GameCrap

Now that GameTap has made its transition to its new model (the "capitalist model"), it's no fun anymore. Instead of hundreds of free games, you can currently choose from 31. If you want to play what you could once get for free, it's $5 a month. If you want to play the complete collection, it's $10 a month. Instead of a delightfully sized free sample, you now get a sip. Instead of providing a public service by giving classic games to people that might otherwise not get the chance to play them, GameTap has become a drug pusher. First hit's free, then it's very, very expensive. Bleh.

Dork for Zork

So GameTap has a bunch of free games until June... and since they're free, I've been trying some games that I've known about but have never had the chance to actually try.

And I found Zork. A text-based adventure game from the Apple II days. The entire game is 100 kilobytes and it is awesome. There's no graphics; you get to use your mind! It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book but you get to type what you want to do besides just turn the pages!

Sorry if I'm two decades late to the Zork party. I'm still at the point where you type dirty things into it like the first time ANYONE used the PictoChat function on their DS (remember the April Fool's game Wangdoodler in the Game Informer a few years back?). It's funny seeing your computer respond to you "Suicide is not the answer" or "I do not recognize the word 'masturbate.'" Ahhh, childhood.

Once you get the interface down (look, go, take, jump), there seem to be no limits to what you can do. The game makes you feel that you could do anything as long as you can figure out the right configuration of words. I managaed to jump into the Grand Canyon within 5 minutes. Awesome. Just like real life.

GameTap also has a few other text-based imitators, including a sci-fi game called Suspended which is way less user-friendly, and there are a handful of Zork sequels also for free play until June. Anyway, I gotta go back into my imagination now. Bioshock is cool but there's just something incredibly addictive about the possibility of doing anything in a game, even if you can't figure out how to at first.

"Punch door." "You broke your hand. Good job whiz kid."

GameTap's New Pricing System = More Money.

Right now, there are a bunch of free games on GameTap, and you can play the rest of them for $10 a month or $60 a year. Starting March 18, you can play them all for $10 a month or $80 a year, or you can get their "Classic Pack" which includes 500 classic arcade games you can play right in your browser for $5 a month or $50 a year.

Luckily, if you sign up for GameTap before then, you're grandfathered into their classic pricing system for life. Quick! Pay monthly to play games on your computer that you got bored of years ago when they were on consoles! Or not. Only shooters and strategy games work on PC...

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So here I am, waiting. Downloading demos on Steam. Downloading free games on GameTap because I haven't decided if it's worth paying for a membership yet (although I could just waste hundreds of My Coke Rewards points). And waiting in line for the Quake Live Beta. I'm number 5017 in the queue. It's not as bad as it sounds. At the start of this post I was #6005. And Quake is worth waiting for, especially when it's free.

Also considering playing one of the dozens of games I bought but haven't had a chance to pop in yet. Left 4 Dead, Blue Dragon, The World Ends With You, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, GTA: San Andreas. Quite a collection. Wish I had the time. Oh wait, I do. Gotta go now.