Each Tuesday is game tuesday here at Ghacks and I list the most interesting games that I discovered throughout the week at my games blog Take9. I cover everything that I like which most likely means that it won’t attract a huge audience in the near future. So what you get is a good mixture [...]

I have created a new free games blog about a month ago – as you might know – and decided to post about the best articles of that website every Thursday here at Ghacks. If you want to check it out right now head over to Take 9 and make sure you subscribe to the [...]

Just a day ago we have reported that Electronic Arts had plans to publish some of their upcoming PC blockbuster titles with a new Securom copy protection that would validate the game every ten days online. Failure to validate the game in that time period would have the effect that the game would not start [...]

How would you feel about a game that needs an active Internet connection to verify the serial number ? How about a game that would have to do that every ten days after installation to make sure the serial number was genuine ? How about a game that would stop working after another ten days [...]

No more games I said. And still, this one is just to good to pass on. I already wrote about it on my new games blog Take9 but since it’s relatively new I thought it would be ok to post about this game here at Ghacks as well. Typeracer is a game that you play [...]

You heard me talk about a game blog that I wanted to create for several months and probably asked yourself if the blog would ever go live. I know that it has been a long time but I finally found some time to setup the game blog after purchasing a great domain name for the [...]

I really loved the 8-bit gaming systems. I was pretty much a Sega fan back then and only played some Nintendo games like Super Mario Brothers or Zelda on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I did however follow the news and games and know lots of old classic games that came out for that Nintendo video game system and I actually bought a few already on my Nintendo Wii using the Virtual Console.

Keyboard, Mouse and Gamepads: Those are the standard controls of today’s video gamers and I personally did not think that this would change anytime soon. Then came the presentation of the OCZ Actuator which changed my mind. It looks like a high tech headband but it’s actually more than that.

The high definition format war is almost over with Blu-Ray winning the field. Microsoft was supporting the HD DVD format by offering the HD DVD player add-on for their XBOX 360 gaming system. In an announcement made today they made clear that HD DVD will be pulled as add-ons for the XBOX 360 as well.

The release of my own gaming blog has been delayed for a few months and I decided to post some great games in the meantime here at Ghacks to keep you all entertained. There is actually one flash game called Protector that I’m playing for some time now. It’s one of those Tower Defense type games but with some basic RPG elements and more strategy involved.

Pcsx2 emulator as the best Playstation 2 emulator in existence and I have to say that it really does an awesome job as long as your computer is fast enough to handle the emulation. There are two prerequisites that are a big hurdle for many users. The first is that you do need a Playstation 2 bios file.

I have to admit that I like to play flash games from time to time and enjoy some tremendously. It happens that websites that offer flash games are not available at the time that you want to play the game which is why I would like to explain how you can easily save flash games on your hard drive to play them without an Internet connection.

I’m still puzzled as to why it took so long to add Divx and Xvid support to the Xbox 360 and wondered if Microsoft did not ask the users before they produced the Xbox 360 about the features that the users wanted to see. My old Xbox is playing all of those files without a problem and the main reason why I did not make the switch to the new Xbox 360 was, among other things, the non existent support for Xvid and Divx movies.

My four year old nephew likes to play jigsaw puzzles and I also began teaching him computer basics. He already knows how to move the mouse, click and drag objects and install Linux on a computer. (just kidding about the last one). He does very well and I thought it would be nice to play some jigsaw puzzles with him on the computer so that he would get used to mouse movement and ways of interacting with the screen and game.

If you do not want to get rid of the full game I’m showing you how you can at least get rid of the intro movies that may look great when you start Unreal Tournament 3 for the first time but become a nuisance soon after. The following hack is actually one that you can use to disable intro movies for many games.

I’m not really sure how Sony is planning on making money from that sale but I suppose they have a good reason for that. Walmart is apparently offering a Sony PS3 80 Gigabyte console system plus 10 Blue-Ray movies plus 5 mail in Blue-Ray movies for $499 as part of their Secret Sales holiday campaign.

I have seen many niches come and go in the last year and I’m not sure if Social Shots will survive the coming year. It is basically a community portal where everyone may post game screenshots. Those screenshots can be tagged, rated and commented on by registered users.

