My Favorite Freeware: April 2010

I hope you’re nothing like me. I have no money to spend on PC gaming and over 100 unplayed games. Yeah—it’s bad. Or… is it good? Maybe it means I can abandon the newest releases for the next five years and hunker down to play them all.

…Nah. Bring on Deus Ex 3! There is a time for free games, and that time is always! Here’s a list of fabulous games for all you cheap-o’s.

No, not the 1984 classic that kick-started the graphical adventure game tirade of the subsequent decades—this is a fan-made remake. “But wait, Keenan!” you may exclaim, “I haven’t played the original game! I can’t play the remake first!” To which I’d reply, “Who cares?” This remake turns King’s Quest relevant again. In an era of the metamorphosis for the adventure game genre, a re-do of a classic game is wholly appropriate; especially when the game’s assets are formed with a craftsman’s delicate fingers. There’s professional voice acting, beautiful artistic rendering, and a brand new score. In general, I’m not too fond of remakes, but AGD Interactive’s King’s Quest I is one I heartily approve. If you’re new to King’s Quest, go ahead and try it out!

Let’s continue the remake spree, shall we? While not technically a “remake” of a game, Digital: A Love Story reconfigures the classic Amiga platform and tells a story along the way. The game isn’t a game in the traditional understanding—it’s primarily an adventure of reading. Using the old skin of the ’80s computer, Digital tells a story of “mystery/romance set five minutes into the future of 1988.” There’s no real obviously laid goals in the game; you’ll mainly read messages and enter in phone numbers to dial places. Regardless, Digital’s presentation is superb and will most likely keep you enthralled from your first sit-down and until you finish it.

Crime Fighter is one of my favorite games of all time. I first played the game back in 1996 on my Windows 95 computer, and it was the first game where I’d consider myself  “addicted.” At that point, I hadn’t played a “just-one-more-turn” style PC game before—after all, I was just eight years old. In complete honesty, it’s hard to classify what sort of game Crime Fighter is; it feels very much like a board game and implements turn-based elements into the gameplay. Starting with a series of petty crimes such as holding up convenience stores and banks, you play as a criminal looking to forge a path to becoming top dog in the underworld. Along the way, you level up skills in intelligence, power, and recruit other people to help you in your dirty work. The game is designed with more than one player in mind, so to achieve maximum fun-ness, play with a buddy. This version is a recent re-doing of the original DOS game into DirectX graphics and modern controls. I must warn you: this game is very addicting. Imagine Civilization’s up-until-3AM propensity combined with that of Grand Theft Auto’s motif. This game has a nicotine that’s so chronic you’ll never want to stop. See you in three weeks!