Free to Play Games on Steam

I found ou that they’re offering new games, free to download, free to install, and free to play games on Steam.  You have to pay if you want extra features.  Of course, because they’re all free to play, being the greedy game-monger noob that I am, I jumped at the opportunity.  So far, I’ve downloaded and played two of the F2P games: Forsaken World and Spiral Knights.

Spiral Knights by Three Rings, published by Sega

Let’s start with Spiral Knights.  The story goes as such: the Spiral Knights’ starship, The Skylark, crashed on planet Cradle and the Spirals are stranded.  They have to band together and journey to the core of the planet, mining some Minerals along the way, fighting monsters, buying better gear to fight even more monsters . . . but I think the main goal is to get to the Core.

Why did I download Spiral Knights?  Because I find them cute.  That’s it.  Everyone and anyone who knows me knows that I love kiddie artwork.  In fact, I’m actually more fond of toon Link than the regular, adult Link of Legend of Zelda, despite the passionate objections of my gamer friends.  So, I watched the Spiral Knights trailer, found the Spirals super-cute, I don’t have to pay a dime to play it, and so I’m playing it.

The other F2P game that I downloaded is Forsaken World.  I find that it resembles World of Warcraft.  Well, WoW is the only other MMORPG that I have ever played in my life, so, ugh, there’s not much of a comparison that I’m making.

Forsaken World by Perfect World

Anyway, my point is, like WoW, Forsaken World consists of characters of different races: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Stonemen, and Kindred.  I played a Blood Elf Hunter in WoW, so Hunter in Forsaken World is off limits (I wanted to try a different race).  I thought playing a Human would be boring because I’m already playing Human in real life.  Dwarves are short and I find them creepy-looking.  Stonemen are all males, how sexist.  That leaves me Kindred.  I didn’t know what kind of a race Kindred is, so I chose it.  They are actually just vampires.  Ugh.  Such disappointment.  The only vampires I like are Anne Rice’s vampires.  But WoW doesn’t have Kindred among its list of races (although it does have the Forsaken, which is the closest to Kindred, I guess), it has Assassin among its classes, so I forgave myself for unwittingly choosing a vampire race.

So, what about me downloading a couple of MMORPG games?  Good and bad.

Let’s start with the good.  I ended up loving these games!  Now I wish I were a Spiral in real life.  Although I’m not too crazy about the Kindred race, I’ve come to terms with my Forsaken World character.  I mean, I’m an assassin vampire.  I guess that’s pretty cool.  Or cool enough.

Bad news?  I have too many games installed in my non-gaming laptop!  I haven’t finished playing the others that I’ve downloaded:

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent.  Only half an hour into the game when I chickened out.
• Magicka.  Vlad annoys me.
• World of Goo.  I bought it on a sale.
• Dungeon Siege 1 & 2.  I got them with my purchase of Dungeon Siege III, which I’m going to get when it comes out on the 21st.

Okay, I really have to stop downloading games until I’ve finished at least Amnesia and single-player Magicka.  And I’m planning on buying Witcher 2, but I won’t, at least not until I finish Dungeon Siege III.  And I still have to focus on my Spiral and my vampire.  But I have a life outside gaming, and so I don’t have enough time to play all these games.

Ugh.  Life of a wannabe-gamer is so hard.