So as we sit here on this early Halloween night, it is raining here. We like that. California desperately needs the rain, to be sure, but I have high hopes that an evening shower will pretty much kill trick-or-treating. We stopped handing out candy a couple of years ago, weary and annoyed with the four-hour parade of rude kids, teenagers with babies, and bused-in crowds from four neighborhoods over. So now we spend Halloween night doing what we do pretty much most nights: dinner, TV, maybe a movie, and video games until bed.
Rain it out, rain it out, WAY OUT!
So lately my video game rotation has been evolving. I’m about to go inactive on Eve Online – too little interest, too many griefers, and I’ve been mostly bored with it this year. And I’m tired of working the points up every month just to keep the account alive. So I’ve been playing other things – Civilization V as always, and my modded-to-shit Fallout build, but recently I’ve been digging back into fanmade games.
These are games (mods, usually) that have been developed by fans of major brand series, usually in an effort to keep a franchise alive longer than the company that originally made it. And there’s been some great stuff out there, completely free to download and play, written and maintained by the people who love to play them the most. The best part of them, in my opinion – and especially the MMOs – is that there’s no feeling of obligation tied to getting value for your money. You play when you want, stop playing when you want. Have fun when it’s fun.
Here are a few of the games that have caught my imagination and interest this year, highly recommended for anyone with more time than cash to kill.
FOnline 2. I stumbled on this one a couple of months ago. A few years ago, someone decided to code an online multiplayer version of Fallout 2, and the software base has been evolving ever since. The latest and most feature-rich version, FOnline 2, just entered its third season with a rich spread of new missions, items, quests and storylines in the post-nuke California valley. An all around awesome game for fans of old-school Fallout. (www.fonline2.com)
Multi Theft Auto. Another recent pleasure, an extensively reworked online multiplayer version of GTA: San Andreas. Also completely fanmade and free to play, requiring only a copy of San Andreas to use. I’d heard about this mod for years but only tried it out recently, and was completely amazed at how slick and well done it was. From time to time, you can find me running pilot missions on the CIT server. (www.mtasa.com)
FreeCiv. This is an old open source clone of Civilization II. I’m a huge Civ fan, but never bothered to try out FreeCiv until recently. Turns out it has one major advantage over its more developed cousins: you can play it on Android. So while we were watching the World Series and cringing at getting pounded by KC 10-0, I was building FreeCiv cities and armies on our Galaxy Tab 2 tablet. Now also available to play on the Web in HTML5! (play.freeciv.org)
PokerTH. Want to learn and/or play tournament Texas Holdem Poker online for free? No, really – just for the sake of friendly competition? PokerTH is an open source poker game platform for online tournament play, competing (assuming you care) for leaderboard positions. Free to download, free to play, no ads, nothing but cards and cutthroats. Lots of fun. (www.pokerth.net)
Black Mesa. For now, the only game on this list that isn’t multiplayer. This is the long-in-vaporware fan remake of Half Life, built on Valve’s Source engine and featuring completely modernized graphics and gameplay. Especially for a free download, it’s a great first-person shooter and loyal homage to one of the great all-time game classics. (www.blackmesasource.com)
Those are the ones that are keeping me busy on this rainy Halloween night. Hope you’re somewhere keeping yourself amused, either online or out in the Big Blue Room. Take care y’all, and please bring your pets inside tonight. Halloween is a really bad night for pets left outdoors.