Featured Game: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

Plays on the same hardware as SoC

Year: 2008

Genre: First-Person Shooter, Survival Horror

Recommend: Depends

If you can run S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl on your netbook, you'll be happy to know that its prequel, Clear Sky, will run on exactly the same hardware. The minimum system requirements for the game are unchanged, although it takes more juice to run the game with more eye candy, like volumetric light and fire, DirectX 10 support, and fancy weather effects. If you enjoyed the first game, it wouldn't hurt to give Clear Sky a try, and flex some GPU muscle in the process.

What you'll need

Reviews and Awards

Clear Sky earned some mixed reviews; on average, the game is the worst-rated in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. The best rating came from GamesTM, with a 90/100 for "transform[ing] grim fantasy into a startlingly real-world experience." On the other hand, X-Play wasn't so kind, awarding Clear Sky a 60% for its boring environments, numerous bugs, and antiquated gameplay. GameSpot nominated the game for Best Atmosphere in 2008, but it was shot down by Dead Space.

Tips

OK, I'll admit it. There's no netbook out there that meets Clear Sky's recommended requirements.  I suggest starting off at medium settings at your netbook's native resolution, then tweaking settings from there.

Sunbeam effects; thanks, Wikipedia

Featured Game: Street Fighter X Mega Man

A disappointing resource hog

Year: 2012

Genre: Action + Platform

Recommend: Depends

Ah, nostalgia. Both the Street Fighter and Mega Man series have let their marks in gaming history. Now these two classics have come together with the collaboration of fans and Capcom. It's too bad that the game overloads most netbooks, even with its NES-style 2D graphics. On my netbook, the game runs at about 2 fps. Fortunately, higher-end netbooks can handle the game.

What you'll need

Reviews and Awards

While not the groundbreaking game of the century, by any imaginable means, the game has enjoyed largely positive reviews. IGN and Destructoid rated it a 7/10, saying the game is "solid" and "fun," but lacks replay value and a save system (version 2 of the game implemented a password system). GameRankings and Metacritic both give SFXMM a rating of approximately 71%. On the other hand, Edge magazine gave the game a 5/10, saying the level design is inconsistent and functionality is limited.

Tips

It's a little hard to give any tips when the game won't run at a tolerable speed. If you have a subpar netbook, don't bother with this game.

A pain to run in more ways than one.

Featured Game: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

Tweaking necessary

Year: 2010

Genre: Real-Time Strategy

Recommend: Ehh.....

There's just no way around it; StarCraft II is a heavy game for netbooks. Even with the most powerful netbook out there (A6-5200-powered), tweaking might still be required to get the game to run smoothly. Once you do, though, the reward is well worth the effort.

What you'll need

Before you even attempt to run StarCraft II, you have to meet certain requirements. For starters, 2 GB of RAM is absolutely necessary, unless you're running an ION 2 platform on Windows XP. You'll need a dual-core CPU from the following list: Atom N550, N570, N2600, or N2800; AMD C-60, C-70, E-300, E-350, E-450, E1-1200, E1-1500, E2-1800, or E2-2000. If you don't have to tweak anything, consider yourself fortunate.

Reviews and Awards

 StarCraft II has been highly praised from every direction: story, gameplay, multiplayer, graphics, and more. The game scored around 93% on the aggregator sites GameRankings and Metacritic, and received 10/10 or equivalent ratings from at least 4 sources. However, some have criticized the game for its lack of LAN multiplayer support.

Tips

"Well," you say, "I don't know how to tweak a game!" Fear not, it's not that difficult. See this site for assistance.

Screenshot from the StarCraft Wiki

Featured Game: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Low-end netbooks won't cut it

Year: 2007

Genre: First-person Shooter + Survival Horror

Recommend: Depends





















 You know those old classics everyone loves that can run on anything? Well, this isn't one of those games. Fortunately, you can still play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on a netbook, but it can't be one of those sub-$300 ones.

What you'll need

Reviews and Awards

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. won GameSpot's Best Atmosphere award from Best and Worst of 2007. Reviews were generally positive; Eurogamer called it "one of the scariest games on the PC". However, it was criticized for its various bugs and mediocre story.

Tips

Since all netbook GPU's support D3D 9, you might as well enable some kind of dynamic lighting. Both Nvidia's and AMD's GPU's can handle it.

Screenshot from Wikipedia

Featured Game: Vindictus

You can play it if you have the right hardware

Year: 2010/2011, depending on region

Genre: Fantasy MMORPG

Recommend: Depends

Best MMO nomination at E3 2010? Best free-to-play MMO of 2010? Playable on a netbook? Yes, yes, and yes. Oh, and did I mention it's free? Vindictus is a great game for netbooks, if yours has the chops.

What you'll need

Reviews and Awards

Besides its nomination for best MMO at E3 2010, Vindictus has received other praise for its graphics and action. IGN awarded Vindictus as the "Best Free-to-Play MMO Game of 2010". "Ever wondered whether or not it would be satisfying to break a pillar in half and smash one of those halves into the face of a giant wolf-man?" MMO Hut gave Vindictus an Excellent rating for its "great skill and attack animations" and other positive features. Vindictus got dinged a little for its repetitive combat and limited choice of playable characters.

Tips

Having trouble playing? Open up the Task Manager and kill all processes you can do without, using End Process. In extreme situations, this might even include Windows Explorer. Killing Explorer isn't as dangerous as it sounds; you can always use Task Manager to restart it if needed.

Screenshot from MMO Hut

An Introduction to AMD's Fusion CPU's: Zacate

Along with Ontario, AMD released a more powerful line of mobile Fusion processors codenamed Zacate. These are designed for bigger netbooks and small laptops. There are 4 flavors of Zacate to choose from, 3 of which are dual-core. The only single-core, the E-240, is clocked at 1.5 GHz with a Radeon HD 6310 running at 500 MHz. Keep in mind that the Radeon HD 63x0 series is nothing more than a faster version of the HD 62x0 series. Moving on to the dual-cores, the E-300 runs at 1.3 GHz with its GPU at 488 MHz. The E-350 works at 1.6 GHz, and the GPU goes 4 MHz faster. Finally, the E-450's CPU is a tad faster at 1.65 GHz. Unlike the Ontario C-60, the E-450 does not get a CPU speed boost under load; however, the GPU does, clocking between 508 and 600 MHz. Zacate processors are the best of all mentioned so far for gaming, although the chassis housing them is almost guaranteed to be bigger than 10.1".