Covert Front is an ‘Escape the Room’ game with beautiful graphics and nice sound effects. The gameplay is similar to point and click adventures where you have to find items and objects and combine them with each other to proceed in the game. The setting of the game is the beginning 19th century using an alternate time-line.

Brian was nice enough to send me an invite for the gaming website The Casual Collective which takes a different stance than all those other arcade sites out there. The Casual Collective is run by game programmers who publish their games exclusively on the website which means that this is the only way that you can officially play the games.

I’m playing Team Fortress 2 for a while know and thought that it would be nice to share the knowledge and expertise that I gained while playing the Beta of Team Fortress 2 with players who just got the game recently.

Unlike most commercial developers the freeware scene is always good for a surprise. Tower of Goo Unlimited is such a pleasant surprise. It is a small game that does not have to be installed at all. The task is to build a tower of goo by connecting drops of go that stick to each other.

I recently came upon a series of video game reviews called Zero Punctuation over at the Escapist Magazine which could probably described as reviews in a hurry. Yahtzee Croshaw, the guy doing the reviews, was apparently born with the talent to talk pretty fast which he is doing in those reviews that usually last between three to five minutes.

I wrote about some real heavyweights the last Fridays which is why I would like to write about a pretty interesting flash game today. Treasure of the Cutlass Reef is a game that reminded me a little bit of the oldschool Pirates on the C-64 back in the time when wonderful games would fit on a disk that had storage capacities of less than one Megabyte.

I never played around with Google Earth for long and did not follow the news that closely. Maybe that is why I never heard about the flight simulator that is build into Google Earth. I read about it today in a computer magazine and thought it would be cool enough to post it along to all those other unknowing ones.

Weekend Fun time again. H2O, no not Water but Heaven to Ocean, is a nice plattform puzzle game putting the player in control of a rather large water drop who craves to get back to the Ocean. To achieve this goal the player needs to move the drop around the screen by tilting the screen to the left or the right.

Team Fortress 2 is an awesome game. If you are a gamer who loves sharp textures you might find the following console command for Team Fortress 2 useful. The command is mat_picmip -0.9 and has the effect that the textures in the game look much sharper than before.

If you ever wanted to be a guest in one of those famous tv shows such as Deal or no Deal, Who wants to be a Millionaire or Blockbusters. WeDigTV, the World’s first TV2 Network, lets you play these shows and a couple more blending show footage with interactivity.

Source Engine games are Half-life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike Source and others. Those games, or better part of those games, can get internally defragmented and can’t be optimized using a software that defragments Windows hard drives. It is a good idea to defragment those games regularly to speed them up.

Team Fortress 2 is a great game. I play the beta regularly with some of my friends. The German version of Team Fortress 2 puts players at a serious disadvantage though. There is no blood in the game which means that German players do not know if they hit an enemy or not because the blood has simply been removed without adding some other means proof that the enemy was hit.

Poizoned Mind is an entry to the B-Game Competition held at The Independent Gaming Source which, judging from the looks of it, seems to be one of the better games of the competition. It reminds me of those classic adventures like Guild of Thieves and The Pawn which were among the first to combine text with beautiful images to support the story of the adventure.

Synaesthete is one of those trendy arena shooters that bombard the player with a splendid mixture of color and sound while keeping the game mechanism as simply as possible. The task of the player is to destroy all enemies in an level to be able to cross the bridge to the next level.

I was really looking forward to play Team Fortress 2 once it came out on October 10th and decided to read a lot of news regarding that release to be up to date. My heart began to beat like hell when I realized that it was possible to make the purchase at an discount right away and be eligible to play the Team Fortress 2 beta right away.

For people who enjoyed Team Fortress Classic and maybe even still play it, there is a new multi-player modification out for Half Life 2 called Fortress Forever.

It has been a long time ago that I was addicted to a multiplayer shooter. The game back then was Unreal Tournament and I have yet to witness a game as addictive, as fun and exciting as the original UT 99. Team Fortress 2 could be that game judging from the trailers, class videos and gameplay movies that I have seen so far.

