Free Online Gaming (zone.com)

Member Name: andycharger

Product:	zone.com
Date:	14/12/02 (797 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good fun, Good way to meet people, Free

Disadvantages: Cheaters

Yep, thats right. You dont even need to buy expensive games here to enjoy an interactive game with someone from the other side of the world! All you need is an MSN Passport.

That is what www.zone.com offers you, the player.

Firstly, it is like a big meeting place for games all over the world to converge on the internet and glay various online and pre owned games. All of the popular dice, board and card games are here from your Windows desktop as well as some others you will not have seen.

So how does it work?

Well, basically, you need to download the zone software to your machine. This is about a 500k download and takes approximately 5-6 mins on a modem and substantially much quicker on broadband.
Once downloaded, it self extracts and cofigures and you are all ready to play.

You then return to zone.com and select the game you want to play. Simple.

The site layout is very simple. The games are all categorised on the homepage and are nice and easy to find. They are split into :
Card Games
Puzzle
Word and Trivia
Zone Casino
Kids Zone
Racing and sports.

Amongst these, there are a number of free games you can download from the site and a number you need to own to take part.

2 examples from each section would be:

Age of Empires
From the owned games section, you need to have bought the game from the shops. Click on the link and it launches many different game rooms and senarios for you to join. If you are familiar with the game, the multiplayer game is very similar.
Just join a room and join a game.

Backgammon.
From the free section. You have the option of playing for fun or points here. There are also various tournaments to join for free. You recieve points for a win and climb or fall up the rankings. You have a ranking to compare yourself to other backgammon players in the game.

Chatting?
You also have a chat window so you can com
municate with your playing partners on line during the game. This is very handy for getting people to start when they forget to push a button.
Easy to use and self explanitory.

Fun factor?
Very high. Its suprising how addictive it is. If you play a game often enough, you notice there is a bit of community spirit amongst regular players, a bit like on here. You can add friends you make to your profile so you can find them again. Its a bit like a messenger service and closely related to MSN Messenger.

Overall.
A great way to spend you time online. I love playing backgammon. Its great fun. However, I need to tell you about the inevitable "cheats" involved in the owned games section.
PLaying Age of Empires, I noticed impossible winning situations taking place. I looked into this and found that people had installed cheat methods on their PC's. These are called "painters" and Trainers". They allow the player to move around and have more resources and weapons than an ordinary player. It can get tedious playing against cheats as there is no point to the game. You just give up and leave. This is killing the game and they just laugh!

A good site for the "controlled" free games but a pain with the cheats on the paid games.

Summary: