101 free game

The best games that money can't buy.
Originally published in Games for Windows #03, February 2007
by GFW Staff
12.19.2006

It's not hard to find free games on the Internet -- but it's damn near impossible to sift through the terabytes of crap to find good ones. That's where the editors of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine come in: 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.


Bloodmasters



Harmotion



Ray-Hound





Bloodmasters
You can't actually master it, but you can sure spill a lot of it in this top-down multiplayer shooter with deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture-the-flag modes.

Gunroar
This game reminds us of an über-stylish, vector-graphics version of Raid Over Bungeling Bay -- except you're controlling a boat. (Extra nerd points if you actually know the game we're referring to.)

Harmotion
This musical, cooperative multiplayer space shooter pits you and a friend against mankind's greatest foe: evil polygonal shapes. Harmotion is groovy digital proof that we can all get along&as long as we have someone else to slay together.

Mu-cade
OK, hotshot. You're trapped in a box with a bunch of freaky geometric shapes. What do you do? What do you do? Don't ask; just shoot.

Nanozoa
It's not very long by most shooter standards, but it's got a unique style that makes it worth the fantastic voyage. You're piloting a nanobot, fighting human infections, watching everything unfurl as if through real medical equipment. Go on, call a doctor and see what he thinks.

Ray-Hound
When is a shooter not a shooter? When you don't ever actually pull the trigger. In Ray-Hound, you control a spacecraft with a funky gravitational field. Activate the field in short bursts to redirect enemy fire back at them.

Titanion
Think Galaga. You stick around the bottom of the play area while lots of stuff swoops down to screw with you. Now shoot.

Disaffected



Airport Security





Disaffected
FedEx Kinko's may not seem like a hotbed of activity, but it's secretly run by a cabal of elitist grad students and goofy slackers who sneer and screw up print orders. This spot-on satire makes you one of the disaffected troops trying to do your job -- or just slacking off and screwing up orders.

I'm OK (ADULTS ONLY!)
Antigame advocate Jack Thompson said he would donate $10,000 to charity if anybody would design and release a videogame based on his crackpot ideas -- and lo and behold, someone did just that (though Thompson reneged on his charity offer). Thompson's design spec, from a press release: "Osaki Kim hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets 'justice' by taking out this female CEO along with her husband and kids. 'An eye for an eye,' says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims."

Airport Security: The Game
Here's a Flash game that mocks the absurdity of airport security by putting you in charge of checking and removing weapons of mass destruction -- you know, like pants.


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