Casual Friday: Top 10 Free Games
This week, we list a bunch of fantastic free games (and then link you
to hundreds of other time-killers). You're welcome.
Darren Gladstone, PC World
Jul 10, 2008 10:00 pm
http://www.pcworld.com/article/148129/casual_friday_top_10_free_games.html
I'm all for celebrating slack on a weekly basis here at PC World, but
there's something more tangible that I like just as much: free games.
Now a little confession before I go any further. In my past life as a
video-gaming journalist, I was a bit of a freeloader--that is, I'd be
ferreting out freebies that were just addictive fun. And today, I'm
giving you my personal Top 10 free games that I'm playing right now--
with a bonus eleventh game, to boot--and links to hundreds of others).
The Best Free Games (This Week)
One of last year's hits, ****tal, had a simple concept: Shoot a warp
hole in one wall and create the exit point in another. Easily one of
my favorite puzzle-solving games in years, it was brilliant, but
waaaaay too brief. To keep me going, I've played ****tal: The Flash
Version on lunch breaks but that still isn't enough. Ready for another
40 levels of brain-bending puzzles? These days, I'm making my way
through P:TFV Mappack, which plugs into the original PC version of
****tal.
Jimmy's Lost His... (click for full-size image).
This next game is really the touching story of a boy and his toilet
paper, which has rolled away from home. So what's a kid to do? Follow
it all over town, apparently. In the appropriately named Jimmy's Lost
His Toilet Paper, it's up to you, playing Jimmy, to run through a
series of levels and try to collect all the loose tp and, according to
the instructions, "find love and meaning to his life on the way"--and
maybe a free stall.
****ft-3; click for full-size image.
In the same way that I got a kick out of playing ****tal: The Flash
Version, two other site-based games keep me coming back to play. The
first is ****ft-3. The general idea is that you've got to navigate
rooms and make it to the exit door. You do that by hitting your ****ft
key to invert the world and change your perspective on each puzzle.
Trust me, you'll want to play it. The other is a platform game
called....wait for it...Platform. You play through 33 levels of
running and jumping to reach the end. It's a little old, but I still
come back to it on occasion.
Sometimes you don't need an elaborate story to enjoy a game. You just
want to tune out for a minute. In that case, allow me to introduce A
Game About Bouncing. You control a ball and need to bounce off other
balls while avoiding ball-seeking missiles. It's actually a little
hypnotic once you start getting into it. If you dig that, also explore
the creator's site for a taste of Chain3, his iPhone game that will
launch at the iTunes store in July.
Streetwise; click for full-size image.
Hit the spacebar. Do it again. And there is your walk-through of how
to play Streetwise. This goofball game is one big timing puzzle. The
object: You have 2 minutes to see how many cutesy obstacles you can
get past. That's it? Yep, and those 2 minutes will seem like the
longest of your life.
Dirty Split; click for full-size image.
As a huge fan of classic graphic adventure games, I loved playing
Dirty Split. Only problem for me is that while trying to crack this
murder mystery, I got too distracted by how professional this freeware
game looks. It has tons of style (it looks like a mod 1960s cartoon)
and even has great voice acting while you interview suspects. The real
crime here is not trying this game.
Once upon a time, there was this classic game series called Star
Control. It was an action game, a space-trading and exploration game--
and then it was gone. The Ur-Quan Masters is a full recreation of that
classic experience, and now playable on just about every platform. If
you've ever fancied yourself as the next Captain Kirk (or Picard, or
whatever), you need to try this one out.
Clifffall; click for full-size image.
If you don't get Atari 2600 flashbacks the second you start playing
Cliffall - Treasures of the Lost Cave, I don't know what to tell you.
While the game is a lovingly low-fidelity tribute to the ancient
Pitfall, there's enough new polish here to enjoy swinging through this
digital jungle.
Then there's Combat Arms from Nexon America. It's a competitive,
online-only first-person shooter game squaring off two squads with
modern gear. And it won't cost you a dime. Well, at least if you don't
want to pay. Nexon, the company behind Combat Arms, has made a
business out of making gratis online games and then charging a little
here and a little there for items (see its MapleStory or Kart Rider).
Oh, sure, plenty of other great free FPS games are around, like Return
to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, F.E.A.R. Combat, or America's
Army. But Combat Arms just happens to be in open beta right now. That
means you can get in early and learn all the maps before every other
gaming savant shows up on the scene to master it.
8bit Killer; click for full-size image.
Don't need the high-end graphics to have a good time? It may not look
like much, but 8bit Killer is an old-school throwback to the birth of
first-person shooters. Collect a variety of weapons across several
levels; open doors and shoot anything in your way. Now mind you,
nobody's confusing this blocky FPS with Crysis, but it's got enough
style where it counts. So go forth and shoot pixelly bad guys while
grooving to chiptunes.
303+ More Free Games
Only ten? Yes, there are easily hundreds of equally great games out
there if you know where to look (click this link for an amazing head
start). I mean, the above-mentioned titles are only the games I've
been playing this week. Also, I wanted to get you all warmed up for a
couple more hot summer games that didn't make our initial list--
namely, the pending free releases of Runescape HD and Battlefield
Heroes.
RuneScape has been around for ages. Its hook: you can play a free MMO
in a browser or pay $5 per month for the full experience. Starting
next Monday (July 14), the game gets a graphical overhaul with
RuneScape HD. Among the big-deal promises: full-screen gaming and
procedurally generated graphics that could fly on most modern
computers. That still isn't exactly high-end graphics, but it will at
least bring the game up to this millennium. Not too shabby for a
browser-based game.
Battlefield Heroes, on the other hand, launches a little later this
summer, and I, for one, can't wait. The game offers amazing cartoony
graphics and great team-play action--kind of like a cleaned-up version
of the original Battlefield. The difference is that the new version
requires no money to get in, but you can pay for some upgrades and
extras along the way.
Okay, I've got a plane to catch. Casual Friday will be taking a week
off--but not because of summer vacation. Stay tuned as Senior
Associate Editor Danny Allen and I brave the wilds of LA to bring you
the latest developments from the gaming world at E3, the Electronic
Entertainment Expo.
Senior Writer Darren Gladstone geeks out over gadgets, games, and odd
uses for humdrum tech. In other words, he's a nerd--and he's okay with
that.
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