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Multiplayer Games For Christmas Lull at the Office?

Posted by Cliff on from the fun-for-the-holidays dept.

smallstepforman asks: "Christmas is almost here, and most companies will be running a skeleton staff during the holiday period. Since there will only be 8 people in the entire building where I work, you can guess what we'll all be doing - multiplayer LAN gaming. The team leader (who will be the acting manager for the holiday period) is asking about good games to play during this period. Most of the machines on the LAN are P3@733 with integrated i810 video cards, while some older machines (P2@45) have a Voodoo 3. Which multiplayer games can Slashdot readers recommend? The games need to be easy to pick up, and not require a lot of hard disk space. Free/shareware games or demos should be considered due to legal issues."

6 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. fps by chewedtoothpick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My best hint is to avoid anything RTS or time consuming. Some of the best ones that you can get away with at work are the older games that can easily be ALT-TAB'd out of when the big boss (not your team leader) comes around. FPS' are probably the best bet. Try Unreal Tournament. You can still get it at most major stores like Best Buy etc... and it does have a spawn version built-in for situations like yours. It is also able to run on the systems that you describe quite well, but the size can be a problem... the spawn version is around 300mb I believe.

    Just my 6 cents.

    --
    Erutangis ym si siht.
    1. Re:fps by ReverendRyan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Whatever happened to the "BOSS" key? Back in the old (DOOM/Wolfenstein) days, F10 dumped one to the prompt w/o asking in case the boss comes by. A quick CLS and all the evidence is gone. Even if you Alt-Tab, theres still the taskbar icon. Also, on many games, alt-tabing causes the texturemaps to get messed up, so when you reenter the game, everything looks funny.

    2. Re:fps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      Also, on many games, alt-tabing causes the texturemaps to get messed up, so when you reenter the game, everything looks funny.
      dude - get more ram. it is not the game's fault.
  2. Try a multiplayer tank game! by PurpleFloyd · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Try something like Scorched Earth 2000. It's a Java based cross-platform network-multiplayer version of the classic tanks-lob-shells game. Even better, it's GPL (no worries about legal stuff!).

    Tank games require a combination of skill and luck that tends to reward skilled play, while still remaining accesible to newbies if that's a concern. Someone can learn to play decently in 5 minutes, rather than the 40-50 frustrating hours it takes to become decent at Quake/UT/Counterstrike/FPS-of-the-month.

    Note that there's an ad banner, but that's just HTML, so it can be removed without any real hassle.

    --

    That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
  3. Worms 2. Definitely Worms 2. by nbvb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You _need_ this game.

    Runs fine on a Pentium-100 (Yes, I know, I've tried), and is an absolute _BLAST_!

    We played this thing over the network, and it was probably the most fun network game I've ever played.

    You'll be hooked, I promise. Just be careful the first time you order a napalm strike; JUDGE THE WIND. :)

    "The first of many!"

    --NBVB

  4. Xblast by TheLink · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ever played bomberman? xblast is a bit like it.

    People running around mazes laying/kicking bombs. There's a bit of a learning curve due to the variety of different rules given different maps, but most people get the hang of it after a short while.

    Has some bugs but pretty good fun.

    --