The problem is that laptops generally have only one hard drive bay, so if you buy a SSD, you'll have to do with it alone, and can't have a bigger HDD on the side, which is what desktop users seem to prefer (a small and fast SSD for Windows itself, and games are installed and stored on the bigger (and slower) HDD).

My 17.3" ASUS gaming laptop has two hard drive bays though, but I'm using two HDDs because I prefer more storage room to faster Windows loading speeds, especially if I will install Linux beside Windows like I am thinking about.

I just checked what SSDs costs here, and a mere 500GB SSD prices start from 200€ and upwards... Maybe later when I can get a 1 terabyte SSD for 100€ or so (now they are around 350-400€ and up).

SSD doesn't really improve old games like Unreal or Quake series at all, besides being able to load the game in a fraction of a second instead of 1-2 seconds. It doesn't improve framerates or anything like that (not that such old Quake/Unreal games need help there anyway, they run fine even on old low-end laptops).

I agree --older FPS games such as Doom, Quake, etc. would not necessarily benefit other than the load time; however, RPG's like Morrowind (or even the earlier Arena or Daggerfall) were pretty excessive when it comes to disk access.

If you couple that with every other service running on the system and things swapping to disk, the SSD vs. the HDD can make quite a difference.

...and yes, vs standard hard drives, they are more expensive for less space; however, they don't really have moving parts and while they do have a lifetime (many years if you look at the specs), they more than likely tend to outlive their more spacious counterparts.

Even a fairly inexpensive 128GB SDD these days would cost roughly $60 US, and assuming you set aside 25GB for a hog of an OS, you could still get about 20+ games on there, roughly more than one would need to play at a time.

I did get a little spoiled after using an SSD in that old laptop and while its storage may be a bit more meager, I don't know if I could go back to a slower machine. :)

I've added my specs (at least I think I have) Hope this helps.

I'm pleased to say Urban brawl runs flawlessly. First person Streets of Rage, aww yeah!

Do you play with touchpad, mouse or controller?
GPU is probably important, too, although it's not easy to compare.
What services and stores do you use, which ones are a no-no?

Wireless mouse.
Not sure what a GPU is.
GOG and Steam for stores.Does services mean something else?

Thanks

Graphic card.

No, that's what I meant, e.g. clients, if the games are not DRM-free.

Thanks for the replies, I'll check what games I play on my laptop and get back to you soon with recommendations.

I play a lot of games on my 5 or 6 years old laptop (I like to call it craptop, because it's really, really, really slow) with some random Intel DualCore CPU.

If you're into adventures, try Telltale's games. They work very well for me (at least Back to the Future and the three Sam&Max games). Blackwell series (and the other Wadjet games) works well on a laptop too.

Don't be afraid of JRPGs. Their stories aren't that deep and they're very relaxing. Plug in a controller, lay back, relax and play. Legend of Heroes is awesome and the older Final Fantasies (up to 8) run very well on everything that is able to run Windows.

Worms! Get Worms! Now! It's a lot of fun and you can fire it up for a small ten minute match whenever you don't have time for more.

Torchlight. Hop in, slash some monsters, save&quit. Story? Yeah, I think it has a story... I don't remember ;P Gameplay is where Torchlight shines. And it even has a laptop-mode for very weak machines.

Master of Orion II. Still the King of 4X games. It's turn based and very relaxing (the background music!). You can save whenever you want, so you could even play for only half a turn if you want ;)

UnEpic. Good humor and nice gameplay with small puzzles, a little bit of platforming and good exploration and character progress (equipment).

Sword of the Stars: The Pit. A Rogue-like. Turn based, save&quit whenever you want, lots of very different characters, huigh replay value. Just be prepared to die a lot ;)

ps. Be careful with platformers. My craptop handled Dust: An Elysian Tail pretty well, but it fails horribly on similar games (with worse graphics). Shovel Knight ran at 5 FPS or something like that (and the game speed was extremely slow too).

Probably the most important thing regarding gaming is missing: what GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) it has? Something like Intel HD 4000 Graphics, or NVidia Geforce GT 630M, or AMD somethingsomething. You probably have either Intel HD graphics or Geforce, or both. I presume AMD GPUs are mainly on laptops where also the CPU (Central Processing Unit) is from AMD, but your CPU is from Intel.

4GB of RAM already tells me that you are probably restricted to simpler indie games and older games. Doubling it to 8GB might make sense, unless the GPU is very poor. Anyway, GOG should have lots of older games to run great on it already as it is.

Unless they are Batman: Arkham Asylum, Resident Evil Revelations or Castlevania Lords of Shadow. Yeah trying bit of everything to see what does and doesn't work I find anything up to 2006 runs fine and when it comes to 3D games AAA games run better than indie ones. Crysis 2 runs a bit wonky but is mostly okay and even on the lowest settings still looks better than everything else, ever.

