Can anyone recommend any good free games to play over a Windows LAN?
January 18, 2005 3:41 AM   Subscribe

Can anyone recommend any good free games to play over a Windows LAN?
posted by nthdegx to Computers & Internet (10 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Unreal Tournament 2004 demo. Very easy to setup and plenty of deathmatch fun. The more people who can join in, the better.
posted by humuhumu at 5:42 AM on January 18, 2005


Red Ace Squadron is a great little game from Small Rockets that lets you fly WWI biplanes and shoot it out in the sky. I can't remember if it's only the full version that has multiplayer in it, but we use it at our LAN parties as a break from all the FPS/RTS games we usually play. Great fun, and also fun to play on your own.
posted by furtive at 6:52 AM on January 18, 2005


I realize you're specifically interested in Windows games, but:

London Law is a networked, cross-platform Scotland Yard.
Colossus is a networked, cross-platform Titan.
Scorched3D is a networked, cross-platform Scorched Earth.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a completely free, commercial quality, networked, Windows/Linux team tactics FPS.
posted by majick at 7:09 AM on January 18, 2005


Oh, just thought of another. Enemy Territory is a full featured and free game from Id Software and is based on the multiplayer gaming that came with the more recent version of Castle Wolfenstein. No, not that one, and not this one either.

This is hands down the best free FPS game ever to come out. Oh, it works on Linux too.

It was released maybe two years ago, and is different from most FPS games in that you select a specific trade (e.g. engineer, medic, soldier, covert ops, etc....) and you have a task to accomplish above and beyond killing the enemy. Oh, a quick hint for first time players, each team needs at least one engineer if they want to get the job done. Although it only has six maps to it, this is possibly one of the most perfect FPS games out there since there is so much depth as to what you can do.

I've been playing it from the start, and although I've moved to other games, I never hesitate to go back and play some ET with the friends. Oh, and just this weekend a new mod was released, although it doesn't suite my tastes.

On preview, what majick said.
posted by furtive at 7:14 AM on January 18, 2005


Oh, and Unreal Tournament is also available in a Linux flavor which works just fine with the Windows version.
posted by humuhumu at 7:41 AM on January 18, 2005


iSketch and WEBoggle are two good LAN games that only require a web browser (and in the case of iSketch, Flash). Every LAN party I've gone to in the past three years has ended up playing them at one point or another.

(Note: self-link, sorta. I wrote WEBoggle, but I no longer maintain or host it.)
posted by Plutor at 7:44 AM on January 18, 2005


If you have a large number of people (10+), Armagetron is lots of fun. We used to play for many hours at work.
posted by Sibrax at 9:02 AM on January 18, 2005


The Sin demo is an old favorite of mine.
posted by neckro23 at 9:12 AM on January 18, 2005


Okay, not exactly free but damn close...

The original Serious Sam gets my vote for most fun ever had on a LAN. The First Encounter is most fun in collaborative mode, where your 6 or 8 or 10 people fight back hordes of enemies who explode in little tiny bits. Particularly with the hand-held pirate cannon. Sam is what would happen if Ash from Army of Darkness had a kid with Duke Nukem.

The game is campy, comical and a blast to play. I think you can get it for about five bucks in most places.
posted by TeamBilly at 11:00 AM on January 18, 2005


BZFlag. Fun for the whole office, and multiplatform, too.
posted by aberrant at 11:48 AM on January 18, 2005


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