Seeing as it's based on the Quake 3 engine, we had high hopes for Jedi Academy. We weren't disappointed. For our trial we used the Steam version which installed itself without issue. The game ran fine in both single and multiplayer modes at 800 x 600 resolution. With an attached USB mouse we found that there is no reason a netbook user can't successfully defeat a desktop user at Lightsaber combat.
Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N270 CPU
1 Gb RAM
Intel 945 graphic chipset
8Gb SS hard drive
16 Gb HCSD card used as a second drive
8.9" LCD screen
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Darkfall Beginner Guide
Congratulations! If you're reading this we're assuming you won the Darkfall 'lottery' and were able to purchase an account. Of course there is no lottery but with account sales the way they've been, it might as well be that way.
First of all, when you start out in Darkfall Online you'll be nearly naked with nothing but a cheap one-handed sword in your possession. If you're sitting at the keyboard waiting for a tutorial to get you into the game, you'll be waiting forever as there isn't one. Instead of trying to figure out the controls for the game, go into the options and set the controls up the way you like. We recommend setting the controls up the same way you play a First Person Shooter as opposed to a traditional MMORPG.
Once you're moving around, check out the exits of the starter city you're in. Near one of the exits will be a Councillor. The Councillor will start you off on the beginner quests. Definitely complete all of the beginner quests that you can. This will give you the opportunity to kill a few goblins, earn some cash, and acquire a few crafting tools.
Now, before you leave town to kill your first goblin there are a few things you should know:
Good luck out there!
First of all, when you start out in Darkfall Online you'll be nearly naked with nothing but a cheap one-handed sword in your possession. If you're sitting at the keyboard waiting for a tutorial to get you into the game, you'll be waiting forever as there isn't one. Instead of trying to figure out the controls for the game, go into the options and set the controls up the way you like. We recommend setting the controls up the same way you play a First Person Shooter as opposed to a traditional MMORPG.
Once you're moving around, check out the exits of the starter city you're in. Near one of the exits will be a Councillor. The Councillor will start you off on the beginner quests. Definitely complete all of the beginner quests that you can. This will give you the opportunity to kill a few goblins, earn some cash, and acquire a few crafting tools.
Now, before you leave town to kill your first goblin there are a few things you should know:
- You are going to get killed. Lots. Probably not from goblins because they're pretty weak, but definitely from other players. Until you get your skills up (or make some friends to travel with), leave any armour you might have in the bank. All you're doing by wearing armour is advertising that you have something to steal.
- Find the closest bank and get used to running there. Often. Sure it takes time to run back to the bank from the goblin spawns but it's still more cost-effective than losing everything you've looted to an opportunistic ganker.
- You need a Fox Mulder mentality to make it in Darkfall, "Trust No One." You might be thinking that you only need to keep your eye out for other races. This is not true in any way at all. Especially as a new player you will be attacked by your own race repeatedly. After all, why kill ten goblins when you can kill one player who has ten goblins worth of loot? The alignment system won't necessarily protect you. If your would-be ganker has killed a few players of opposing races then his/her alignment will be high enough that he/she can afford to kill a few players of his/her own race. Or, if the would-be ganker manages to step in the way of one of your attacks, you will be flagged as "Rogue" for a period of time allowing your own race to attack you freely. Be wary of joining a group with another player even if he's offering to help. Being in a group allows the other player to attack you without consequence.
Good luck out there!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Survey Results - #1
Which OS do you primarily run on your netbook?
The votes are in:
76% - Windows XP
15% - Linux
7% - Windows 7 (Beta)
2% - Other
The votes are in:
76% - Windows XP
15% - Linux
7% - Windows 7 (Beta)
2% - Other
Darkfall Online
If you're involved in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) community at all then you've undoubtedly heard of the new game by the Greek company Aventurine: Darkfall. Darkfall was supposed to be released on February 23rd of this year however there have been so many issues with the launch that you might as well consider the game still in Beta testing. Right now there is a freeze on sales of the game until some of the issues are worked out.
We at Play On The Run are lucky enough to have an active game account and have had the pleasure of playing Darkfall for a few hours between server restarts and client crashes. This however, did not take place on our netbook. The poor Intel graphic chipset on our test unit just isn't up to the task of running Darkfall and the game client will not even start to let us attempt the game at it's lowest graphic settings.
Having discounted the game as viable for netbooks, it is still a mold-breaking MMORPG and as such, we will be publishing some hints and tips in the near future. Check back soon.
Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N270 CPU
1 Gb RAM
Intel 945 graphic chipset
8 Gb SS Hard Drive
16 Gb HCSD card used as a second drive
8.9" LCD screen
We at Play On The Run are lucky enough to have an active game account and have had the pleasure of playing Darkfall for a few hours between server restarts and client crashes. This however, did not take place on our netbook. The poor Intel graphic chipset on our test unit just isn't up to the task of running Darkfall and the game client will not even start to let us attempt the game at it's lowest graphic settings.
Having discounted the game as viable for netbooks, it is still a mold-breaking MMORPG and as such, we will be publishing some hints and tips in the near future. Check back soon.
Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N270 CPU
1 Gb RAM
Intel 945 graphic chipset
8 Gb SS Hard Drive
16 Gb HCSD card used as a second drive
8.9" LCD screen
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sim City 4
First of all, yes, Sim City 4 will run on a netbook. In fact, SC4 is pretty forgiving to netbooks as it allows a lot of customization in relation to your graphics settings. The graphics settings in Sim City 4 include an option to switch to software rendering if you're finding the itty bitty graphic chipset in your netbook is having a problem rendering your city when it gets large.
Sim City 4 installs well from an image file though the installation takes a little while. When all is said and done, SC4 will take up approximately 920 MB of storage. The default graphics settings will allow the game to play smoothly. However, with no wide-screen resolution you might find it difficult to navigate your city as the control menu at the bottom of the screen takes up a large portion of your view.
Will you create a metropolis to rival New York? Or will you lead your city to ruin? Good luck!
Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N270 CPU
1 Gb RAM
Intel 945 graphic chipset
8 Gb SS Hard Drive
16 Gb HCSD card used as a second drive
8.9" LCD screen
Sim City 4 installs well from an image file though the installation takes a little while. When all is said and done, SC4 will take up approximately 920 MB of storage. The default graphics settings will allow the game to play smoothly. However, with no wide-screen resolution you might find it difficult to navigate your city as the control menu at the bottom of the screen takes up a large portion of your view.
Will you create a metropolis to rival New York? Or will you lead your city to ruin? Good luck!
Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N270 CPU
1 Gb RAM
Intel 945 graphic chipset
8 Gb SS Hard Drive
16 Gb HCSD card used as a second drive
8.9" LCD screen
Saturday, February 28, 2009
World Of Warcraft
It's not the most original MMORPG (Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game) on the market nor is it the prettiest. However, there's one thing that World of Warcraft has that no other MMORPG does: over 10 million subscribers. What's the mystery behind WoW's overwhelming success?
First of all, WoW got a huge jump-start on to the scene simply because of the Blizzard brand name. Being the developers of Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft, consumers knew that Blizzard produces a quality product. However, if hype was all WoW had going for it, it wouldn't have shown the staying power that it's demonstrated through it's two major expansions (The Burning Crusade and Wrath Of The Lich King).
Blizzard's biggest accomplishment with WoW is knowing just how far away to dangle the carrot at the end of the stick. Leveling up your character in WoW does take some grinding but the next level never seems that far out of reach. New skills and abilities are scattered throughout the leveling process so that there's always a reward, even if it's just a small one. This process feeds the addiction centre of the brain explaining the nickname World of War-crack.
Now if in addition to owning a netbook you are one of the over 10 million World of Warcraft subscribers, you probably skipped over the proceeding paragraphs to find out if you'll be playing WoW on the run anytime soon. Good news: yes you will.
One of the nice things about WoW for netbooks is that you can download the client from the World of Warcraft site. This saves you the hassle of dealing with image files or a USB optical drive. For the purposes of our test however, we ripped the Wrath Of The Lich King DVD to an image file and mounted it on the netbook over our network. If you have the Wrath Of The Lich King DVD you'll find that it contains all of the WoW data and Burning Crusades data as well, you don't have to install them all in order first.
If you own one of the base model netbooks that only has a small SSD hard drive, you won't be able to run WoW with all of the expansions installed. Wrath Of The Lich King pushes the World Of Warcraft directory up to an impressive 12.9 GB. However, if you own an Acer Aspire One like our test model, you can do what we did and install the game to a 16 GB HCSD card placed in the left SD card slot. This slot is designed to be used in the same manner as a swappable hard drive.
The installation is a long process and even after WoW's installed you'll be waiting some more for all the patches to install. Once installation is completed and you're in the game at the main menu, go into the options menu and then to video. Change the resolution to 1024 x 600 and lower all of the graphic settings as low as they will go. This will give you a very playable frame rate that hovers around the 20 frames per second mark. It's not going to look as smooth as it will on your desktop with a dedicated video card however with the small screen, it's actually pretty good.
