Hi all I have an HTPC and sometimes when my niece comes to visit, I play games with her on it. She also has a laptop of her own and she wants to put some games on it so asked me for suggestions. Seeing as I'm male, old, and a super hardcore PC gaming dork, and she is the opposite of all those things, I am at quite a big loss when it comes to thinking of games she might enjoy. So I am hoping some people here might be able to give me some ideas? Here is some more information that should help: Problems: 1) She is a girl 2) She is 10 years old 3) She isn't really a gamer so she isn't really skilled enough yet to start playing big grown up stuff like Unreal Tournament and whatnot. She has a Wii at her house so the PC is all quite alien to her to be honest. 4) Being an HTPC, it can't really play the latest games, so I have to pick stuff that is a few years old or more. I could pick something new I guess but it would have to be veeeerry scaleable. The specs of it are: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e AM2 Dual Core 2.5GHz, 512KB x 2 Cache 4 Gig RAM (DDR2 PC2-5400 (667)) 256MB Sapphire HD3470 PCI-E 2.0 1400MHz GDDR3, 800MHz GPU 40 Cores Vista Ultimate 32bit (Her laptop is similar kind of horsepower) other info The good news is, I've had some success with it. There are one or two of the Vista games she liked, and mostly I just google flash games for kids and we managed to find quite a lot she really enjoys. What's not to love about shooting pins at balloons? They don't hold her attention for long though so I really want to get her some real games. There was one flash game we played which was a very simple adventure game with an inventory where you click and find stuff on each screen and use it with objects on another screen etc. She LOVED it and this got me really excited about introducing her to games of my youth like Monkey Island etc. Anyway, I installed a bunch already and even bought a couple, but I can't get too excited and just start installing all my old games because I really don't think she will like most of them. Using the cursor keys (or WASD) is very strange and difficult for her. I plan on buying an XBOX360 controller which should help make some of the games more fun though. Here is what I already have installed: We tried: World of Goo - she liked it but it was a bit hard for her. Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed (she struggles with keys but the x360 controller may fix that) Sim City 4000 (I have to lower the graphics a lot but she seemed interested by this) Jones in the fast lane (she looked totally bored/confused by this but we didn't have time to really try it) we haven't tried yet: Atomic Bomberman (I know she will love this because she used to play it on her phone) Monkey Island Monkey Island 2 Eye of the Beholder 2 (I have no idea what she will think of this) Theme Park World (I have a feeling she will love this) Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 (Bit complex for her maybe) stuff I bought for her because it was cheap on ebay The Longest Journey (Looked a bit boring and slow to me but it got high score reviews and main character is a girl) The Sims Thanks in advance
I'd suggest the origional sims for a start if she liked the sim city style building thing, my sister has liked it since about age 10... RwD
Monkey Island 3 - skip to 3 because it's more colourful and cartoony and acessible to someone like her. Beyond Good and Evil - a fairly difficult game at the end, but easy enough to start with and with a very child friendly design. About a woman who runs a wartime orphanage. Psychonauts - a very cartoony, bizarre 3D platformer which I have never seen a child not laugh out loud at constantly. It's about a child who runs away from the circus to go to a psychic training camp. Check out the intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=416JS0yT160 I'd really suggest starting with Monkey Island 3 and Psychonauts, especially if you intend to play the games with her.
Unreal tournament (The original) my son was playing at age 6 (obviously you turn the blood off) but he enjoyed it and it will run on almost anything.
Or leave the blood on and toughen her up. Hate to be sexist, but it's unlikely a 10 yr old girl will enjoy rampaging FPSs. I vote The Sims (popular with just about every 10-15 year old girl) and possibly Spore, if she can get her head around it. Although neither of them involve you. Maybe FlatOut (whichever one is the latest) if she's more of a racer. I mean, you get to crash and stuff!
Thank you guys so much, these are all fantastic suggestions. I hadn't thought about most of these and they are really ideal, great suggestions. Also, some of them I haven't even played and I always wanted to, so that will be fun for me too Thanks guys, I'll get all these this week. If anyone else thinks of any other good suggestions, please feel free to add them.
why not try out the zoo tycoon series my 9 year old cousin really on into it, also maybe theme hospital as they are quite old now you should be able to find them very cheap
maybe world of goo, it's a bit hard though (i'm having trouble even on early levels). +1 for lego games (get her into starwars if she isn't already)
What about Peggle, according to the site you can purchase it for £2.55 for a limited time. http://www.popcap.com/games/peggle?icid=peggle5_PC_promo_top_1_02_26_09_EN_UK
I was going to suggest Peggle through steam, a lot of the pop cap games have demos you can try out and see which type of games she prefers. If she likes Monkey Island then try the Sam & Max games (also on steam) might be worth a look, and Episode 4 is free if you want to try it out first. Lego Star Wars / Indianna Jones / Batman. Nice an easy for kids to get to grips with and 2 player for you to help her out.
Agree with this.Pop cap do some great games. You might want to check out a few from here Gamehouse There's some good puzzle and word games in here. Fresco wizard Jewel quest bejeweled 2 luxor flip words big kahuna words
Used to play a lot of Rollercoaster Tycoon when I was that age (RCT3 is rubbish!), I also played a lot of N64 games back then. The above game is also very good. Maybe get some old skool racing games? My brother is 10 and he is already owning on COD4 online, lol, his skill compared to his mates at school is quite funny as he plays against me everyday (vs his mates playing against easy AI) so he has to improve therefore he is a very skilled gamer now. Maybe you should choose a slighty harder game for her so she has to improve a little to play it?
Thanks guys I added all your new suggestions to my list. These games are all so cheap now, I will probably end up buying them all. As for choosing harder games so she can improve, I would really like that. I think she is so busy though that she might not have time to. She plays a musical instrument and gets lessons for that after school and she does swimming after school and she is in all kinds of clubs and does activities and trips and stuff so she is WAY more active than I was at her age I will give her Unreal Tournament though and see if she gets in to it. If she does then opens the door to lots of modern FPS's Thanks again everyone.
After the utter hilarity of watching my mum attempt to play it i'm not so sure Depends if the person has a reasonable grasp of physics or not... Turns out my mother doesn't really have any at all, but was hilarious to watch My Dad and my brother's GF loved the game though
Roller Coaster Tycoon, it's simple, build a park, make money, win level, move onto next park. Theres no death at all, unless you drown someone, or build a roller coaster badly, or build a roller coaster badly on purpose to kill people for the amusment. Sam
On top of Monkey Island... some other Lucas Arts Adventures might be good. Day of the Tentacle in particular, my sister and I used to love playing that as kids. The Discworld games were great, you could try Grim Fandango.. but that might not be suitable for a 10 year old, I'm not sure. Sam and Max. Full Throttle? The Dig? All of these games I loved playing when I was a child.
