Help me find a good game to play over the internet with my friends.

May 6, 2007 11:38 AM

Help me find a good game to play over the internet with my friends.

I would like to host a series of gaming tournaments with my friends, probably 3-6 people besides myself. The game should be online, not LAN, as we don't have a place to host a LAN party. It should be free or damn cheap, and it should be able to run on XP, OSX, and Vista would be nice but not necessary. It should also not be requiring too much from a system, because my hosting computer is not anything special (4yr old Dell Machine). The game should also allow some specific server tools; password protection, banning, etc.

As for the genre, any game that is good for several 2-3 hour tournaments is good, but shoot-em ups and RTS games are what I have in mind. Thanks!

posted by zenja72 to computers & internet (20 comments total)

The perennial favorite Starcraft, and/or Warcraft III.

Both are well polished, run on nearly anything, and 40 bucks will get you a copy in any major mega mart.

BZFlag is an open source tank game that will run on anything, and is free. I played it with a four year old computer, so it should run quite well on nearly anything you throw at it.
posted by zabuni at 11:50 AM on May 6, 2007

Soldat is a ton of fun. It's a 2D multi-player shooter that is freely available. Think counterstrike/tfc, but with a worms-style view. It runs on basically any hardware you have (350MHz, 32 MB Ram)

I don't think its available for OS X, but I'm told it runs just fine under Linux using Wine, so it might be fine under parallels, YMMV.
posted by jjb at 12:07 PM on May 6, 2007

Unreal Tournament 2004 is perfectly delightful, and in addition to a lot of shooting, there are really good capture-the-flag and shoot-the-ball-through-the-goal games too, all available with the free demo version.

The server eats very little CPU, but requires a modicum of computer savvy to get running; you need to be able to open certain TCP and UDP ports and maybe even type a couple of command-line flags when you start the thing.
posted by ikkyu2 at 12:11 PM on May 6, 2007

You can play any LAN game over the internet by using Hamachi, it creates a great VLAN for everyone. (encrypted too!)
posted by mattdini at 12:25 PM on May 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ur-Quan Masters (aka Star Control 2) Super Melee mode is awesome. Shoot 'em up with each ship having its own strategy.
posted by starman at 12:39 PM on May 6, 2007

I vote for Defcon. Think Wargames, with a great interface and minimum system requirements.
posted by craven_morhead at 12:49 PM on May 6, 2007

DEFCON might be worth a try
posted by malevolent at 12:51 PM on May 6, 2007

Cube or Sauerbraten. (Sauerbraten is Cube v.2, but I haven't found time to sit down and play it yet [muttermutter] so I can't really elaborate on the differences.)
posted by anaelith at 1:12 PM on May 6, 2007

Be careful with Hamachi -- it can do weird things to home networking setups.

I heartily recommend the Battlefield series for your games. It's a great shooter with a high absurdity factor, as the players are constantly jumping into and out of vehicles and whatnot.
posted by frogan at 1:12 PM on May 6, 2007

Settlers of Catan has an online version. I have never played the board-game or the online version, but it is quite popular.

Downside, it is brought to you by MSN.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 3:03 PM on May 6, 2007

wolfenstein enemy territory is pretty awesome, I think its got to be one of the most fun games i've ever played at a LAN (or online with friends). Its a first person shooter, but there is a lot more to it since its not about kills, but about completing missions (some fairly complex)which require teamwork. There are also a ton of additional maps and missions since the source was released.

Its a 100% free download too which is great. Get it here.
posted by teishu at 4:01 PM on May 6, 2007

You can always get your DOOM on with ZDaemon. I love it.
posted by malaprohibita at 6:14 PM on May 6, 2007

Settlers of Catan was mentioned earlier - I thought I'd point out that there's a free java based version at http://games.asobrain.com (although it's called Xplorers on the site). The games won't be 2-3 hours if you're playing online, but there's enough variety that you could easily play a few games in a row and not get bored.

Also, the Asobrain version is for up to 4 players only.
posted by backwards guitar at 7:38 PM on May 6, 2007

I agree with zabuni: you're looking for Starcraft. They still haven't made a better RTS game. For FPS, Unreal Tournament or Quake should be good.

Depending on how good your 4 year old Dell is, you might also try Dawn of War. I think it's the best of the roughly-current RTS games, and it runs fine on my 4-year-old box, albeit with low graphics settings. You can get the game plus the first expansion pack for about $20.
posted by vorfeed at 8:19 PM on May 6, 2007

Although not FPS or RTS, Tetrinet has always been a favorite of mine (online competitive Tetris... but be warned that it's even more addictive than regular Tetris).

As an addendum to the Settlers of Catan recommendation, there's an open-source version that was mentioned in the blue called pioneers. See also.
posted by spiderskull at 9:38 PM on May 6, 2007

Total Annihilation. Brilliant as a multiplayer game, and fairly low specs are required. You can pick it up on ebay cheap. You don't even need the CD to run it once it's installed, which is a blessing.

There are still mods for it available, and maps, units etc. Quick to learn, and I still play it many years after it was released.
posted by tomble at 10:15 PM on May 6, 2007

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2. Started playing it online with my friends years ago, and it's still fun.
posted by Zaire4Ever32 at 12:53 AM on May 7, 2007

It depends on what type of games you like, but me and my friends play Yahoo's Literati. You have to have Yahoo Messenger and go from there.
posted by raspberry21 at 1:12 AM on May 7, 2007

Just wanted to let you all know that we decided to go with Wolfenstein, because it was free, available on both platforms, and it looked like the most amusing game. Thanks for all the responses, we had a tough time deciding.
posted by zenja72 at 4:30 PM on May 7, 2007

Age of Empires 2 is awesome, I've played it many a time with my friends.
posted by CliffDiving44 at 7:38 PM on May 8, 2007