Struggling for a PC FPS for a 12 year old

sillygoose

Hi,

My son is getting a laptop for his birthday soon but I feel a bit guilty as he really needs it mostly for school work so not so much of a fun present.

It would soften the guilt a bit if I could load it with some good games, I already put some freebie downloads on and bought Warcraft 3 which is loaded OK.

I am now looking for a decent first person shooter suitable for a 12 year old but most seem rated higher or are 10 years old or something.

I don't mind one with fairly graphic violence as he is a well balanced mature lad and easily understands fantasy vs reality.

The adult content in some bothers me more, he knows all about the birds and bees but I don't like the way many games treat women as a bit of meat for male characters benefit, its not a message I want him seeing, I don't really understand the need for gratuitous bad language either.

So anyone know a graphically good looking PC FPS that isn't ported from a Sinclair Spectrum that might be what I am after? thank you!

bluenoseam

Half Life 2 - Granted maybe a bit "scary" but it's not all sex, drugs & rock n roll, definately more storyline based but has competitive side of things in multiplayer. (Although that's a whole different area where people can & will be jerks!) Possible that it might be a little cheaper at the minute as Steam have themselves a sale on the go.

Fallout 3/New Vegas - more role playing style but absolutely massive, more suspenseful than straight up fear but capable of being absolutely brutal. I only really recall 2-3 moments where there's objectionable content regarding women but more often than not they're strong & independent.

Sniper Elite - does what it says on the tin, mostly a sniper game, pretty graphic (x-ray bullet cam can be a bit excessive at times!), might be a touch of bad language.

Have a quick look on Steam, they've got a Halloween sale on at the minute and they're often loaded with cheap gems.

Johnmcl7

There's quite a variety of first person shooters so it depends largely on what type he likes.

I was going to say Borderlands 2 as it uses a cel-shaded style and isn't at all realistic but I'm surprised to see it's rated an 18 apparently for violence, profanity, sexual themes and alcohol consumption. Some of it can be censored although I didn't think the game was that bad compared to other fps games, it's easily been my favourite of recent fps games as it combines an RPG element with a vast array of different guns with four different characters each with their own special abilities and skills.

The obvious choice of game as a treat for someone that age would be Minecraft if he doesn't have I already although I can be dangerous in sucking away time.

John

sillygoose

Thank you both, will take a look. Mincraft he does a lot so I have transferred that from the family laptop to his.

This looks a bit of a bargain, seems to be cheap because its a bit old and they can no longer provide online multiplayer but that doesn't bother me, graphics look decent..

https://www.origin.com/en-gb/store/buy/medal-of-honor-allied-assault/pc-download/base-game/standard-edition

AlecEiffel

Regarding Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I would probably stick to F3, New Vegas in the Vegas area has quite a few ladies of the night loitering around and the humour in some of the quests may be a bit too smutty.

Borderlands is graphically violent but in a v over the top comic way. Loads of swearing in it though (they're an 18 for a reason).

As above, the Half Life games are great. Fantastic FPS, not overly gory, I don't recall over the top swearing, and the stories are top notch. They're old but aren't considered some of the best games of all time for no reason.

Linked in with Half Life are Portal and Portal 2 which are more puzzle games from a first person perspective, where you have a gun that shoots portals in walls to get you through levels.

The first Far Cry is good. Not played any of the others.

Rotor

Bioshock. Best game ever

PenguinJim

Rotor wrote: »

Bioshock. Best game ever

Except it didn't quite surpass even its own predecessor, has mature themes of drug addiction and brain-washing, the option of murdering little girls, and people get beaten to death with golf clubs in front of you. There's also a strip club and you can see the dead body of a stripper (who, coincidentally, also appears to have been beaten to death). Assuming all that's OK, Bioshock might be a good game to start with, as it won't set the bar too high for subsequent games.

For multiplayer first-person shooters, Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is extremely popular and is now Free-to-Play. You can get it for free on a Steam account. An oft-overlooked alternative is this year's Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, which can be played from an Origin account, but will cost ~£15 to buy the game first - and it may not run too well on a laptop (compared with TF2, at least, which scales very well). (Origin is a bit redirecty, so you'll have to find it yourself, I'm afraid!)

For single-player, it'll be difficult to beat bluenoseam's Half-Life 2 suggestion (which also scales very well on slower PCs), but I'll try! ... .... ...nope. I think that's the best. But if he's into Ghostbusters, "Ghostbusters: The Video Game" (£2.09 at the moment) is quite a good "third movie". Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a decent-enough game which offers a variety of ways to tackle each level (e.g. stealth, guns blazing, hacking and misdirection, etc) which makes it a bit more interesting for a younger person to experiment and find their own path. Nope. Too many hookers!

It's not a shooter, but I'm surprised that the ubiquitous Minecraft hasn't had a mention. In fact, that would probably be my top pick for any under-16 - it scales well and encourages building, and he can share a server with his friends that they can all access online. It's the digital game equivalent of Lego.

Dropping back to third-person for a moment, Just Cause 2 is simply action action action (driving/flying/parachuting around a beautiful island causing huge explosions), and Orcs Must Die! and Orcs Must Die! 2 are cheerful, colourful games where you run around shooting and setting up traps for cartoonish orcs and ogres - surprisingly tactical, and very tongue-in-cheek.

All of these can be picked up extremely cheaply (except for expensive Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare and free TF2) - you can expect to pay less than £5 each during a sale (for example, Steam's upcoming Christmas sale).

However, what graphics chip is inside that new laptop? I'm slightly concerned that a laptop given to a 12-year-old is unlikely to be sporting Nvidia's latest! Let us know, and we can make suggestions more appropriate for the hardware.

Cycrow

I would be wary about getting any newer games, unless its a high-end gaming laptop, then it will struggle with alot of newer games, especially the more graphically intense FPS games

bluenoseam

I didn't suggest Human Revolution due to the content of the Hengsha level - where you visit a brothel, don't get me wrong, awesome game but I kinda figured that was against the remit.

PenguinJim

Youch, you're right, for some reason I had them placed in Invisible War! o_O (I didn't think either sequel was a patch on the original DE!)

sillygoose

Hi, thanks for the ongoing suggestions. Portal 2 is now installed and looks good

(even that has a few cheeky bits but it will go over his head, in the opening clip one of the workers has his computer screen pixelated and is subtly pleasing himself to the presumably adult content, made me laugh)

Its a pretty low end laptop, but minecraft, portal 2 and Medal of Honour are all running fine on it.

Its a bit of a faff as you don't just download the executable you have to load the front end too, Steam was OK but I liked the Origin one is better as you could switch it to parent mode and lock it down, hides anything but the actual game and doesn't stay running after the game is closed.

Laptop has a humble 1.8Ghz quad core, 4GB, and Radeon HD 8330 graphics chip. I wiped off Win 8 and put a clean vanilla Win 7 64 bit install on.