Is there a way I can fin out what my GPU is without taking my lop top appart?

You should be able to find that info in the Device Manager of Windows' Control Panel, under GPU or Graphic card.


Here's what I could come up with:

obviously, 2D adventure games (there's a vast choice of them)
puzzle games like CLARC, Where Is My Heart
Card City Nights
metroidvanias like Valdis Story, Super Panda Adventures
Waking Mars
One Finger Death Punch
Not A Hero
Mark of the Ninja, Ronin and Gunpoint
Qasir al-Wasat, Stealth Bastard
rogue-likes, e.g. Dungeons of Dredmore, Tales of Maj' Eyal
tactical combat like Halfway or Knights of the Chalice
Super Meat Boy, Limbo (depending on your graphic card)
older 3D games like Tomb Raider, Rune, Soul Reaver, Outcast; and some of the newer ones work surprisingly well on my laptop, too (Assassin's Creed, Alpha Protocol)
but if your laptop can't handle Witcher, I'd be careful with 3D games; it seems they also heat up the laptop rather quickly


FREE:
Harmony (retro FPS)
Iji (side-scrolling shooter/platformer)
Knytt (relaxing exploration platformer)
the original Cave Story (metroidvania)

Great list. Thanks!

What are the difference between the free version of Cave Story and the paid version?

Care to tell me about Super Panda Adventures, Knights of the Chalice, Knytt, Dungeons of Dredmore or Gunpoint?

As most of my favourite games are the FPS games came out between 1998 and 2007 (Half-life, Halo, Far cry, Medal of Honor 2, Undying, Unreal, Serious Sam, Painkiller, Quake 2, Prey, Call of Juarez Etc) how do you think I'd take to outcast?

I'm not sure if this what you were asking for but apparently I have a intel graphics 5500. is that GPU?

I think Cave Story+ has HD, less pixelated graphics and a remixed soundtrack. Not sure what else. To me the makeover seems to be mostly superficial; I thought the original's graphics and music were fine already.

Super Panda Adventures is a sidecrolling 2D platformer with simple pixel graphics that has some RPG elements like XP from defeating opponents that you can use to level up the skills and features of your choice (e.g. more melee damage, better magic, better armor etc.). The world is not big but sometimes you can choose in which order you want to do the quests you're given and what levels to visit first, and you can always come back to levels whenever you want to (they are connected with each other via a topdown world map). It's fun, but if it has one flaw, I think it's the boss battles; those are a bit tedious. Anyway, it's cheap, and I forgot to mention the developer has also released freeware games that are somewhat similar, so you could just try those first, particularly Gun Girl 2.

Knights of the Chalice is a D&D RPG under disguise, that is without the license and the names, but the rules are very similar, I think based on an open source license of the system. It's top down 2D, a bit like Ultima VII in looks, and combat is turn-based and similar to the old D&D Goldbox games. It does have some story elements and quests, but is really more focused on combat. It's fun until you run into its main problem which IMO is that it often tries to balance combat by cutting you off from resources and camping in hostile environments, so that your party gets worn down slowly with each combat, and you don't know for how long you'll have to hold out. That can make the game quite hard and frustrating at times. Others may find that challenging, I could have done without it.

Knytt is a very simple platformer with simplistic miniature graphics, in which your task is to find several pieces for your spaceship or something, and it's mainly about exploring the 2D world, looking the location of the pieces and way how you can reach them. No combat, just some occasional dexterity challenges, but overall rather easy, with relaxing atmosphere.

Dungeons of Dredmore is a graphically pepped up rogue-like, in which you create a character that you explore a randomly generated dungeon with and try to survive as long as possible to reach the end boss. Dying and retrying with another character in a new dungeon is part of the experience, although DoD also has easier modes that allow you to save and reload when you die.

Gunpoint is a little game about infiltrating buildings and hacking computers without getting seen or killed. I'd say it's mostly a puzzle game with some stealth/action aspects. And it's got a story and upgrades you can buy between missions. Missions are a matter of seconds to minutes, very short.

I haven't played through Outcast myself yet, but it's quite different from the games you listed, in that it's not a FPS, more a third person action adventure like, maybe, Tomb Raider, or Giants: Citizen Kabuto. But more open, maybe an early open world game even. It also has quite a bit of dialogue, so it feels partially like an adventure game or RPG. No idea how you would react to it.

Yes that's the one.

Upgrading the laptop's RAM from 4GB to 8GB might be the best available option to increase performance (for games that might want more than 4GB), but depending what you intend to play on it, maybe it is not required.

Also make sure you have the latest Intel HD 5500 graphics drivers installed for your laptop, from Intel's homepage. Drivers offered by the laptop vendor (Toshiba) might be out of date, at least HP tends to offer quite old Intel HD graphics drivers.

At least for me many GOG games, which had problems before, starting working great with the newest graphics drivers. I have Intel HD 4000 on my smaller (work) laptop.