side-scroller posts

Each week we find more and more free games that do not quite fit into the freeware mold. Games that do not require a subscription fee to play, but encourage player usage of money through microtransactions or special subscription services. This is Playing For Free, a column that showcases these games.

It's interesting to note that sometimes the knock-off can exceed the original, or change things up in ways that make the knock-off more compelling than the original. Runes of Magic did this with World Of Warcraft through a bunch of intriguing changes to the gameplay, but it's not just restricted to knock-offs of mainstream commercial games. La Tale is very similar to Nexon's incredibly popular and enduring Maple Story, but it iadds many great changes to the simple side-scrolling formula. Sure, it has an uncanny resemblance to its inspiration, but it manages to be a great game on its own and hold up to Maple Story when compared side-by-side.

In this case, the headline says it all. Dan Tabar's phenomenal arcade-strategy-shooter-physics game Cortex Command, which was talked about in the 15 Indie Games for the Holidays feature, has been knocked down in price from $18 to $9 from November 28th through the 30th in celebration of Thanksgiving (and Black Friday). Buying the game in beta phase right now will net you all the features as well as all future features and the full campaign once it is released.

If you don't know what Cortex Command is, well, it's hard to explain in entirety. It's about remote-controlling body to shoot at each other and dig tunnels through the landscape in a real-time environment, but it's also about explosions, finding treasure, and skillful platforming and shooting, among other things. The demo is freely available through the Data Realms website, and is best played with a gamepad like the Xbox 360 controller.

We do love a good side-scrolling game. intrusion, a new release on Kongregate, satisfies our lust for side-scrolling ragdoll mayhem. Taking control of an operative with a rather long headband, you must inflitrate each base in 5 expansive levels and pretty much annihilate everything on your way. The ragdoll physics, combined with the scoring system, makes for an incredibly entertaining experience. If we had to gripe at all, it would be that the environments feel sort of barren. There's not much going on in the background behind the characters. The sounds are also recycled from other games. Overall, though, it's a great pick for any action fan.

Now that the TOJam 2008 entries are available, we've decided to showcase some of our personal favorite entries in the competition. One of them, Seas of Cheese, intrigued us with its premise like none of the other TOJam games. While it is a simple side-scroller, it has more to it than meets the eye. The reason? The game is meant to be played with the Rock Band drum controller. Sessions quickly turn into impromptu songs as the player furiously beats on the drums to move and attack. Quite possibly one of the best non-conventional uses of a peripheral we've seen so far.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

So far on Freeware Friday, we've talked about some real classics. The thing is, they are all classics from after the year 2000. What about the old-school days, when the resolution was 320x240 and all the art was hand-drawn? When your install was merely an unpacker? When setup was a DOS program, and not a fancy-pants auto-detection wizard? Well, there's always Abuse. And I don't mean the domestic kind.