I don’t remember when my PC hardware got out of date. Last I remember, a 1GHz Athlon, 256MB of RAM and a GeForce 3 (the good one that’s faster than all GF4’s except the top 2 Ti’s) was a screamer of a system.
I’ve been gaming deprived ever since my girlfriend/wife/whatever* and I moved in together, discovered she was pregnant with our child, and we had to rush to make certain modifications to the new place before she got too big to move. Now that those mods are mostly done (the bathroom is lovely), it’s time to play.
But this thing won’t run Doom 3. After the six-figure down payment (which required a LOT of borrowing, needless to say) and remodeling costs (about a grand for the bathroom alone), I have no money to upgrade.
The last FPS I played was Return to Castle Wolfenstein, if that gives you an idea how long it’s been since I did a real, big-production PC game.
I’d played System Shock 2’s demo when it was new, but it wasn’t enough to make me go run out and buy the game. (At the time it came out, I didn’t have the time or money anyway.) But now I’ve seen enough rants and raves to make me reconsider, so I got it and put it in**.
I get chills just from the intro. The career choice wasn’t in the demo, and so far that’s the only new thing I’ve experienced. I think I’m going to enjoy this. (I hope it doesn’t spoil me.)
Still, I’m not sure this is a game that’s really taking advantage of my hardware. I never had one; I seem to have missed that period. Since I sort of missed the point where games would take advantage of my hardware, what good*** single-player games – RPG and FPS – would you recommend, for a machine of this age and these specs?
[size=2]*It’s a long story.[/size]
[size=2]**I also got Betrayal at Krondor working in a DOSbox on my old G3-based Mac laptop, which creeps along at the equivalent rate of a 386 at 10MHz. It’s nice, but it’s the wrong machine, and not exactly taking advantage of a GF3.[/size]
[size=2]***Unfortunately, this requirement rules out Unreal 2. It does a good job of involving my graphics card, but I want a GOOD game.[/size]