One of the flaws of the Xbox 360 is the inablity to playback divx movies on it. Microsoft might have left it out intenionally to push their own wmv format or avoid that the Xbox 360 would be used as the universal media center like the orginal Xbox with the (unofficial) Xbox media center was able to do.

Wing Commander back in the 90s was a phenomenal successful game franchise and is still considered one of the best – if not the best – space simulation game that was ever created. It spawned lots of sequels and included cinematic story telling. The Wing Commander series was developed by Origin which was later bought by EA where the game series found an abrupt ending.

Ray-Hound is a freeware arcade game with great graphics and interesting gameplay. You move your spaceship with the mouse and activate a gravity field by left-clicking the mouse. The gravity field lasts for 1-2 seconds and becomes inactive for a short period afterwards. Other Spaceships fire rockets that destroy the energy shields of your spaceship, once the shields are down to zero your spaceship bursts and you see the game over screen.

Hacking flash game high scores is considered unethical, please consider this before trying out this great hack. It is also not working on every site that offers flash games, just try it out and if the new high score is not submitted you have come to a website with additional protection. You do need the firefox extension tamper data which can be downloaded and installed from the mozilla website.

I write an article every Friday about a new great game that could entertain you during your weekend. The game for this weekend is called Bloodmasters – a top down multiplayer old school arcade game that I enjoy playing regularly for a couple of days. All the known game modes like capture the flag and team deathmatch are available and add to the fast paced game experience. The maps are filled with weapons, armors, health packs and munition to fight the other players / team.

Fun Fun Fun ! That is exactly what Babe Violent 2 is all about. It is a free multiplayer top down shooter. Players are armed balls that carry one of six weapons and try to beat the opposite site in exciting game modes such as capture the flag, deathmatch and team deathmatch. It is currently possible to play on 13 different maps with 2 to 32 players that fight it out. Just add a name and connect to one of the servers that are available. Then choose a weapon like submachine gun or bazooka and enter the battle.

Colonization was one of those games that made Sid Meier, the creator of wonderful games such as Pirates and Civilization famous. Colonization was one of the best games that I ever played, it was highly addictive and had some resemblance to Civilization. You picked one of four nations and set out to colonize the new world. You had to deal with the Indians and the other powers and in the later stages with your own European motherland.

Fast Paced Multiplayer CTF action, that’s what Toblo is about. Two teams, the read and the blue team try to capture the flags of the other team and reach the own home base with it. The only weapon that exists in the game are the cubes that compose every structure in the game. Every player may pick up those cubes and either throw them at the enemy or destroy structures for better access to the enemy base. The flags themselves are located on top of structures at the beginning which have to be destroyed as well to reach them.

We all made our jokes when Nintendo’s new system Wii emerged about how the fat video gaming kids would lose weight while playing video games. Well, someone decided to give it a try and use see if a daily Wii workout would reduce his weight and body fat. He called it the Wii Sports Experiment and had some astonishing results.

I seldom come upon a great freeware game with stunning graphics, gameplayer and multiplayer action. Bang Howdy has all of that and much more featuring fast based turn based action with a twist. The excellent tutorial covers all basic game elements and describes the various game modes that are available when playing online. All players choose a number of units before the game starts who all have advantages and disadvantages against certain types of units for example.

Rumble Box is a great freeware beat em up game which uses characters made of cubes and balls. Controls are pretty easy to figure out. Use the arrow keys to move your character, double tab forward for a dash, press the spacebar to hit and use Control to grab. The enemies enter the level through doors that appear in the walls that limit the box that you are fighting in. Defeated enemies stay in the level dispelled in the objects that they were composed off.

I think I found a reference to the blob game in the donation coder blog. The task of the freeware game sounds simple. Collect colors and use them to colorize the city that you are in. You, the blob, roll around in the city and absorb the colors of non player characters that roam the streets. Colors get mixed if you absorb more than one of them and run out after a certain time of rolling around and coloring objects.

Sudoku is a addictive puzzle game which became popular in Europe just a few years ago. The goal is to fill the nine 3×3 grids with the numbers of 1 to 9 each and exclusively for the whole row and column. The concept itself is pretty simple but there are various difficulty levels that make it quite a challenge.

