[richlevy]

I've been playing interactive first person shooters. My basic requirement is that they be free to play over the Internet. All of the games below are free to play over Internet. America's Army is completely free, although the 600+ MB download is only something you can do with broadband.

America's Army is the official game brought to us by the US Army. Very realistic, with a nice training component. They just did a major release change. I now qualified as a medic by taking short classes and exams in first aid, including how to treat shock and blood loss.

A nice component of the game is that you have to earn your way to be able to use certain skills.

Day of Defeat is a mod (modification) built on the Half-Life engine. It turns a science fiction game into a WWII reenactment. The skirmishes are German vs British or German vs American. Some games are capture the flag and some require demolition. The simplest ones are with both sides in simlar positions. The toughest ones are with the Germans in an entrenched position. Since fortifications are a force multiplier, this means that if the teams are even the Germans can have an effective 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 advantage. If it weren't for multiple lives, reenacting the Normandy invasion with even teams would quickly lead to an alternate reality in which the Germans win.

In my opinion the Germans have better equipment than the Americans who have better equipment than the British. Since I don't ever play the Germans, my solution to this is to take dropped weapons before they disappear.

Counterstrike is another Half-Life mod. I haven't been playing much of it lately. This is a terrorist vs counter-terrorist game. The weapons are realistic. The locations, from small villages to modern office buildings are also realistic. One note to this game is that there was an airport-airplane hostage rescue scenario that I have not seen post-9/11.

Starseige Tribes 1 is my personal favorite. This game is a futuristic infantry squad game that was designed to only be played online. I bought Tribes II when the original stopped working, since I thought the company had purposely dropped support for Tribes 1. I am happy to report that as of last night it is back again and I am playing it again for the first time in almost 2 years. The graphics on Tribes 1 are more cartoonish than Tribes II, but the gameplay and user support are much better developed.

The original Tribes 1 had 3 armor types and maybe two dozen items between weapons and supplies which could be used. User modifications, there are a dozen different mods, stretched it to about ten kinds of specialized armor and as many as 50 items, including tacital nuclear weapons. The armor was balanced so that heavier armor sacrificed speed and agility. In addition to the jet pack on all armor which can only fly in 10-20 seond bursts, there were three basic aircraft 'jeeps' which were expanded in the mod games and in Tribes II.

My favorite part of the game is that in addition to the capture the flag aspect, there are items which can be broken to destroy the intelligence or supply capability of teams. This would require players to suit up as an engineer and repair radar or solar panels. Unfortunately, this made them a targer for snipers. After this happended to me in a few games, I made it a point to carry a scoped rife, which the mod allowed me to do. If he didn't get me on the first shot, or after I came back, I would sneak around and wait until the sniper stuck his head up from behind a nearby ridge for another shot.

Of course the usual course of action for dealing with 'sappers' was to have a whole group of heavily armored individuals pop out and lay down mortars across the ridge top or by remotely controlling turrets.

If you don't mind graphics that look a little more like anime than modern computer-shaded animation, the gameplay on Tribes 1 is better and the specialization in the mods lets you suit up almost any way you like. Tribes 1 is now under $10 and the patch is available to bring it up to date.