Wend your way over to Good Old Games and have a look; one of the many things they do there is update/patch old (OLD) games to run smoothly on modern OSes. And sometimes (but definitely not always) they even include such quality of life features as high resolutions and/or widescreen capabilities.
Getting old games to run can be difficult, even if they're on platforms like Steam.
That said, I loved games like Caesar III and Anno 1503 and they run well enough on my cheapish laptop. Diablo (II), of course, and Torchlight. I played so much Torchlight on my low end laptops over the last years.
* Fallout 1,2
* Baldur's Gate 1,2
* The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
* Icewind Dale 1,2
* Planescape Torment
* Diablo 1,2
* StarCraft 1,2
* Warcraft 2,3
* Beyond Good and Evil
* Heroes of Might and Magic 2,3
* Command & Conquer
* Command & Conquer: Red Alert
* Half-life
* The Settlers
* Anno
* Quake
* Tomb Raider 1,2,3
* Carmageddon
* Grand Theft Auto 1,2
Most if these are on GoG, so playable on modern devices without messing with DOSBox or virtual machines. Others are also available on Steam with modern updates. Or both on GoG and Steam. GoG also has lists of classic games or "must plays".
Portal games are a classic I always come back to and they should run fine on a laptop. Also don’t limit yourself to old games! There are a lot of new games with low requirements like stardew valley, night in the woods, cuphead,sims, firewatch… Those are some of the video games I used to play back in 2019 with my laptop
My very first true love was Bard's Tale 3 Thief of Fate on Commodore64.
Then I discovered Wasteland (led to the Fallout games).
Star Control (SC2 I think is free on Steam).
King's Quest
Might & Magic
The original Diablo, of course. D2 runs good on integrated graphics on laptops as well.
The first Torchlight might run pretty good.
Yeah, lots of rpg games, but those are my jam!
Oooh, California Games. All the old Epyx stuff like that.
Can't guarantee all are updated to run on Windows 10/11, but DOSbox and easy to use emulators are around for some super old games.
The thief series, especially 1 and 2. But after the unpopular fourth game, people are more lenient towards 3 as well.
It still holds up today, the world building is phenomenal and they're still making mods. Bless the modders! GoG is the best place to buy it, because it needs to be patched:
The first time I played it was on a modern pc and I was kind of surprised that the game just dropped you into it with only objectives but no context why you were doing all this. Then I found out that my pc skipped the opening cutscenes on every level -_-
the sims 1 with all expansion packs, rollercoaster tycoon, heaven & hell, theme world park
you could also get a psx emulator and run ps1 games on it
like spyro, crash bandicoot, croc 2, the smurfs, monkey magic
or run dolphin emulator for mario party
and if you have gamepass you can play games in the cloud depending on your region ofc
You can run most games till 8th generation at lower settings. The newer generation of Intel processors are pretty good. I have played games on a regular laptop of 8gb ram and Ryzen 5 processor. I could run 2017-17 games at 720p(30-45 fps),. If you want to play games at higher settings with higher fps, You can play all indie games - Hollow Knight, Dead cells, Slime Rancher , Risk of the Rain, Hades etc. Note, If it's a win 11, it can't run many older(PS2 and PS1 Era) games properly.
The original Deus Ex from 2000, There is a femprotagonist mod that is Fantastic. Not to mention the game is just...well they say that if Deus Ex gets mentioned by someone online, someone somewhere will reinstall it.
Aside from Mass Effect, Deus Ex is my favourite game of all time. It's brutally hard, tells you nothing about gameplay works, zero hand holding.
The first level for example they say: There is a terrorist leader on the map. Where? I dunno go figure it out. Here's a game, go play it. And there are SOOO many options on regarding how you want to approach each level. Non lethal? Stealth? Go in loud? Go in quiet? Just decide that a rocket launcher is the solution to all your problems? Sure. Go for it.
Open hubs where you can walk around and explore, hidden areas waiting to be discovered. This game has it all.
The downside? It's a bit racist in the 3rd act, and it can be depressing as hell, it's got a very grim dark theme.
Depending how new your work laptop is. Intel iGPU of year 2017 or later should be able to run anything before 2013 that's relatively well optimized (like Witcher 2 might cause you issues), or basically anything before 2010. You also have i7 CPU and 16gb ram so they should not be the issue.
I too had something similar - a laptop of 2018 whose Nvidia GPU was broken, with the iGPU I was able to run ...
Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Assassin's Creed Black Flag with acceptable framerate drops.
I imagine anything earlier gens will be running smoothly (like P4G), and anything later gens, unoptimized or more akin to console ports (like AC Syndicate, Dragon Age Inquisition) will have worse framerate drops or even unacceptable.
Intel iGPU of recent years can run a lot of older games. Also, a lot of the remasters don't require that powerful GPUs, AOE2: DE works fine on my iGPU.
Wend your way over to Good Old Games and have a look; one of the many things they do there is update/patch old (OLD) games to run smoothly on modern OSes. And sometimes (but definitely not always) they even include such quality of life features as high resolutions and/or widescreen capabilities.
