Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

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

Quake 3 Arena

One of the best first person shooters of all time, this game has made more than one professional gamer a tidy sum of money. Played at tournaments all over the world, Quake 3 Arena is a high speed frag-fest. Will it run on a netbook? Thankfully, yes.

Both the original game as well as the newer version distributed through Steam will work on a netbook. Installation is problem-free with both versions. The game runs smooth and with an attached USB mouse be prepared to put up a decent frag count.

When Quake 3 Arena first came out, widescreen monitors were just a dream in the sleeping minds of gamers. Your netbook likely has a widescreen monitor and runs at a widescreen resolution (1024 x 600 in the case of our test unit). To set the game to a custom resolution you need to get into the command console. This is easier than it sounds. When you get to the main menu of the game, press the ~ key on your keyboard. Once in the command console you will need to enter the following three commands and then restart the game:

• r_mode -1
• r_customwidth 1024 (or whatever width you'd like)
• r_customheight 600 (or whatever height you'd like)

Changing the resolution as described here will make the game look and play a lot better however you likely won't be able to watch any of the game cinematics. Really though, Quake 3 Arena was never about story line. Happy fragging!

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