Featured Game: Metro 2033

Uh, no.

Year: 2010

Genre: First-Person Shooter, Survival Horror

Recommend: NO

I'll be quick about this; the graphical demands of Metro 2033 simply butcher anything a netbook can give. Maybe if you overclock the Radeon HD 7340 to 1.23 GHz and the system RAM to 2 GHz you can get it to work, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Screenshot from Giant Bomb

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: 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

Featured Game: F1 2010

Don't even try

Year: 2010

Genre: Racing

Recommend: NO

I'd like to recommend this game, but the truth of the matter is I can't. There are a multitude of reasons for my verdict that I won't bother you with, but I will mention one: single-channel memory. Most netbooks use only one stick of memory, in a single channel. This can only supply so much bandwidth, and modern games rely on the high-bandwidth dedicated memory that discrete graphics cards have to offer. For this particular game, even dual-channel memory can't keep up with its demands. Until technology advances, F1 2010 will have to go unplayed on netbooks.

Screenshot from simhq.com