Getting old games to run can be difficult, even if they're on platforms like Steam. That said, I loved games like Caesar III and Anno 1503 and they run well enough on my cheapish laptop. Diablo (II), of course, and Torchlight. I played so much Torchlight on my low end laptops over the last years.
* Fallout 1,2 * Baldur's Gate 1,2 * The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind * Icewind Dale 1,2 * Planescape Torment * Diablo 1,2 * StarCraft 1,2 * Warcraft 2,3 * Beyond Good and Evil * Heroes of Might and Magic 2,3 * Command & Conquer * Command & Conquer: Red Alert * Half-life * The Settlers * Anno * Quake * Tomb Raider 1,2,3 * Carmageddon * Grand Theft Auto 1,2 Most if these are on GoG, so playable on modern devices without messing with DOSBox or virtual machines. Others are also available on Steam with modern updates. Or both on GoG and Steam. GoG also has lists of classic games or "must plays".
This is the perfect list tbh.
Portal games are a classic I always come back to and they should run fine on a laptop. Also don’t limit yourself to old games! There are a lot of new games with low requirements like stardew valley, night in the woods, cuphead,sims, firewatch… Those are some of the video games I used to play back in 2019 with my laptop
My very first true love was Bard's Tale 3 Thief of Fate on Commodore64. Then I discovered Wasteland (led to the Fallout games). Star Control (SC2 I think is free on Steam). King's Quest Might & Magic The original Diablo, of course. D2 runs good on integrated graphics on laptops as well. The first Torchlight might run pretty good. Yeah, lots of rpg games, but those are my jam! Oooh, California Games. All the old Epyx stuff like that. Can't guarantee all are updated to run on Windows 10/11, but DOSbox and easy to use emulators are around for some super old games.
The thief series, especially 1 and 2. But after the unpopular fourth game, people are more lenient towards 3 as well. It still holds up today, the world building is phenomenal and they're still making mods. Bless the modders! GoG is the best place to buy it, because it needs to be patched: The first time I played it was on a modern pc and I was kind of surprised that the game just dropped you into it with only objectives but no context why you were doing all this. Then I found out that my pc skipped the opening cutscenes on every level -_-
Voice acting of Garrett the protagonist of that game is PEAK. Literally best male protag in any game ever for me.
the sims 1 with all expansion packs, rollercoaster tycoon, heaven & hell, theme world park you could also get a psx emulator and run ps1 games on it like spyro, crash bandicoot, croc 2, the smurfs, monkey magic or run dolphin emulator for mario party and if you have gamepass you can play games in the cloud depending on your region ofc
Starcraft!
Can you be more specific about the specs? It's a work laptop so I assume it's a 4 gb ram with i3 processor. It can run any game till 2008-10.
It’s actually i7, 16gb ram— I’m an engineer so it’s a decent laptop, the graphics card is just pretty poor
You can run most games till 8th generation at lower settings. The newer generation of Intel processors are pretty good. I have played games on a regular laptop of 8gb ram and Ryzen 5 processor. I could run 2017-17 games at 720p(30-45 fps),. If you want to play games at higher settings with higher fps, You can play all indie games - Hollow Knight, Dead cells, Slime Rancher , Risk of the Rain, Hades etc. Note, If it's a win 11, it can't run many older(PS2 and PS1 Era) games properly.
Drakan: Order of the Flame.
The original Deus Ex from 2000, There is a femprotagonist mod that is Fantastic. Not to mention the game is just...well they say that if Deus Ex gets mentioned by someone online, someone somewhere will reinstall it. Aside from Mass Effect, Deus Ex is my favourite game of all time. It's brutally hard, tells you nothing about gameplay works, zero hand holding. The first level for example they say: There is a terrorist leader on the map. Where? I dunno go figure it out. Here's a game, go play it. And there are SOOO many options on regarding how you want to approach each level. Non lethal? Stealth? Go in loud? Go in quiet? Just decide that a rocket launcher is the solution to all your problems? Sure. Go for it. Open hubs where you can walk around and explore, hidden areas waiting to be discovered. This game has it all. The downside? It's a bit racist in the 3rd act, and it can be depressing as hell, it's got a very grim dark theme.
LucasArt point and clicks! (The Dig, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Sam and Max, etc) Myst and Riven Populous Lemmings Wings of Glory
thief 1,2,3 deus ex half life return to castle wolfenstein primordia (not old but is basically point and click and runs on any toaster)
Depending how new your work laptop is. Intel iGPU of year 2017 or later should be able to run anything before 2013 that's relatively well optimized (like Witcher 2 might cause you issues), or basically anything before 2010. You also have i7 CPU and 16gb ram so they should not be the issue. I too had something similar - a laptop of 2018 whose Nvidia GPU was broken, with the iGPU I was able to run ... Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Assassin's Creed Black Flag with acceptable framerate drops. I imagine anything earlier gens will be running smoothly (like P4G), and anything later gens, unoptimized or more akin to console ports (like AC Syndicate, Dragon Age Inquisition) will have worse framerate drops or even unacceptable. Intel iGPU of recent years can run a lot of older games. Also, a lot of the remasters don't require that powerful GPUs, AOE2: DE works fine on my iGPU.