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What are your favorite LAN party games?
- Thread starter Archaea
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mvmiller12
[H]ard|Gawd
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I ran an annual LAN party around July 4th holiday every year for the last 20 years until last year - sadly almost everyone has moved away not making it worth the effort now.
It may be a controversial suggestion, but Supreme Commander 2 is a great LAN party game. The single player sucks, but the multiplayer is easy to pick up for people that are not hardcore into RTS (in general) and Supreme Commander/FA (in particular, as the in-game economy in SupCom 1 is like nothing else). SupCom 2 also has the benefit of being cheap on Steam. For hardcore RTS fans in your LAN party there is Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, and you can always try Beyond All Reason - it's not on Steam, but it IS a free community made RTS based on Total Annihilation (same progenitor of RTS gaming that SupCom descended from). Other RTS honorable mentions for LAN party fun include Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath, Warhammer 40,000 - Dawn of War: Soulstorm, and Kohan 2: Kings of War.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion was also a mainstay game for us. This one is pretty popular so I won't dwell on it. Stellaris is also an honorable mention here. I will say that Stellaris with all of the expansions is very expensive if you haven't been keeping up with DLC releases, but like Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, only the hosting player has to have them all for everybody in the match to benefit. Both of these games are time sinks though - you'll be playing the same match for MANY HOURS. It IS easy to save and resume later if people want to take a break from the match, though.
A couple of years back, someone suggested Heroes of Might & Magic III as a good LAN party game, but I disagree. It's strictly turn based and that means there are loooonnnngggg gaps between player turns with more than 2 players. Also, there is no Auto-Resolve for battles, and battles can take a while. A much better alternative is Age of Wonders (any version from the original on up through 4 and including Planetfall) as all of the Age of Wonders games support simultaneous turns where the new turn doesn't roll over until every player has completed their turn. It dramatically improves the wait between turns -- just make sure you have the game set to auto-resolve battles. Like Sins of a Solar Empire and Stellaris, these games are time sinks that will eat up MANY HOURS and can also be saved and resumed later.
Another good LAN game is Demigod. It's an early MOBA from Stardock and Gas Powered Games designed using the Supreme Commander engine and released before the Free-To-Play model that you see in all the MOBAs now was a thing -- when you buy it, you get the entire game. It's pretty cheap on Steam. It has a lot of interesting ideas I've never seen taken up in other MOBAs before or since and is a blast to play with up to 10 people. Speaking of MOBAs, Smite is a fun and easy to pick up game at LAN - 5v5 custom matches are a hoot if you can balance the teams well. Smite is Free-to-Play, but that only allows you ~20 playable Gods. There is a one-time $30 purchase available (per player that wants it) to unlock all 100+ Gods in the game.
It may be a controversial suggestion, but Supreme Commander 2 is a great LAN party game. The single player sucks, but the multiplayer is easy to pick up for people that are not hardcore into RTS (in general) and Supreme Commander/FA (in particular, as the in-game economy in SupCom 1 is like nothing else). SupCom 2 also has the benefit of being cheap on Steam. For hardcore RTS fans in your LAN party there is Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, and you can always try Beyond All Reason - it's not on Steam, but it IS a free community made RTS based on Total Annihilation (same progenitor of RTS gaming that SupCom descended from). Other RTS honorable mentions for LAN party fun include Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath, Warhammer 40,000 - Dawn of War: Soulstorm, and Kohan 2: Kings of War.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion was also a mainstay game for us. This one is pretty popular so I won't dwell on it. Stellaris is also an honorable mention here. I will say that Stellaris with all of the expansions is very expensive if you haven't been keeping up with DLC releases, but like Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, only the hosting player has to have them all for everybody in the match to benefit. Both of these games are time sinks though - you'll be playing the same match for MANY HOURS. It IS easy to save and resume later if people want to take a break from the match, though.
A couple of years back, someone suggested Heroes of Might & Magic III as a good LAN party game, but I disagree. It's strictly turn based and that means there are loooonnnngggg gaps between player turns with more than 2 players. Also, there is no Auto-Resolve for battles, and battles can take a while. A much better alternative is Age of Wonders (any version from the original on up through 4 and including Planetfall) as all of the Age of Wonders games support simultaneous turns where the new turn doesn't roll over until every player has completed their turn. It dramatically improves the wait between turns -- just make sure you have the game set to auto-resolve battles. Like Sins of a Solar Empire and Stellaris, these games are time sinks that will eat up MANY HOURS and can also be saved and resumed later.
Another good LAN game is Demigod. It's an early MOBA from Stardock and Gas Powered Games designed using the Supreme Commander engine and released before the Free-To-Play model that you see in all the MOBAs now was a thing -- when you buy it, you get the entire game. It's pretty cheap on Steam. It has a lot of interesting ideas I've never seen taken up in other MOBAs before or since and is a blast to play with up to 10 people. Speaking of MOBAs, Smite is a fun and easy to pick up game at LAN - 5v5 custom matches are a hoot if you can balance the teams well. Smite is Free-to-Play, but that only allows you ~20 playable Gods. There is a one-time $30 purchase available (per player that wants it) to unlock all 100+ Gods in the game.
sharknice
2[H]4U
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- Nov 12, 2012
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- 3,769
I don't think instagib evens the playing field. I just dominate even harder with instagib and end up racking up 100 kills while everyone else is still at single digits.
What I usually do in Quake 3 is set handicap on my player and it gives me less health. And/or I only use the underpowered weapons.