It’s the time of the year for gift-giving and gift getting, which is a good time for games. I like lots of games, and you might too. But PCs can be grinches–they only like SOME games.

Laptop sales are growing year by year, with 2010’s first quarter seeing a 43% jump in sales of everyone’s favourite tiny computer. But the budget models you can buy for cheap often don’t have a sophisticated graphics setup–sitting annoyingly on the line of playing some PC games but not others. For me, it’s the Bioshock line–my computer can play games with less complicated graphics (like Half-Life 2) but it can only just muster the juice to play Bioshock poorly.

So when Crazy Gabe’s Discount Game Palace decides it wants to sell you ludicrous things like both Mass Effect games for $10 each, the thought that you could nab some games is tantalizing, especially if you don’t own any major gaming platform. I mean, Mass Effect is two years old, right? But newer laptops often ship with onboard cards–I have no idea whether or not the “Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family” is equivalent to any of the ATI cards listed in Steam’s system requirements.

If you go to www.yougamers.com, the site uses a java applet to scan your system specs and can compare your actual performance to individual games. It got it right–it judged that my machine can handle Half-Life 2 fine and although I meet the requirements for BioShock, it recommended that my laptop can run it only poorly. Unfortunately, I can’t run Mass Effect. Back to my default plan: staring longingly at pretty next-gen games and then playing World of Goo.