AUTUMN SALE - DAY TWO - THE TWO SENTENCE REVIEWS

It's Day Two of the Autumn Sale and I have been busy all morning and did a quick check on if these games would work on an Intel laptop, so let's cut right to it!

ARMA2: Combined Operations
You know you're just buying it for DayZ, you could get some sweet tactical shooting from Operation Flashpoint. Also remember to stock up on bandages and axes.
9 awesome mods out of 10
Price: $14.99
Will it Run? Nope

Max Payne 3
Max Payne 3 is...wait,  I get it now: Max Pain, as if he's in a lot of pain and anguish. Wow, it took me over a decade to get that, so yeah, this game is probably pretty good.
8 rehab tokens out of 10.
Price: $22.49
Will it run? Nope

Bruce Willis looks so different with a beard...

Awesomenauts
Awesomenauts is pretty awesome...naut...but really, it is. It's a great co-op experience with a strong focus on being colourful, fun and well, awesome.
9 exploding robots out of 10.
Price: $3.39 (3 pack for less than $7)
Will it run? Highly likely.

Haha...more like aweso- Oh, I already made that joke.

Portal 2
Stephen Merchant is a single eyed overly self-aware robot with anxiety. No, you buy it now and I'll wait!
9 SPAAAAAAAAACE out of 10
Price: $4.99 (2 pack for less than $9)
Will it run? Yes, with a bit of tweaking.

Yeah, I am one of the best characters ever written in video games. Yep.

Sleeping Dogs
This game does not actually contain any sleeping dogs, just Emma Stone pretending to be Asian and badass. She only pulls off one of them and the game is GTA: Hong Kong but without any lame cousin calling.
8 lying dogs out of 10
Price: $24.99
Will it run? Nope.

Wait...this is...dammit!

Prototype 2
Prototype 2 tells the story of a game that isn't yet finished. The game was originally going to be called Beta 2, but the title was already copywritten back in 1977, times be tough for Activision.
7 anti-hero clones out of 10
Price: $34.99
Will it run? Nope.

...get your prostate checked annually.

NOW THESE ARE THE DEALS I WOULD PURCHASE NOW AND NOT BE WORRIED ABOUT BURNING THROUGH YOUR WALLET.

Company of Heroes
The game is about a corporation going broke and you must go into business making heroes. It doesn't go too well so you start a war with different factions.
9 burning buildings out of 10
Price: $2.49 (Gold Version less than $8)
Will it run? Yes, with a bit of tweaking.

Why did we put so much money in making heroes?!

Of Orcs and Men
Are you an Orc or a Men? Well, you don't have to decide with this sweet RPG title about Orcs and the humans who are around them sometimes.
9 burnt Orc faces out of 10.
Price: $19.99
Will it run? Not very likely.

Yeah, I called you a pussy. So what?

Garrys Mod
This is a game about a man who isn't sure about what British music to commit to in his small town. He decides to become a Mod, but is this the right choice for Garry, find out in GARRY'S MOD?!
9 sweet haircuts out of 10
Price: $2.49
Will it run? Yep.

Worst PEZ exhibit ever...

AMNESIA: The Dark Descent
Don't...just don't even ask me to play that ga- What was that? DUDE, THE FUCK WAS THAT NOISE?!
9 dark rooms out of 10
Price: $4.99
Will it run? Frightening yes.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK EVERYTHING

Sim City 4: Deluxe Edition
Create cities, destroy cities, create cities, raise taxes, destroy citizens lives with industrial zones. Yes, Sim City 4 is awesome and is not as boring as I just made it sound.
9 UFOs destroying cities out of 10
Price: $5.99
Will it run? Yes.

Everything is Fucked.

Tower Wars
TOWER WARS?! I thought it said Tower Mars. I wanna build towers on Mars...Marscrapers.
8 Broken Towers out of 10
Price: $4.99
Will it run? Highly likely.

