Free games thread

A game I have been beta testing for quite some time:

World of Tanks

www.worldoftanks.eu is in 'open beta'.

This will be a free-to-play game when beta has passed.

Its an excellent, sort of MMO, sort of FPS where you progress through various tank 'trees' of different nations.

Currently you can fight as US, German or Russian, in Tank Destroyers, Self Propelled Guns & Heavy/Medium/light tanks.

There are a HUGE amount of tanks in this, and a massive amount of detail in the game, from developing your tank crews to tank upgrades and purchases etc.

We already have a thread about it:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055900024

Please try it! The grind to get to different tanks can be long the further you get, but it is a fun game.

Team Fortress 2 was made free last month.

http://www.tf2.com/freetoplay/

Easily one of the greatest and most fun FPS' of all time

Who likes getting games for free (and legally)? Let's share some good free games, no matter how large or small, new or old, or whether they were originally free or only became free later. The point is let's all enjoy some games without paying any money.

First up there's a programme called Tiggit that wants to be the Steam of free games. It's a very simple open-source programme for installing free games (and some demos) without having to trawl through the internet for them. Currently has 349 games including Bungie's (of Halo fame) Marathon, Ben Croshaw's (of Zero Punctuation fame) point 'n' games, Cave Story, Knytt and other well known and not so well known free games.


I haven't played it in ages but assuming they haven't changed it much TrackMania Nations Forever is a really fun online racer. What's great is the custom track support. There are so many user-made tracks you'll never be finished playing for them and there is a massive variety in there. It's not a typical racing game. One crash will not make you lose the entire race. You are competing for the best time and can reset back to the start as many times as you want to keep trying to push your way up the rankings before the round ends. Sometimes just being able to figure out how to finish a track is hard enough.


Psi-Ops was a decent shooters that has been released as ad-supported freeware. If you can't stand the idea of ads in your loading screens you can steer clear but otherwise it's a commercial-grade shooter you can now get free.
Edit: I had Far Cry here but the promotion is actually closed. Sorry about that.


Some real classics here: the original Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert and Tiberian Sun have all been released for free by EA. To make the games as good as possible I'd recommend also installing Nyergud's patches. Command & Conquer v1.06 and Red Alert v3.03 are not official patches but they represent years of fan effort to bring the games up to spec. On the same site you can also find mods to enable windowed mode and online play for these old games, but you probably should mess with those unless you know what you're doing.


Similarly you can download GTA 1 and 2 straight off of Rockstar's website. Anyone else remember playing these and swapping out the GTA disc with a CD to get whatever tunes you wanted to play over the car radio in the game?



One last thing. I made this for some friends but I don't expect the traffic from here to overload my Dropbox. It's a little pack of free horror games. The first three are 3D, small, to varying degrees randomly generated and already fairly well known. Slender, SCP - Containment Breach and SCP-087-B.

Containment Breach has you trying to escape an underground facility where powerful creatures/artefacts are stored and of course everything is trying to kill you. If there are any Doctor Who fans here the main creature you're trying to avoid is basically a Weeping Angel; it only moves when you're not looking at it or when you blink (the game has a blink meter) and moves incredibly fast as soon as you look away so you have to keep looking at it while trying to reach the nearest door to get it between yourself and the creature.

Slender is similar but in some ways the opposite. You are dumped in a forest and trying to avoid the Slenderman who also doesn't move when you are looking at him but you must avoid looking at him because if you stare at him too long you die.

SCP-087-B deals with a particular creature and lots of stairs.

The other two games in the pack were made by Japanese devs using RPG Maker. They're both 2D horror adventure games and much more story-based than the 3D ones and feature actual characters and dialogue and such. Ib is especially good though it's the least scary game in this pack. It's about a girl who goes to an art gallery with her parents and then things go a bit Silent Hill.

The other one is called Ao Oni (roughly that means blue troll). It's about a group of students who go to explore an abandoned mansion and get chased by a large violet-coloured monster.

Download link for the pack.

From the Far Cry link:

You will need an Ubi.com account and you must live in the U.S. to play the game


Update:
The promotion is now closed and it is no longer possible to play the game for free. If you are interested in further information on this title, visit the Ubi official website at http://www.ubi.com/

I should have read that before I downloaded it

Also, Warzone 2100 was open-sourced a while back.

List of free games available on steam:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=851573

Planetside 2 will be completely free on release, it's gotta be the biggest AAA title to be free. you'll hear all about this stunning game when the NDA lifts, 64 player BF3 maps just won't do after you taste this game

I wish there was a Mac version of this.

It would also be... easier... to maintain.

ChampionShip Manager 00/01 is free now from the makers.

There is a pretty big community behind it who keep the game updated to the most recent transfer market and include up to date player packs and icons aswell.

Unfortunately its a bitch to get running on Windows 7, while I have it going ok on my laptop, have abandoned all hope on my main PC.

Considered one of the best football management sim games ever made