Code Red Alien Arena reminds me a lot of the first Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena games that came out. I think I was addicted to Unreal Tournament in 1999 playing in a high skilled CTF clan for more than a year. It was tremendous fun and we were all pretty disappointed when the successor brought shiny graphics and shitty gameplay to the community. Alien Arena has nice enough graphics for a freeware game but the most important aspect is of course the gameplay. What can I say, it is fun.

It seems that everyday a new tower defense kind of game appears on the internet and gets linked pretty quickly. I found areference to the game Curator Defense in the donation coders blog and can absolutely recommend it. You have to download the 50+ megabytes freeware game but the download is well worth it. Pieces of art invade the museum and you have to stop them to prevent them from replacing the master pieces in your museum.

This game for the weekend will keep you busy for a long time. Ahriman’s Prophecy is a 2D roleplaying game that reminds me a lot of the old Zelda 2D games. The looks of the game are nice and the developers did their best to create a believable world. You start as a young lady named Talia in the small village of Elden who is supposed to become a herbalist but finds out a little bit later that actually magic is her destination.

The objective in the highly additive freeware game Base Invaders is simple: Defend your central tower. Hordes of aliens, among them the feared drillers, ninjas and bombers try to overcome the obstacles that the player creates to lay siege to the central tower. Every structure in the game can be planted by the player, reminds me a bit of the famous Dungeon Keeper games by Bullfrog.

You know it must be Friday when I’m introducing a new game for the weekend. This time it is a strategy game called Battle for Wesnoth. Maybe some of you know the classic games Shining Force by Sega, Final Fantasy Tactics by Square and Fire Emblem by Nintendo. All are turn based strategy games – so is Battle for Wesnoth which can be downloaded for free for Windows, Mac and Linux.

I found some great (online) games today that I would like to pass on. The first is connected to Star Wars. I know you like Star Wars. I always thought why the Imperium was that stupid to construct the Death Star the way they did. A defense shield that was guarded by nothing at all, just some silly stormtroopers. A planet shattering canon and a tiny hole that made the whole thing vulnerable.

I know that this is the second online game of the weekend in a row but this is just to much fun, and that’s what games should be all about fun. iSketch is an online multiplayer game. One person sketches a word and the others have to guess what it is. The first one to guess right gets the most points and the others have 20 seconds to guess it as well before time runs up. If they guess it as well they are awarded lesser points than the first person.

I write about a new game that could make your weekend every Friday. This time it is a remake of a classic game: Zelda Ocarina of Time. The developer created a 2D version of this classic game which can be downloaded from his website. If you remember the original Zelda games on the like the legend of zelda for the nes or a link to the past for the snes you might be in for a suprise. The game looks and feels a lot like those classic Zelda games.

We all know and love those stickman animations that started to show up some years ago. There have been some incredibly works of art and I bet that many watchers thought that it would be really cool to play a stick man game instead of just watch the animation. Their prayers have been heard: This weeks game for the weekend is called Fight man and is a game like Double Dragon, only with stickman.

Sometimes it’s the small free games that are more fun to play than the large commercial games. Zombie City Tactics is such a game. It’s about 2 megabytes in size and beats many commercial games in the most important criteria of them all: gameplay. I’m not the only one who thinks that graphics are way overrated when judging games. Sure Gears of War is a nice game, but a really good one ? I don’t think so.

This is a great chance to win one of the much thought after beta keys for the upcoming world of warcraft add-on burning crusade. All that needs to be done is sit in an irc (internet relay chat) channel and be lucky to be randomly selected. They give out keys every 18 minutes for the next 5 days !

Ingame advertising will become more common in the next years. One of the first games that makes extensive use of ingame advertisement is EA Games Battlefield 2142. Once connected to the server it displays ads in the game that are displayed by a calculation of variables like your geolocation or time you did spend looking at an ad.

You are probably staring at the topic and wonder what Gftw means. I decided to create a new series of articles that appear every friday, the Game For The Weekend Series. I will write about a cool free game on every Friday because I think that is the best time to try something new. This week features the game Future Pinball which looks surprisingly good for a freeware game. The game can be run on every Windows system starting with Win98 and can only be downloaded using a torrent they offer on their website. Don’t worry, it is only about 15 megabytes.