Wish it was set on Mars...*pout*

This post will be updated in an hour's time :)

AUTUMN SALE: DAY ONE – THE TWO SENTENCE REVIEW

AUTUMN SALE: DAY ONE – THE TWO SENTENCE REVIEW - LAPPY EDITION

As you may recall earlier this year, I did the Steam Sale during Summer while I was in Finland. Well, I'm home now and ready to roll out with the leaves falling and the birds rugging up for the American winter, so here are some of the highlights from Day One of the Steam Sale. All the prices cited are for Australian regions, so some prices may vary but the two-sentence reviews. This will be reposted on my original blog but I thought it'd be cool to have people enjoy it here with an extra note about it running on Intel laptops.

Front Page Deals

Steam's Front Page is like a present. Every time you open it, you get excited to see what's inside. Even if it's a pair of socks, you can rip those socks apart and wear them around your wrists and pretend to be a sock commander. The first game of today's Front Page is better than being a sock commander.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Classic sci-fi revisionist turn-based strategy with RPG elements could not be more awesome and worth it. Play as government scientists killing aliens who descend to the earth and want your women and something about resources and conspiracy.

9 lady loving aliens out of 10

Price: $46.89

Will it run? Not very likely.

Hey, where all the earth women at?

Can you run DOTA2 beta on an Intel Graphics Laptop?

DOTA2 or Demons On Toasted Almonds 2 is a multiplayer game akin to well, DOTA or League of Legends. The game is currently in beta for a late 2012 or early 2013 release. You play as different factions as you fight for you life in a team and hope to bring the world together and stop the other team for winning or something easily fun like that.

It's currently planned as a F2P game but a lot of beta testing and tweaking is clearly going on behind the scenes. The game looks amazing and is graphically quite a step up from the original Warcraft 3-style but quite a lot darker when compared to the League of Legends aesthetic.

Regardless of how it looks, does the game run on an Intel Graphics laptop?

Can I run Braid on an Intel Graphics Laptop?

I'm realising more and more as I'm writing each post that I have a somewhat pretentious Steam Library. Between a few other titles, Bastion and Braid, I'm one "experience" game away from being crowned a wanky game owner. If Flower was on Steam, you'd expect me to have purchased it (I do have that on PSN). I do believe these games do have innate qualities designated both aesthetically and creatively within the fabric of the gaming quilt that both games weave for the player.

Told you, wanky. Braid is a great puzzling platformer from 2008, one of the first great indie titles to truly make it big. Braid tells the story of a man named Tim who is after The Princess as he recollects fragments of his memory and their relationship. You jump, leap and reverse time as you move through each level collecting puzzle pieces and finding out the truth of their romantic history. Was it a fling, an infatuation or just a relationship doomed to fail? All shall be revealed in...Braid.

Now after all that wankiness, will the game actually be bothered to get it's pretentious arse to play on your "common" laptop?

Can I run Bastion on an Intel Graphics laptop?

This 2011 Action RPG indie title, captured the hearts and imaginations of gamers world over. A dynamic and original art-style combined with stunning enigmatic narration and sound design.

The game was first released on XBLA in July of 2011, but was eventually ported to Steam in August of the same year and now you can even play it on iPad and if you have a Google Chrome Browser, you can get Bastion for a few dollars.

So clearly, something that is fairly simple, multi-platformed and cool as hell would be optimised for any system right?
I mean, by now you can kinda guess whether some guys are going to run really well and others are just going to heat up and crash harder than the Hindenburg?


I mean, I'm aware I'm assuming a lot of knowledge about you and why you visit this site, and I do apologise for that, but seriously, it's a colourful top-down title with an expandable environment not a mega-3D triple-A shooty McHead Grunt kinda game.

So will Bastion run on your Intel Graphics Laptop?

Can I run Borderlands 2?

Now we're getting into the nitty-gritty of new games. The insatiably ridiculous FPS of 2012, Borderlands 2 written by Anthony Burch (Hey Ash Watcha Playin, Anthony Saves the World), developed by Gearbox (Borderlands, Brothers in Arms) and distributed by 2K Games (Bioshock, XCOM) . A Triple-A title that has you playing a vault hunter and kicking some serious cel-shaded arse.

