101 Free PC Games 79
"Computer Gaming World" may now be "Games for Windows: The Official Magazine", but they haven't forgotten the little guys. Straight from the new issue, 1up is hosting an impressive list of 101 freebie PC games. Every genre and topic you can think of is covered by the exhaustive exploration of 'free'. From the article: "We've tracked down another 101 absolutely, positively, no-strings-attached free games that are actually worth playing, grouped them into handy categories, and put most of 'em up on FileFront.com. There's something here for everyone, from RPGs to real-time strategy to Asteroids Flash games, though we have to confess up front: There are actually more than 101 free games here. So no complaining that you're not getting your money's worth." My favorites include Ninja Loves Pirate , Tripline , Iris (HL2 Mod), Super Mario: Blue Twilight DX , and Star Control II .
just need 1 free game (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Ouch... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.1up.com.nyud.net:8090/do/feature?cId=3
I wouldn't worry too much, though. It's just another "look at all the free games!" list with very little time spent on trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of the "games" are expansion packs, some are flash games, some are OSS games that everyone knows about, some are clear copyright violations, some are just plain weird, and some are repeated more than once.
The worst part of it all is that they missed a huge number of great games. For example, Privateer Remake is not on the list, but a Babylon 5 expansion pack is? Go figure.
If you're looking for a smaller list of free game recommendations, try my Top 10 OSS Games You've Never Played [intelligentblogger.com] article. I have personally played all of them, and enjoyed them to a varying degree. Not everyone has the same tastes as I do, but it might be an interesting list for you to check out in addition to this article.
Some they left out (Score:3, Informative)
Nexuiz, for instance. High quality open-source deathmatch game running on the Darkplaces engine, which is arguably superior to quite a bit of the stuff currently on the market. (Read: Source.) There's also Warsow and Alien Arena, both with similar premises to Nexuiz. These all have excellent graphics, and make up in fun what they lack in imagination in terms of gameplay.
Tremulous!! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Some they left out (Score:4, Informative)
Nexuiz is just incredible. It looks every bit as good as Quake 3 (perhaps better), but is based on the original Quake engine. Talk about parallel development!
Here's the game: http://www.nexuiz.com/ [nexuiz.com]
And the Engine: http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/ [icculus.org]
Re:Wolfenstein Enemy Territory (Score:2, Informative)
Dink Smallwood (Score:5, Informative)
Last year, after years of collecting dust, the publisher released an update with some nice new features and bug-fixes. And (I just looked) it's now open-sourced.
There's a *huge* collection of mods, add-ons, extra levels, etc available for free and the people making them are just as twisted as the original author. Many of the mods I tried were really, really fun. Some were incredible in what they added to the original game.
Crappy article (Score:3, Informative)
There's lots of really good games available for free. For example old commercial games that have been released as freeware (I'm a diehard abandonware fan). Just to mention few: Betrayal at Krondor, Beneath a Steel Sky, Descent: FreeSpace, FreeSpace 2, Hidden & Dangerous, One Must Fall: 2097, Railroad Tycoon Deluxe. Then there's open source games like America's Army.
There's also free multiplayer games: Freeciv, Allegiance, Starsiege: Tribes and even MMORPGs like Anarchy Online [anarchy-online.com], Kal-Online [kalonline.com] or RuneScape [runescape.com].
Check these Wikipedia lists for more great free games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_first-p
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_
I'd say any of these is better than all the games mentioned in the article.
Liberated Games (Score:4, Informative)