Fieldrunners is a very popular tower defense game for iOS and Android, it usually costs between $3-$8 depending on the version, but guess what? You can download and play it for free using nothing but the Chrome web browser and Google’s web store.
You’ll want to download the game to be able to resume games, but you can also just play the game directly at the appspot url. The game can be loaded in either standard or high def mode, so choose accordingly based on your screen resolution.
Technically it’s supposed to be for Chrome only, but you can usually load the game with Safari or Firefox as well. You won’t need Flash either because the app is HTML5. Similarly, you can download and play Angry Birds for free with your browser too, just in case you haven’t beaten that dead horse enough yet.
Portal runs in both Mac OS X and Windows, and once it’s in your Steam account you can download it on other machines if you want.
Here’s the interesting part: the game is offered as a free download until September 20, 2011 as part of the “Learning with Portals” program, where some schools are using the popular video game to help teach physics and critical thinking skills. How cool is that? This blurb from their website explains further:
Today, innovative educators are finding ways to incorporate Portal™ and Portal 2 into their classrooms—helping teach physics and critical-thinking skills. It’s eye-opening to see how video games can be used in amazing and unexpected ways to help educate our next generation.
One of the biggest challenges in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math is capturing the students’ imaginations long enough for them to see all of the possibilities that lie ahead.
Using interactive tools like the Portal series to draw them in makes physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, and problem-solving interesting, cool, and fun which gets us one step closer to our goal—engaged, thoughtful kids!
If you’re skeptical, Valve put together a video which shows exactly how it’s being used by one 7th grade classroom:
Pretty cool huh?
Check it out yourself, the system requirements are relatively basic and it should run on most recent Macs:
OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3, or higher
1GB RAM or more
NVIDIA GeForce 8 or higher, ATI X1600 or higher, or Intel HD 3000 or higher
Looking for a fun game to play this weekend on the iPad? Grab Crimson: Steam Pirates, an action-strategy game where you can battle through a series of pirate voyages with over a dozen different boats, subs, and airships. The turn-based game is getting raving reviews which isn’t too shocking considering it’s coming from Bungie, the creators of the Halo franchise and Marathon. Here’s the games description from iTunes App Store:
In Crimson: Steam Pirates, plumes of black smoke fill the blue Caribbean sky as Thomas Blood’s pirate fleet steams ahead—over, above, and below the waves. On the surface, ships bristle with swivel cannons and lightning guns. Above, zeppelins drip with incendiary bombs. And below, silent and deadly, submarines stalk their targets, torpedoes at the ready.
Command your fleet and your Steampunk crew using an elegant action interface. Crimson: Steam Pirates’ turn-based gameplay provides an addicting mixture of strategy and action as you anticipate your enemies’ moves and counter them, luring them into a deadly hail of weapons fire while uncovering the mystery brewing in the Caribbean.
Rage is a first person shooter for iOS where you blast your way through mutants in some post-apocalyptic disaster, it’s fairly similar to classics Doom and Quake, and that’s because ID Software created them all.
Both versions of the game, Rage and Rage HD, are available free for a limited time, with the HD version bringing higher resolution graphics and textures to iPhone 4, the latest iPod touch, and the iPad and iPad 2.
Want to make it a gamers weekend? Don’t miss the huge Steam sale going on now that has just about every game for at least 30% and up to 75% off. Everything offered on Steam is instantly downloadable so you can quickly get your gamer fix, some of the hot titles for Mac OS X include:
More games pop up on sale every day, but the core Valve lineup is discounted all the time. The sale goes until July 10 so stock up now and you’ll have entertainment all summer long. If you happen to game or dualboot with Windows there are even more options for you, but the Mac section is quite large and shouldn’t be missed.
Blizzard has made its ultra popular virtualcrack game World of Warcraft free to play up until level 20. Free players can access the entire game and all quests of paying players, but there are a few limitations with the free World of Warcrack, notably:
Free players can not join guilds
Free players can not accumulate more than 10 gold coins (probably an anti-farmer move)
Free characters max out at level 20, gameplay continues but experience points stop accruing
Over 11 million people play World of Warcraft on a regular basis, so you’ll be in good company if you get addicted to the never-ending MMORPG.
Blizzard has always offered free trials, but previously you would only get 14 days to test the game before being told you had to buy it. Now you can play endlessly if you don’t mind your character maxing out at level 20, and at any point you can purchase a paid subscription to carry the character and your addiction further.
World of Warcraft runs on both Windows and Mac OS X and has fairly low system requirements, just about any Mac from the last 5 years should play it fine. Kiss your social life goodbye! If you do get sucked in, you can get a slight discount by buying pre-paid cards from Amazon. Read more »
If you’re a gamer don’t miss Electronic Art’s huge iOS game sale this weekend, everything is just $0.99, even their most popular titles. This represents a discount of up to 90% on some titles, and EA says it’s their biggest iOS sale ever. Make it a gaming weekend!
The sale is in celebration of the holiday weekend and goes until July 4. Sims, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Madden, it’s all there, so grab your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, and get downloading.
Team Fortress 2 is now completely free to download and to play online. No strings attached. That’s right, one of the most popular and highly rated online multiplayer games of all time is now being given away for free.
This could very well be the best free online game for the Mac platform. If you haven’t played Team Fortress 2 before but you like multiplayer action games, there’s no excuse not to now. Since both Windows & Mac OS X versions are available and can play together, you can get your PC friends to tag along too.
Most newish Intel Macs can run the game, the Steam system requirements match TF2′s minimum requirements closely: Mac OS X 10.5.8 or 10.6.3, 1GB RAM or more, NVIDIA GeForce 8 or higher, ATI X1600 or higher, or Intel HD 3000 or higher, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection. As usual the newer your Mac, the better the game will run.
The iOS line is gearing up to be a viable contendor in the video game console world, thanks largely to the new wireless AirPlay video mirroring feature coming in iOS 5.
It works like this: an Apple TV2 becomes a wireless receiver that an iOS 5 equipped iPad 2 can then export it’s screen to, the TV can then either mirror the iPad 2 display, or if an supports it, the TV can display different images than what is on the iPad 2, turning the iPad 2 into a controller. Yes, that means the feature is currently limited to iPad 2 in beta 1 of iOS 5, but I suspect that will broaden to the rumored A5 equipped iPhone and possibly other iOS hardware through some jailbreak tweaks.
Did you just get a new Mac? Maybe you upgraded your hard drive and went with a clean Mac OS X install, but you want to maintain all of your Steam saved games from the old drive so you can pick up where you left off.
Instead of redownloading everything, you can preserve your bandwidth and copy the files directly. Steam makes this easy to do by storing all game files in a central location, you just need to copy the game files to the new drive and then reauthorize through Steam. First off you’ll want to make sure the Macs are either networked together or that the new hard drive is mounted on the system where Steam files are stored.
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