Favorite (Free) Video Games

Alex

A variation on the "favorite video games" thread.

A number of us here use Linux. I suspect even those who don't, and do play video games, would not be opposed to high-quality video games they can play for free. So what free video games are your favorites?

Oh, and by "free", I mean legally free. Pirated games and abandonware don't count, because that's the easy way out. I'm talking about games that are made to be released for free, or were once commercial but have since been given up to the public domain or some such.

A couple of my own:

Battle For Wesnoth (turn-based, fantasy-themed strategy game)
Crack-Attack (vaguely Tetris-like puzzle game)

thaneofcawdor

Babylon 5: I've Found Her - space sim with accurate physics, dangerous hyperspace travel, very true to the source material.

Facade - realistic social simulator.

Katsu

Battle for Wesnoth

Good old-fashioned turn-based hex map strategy game.

EsonLinji

Nethack

The shear depth of possibilities of things you can do is amazing. The fact that in over three years I haven't managed to win yet is in no way discouraging (I've almost done it twice).

Apreche

I really want to play nethack, and there really isn't anything stopping me. But I just can't be bothered to learn all the stuff. I usually go a few levels down and then end up with nowhere to go. I realize I could continue, but I don't know the commands to find the hidden exits and such.

Scooter

Scorched Earth was always a fav of mine. They have recently updated it. Here is a link.

http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/downloads.php

Another good one is ADOM. Its like nethack but different. I really got into it for a while.

Johannes Uglyfred II

I guess Gunbound would count, since it's free. Ignoring the hordes of creepy people and hackers who inhabit it, the actual gameplay itself is fun. Yes, it's basically the same as Scorched Earth, but I found Gunbound much less aggravating and boring than SE. >_> I think it's because the controls are a bit more polished, and it's got the cartoony graphics and music.

That being said, don't ever play it with random people, and don't ever pay real-life currency for in-game items. But I always enjoyed playing Gunbound against people I already knew.

Scott and Rym, I remember you guys playing it for awhile when you were still at RIT, but then apparently you stopped cold-turkey or something. What's the story with that?

Rym

The game was awesome, until it flooded with fanboys. By then, we'd mostly figured out how to play perfectly, and had other things to do =P

Apreche

Also, gunbound seemed to be whoever paid the most real money won as opposed to whoever had the most skill won.

Rym

There were places to play that did not allow items.

Johannes Uglyfred II

Yep. When you logged on you could pick a server/realm/whatever that had items disabled.

But I can perfectly understand the "we mastered it totally" point. It's a pretty simple game.

RadioElectric

Nethack is good, I like the icon version best. (The commands aren't _that_ hard Apreche, if you're REALLY forgetful you could probably print out the quick help file).

Soldat is great, but it's shareware, so it has one of those "register now" screens to pester you.

Battle For Wesnoth is AWESOME, I usually play it while I listen to GeekNights(TM?). The levelling characters are by far the best element.

AtheriShadow

Graal, and now it sucks.. it's pay to play.
It's how I picked up women. Err.. I mean, how I met Uglyfred and met my fiance, Teslyn.

Johannes Uglyfred II

Yeah, Graal was fun back in the day. It came from a project to make a "Zelda Online," but since there were obvious copyright issues with that, they changed it to Graal Online and it went from here.

Despite its crazy ass wtfnewb players and the insane politics concerning the GMs and the creator, I have to say it made my boring middle school years infinitely less boring. I met Atheri, and his now-fiance, and a number of other cool people whom I still communicate with, and working on one of Graal's player-run worlds got me into an amateur videogame project that's responsible for two of my primary hobbies: drawing and writing/roleplaying. Oh, and most importantly, it's where I learned 13375p34k. Omgz.

It's scary to think that one free, retarded game was so crucial in nuturing my geekery o.o

Kevin, I just WAIT for the day when Claire is old enough to ask, "Daddy, how did you meet mommy?" "Internet, honey. Internet." Pure hilarity/awesome waiting to happen.