Yeah its the graphics card which lets me down. Sorry about forgetting to mention that part. All I have is the Intel HD graphics card.

Would I still be able to play the vampire game with only that card ? I can play World of Warcraft but I heard you can play that game on a piece of slate. I can also play a game called Torchlight. Desperados demo runs fine also.

As someone mentioned already, download demos before buying the game. Although I'm pretty sure you can run Vampire on your PC.

No, not really. Very promising, but also quite flawed.

You asked for sandbox games; Space Rangers 2 and Mount & Blade: Warband are two sandbox games that I absolutely recommend. They are very unlike GTA and the like, and obviously a bit low-budget, but they are also true sandbox experiences that have no real console equivalents. I highly recommend them both. SR2 is on GOG, Warband is on Steam.

Does Vampire Masquerade hav e a demo ?

Also thanks again to everyone. I appreciate all the advice and patience that is required for a new person to PC gaming. Was Grim Fandango a good game ? During the Amiga years I was a massive fan of point & click as well as the old Leisure Suit Larry games, but always remember people highly rating a game called Grim Fandago. What was it about ?

Welcome to GOG! Now you will never leave!

Keep in mind that GOG is starting to add newer games as well, though I don't think they're separate in any way to the older ones, so always check that the requirements on the game page match yours. It's easy to tell which games are big and heavy and maybe too much on your computer if you look at the size of the game's file and the graphics on the screenshot. Be wary of anything overly detailed like the Witcher 2. Also, games that are usually more expensive than $9.99 tend to be newer, but these are not rules written in stone and there's some leeway.

Oh, I think they also put in the date when the game first came out somewhere in the game pages, so that's a big clue giving you a hint if your computer might run it or not. Then again, some new games are indies and can run perfectly on older machines.

Found one here:


http://www.fileplanet.com/46322/40000/fileinfo/Vampire:-The-Masquerade-Redemption-Demo

Cheers for the demo link.

Downloaded the demo file and unzipped the files, it then opened up the readme doc but then nothing happened.

I'll wait to see if I can get version of the game on disc. All this opening and unzipping files here and graphics cards there is starting to tick me off a little. Going to leave it for a while and try at a later date.

Cheers for al the help again everyone and thanks for the game reccomedations.

Welcome to the wonderful world of PC-gaming! Just a word of warning, as games tends to be a fare bit cheaper on PC than on consoles, it is very easy to build up a huge backlog. Also, I take it that the reason why you are not able to play the latest & the greatest games is simply due to your graphics card, as you seem to have a better computer than me, and I'm able to run Fallout 3 & New Vegas. You might want to look into getting yourself a proper graphics card at some point in the future, but if you plan to stick with some older games for now, you will do just fine with what you have. Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption is more action-oriented than Dragon Age Origins. It is a good game, no question about it, but don't go into it expecting Dragon Age. If you want something more Dragon Age-like, then check out Baldur's Gate (DA:O is often seen as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate). And if that particular style of game tickles your fancy, check out the other infinity engine games (Icewind Dale & Planescape Torment. Planescape is by far the best of the lot, but wait until you have played a few other CRPGs from that era before you start that one, as by doing that you will really be able to appreciate how different it is) Closer to Morrowind than GTA, Gothic 3 is worth checking out if you are looking for an open world game. Just make sure that you get the community fan patch, it fixes a lot of issues that the game had on launch. http://www.worldofgothic.com/dl/?go=dlfile&fileid=166
Also, don't miss out on Gothic 1 & 2. While more linear in their design, and relatively hard to get into, due to the strange controls (don't read that as bad controls, they are just very different). Those two games offers a good amount of challenging gameplay & an interesting setting.

As you said that you enjoyed Beneath a Steel Sky, make sure to check out Syberia & The Longest Journey as well.


And here are just some of my personal favourites that I think everyone should check out:
Thief series
Age of Wonders series (first one in particular)
Geneforge series
Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord
Scratches Director's Cut
Jagged Alliance 2
Realms of Arkania series (only for the patient person, the rule system takes a lot of getting used to)
Divine Divinity
Tex Murphy series (Pandora Directive in particular, you can skip 1 & 2 if you want to)
Lands of Lore 1 (2 is also good, but not a must play, but it comes with 1 so no harm in trying that one as well)
Legend of Grimrock (though this one might be too much for your graphics card)
The last Express
Sacrifice (though wait with this one until you feel really comfortable with using a mouse & keyboard)
Nox
Fallout 1 & 2.

My rig is a bit inferior to yours, I have a double-core 2.1GHz, Vista 32-bit and an onboard graphic card from 2007 (GeForce 6 series, I think). So far, the only games my onboard graphic card had issues to run smoothly for some reason or other were:

- Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2003)
- XIII (2003)
- Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (2004)
- Gothic 2 & 3 (2005/2006)
- Two Worlds (2007)
- The Witcher (2007) (and most certainly the sequel, too)
- King's Bounty: The Legend (2008)
- Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath (2010)
- Legend of Grimrock (2012)

All other 73 games or so that I bought from GOG run well (except that the DOSBox games sometimes get a bit of sound stuttering). I didn't try Gangland but VTM Redemption ran perfectly on my rig, and I played through the whole game. VTM Bloodlines from DotEmu.com works fine, too. And Desperadoes worked well even on my 15-year old Pentium 2 166MHz with Win98 and without 3D card back in the days, so I see no reason why your graphic card should not be able to run it.

Btw, if you like RPGs, you should also check out Leroux's Torment and Leroux's Arx Fatalis! ;)

Thanks for that info,Leroux. I'm going to buy Vampire Redemption now :D

Hey because of these digital downloads, if I ever need to format my computer what ever reason, can these games be then put on to a disc ? Or do you just re-download from thi ssite ?

Both will work with GOG games. It's always good to have a backup on disc, in the unlikely case that the site is down or you don't have access to the internet or whatever, and because it's faster than to download the game another time. But it's your choice.

There is no DRM, no activation, for a backup you just burn the downloaded installer to disc or copy it onto your flash drive or harddisk etc.

Btw, if you play VTM Redemption, it's good to know that you can pause the game with the PAUSE key on your keyboard. That function was only introduced with a patch, I think, so it's not described in the manual. But it can make combat a lot easier and less hectic (you can issue orders to your party members in combat while the game is paused).

And you should probably give all free feats you get (e.g. from books you find or buy) to your main character, not the other party members. I nearly got stuck once because I gave an important feat to a character that left my party later on.