Don’t be afraid to go digging for gems you might have missed in previous generations. There are literally thousands of amazing PC titles released long before you bought your system. There are more, but that’s a handful of titles that I’m confident hold up (though Bloodlines is, admittedly, a bit of an acquired taste). Great games from this era include the original Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: Jedi Knight II, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, Serious Sam 2, KOTOR 2, and Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (make sure to mod this last one thoroughly). A midrange system built in 2009 and never upgraded can still run games from 2001 – 2005.

Would-be gamers limping along on desktops that were midrange 10 years ago can still game - you’ll just need to look a little farther back in time. Most of Bioware’s back catalog up to and including the original (non-Legendary) Mass Effect trilogy will run on the relatively lightweight GPUs found in midrange or lower-end laptops.

While we’ve got some specific recent titles to recommend for gamers who want to play new games, one of the best ways to find games that will run on weaker hardware is to dip into the back catalog.įallout 2 will run on the equivalent of Chromebook hardware. Just because you’re stuck on an older, slower PC doesn’t mean you have to give up gaming.

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