101 Free PC Games

"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 .

Comments

just need 1 free game

[indy_Muad'Dib]

tremulous > all

Re:Ouch...

[AKAImBatman]

Works fine for me. If you really can't get to it, try the Coral Cache mirror:

http://www.1up.com.nyud.net:8090/do/feature?cId=31 56339

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 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

[the linux geek]

There are some important free games that they neglected to mention.

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.

Re:Some they left out

[AKAImBatman]

Nexuiz - 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.

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/
And the Engine: http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/

Tremulous!!

[tupletuple]

Easily the best free (oss) game in existence is Tremulous! http://www.tremulous.net/ Check the demo if you don't believe me http://mods.moddb.com/3449/tremulous/ Windows and Linux clients, as well as an independent Mac client, 100+ servers, all free. And the wallwalking ROX!

Re:Wolfenstein Enemy Territory

[Sidn]

...and a very nice tactical fps full conversion: http://www.truecombatelite.net/

Dink Smallwood

[Hercynium]

I just want to put in my vote for Dink Smallwood. It's like King's Quest or Legend of Zelda, on drugs.

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

[Poutsi]

I RTFA and it was complete bull. If they approve game demos and mods to their list why they didn't list any good games? :p

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, Kal-Online or RuneScape.

Check these Wikipedia lists for more great free games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_ga mes_released_as_freeware
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_first-pe rson_shooters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_g ames

I'd say any of these is better than all the games mentioned in the article. :p

Liberated Games

[owlman17]

Liberated games has an extensive list of free, not to mention, legal games for download. There are the classics, old games and not so old games. Not abandonware, they've gone to great lengths to make sure there aren't any on the site.