I personally loved the first game and played it with a few friends of mine on 360. When they announced a sequel I got excited, when they announced a writer, I got excited, when they posted that first dubstep trailer, I was more than excited. I practically was a hairy annoying equivalent of a 12 year old girl for a good portion of late 2011 and 2012. Finally, the game came out in September of this year, I put my money down without any hesitation to get it on PC and then, only then did I think....

Can I run this on my Intel Graphics Laptop?

Can I run The Binding of Isaac on my Intel laptop?

The Binding of Isaac is a special little game in the hearts of many. Released in 2011 by Team Meat, creators of Super Meat Boy and some amazing flash games, Binding became an amazing hit with gamers of all shapes and sizes. It's mix of a disturbing Legend of Zelda aesthetic and classic roguelike gameplay, The Binding of Isaac was a win-win situation for both fans of Meat and rogue lovers.

I got this game from a Humble Bundle and have been a huge fan of Team Meat ever since their first games showed up on Newgrounds. With the anticipation of Isaac, people were worried whether the team could capture lightening in a bottle. It did incredibly well, played well and got some rave reviews. The game is complimented for it's unique artstyle and brooding music provided by game composer Danny Baranowsky (better known as Danny B).

But will the Binding of Isaac run on my computer or simply bind up and crash?

So can I run Atom Zombie Smasher on my Intel graphics laptop?

Every single one of these posts are a small trip into my library for great games that others may not have heard of. If you have heard of them, awesome, if not, even more awesome because you get to learn about more games. This next one is called Atom Zombie Smasher made by Brendan Chung (30 Flights of Loving, Flotilla). The game is a Real Time Strategy title where you play as a military unit, using everything at their disposal to help get people out of different metropolitan areas.

As you go through each level, the stakes get higher and higher as the zombie horde begin to take over more and more of your beloved country. With an amazing 1950's surf track, Russian propaganda artwork and a great amount of dynamic gameplay, Atom Zombie Smasher is a game that you may have been missing out on, but will my laptop run it?

So can I play Amnesia: the Dark Descent on my Intel graphics laptop?

I was initially going to do each post alphabetically, but I thought between download times, I can just do other games and save them for latter, but bugger that, let's just start doing it.



First on the chopping block is the 2010 scarefest, Amnesia The Dark Descent. Frictional Games, well known for their atmospheric Penumbra series, decided to branch out and tell another classical "things that go bump in the night" tale. But can it run on this laptop?

What is LappyVidya?

LappyVidya is a small blog run by Totes Vidya, initially a YouTube channel, to help you play games on your laptop. I'm not talking your fancy schmancy AlienWare kingdom-come machines, I'm talking for the more price-savvy gamers who may not have the dosh or the tech to play the latest games in Ultra. Currently I am writing and have Steam on a two-year old Compaq. It was picked up for $500 during a christmas stocktake sale at Australian retailer, Harvey Norman.

It is running an internal Intel Graphics Card, running Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), Intel Pentium CPU B940 2GHz with 2Ghz of RAM (1.85 Usable). This will be my last month with this laptop as it's my family's and I will be upgrading to my own laptop soon. I thought this would be the best opportunity to profess my love for this machine which has let me play games on it.

This is literally what we're working with here:

I'm not claiming to be an expert on the hardware that is in this laptop, I'm here to provide a minor guide on possibly running games on laptop's without integrated graphics chips from AMD or NVidia. This is what this blog is for. Letting you know that while System Requirements Lab is an awesome and amazing site, it's not always right.

Time and time again, I've been told, you don't have the correct 3D Shaders or you have a little less RAM or not enough processing power. I've rarely let logic stand in my way and the algorithms they have got and calculated are correct, but for some reason this game is still running, but I appreciate the warning.

So this is my first post explaining that I will be going through my Steam collection, but if you have requests to see what I can run, send me an email and I'll see what I can do.