We took a level 60 Paladin out running some quests in Silithus and had no issue killing giant bugs and worms. Afterwards, we went to Stormwind to see how things would render in a major city. During peak hours the frame rate dropped to 8 frames per second near the auction house but we were still able to move and tell what was going on. After the auction house we went and competed in the Alterac Valley battleground, holding our own and helping our team to victory.
In summary, you're not going to be playing WoW on your netbook if a desktop's available but it's certainly an option when you want to Play On The Run.
Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N270 CPU
1 Gb RAM
Intel 945 graphic chipset
8 Gb SS Hard Drive
16 Gb HCSD card used as a second drive
8.9" LCD screen
First of all, WoW got a huge jump-start on to the scene simply because of the Blizzard brand name. Being the developers of Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft, consumers knew that Blizzard produces a quality product. However, if hype was all WoW had going for it, it wouldn't have shown the staying power that it's demonstrated through it's two major expansions (The Burning Crusade and Wrath Of The Lich King).
Blizzard's biggest accomplishment with WoW is knowing just how far away to dangle the carrot at the end of the stick. Leveling up your character in WoW does take some grinding but the next level never seems that far out of reach. New skills and abilities are scattered throughout the leveling process so that there's always a reward, even if it's just a small one. This process feeds the addiction centre of the brain explaining the nickname World of War-crack.
Now if in addition to owning a netbook you are one of the over 10 million World of Warcraft subscribers, you probably skipped over the proceeding paragraphs to find out if you'll be playing WoW on the run anytime soon. Good news: yes you will.
One of the nice things about WoW for netbooks is that you can download the client from the World of Warcraft site. This saves you the hassle of dealing with image files or a USB optical drive. For the purposes of our test however, we ripped the Wrath Of The Lich King DVD to an image file and mounted it on the netbook over our network. If you have the Wrath Of The Lich King DVD you'll find that it contains all of the WoW data and Burning Crusades data as well, you don't have to install them all in order first.
If you own one of the base model netbooks that only has a small SSD hard drive, you won't be able to run WoW with all of the expansions installed. Wrath Of The Lich King pushes the World Of Warcraft directory up to an impressive 12.9 GB. However, if you own an Acer Aspire One like our test model, you can do what we did and install the game to a 16 GB HCSD card placed in the left SD card slot. This slot is designed to be used in the same manner as a swappable hard drive.
The installation is a long process and even after WoW's installed you'll be waiting some more for all the patches to install. Once installation is completed and you're in the game at the main menu, go into the options menu and then to video. Change the resolution to 1024 x 600 and lower all of the graphic settings as low as they will go. This will give you a very playable frame rate that hovers around the 20 frames per second mark. It's not going to look as smooth as it will on your desktop with a dedicated video card however with the small screen, it's actually pretty good.
We took a level 60 Paladin out running some quests in Silithus and had no issue killing giant bugs and worms. Afterwards, we went to Stormwind to see how things would render in a major city. During peak hours the frame rate dropped to 8 frames per second near the auction house but we were still able to move and tell what was going on. After the auction house we went and competed in the Alterac Valley battleground, holding our own and helping our team to victory.
In summary, you're not going to be playing WoW on your netbook if a desktop's available but it's certainly an option when you want to Play On The Run.
Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N270 CPU
1 Gb RAM
Intel 945 graphic chipset
8 Gb SS Hard Drive
16 Gb HCSD card used as a second drive
8.9" LCD screen
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monopoly Tycoon
Released in September of 2001, Monopoly Tycoon has surprisingly pretty graphics and a catchy soundtrack. With a variety of game modes and multiplayer support this business simulation game is fun by yourself or with other netbook buddies.
Monopoly Tycoon installed quickly from an image file and doesn't take up much storage space (approx. 112 mb). The game will run on a netbook at it's maximum graphic settings however it doesn't have support for widescreen resolutions. Play On The Run recommends using 800 x 600.
Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N270 CPU
1 Gb RAM
Intel 945 graphic chipset
8 Gb SS Hard Drive
16 Gb HCSD card used as a second drive
8.9" LCD screen
Monopoly Tycoon installed quickly from an image file and doesn't take up much storage space (approx. 112 mb). The game will run on a netbook at it's maximum graphic settings however it doesn't have support for widescreen resolutions. Play On The Run recommends using 800 x 600.
Acer Aspire One
Intel Atom N270 CPU
1 Gb RAM
Intel 945 graphic chipset
8 Gb SS Hard Drive
16 Gb HCSD card used as a second drive
8.9" LCD screen
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)