5 Classic LAN games to play on your laptop

Aaaah LAN games, I have so many fond memories of getting together with mates and spending ages trying to get everything hooked up and networked correctly (there was always some chop with a weird firewall or something.) Then spending hours and hours glued to the screen doing what geek’s do best.

This post is specifically written to help out those of you with the following problems:

1. You don’t have an awesome high end gaming rig that can play today’s latest games (or you just don’t want to lug it around, or you are playing at the office, or you just dig old classics…)
2. You don’t have access to a decent speed ADSL line or a legal copy of your favourite game. (Really annoying all that Steam crap – “You want to play the game you bought? Well you can’t, please download 5gigs worth of updates first.”)

There is also the fact that many new games don’t actually support old school LAN anymore (Starcraft 2 for example) what is up with that? It’s like they don’t want gamers to socialise, you need to stay at home and avoid all human contact. Let’s face it the ability to frag your mate and then look across the table and actually see the bitter disappointment on his face is really the most beautiful thing about LAN gaming.

So in light of the above we have put together a tried and trusted selection of games that are awesome to play against your mates and will run on any modern laptop (office party anyone?)

Warcraft 3 Tower Defence

One of the most popular games of all time, Warcraft 3 came with a very capable level editor. Shortly afterwards the TD craze took the LAN world by storm. Building and upgrading towers to defend against hordes of Orcs and weird creatures never gets old, especially with a couple of mates by your side.

You will need Warcraft 3 to play but you can download tons of TD maps from across the web. Play with or against your mates.

Quake 3 Arena

This is one of the biggest FPS LAN games around. Quake was always a solid LAN game and ID software realised this. They created a version of Quake specifically for LANs, which was how Quake 3 Arena was born.

With several different game types Quake 3 did an excellent job of providing grusome satisfaction for many and painfully embarresing deaths for others.A wide range of weapons and maps meant hours of mind-nubbing fragging.

So grab your rocket launcher and prepare for an epic game of capture the flag.

Unreal Tournament

This is my personal favourite. Unreal tournament pitted the scum of the universe against each other in gladiator style environments to fight for their freedom. Throw in some really cool space age industrial arenas and a huge helping of crazy weapons and you have an epic game (no pun intended.)

Unreal sports a bunch of really cool game modes and tons of levels, definately get some mates together and try out Facing Worlds, it a great map if you love to snipe people.

Carmageddon TDR 2000

Okay I’ll admit it, this may not be a common LAN game, but hear me out. Carmageddon provides LAN support for up to 16 players. You drive crazy cars around in all sorts of crazy mini games including a running red rovers style gauntlet. Stop the other guy from getting to the end zone and scoring points.

There are racing style events, most damage type events, Tony Hawk style HORSE events and even one where you become IT and will explode if the timer runs out and you haven’t been able to touch someone else. Seriously awesome to play.

FIFA 2002

Some of the early FIFA games allowed for some really fun LAN play. While there are quite a few of these I believe 2002 was a really good year for LAN. Nothing quite says competitive like 2 versus 2 football.

I realise that you can play FIFA on a console but not everyone has a console with 4 controllers. These older FIFA games also had the epic dangerous tackle, where you could intentionally foul someone. So worth a red card!

So go ahead and check your local game store’s bargin bins or hop online and see what you can find. THese games will still provide hours of crazy LAN fun, bring back memories and run on any modern laptop.

Any games that you think we should include here? Please comment below.