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: 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

An Introduction to the 2nd Generation Intel Atom Processors

Netbooks with a Pineview processor bear this sticker

The end of December 2009 brought the first of Intel's next wave of netbook processors. This time, they included a memory controller and the GPU built into the processor itself. The single-core CPU's (N4xx) were slightly faster than a Diamondville at the same clock speed, save for the N435. Intel also released dual-core Atoms (N5x0) that boosted CPU performance significantly. Unfortunately, the graphics processor, GMA 3150, in Pineviews were even weaker than the GMA 950's, with performance a bit better than a GeForce2 MX 400 (depending on the application). On the upside, the GMA 3150 can access 384 MB of system RAM, provides full MPEG-2 acceleration, and better OpenGL support. Users of Pineview netbooks are even more limited in gaming scope than those with a Diamondville, although both platforms can likely play the same games. Just keep graphical settings low on newer games and you'll be fine.