First of all the best wishes for 2009. I hope you’ve still got your fingers after the fireworks, you’ll need them for this month’s time wasters. Let’s start off…
The Time Wasters of January 2009:
Gears of War 2(Paid game for the Xbox 360)
Someone seemed to be begging for this one last month… and I must admit that it’s a good game. Well, at least for the time wasters. The gameplay is a lot better than in the first Gears of War, but it still is pretty infested with bugs, and Epic does not seem to care. If you don’t mind very long matchmaking times and a laggy online gameplay, you should buy it. If you don’t like those, you can always buy this game for the immense amount of blood, horde mode and the campaign mode.
Website: http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/
TinyWarz (Browser Based MMORTS)
This is one of the rare real MMORTS’s. It’s sort of turn-based and you need to make your decisions fast. The fun starts after you’ve deployed on a planet, you can take your pre-fabricated base with you and you need to search for ore and enemies. In this way you can lvl your units and get more ore to buy new units. It’s fun to play, but it costs a lot of time and you are pretty weak as a free playing user.
Website: http://www.tinywarz.com
Stick Avalanche (Flash Game)
The concept of the game is pretty simple, but to actually do it is hell: avoid the falling triangles and keep your stickman alive. It’s quite addicting because it’s so incredibly hard, you can really enjoy it for a long time… if you’ve got the time and if you are incredibly bored.
Website: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/avalanche.php
GTA 2 (Free to Play Sandbox Action Game)
It’s been quite a while sinds Rockstar released some of their games as a free download, but old games stay old and, in this case, stay playable. The game is 2D and it consists of the normal GTA gameplay. You get some missions, you complete them for money, and you get the next mission. Unlike the modern 3D GTA’s it’s a really hard game. You’re pretty good if you survive the first level.
Website & Download: http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/
Widelands (Open Source RTS)
As it states on the project’s website, this is a Settlers clone, but nevertheless fun to play. There ‘s a campaign mode, there are a lot of maps and you can even play against other people if someone sets up a server. The gameplay is pretty simple, although I miss some buttons to build houses etc. You can now only build houses and roads if you press at the right tile. It takes some getting used to, but after that it’s enjoyable.
Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/widelands/ Available for every OS.