Recommend some games for my build

[2canSAM]

OK I left the PC gaming scene back in the Quake 3, NOLF, and Thief 2 days and went to consoles. I am rebuilding an old PC as a HTPC and would love to mess around with PC gaming again. Now I know going in that I will not be able to run any of the newer games but I am not sure what games I could run on the specs below. I will be playing on a 24" TV with max res of 1920x1280. Some of my favorite games from the xbox were Splinter Cell, Black, Prince of Persia.

PC specs

AMD Athlon x2 64 4200+
4GB RAM
Geforce 9500GT
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

 

[Qbah]

Drop the res to 1280x720 and you may squeeze by with low/medium on newer games. But the 9500GT is just bad, no matter how you look at it. The A64 x2 isn't a speed demon either, but it can support a GPU a lot better than a 9500GT.

Some games that should play fine though at good settings:
- Torchlight
- Beyond Good and Evil (old game, still great!)
- Blade Kitten (platformer, I really enjoyed it)
- DeathSpank & DS : Thongs of Virtue (should work fine)
- Psychonauts (great game, also old-ish)
- Shadowgrounds + SG : Survivor (TPP shooter game, from above, was fun for me)

There are many other games, but many of them are cross-platform and will run and look a lot better on a console than on your HTPC.

EDIT: Thought about getting something beefier for your HTPC? Like a GeForce GT240 or a Radeon HD5670? Those two are a great fit with your CPU. It will greatly enhance your gaming experience (med/high @ 1280x720 - 1600x900). And run the older games great. 1920x1080 is pretty much out of the picture though.

 

[Plimogz]

Half-Life 2. It was great fun, and it should run.

 

[totalnoob]

Team Fortress 2...best multiplayer game ever and very scalable.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Unreal Tournament III DM, TDM, Duel, Greed

 

[2canSAM]

Drop the res to 1280x720 and you may squeeze by with low/medium on newer games. But the 9500GT is just bad, no matter how you look at it. The A64 x2 isn't a speed demon either, but it can support a GPU a lot better than a 9500GT.

Some games that should play fine though at good settings:
- Torchlight
- Beyond Good and Evil (old game, still great!)
- Blade Kitten (platformer, I really enjoyed it)
- DeathSpank & DS : Thongs of Virtue (should work fine)
- Psychonauts (great game, also old-ish)
- Shadowgrounds + SG : Survivor (TPP shooter game, from above, was fun for me)

There are many other games, but many of them are cross-platform and will run and look a lot better on a console than on your HTPC.

EDIT: Thought about getting something beefier for your HTPC? Like a GeForce GT240 or a Radeon HD5670? Those two are a great fit with your CPU. It will greatly enhance your gaming experience (med/high @ 1280x720 - 1600x900). And run the older games great. 1920x1080 is pretty much out of the picture though.

Possibly would be upgrading, I mostly wanted to get a feel for PC gaming in the living room and did not want to sour that initial experience with crappy games. I could justify maybe 75.00 to 100.00 for a newer video card but anything above that I might as well just go with a Xbox 360 or PS3. I am a very casual gamer and as such am still rocking the original xbox

 

[Texashiker]

You should be able to run left 4 dead and left 4 dead 2 with that system.

My daughter was playing left 4 dead with a single core pentium 4 dell system, that was probably 5+ years old. But back in may of 2010 I upgraded her to a dual core AMD 245. Even before the upgrade, left 4 dead ran fine.

Some other games that come to mind

Fortress Forever
half-life 2
counter-strike:source
Borderlands - but this one might be a little laggy.
Unreal black edition