This was making the rounds a couple of weeks ago, back when I was so busy with the move to MA, the new job and so on, that I had no time to post it, but check out the flash-based Murloc RPG. Great graphics and decent old school side scrolling rpg gameplay. Free, easy to get into. If you’ve played WoW you know just how damned annoying the Murlocs are – now you can play as one.

Looking for something offbeat and maybe free to play? Check out the jayisgames.com weblog now and then, or add his feed to your aggregator. There’s a pretty steady stream of content and some excellent reviews of small, offbeat games to be found.

I’ve posted now and then about how other countries, asian countries especially, are completely kicking our butts when it comes to bandwidth. There are lots of side effects of this and one of them is the sheer number of online multiplayer games asian developers are producing – there’s already a whole generation of citizens, male and female, that are acclimated to playing games online with folks, and the game producers are developing all kinds of things to appeal to them. Some of them are getting translated to english as these asian developers try and crack the US market.

Here’s an example of on. I happened across a fun, free action rpg for pc set in wwII on the eastern front. Check out Blitz 1941. It’s a relatively small download at around 150 megs, signup takes only a minute, and the hardware requirements are very modest. The primary gameplay is basically capture and hold in european cities as you work with your teamates to capture them. If you sign up drop me a message so we can group – I’m a level 3 tank commander specializing in repair so far.

Advance Wars is a little strategy game available for the Nintendo GBA and the Nintendo DS. If you played Strategic Conquest back in the day, you’ll have the general idea, though Nintendo has expanded greatly on the concept and added a lot of character to it. The basic premise is you control units with a set of characteristics – how far they can move, how far they can shoot, the kinds of shots they can make (vs air units and ground units, for example) and a how much damage they can take. You use your units to take control of cities and manufacturing centers on maps, which provide income and the means to produce more units. There’s now a free version which is basically a clone of the Nintendo games available online via Advanced Wars By Web which allows web-based online play against other players. Well worth a look if the game style appeals to you. As usual I’ll offer to beat any comers – just issue the challenge and I’m in.

Enjoy.

Wiz-War is this relatively simple to play fantasy-themed boardgame where each player has a token representing their wizard and one representing their treasure. Players hold a hand of cards which they draw from a deck, and the cards enable movement and the casting of all manner of spells. The goal is to either steal the other players’ treasures or kill off the other players. It’s something of a cult classic, in part because of the whimsical and humorous cards and in part because it’s very hard to obtain a copy and the game’s been out of print for a long time. As it happens I own a copy, but if you’d like your own, all you need is a color printer and the materials found on Jeff’s custom wiz-war site.

Yeah, so it’s technically not friday yet, but I’m so consumed with work during the day these days that either I post it now or it doesn’t get posted. Check out the free download of the commercial game S.W.I.N.E. over on gamershell.com. It’s a somewhat cartoony real time strategy game with decent graphics, a pretty good physics system, and solid if unremarkable gameplay. I liked it a bit better than the 70% it’s got over on gamerankings. But even at 70%, it’s free, what have you got to lose. Plus it’s got network play, not that any of you losers ever dare to challenge me.

😉

(pc only, sorry mac and linux folk)

Fileplanet has teamed up with Sony Online Entertainment to give away free copies of Everquest II with a month’s subscription. If you’ve never tried a massively multiplayer online game, here’s a golden opportunity for you. Check out the details over on Fileplanet.

I played Everquest II shortly after it launched and kept my account active for about 4-5 months. It’s not a bad game. Its main issues were a lack of solo content (they’ve since addressed this), a somewhat silly combat mechanic (when you click on an opponent, you see all monsters that are grouped with it that will also attack if you attack the selected opponent. I’m all for trying something new, I just don’t think this new way of handling things is any good), and the fact that they launched at roughly the same time as World of Warcraft, which has become the 800 lb gorilla in the mmorpg market (5 million subscribers and climbing).

Everquest II does have a lot of things in its favor. While it doesn’t have same integrity of style that WoW does it’s still a beautiful game if you have a rig powerful enough to turn on all the effects. It’s got a huge, diverse world to explore. It has 6+ years worth of the original everquest’s content development to build on so there’s a rich, complex back story to it all. There’s also a lot of voice acting in the game and it’s really pretty well done. I’m always surprised by how much that adds to a game, too.

The upshot of all this is, this is definitely worth taking advantage of while the offer stands.

I’ve mentioned this once or twice over the past year – the makers of the superb Red Orchestra mod for Unreal Tournament 2k4 won the ‘Make something Unreal’ contest and won a license for the Unreal Tournament engine. The product that came out of that, Red Orchestra, Ostfront 41-45, is just about to launch. The preload on Steam has started as of today, meaning you can sign in, buy it, and have it waiting on your hard drive when they launch the game, which is something I’ve done. If you do it now you get 10% off, the game is only $24.95. There’s also a gameplay movie on the site I’ve linked to if you’re potentially interested. I can offer that this and Forgotten Hope have been my two favorite mods of the last several years, and I have really high hopes for this game. It’s much more of a simulator than a run n gun action game, so keep that in mind if you’re considering it. I’ll post again if they offer up a demo or barring that once I’ve played some and have a sense of how the game is.

There have been clones of Simcity available for quite some time. Lincity distinguishes itself with a decent isometric tile set as compared to the other clones which use a rather spartan top-down tileset. There are binaries available for Windows and packages for a variety of linux distros on the download section of their site. Unfortunately to install on OSX you’re going to have to use Portage. It’s easy enough to install though if you’re not already running it I’m not sure Lincity is the package that will convince you to get it up and running.

Anyway if you’re a fan of the original first generation simcity, Lincity is an aesthetically competent clone and well worth checking out.

[via Digg]

The original Day of Defeat, built on the halflife engine, was a really good team-based fps mod back in the day. Tons of folks still play it today in fact. Valve released a sequel built on the halflife 2 engine, and this weekend they’re offering free access to it. Check out their site for the details. It’s worth trying if you’re a fan of wwII fps. Personally I think it’s completely overshadowed by the superb Red Orchestra, which is also getting a retail sequel, even though Day of Defeat has much better graphics. Still, they feature different play styles, Red Orchestra focusing on tactics and teamwork whereas Day of Defeat is much more of a run and gun action game, so they both have their place on my hard drive and this is worth a look if you haven’t already purchased it. You can start the download today so that it’s ready to run by the time friday evening rolls around.

One word of caution. This probably requires one to register for a steam account, and some folks really hate steam. I think it’s the future of software distribution so there’s no sense in gnashing one’s teeth over it, but whatever, follow your own instincts there.