: how steep do you want it? 1×1 curve? 2×2? It becomes a puzzle sometimes where you’ll have to engage in trial-and-error to see which curve will allow you to join both stations. There is no diagonal track, by the way. So building diagonally means curving left, right, left, right, etc.

Oh, if only they’ve seen how easy it is to do this on Railroad Tycoon or Cities in Motion.

The game runs excellent on a standard netbook. It does run at a native 1024×768, which means that it won’t be a perfect aspect ratio for a netbook, but the graphics looked fine while I played it. It ran quite stable without crashing.

FIX: Save Game Error

If you have a problem saving your game, head to the installation folder, and create a folder called save . The theory that I heard is that Transport Giant is too old a game and therefore is unable to weave through Windows 7′s file protection system. Create that folder in small caps and you’re good to go.

Like

So many vehicles to choose from…

So many missions to play on…

So many eras to play in…

So time sapping… (i.e. it’s ultra-addictive!)

Dislike

So many bugs…

So tough to play (initially)

So annoying sometimes

Verdict

I’m pretty glad I found this game. I used to play it in my youth and it was great. The game has lost some lustre as it has aged graphics, but the gameplay is still excellent. It is a lot of fun, and if you can tolerate the bugs, the inelegance of its interface, and the  minor annoyances that come with the game, you’ll be set on one of the best transport-management sims. Though if you don’t want to go through the torture, try Railroad Tycoon 3 instead.

Gameplay: So simple, yet so addictive.

Graphics: A throwback to the mid-90s.

Work needed to get game to play: None!