I'm still working away on a laptop I got almost 2 years ago, and even then it was an average machine with average performance. Today I know I shouldn't even bother with the latest computer games. If I turn down the graphics to the minimal settings it's still a coin toss over whether or not the stuttering will hinder my game play. I know there are a bunch of older games out there which will work fine on my system, but old games aren't any good!

Wrong. There are a lot of old games that are still good or even better than most games out today. Try this: go to a website that does game reviews and just flip through the results until you get to the year 2003 or something. Now just find the games with really high ratings and you're off to a really good start. I would actually read the review to make sure it would be something I would enjoy playing. For example, Tiger Woods' golf games back then might've scored high, but they're no fun for me.

The next step would be to hop in the bus to your local videogame shop and legally purchase some of the games you've narrowed it down to. A plus is that older games are usually way cheaper than the new ones. You could even hunt them down on ebay or something similar if the games you've chosen are a bit hard to find.

Me, living in a country where it's hard to find legitimate software, hopped on over to the nearest bit torrent site. After a little bit of patience you'll have a few good games, and perhaps a worm/virus or two, but that's just a fair trade-off. The point I'm trying to make is you shouldn't get frustrated over not being able to play the latest games. If you reading this are one of the few people who can play the latest games today, then smile while you can, because tomorrow you're in the same boat as the rest of us.

Some titles I enjoyed:

- No One Lives Forever 2
- Rise of Nations
- Mafia
- Starcraft + Broodwars
- Medal of Honor
- Call of Duty (the first one)
- Sid Meier's Pirates!

On request I might be able to dig up the torrent tracker files for each of those...