I'd meant to post a game last week becasue there were a few days missed. In fact I though I had a brilliant FPS game for you called Operation Flashpoint, which was released about a decade ago. It was being given away free via Gamestop a few weeks ago, but that offer has ended. (I 'd read it was being made freeware somewhere. Anyway, no matter, it may very well be heading for the freeware community permanantely soon considering its age. It was the best free roaming FPS available until the Battlefield series was released, and is still a great game despite the dated graphics. The new version Dragon Rising that was released about 3 months ago is at the cutting edge of free roaming FPS games; and in my opinion is one of only a few games of its type that I really enjoy playing becasue of the realism.
Despite my initial disappointment a tlosing a great game for our project, thankfully EA came to the rescue. With the release of Command & Conquer 4 just around the corner, EA have decided to release a third Command & Conquer title to the Freeware community. Now you can get Command & Conquer: Tiberium Sun to add to the other free C&C titles (see the games synopsis for details. (I’ve still got a CD copy of this packaged together with another game called LED Wars):
Command & Conquer: Tiberium Sun:
You dream of global dominance, for good or for ill. You think of having an army at your fingertips, of tipping the balance of planetary control, of having really cool weapons and lots of firepower within your reach to preoccupy the minds of the Earth's population. Yet, such awesome force and power elude most of us. Some of us, sadly, live a lifetime without wreaking havoc on a neighboring country or leading guerilla raids against some socially backward principality. All I can say to the myriad armchair commandos out there is, "Thank the gods for Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun!"
Finally, the vision of Tiberian Sun has come to life, filling us all with the need to engage in formal armed conflict. Yet, even the best real-time strategy games can get frustrating (you can lose and lose big) if you don't know what to expect. Inside this ever-helpful guide, you'll find:
* Mission walk-through’s for the GDI and Nod campaigns
* Information on staying one step ahead of the tiberium-based economy
* Advice on base construction
* Available units for the GDI and Nod and their uses
* Tables explaining and describing in-game unit enhancement
* Multiplayer tips, tricks, and tactics
Refrence accessed 18th Feb 2010 HERE
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnJlb-Zorz8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVCQMuEYlrs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRd37D4xL7E
There is an online game manual that includes walkthroughs HERE. There’s also a downloadable PDF version, but you have to create a gamespot account to be able to download it.
Download
You can download the game HERE
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Here’s an oldie from 1994 called The Settlers developed by Blue Byte Software a German software house.
The Settlers: (1.7Mb)
The Settlers also known as Serf City: Life is Feudal is a game about settling land, and expanding through conquest. But the focus of the game is rather on the actual building your empire than conquest.
When the game starts you have to place your palace. This will be your first step towards settling the whole map. The palace will serve as a storage depot, but also as shelter for your subjects. There is also a limited supply of resources stored within its walls, just to get you started. The next step is to gather basic resources which are stone and wood. Also, a very important and basic resource is food. It is needed to feed your soldiers and miners. As a general rule, the more you grow the more types of resources you will need. But the game is more complex than just gathering resources. For example, there are options like the order of item distribution, which sets the order in which items will be transported. But raising your empire by cutting wood and gathering stone still seems pretty dull... However, as I have stated before, there is more to this game than that: expansion and conquest.
How do you expand? By building a military structure next to your borders! The closer to the actual border the building is the more land you will acquire after your soldiers inhabit it. As you expand you will have to battle your enemies. This is done with soldiers (duh!), which will be recruited as you build more military structures. They are recruited from the pool of peasants (or workers as they are called in this game). As more and more peasants get recruited, the stock of weapons from your castle diminishes. When it reaches zero, no more soldiers will be available. You will have to forge weapons at a blacksmith to be able to make more soldiers. In order to have a good army (quality wise), you will also have to feed them, and deliver gold coins to their garrison. By delivering gold, they train, and become better and more fearsome killing machines.
The graphics are very nice! The sound is nothing exceptional and there is an intro movie, which is very nice as well. An interesting feature, this game offers the “two mouse” mode. This is a kind of split-screen hot seat. Other game modes are: campaign, 1 player skirmish map, 2 players skirmish map, a tutorial, and a demo. You can play with up to 3 computer controlled players. Except for that, you can also set the map size, by choosing a figure in between 1-8. But beware because the bigger the map size, the bigger your RAM figure has to be. So, for example, to play an 8 size map, you would need 8 MB RAM minimum. However, I don't think this will present much of a problem today.
In closing, I would like to say that this game is a simply great, and that it fully deserves the 5 mark, although it has a hilarious fighting system (I'm not going into this because this is a review and not a walkthrough... if you want to witness it, you'll just have to download it and see for yourself)
Sidenote: The Settlers uses an isometric perspective for display. This means that the playfield is technically two-dimensional, but drawn in an isometric view so that the game looks three-dimensional. Other, more modern, games which also use isometric perspective include: Red Alert 2(2000), Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura(2001), and even Never Winter Nights(2002), as many more other games.
There's a manual available for download from the same download page.
Running the Game:
-in Windows you will not get sound. Best play this game in Dos mode, or in Dos Box;
-if you launch the game with "settlers" or "quickn", you will not be able to activate the SVGA mode. If you want to enable SVGA mode, you will have to launch the game using one of these executables: "settlern" or "quick"
Download:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/288/Settlers%2C+The.html
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