FarmVille

With more than 70 million active players, this might be the biggest online game of all time, and it has helped legitimize Facebook as a gaming platform

Gothic II

No matter how much you tweak the settings, the current hot epic RPG, Dragon Age, isn’t going to run on a Netbook. However, Gothic II is a well-remembered open-world sword-and-sorcery RPG that will (if you turn everything all the graphics settings to low)

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

A completely kick-ass first-person shooter that makes up for the dozens of poor Star Wars games released over the years

Mafia Wars

While also available on MySpace and the iPhone, the Facebook version of Mafia Wars is where it’s at. It’s a simple turn-based text RPG, but a surprising hit for a sub-genre that was thought to have died out in the era of MUDs.

Sanitarium

A great classic 1998 point-and-click adventure, Sanitarium was recently re-released as a $9.99 DRM-free download from Good Old Games.

Nancy Drew series

This long-running PC game series has managed to stay popular, despite not making many changes to its graphics or interface over the past decade. In fact, these games are expressly designed to appeal to non-gamers, by running on almost any hardware

Beneath a Steel Sky

An excellent mid-’90s point-and-click adventure. While the graphics may look primitive by today’s standards, it’s available as a free download from Good Old Games.

Braid

This indie-game favorite is available for PCs and also for the Xbox 360. Besides being a new game, as opposed to a re-released classic, it’s also an interesting, dark take on the classic platform game genre.