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These days, you don't have to spend thousands on a top of the line PC gaming rig to enjoy games. Sure, if you want to run Crysis 2 with everything maxed out and the all new DX11 patches and high res textures, then maybe you do. But there is an insane amount of enjoyment to be had courtesy of various game download services like Steam, and their wonderful sales.

My rig is quite good, I have a Quad Core CPU, and an nVidia Geforce 570 GTX, it's capable of most brand new games maxed out at 1920x1080. Sure, I really enjoyed Crysis 2 on it, but the last few months I've had an insane amount of fun playing stuff which is definitely not new, or cutting edge, or even remotely pushes my system. And all of it incredibly cheaply.

Now when I say cheap, you may be thinking I'm playing old adventure games from Lucasarts that were born to run under DOS, but you'd be wrong. I'm talking here about very modern games with ridiculous hours of enjoyment, and graphics that are up there with the best PS3 and Xbox 360 stuff has to offer.

The simple fact of the matter is, games budgets for the last three or four years have been huge, and any major title you pick up in this period is going to look good and run nicely. So if you are prepared to accept playing something the Internet and your friends aren't currently all going on about, you can have an insane amount of fun on very little outlay.


What I've Bought This Year
So yes, I payed for Portal 2 and Crysis 2, which were both excellent games that have given me quite a few hours of pleasure. However, thanks to Steam and their various sales and other time limited deals which are always worth watching out for, I've actually spent a lot more time playing other things which cost a heck of a lot less.

One of the first things I bought this year were Supreme Commander 2, the sequel to my favourite RTS game of all time. I got this in January for £2.49. Yes, that's right, for the price of a few chocolate bars I got a game that has a fair few hours of single player enjoyment, combined with many many many more hours of multiplayer fun. At least I hope so, because the chap I RTS with had to wait until a few weeks ago before he picked it up on sale, so we haven't really tried it yet.



Okay, maybe a bad example, but what perhaps isn't is the fact you can buy the original Supreme Commander and the Forged Alliance sequel together on places like Amazon for a mere £5. If you like a challenging RTS which demands you balance resources with strategy, especially if you remember how fantastic Total Annihilation was, then go get this now and you won't be disappointed. If you can get a friend into it as well, you'll have many hundreds of hours fun for such a tiny outlay.

At the same time I got SupCom2, I also bought the Lucasarts Jedi Knight bundle. I do like these old classic games, and despite having owned one of the games from this series already, I couldn't resist getting a pack that included Star Wars: Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, Jedi Knight II, Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith and Jedi Academy, for £3.75. Yes, that is 5 games for under £4!!



These old games are classics and certainly should keep me occupied for a few hours when I'm somewhere with my laptop. Probably the same reason I later bought Quake, Quake II, Quake 3, and a bunch of mission packs for each of them, costing £4.24.

So there we go, that's a barrel load of fun right there, and only £10.48 spent so far. However, I appreciate that SupCom2 aside, these are really old games that whilst fun, could get you laughed at by your XBox owning friends, so let's move on to some that won't.

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Posted by Robert John Shepherd