The PS3 has arrived in North America. The crazy thing is, if you ask me, that you read and hear more about shootings, shortages and systems that are not working than from the number one thing that should leave everything behind: Games that are fun to play. Did anyone actually buy the Playstation 3 for himself or did they all want to make a fortune by selling the system on Ebay ? With fake biddings reaching a million and more dollars Ebay decided to pull the plug and allow only auctions where the seller was able to prove that he did own the system at that time.

Have you ever played Singstar on the Playstation 2 ? It is a Karaoke like game that is great fun if you play it with some friends. Ultrastar looks clearly like it was inspired by Singstar. The big advantage ? It is completely free and offers many texts for songs on various websites on the internet. You need to download the Ultrastar main program from Sourceforge at the beginning, it is only 500k which means it should be a fast download even for slow connections.

The Nintendo Wii will come out in the United States November 19th, 2006, in Japan on December 2nd, 2006 and in Europe on December 8th, 2006. The Nintendo Wii features a unique method of controlling the action on screen which could revolutionize the way games are played on video game systems. It concentrates on this aspect instead of pure horsepower like the ps3 and xbox 360.

I thought it would be a nice idea to take a quick look at all of the Playstation 3 launch titles. As you all know the PS3 was released yesterday in Japan and will be released in the United States on November 17th. Europe, Australia and the rest of Asia will have to wait another 4+ months before the PS3 makes its official debut. Please note that everything that follows is my impression of the launch titles, it does not necessarily mean that the games I do not like are bad, it simply means that I would never buy those games.

True Combat Elite is a total conversion of Enemy Territory. Both games are free which means you can just visit the developers website and download them to your computer and start playing the games. Versions for PC, MAC and Linux exist. The installation itself can be a bit tricky at first, let me guide you through that process later on in this article. True Combat is a modern warfare game similar to Counterstrike Source, you play either on the Terrorist or the Anti-Terror side.

I hate game intro movies with a passion. Some games force the user to view about half a dozen of intros without giving him the change to escape them because the normal keys that cancel the playback are disabled. If you are unlucky you have to watch the producers logo, the developments team logo, nvidia, another team that worked on the game (multiplayer part for instance), the normal intro, an EA logo..

Most computer users do know Counterstrike even though they probably never played it. You side either with the anti-terror unit or the terrorist and try to beat the other team by completing an objective or elimination all other players. Counterstrike 2D is a freeware conversion of this popular game. The interface looks and feels like the real thing, you may configure your keys and choose to play against bots or on the internet against human players.

Inspired by Gnome’s Oh no more hand-picked free games I decided to create the motherload of free games. A List that contains every single free game that is worth playing. I’am absolutely sure that my initial list will miss many games but it will grow over time – with your help. I know that you have an ace up your sleeve and will help me create the list.

Kornie send me a a link to a great webpage that hosts hundreds of NES games that are playable in your browser. All you need is a java plugin and you are ready to go. They currently host 250 English games, 80 Japanese games, 10 prototype games, 25 unlicensed and 25 miscellaneous games.

I started my gaming “career” on an Atari 2600 system with stunning games like River Raid and Pitfall, bought a C-64 later, then an Amiga and finally a PC. If your history looks similar you’ve come across many unforgetable moments and games – that is why I’am going to post this retro game article. Every game mentioned is free to download and play. I know that a top 10 is probably not enough because there are many great remakes out there but I had to limit my post somehow, therefor, it is only a top 10.

You might know the Swedish game producer Remedy who created the blockbusters Max Payne and Max Payne 2. Remedy are working on a different game for the last 18 months called Alan Wake which features a highly dynamic world and lots of interactivity. The story takes place in the idyllic town of Bright Falls and the player takes command of the best selling author Alan Wake who escapes to this small town to recover from the mysterious disappearance of his fiancée. In Bright Falls Wake comes face to face with his darkest nightmares.