This episode of Weekend Fun at Ghacks is reviewing a straight 2D shooter called Arachnos that reminds me of those old Gradius titles that I loved to play back then on the SNES. You choose the type of weapon that your ship is equipped with and realize that this will be a hell of a ride after the first waves of enemy hit the screen.

Oh Sony, when will you learn that manipulating the public will not be taken lightly when it becomes public. This time, someone from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s studios in Liverpool was caught adding a sentence to the Halo 3 entry on Wikipedia. The person in question added the sentence ‘Although it won’t look any better than Halo 2′ to the game description which has been removed after discovery.

Do you love both episodes of the Max Payne game ? Did you also enjoy playing old Sierra classic adventures such as Gabriel Knight 2 and Phantasmagoria which can be best described as interactive movies ? You will enjoy playing Fate by Numbers if you answered both questions with yes.

Would you play ad supported games if they were free ? I think the main question that has be to answered before you can give me an answer is the way the ads are displayed. Are they only shown during startup or ingame as well ? This is unfortunately a question that I can’t answer right now but I can post links to some ad supported games by Ubisoft – full versions of course.

As part of the ongoing celebration of the 12th anniversary of the Command and Conquer series EA decided to make the game Command and Conquer Gold freely available to the community. Both iso images – one for GDI and one for NOD – that are available on the official website and numerous other download sites have a size of about 550 Megabyte and are fully compatible with Windows XP.

I remember when the Hero Quest boardgame came out. We, some friends and I, immediately grabbed a copy of the game and began to play it several weekends in a row creating our own adventures after a while.

Ghouls and Ghosts was the second game in the Ghosts and Goblins series by Capcom. The story was recycled from the first part of the series: You are the shiny knight Arthur who is on a quest to restore souls stolen by Lucifer including the soul of the princess Prin Prin who happens to be your bride.

Ok this is part two of the best trailers that have been released during Europe’s largest gaming expo called Games Convention. Last time it was the incredible Team Fortress 2 trailer next to Half-life 2, Kane and Lynch, Black Site and Prototype which surprisingly come out for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

The game for this weekend is called The Jeluvian Project which is a tactical top down shooter with nice visuals and a compelling storyline. The Jeluvian Project is a game that takes time to master and the excellent tutorial helps you understand game mechanics and prepares you for the real battles that lie ahead.

Games Convention taking place in Leipzig, Germany is probably the most important conventions worldwide for game developers and fans alike. It became even more important with the recent demise of the E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The Games Convention is clearly a consumer expo giving companies the choice to show of their latest works to a game hungry crowd.

Sauerbraten Summer Edition is an ego shooter that was created with the Open Source engine Cube 2. The game features single- and multiplayer game modes and looks incredible if you consider that this is an Open Source project and not a commercial one. The single player part of the game reminds me a little bit of games like Serious Sam and the original Quake games.

Have you asked yourself what you would do if you were in a situation like the castaway Robinson Crusoe, the famous protagonist of Daniel Dafoe’s novel ? What would be your first task, find water, food or shelter ? How would you fight of wild animals, make fire or create tools ?

Don’t worry about the game title. Punishment is definitely not a punishment because it is really a unique experience. One of those games that does not look good but makes it up with incredible gameplay. Another one of those games that prove that graphics mean crap if the gameplay rocks.

I love to play flashgames when I’m on breaks or have some time at hand. The best thing in my opinion is that they are most of the time short enough to entertain you for a few minutes and that they can even motivate non-gamers to give it a try.. or two.

A Tale of Two Kingdoms is a graphic adventure that reminds me a lot of old classic Sierra adventures such as Kings Quest or Leisure Suit Larry. The game has an astonishing size of roughly 100 Megabytes which is a highly unusual size for freeware games and was developed with the flexible Adventure Game Studio. [...]

I read several Fighting Fantasy books when I was younger and it was always pure excitement because it was possible to direct the story in a certain way. Let me explain the principle if you have never heard about Fighting Fantasy before. The books were about 400 pages in size telling a fantasy story that reminded of Dungeons and Dragons or Tolkien books.