TIGS Freeware Game Award Winners

The Independant Gaming Source (TIGS) released their list of best freeware games of 2007. Unfortunately, TIGS's forums are down, so I can't see the rest of the games. Oh well. Here are the four I downloaded before it died.

Fraxy



The Pitch: Fight giant enemy ships.

My Opinion: Fraxy is a cool engine and level editor. When someone makes a game with it, it could be awesome. Currently, all you can do currently is fight random enemies forever, using only two of the six or so weapons the game offers. The fact that this is fun for a half hour shows a lot of promise. And yes, the second picture is me being attacked by a Christmas tree. The star detaches and attacks separately.

The Cleaner


The Pitch: Fight stuff with magic.

My Opinion: I liked the art. The Out of This World style cut scenes were good. Some of the sound effects were pretty annoying. I didn't want to use certain weapons because their sound effects got on my nerves. The gameplay was decent, if somewhat randomly unforgiving. The puzzles were generally good. The last level I played (after killing the invisible super soldier) didn't seem to have a way out, though.

Return to Sector 9


The Pitch: Fight waves of aliens in space.

My Opinion: I've probably been playing first person shooters for too long, but when the left hand turns and the right hand moves, I die a lot. It's obviously a really polished game, with nice graphics, sound, and rewards, but the controls killed it for me.

Hurrican



The Pitch: Shoot stuff.

My Opinion: It's a remake of the Amiga classic Turrican. I only take it on faith that it's a classic. I tried the Genesis version, and it sucked. This version is decidedly better, especially graphically, with raytraced sprites and piles of particle, glow, and smoke effects. The gameplay is simplistic, but serviceable. Just don't use the default controls. Gamepad only. Oh yeah, and keep it on easy. This remake is faithful to the punishing difficulty of the original.