Nintendo already held two of the three press conferences about the upcoming Wii launch in Japan, America and Europe. The press conferences in Japan and the United States revealed many information that should also be valid for the European launch, that is, if it is not delayed like the launch of the Playstation 3. The Nintendo Wii will launch on November 19. in the United States and sell for 250$ including a wireless Wiimote, a Nunchuck, and the game Wii Sports which includes tennis, baseball, golf, boxing and bowling.

It all began with Asteroids, navigating a small spaceship through space, avoiding and destryoing asteroids that flew by on its way. A game of passion using a minimalistic design to create maximum pleasure for the gamer. Geometry Wars, a highly successful game for the xbox 360, is an Asteroid clone. You have a spaceship, you can move it on the screen, you don’t have asteroids but geometrical figures that you have to shoot. It’s faster, more colorful and meaner than Asteroids.

I suppose you already heard the news that Sonys new Ubermachine Playstation 3 will not have a worldwide launch because of production problems. Sony once again decided to smack every European who wanted to buy the system right into the face without caring much that Europe is indeed one of the biggest markets for Sony with more than 38 million Playstation 2 systems sold compared to 42 million in the United States and 23 million in Japan.

I do stumble upon great fanmade games from time to time and write down a note about those games to remember it and write an article like this one you are currently reading. I discovered three nice freeware games that are worth taking a closer look, their names are: Turrican 4 Funeral, Wings of Fury and Warzone 2100 Resurrection.

Fear Combat is the multiplayer part of the game Fear which is an egoshooter game with horror elements. Fear which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon was developed my Monolith who created great games like No one lives forever and Condemned. The game recieved numerous awards including Best First Person Shooter from IGN, Best Action Game from PC Gamer and Top 10 PC Game of the Year from Pc Informer.

What is your favorite activity on sundays ? Right, playing some nice free computer games. I thought it would be a nice idea to give an rough overview of some of the greatest free computer games (freeware or open source) that I did not mention on ghacks before. If you know more games like those let me know, I´am always looking for free entertaining games.

Back in the days before DOOM became the pop phenomenon it still is, the adventure game genre reined supreme. Adventures were cutting edge, they were. Names like Kinq’s Quest, Larry Laffer, Zak McKraken or Maniac Mansion were common household items and easily quite a bit more popular than your average garden gnome.

I love playing boardgames with friends, it´s always funny and exciting and I enjoy those evenings very much. It is unfortunatly happening that I would like to play boardgames when none of my friends are available. I could play by myself but this is rather boring. One alternative would be to look for online versions of those games and play against computers or other human players over the internet.

I´am not sure if most of you will like this article or not. My second computer was an Amiga 500 which I used almost 100% for gaming. I loved many of the games that came out for that incredible machine and still yearn for some of them. I always wanted to play those games again but did not want to buy an Amiga because of several reasons. I don´t want to get into to much detail but it´s mainly a storage problem and a problem of availabilty. Sure, you can buy some cheap amigas on ebay and probably buy some games there as well, but most of the games are hard to come by this days.

I love remakes, especially when they are fan made and not a companys effort to make easy money with a well known franchise. I never played the original Kings Quest series (was more into Leisure Suit Larry at that time) but enjoyed the remakes that have been released so far. If you did not know, there are also remakes of Kings Quest 1 and Kings Quest 2 availabe at the website of ADG Interactive. (free of course)

Plasma Pong is a variation of the classic pong game, pong with a twist so to say. You still move your pad to hit the ball back to the opponent and additonally create plasma streams from your pad to influence the way of the ball even more. The opponent of course uses the same mechanics to counter your streams. It´s a freeware game with nice graphics, features an multiplayer mode as well.

Yesterday we witnessed the release of Nexuiz, an incredible freeware online shooter. Today it´s a free survival game that looks and plays a lot like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Penumbra sets you on a quest to find out more about your father who bequeathed you a mysterious book. Graphics and gameplay is great for a freeware game, make sure you grab your copy from the developers homepage.

Nexuiz is a free online shooter developed by Alientrap. A new version of the shooter has been released today and is available as a download (around 200 megabytes) from the developers homepage. The game Nexuiz is a classic Deathmatch Shooter like Quake 2 and Unreal Tournament. Chose to play different maps, select different weapons to frag your opponents. Graphics are great for a free game.