Get your FREE games here! (freeloader.com)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	freeloader.com
Date:	15/02/01 (7 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free games, no spam

Disadvantages: have to earn credits (minor annoyance)

Freeloader is a web site that does one thing – it gives you games for free! I bet that anyone reading this opinion is now thinking one thing: “What’s the catch?” Well, as far as I can see, there are none!

The key to whole shebang are the credits. Credits are the key to unlocking the games. They give you credits and you exchange them for Game Episodes, simple as that! You begin gaining credits when you first register on freeloader.com. You are also awarded credits every time you visit the site, click on an advertisement or answer the download sequence questionnaire.

Game episodes are usually split into things like levels, or game engines and a game might typically cost about 100 credits i.e. about 4 episodes, or 25 credits each.

One good thing about Freeloader, and registering with them is that you don’t get any spam from giving them your email address (which they use to send out your newsletter, if you desire) which is something I am always quite wary about when signing up to web sites.

The reason for this is simple and straightforward. The funding behind freeloader comes from advertising, in the form of banners and popups. The more people who click through these adverts, then the more Freeloader can charge for the advertising space, thus giving freeloader more cash to go out and get better, and more recent game to give away for free!

A lot of the games available for download are quite old (certainly in the case of the old “commercial” games) for example: Grand Theft Auto is about 4 years old now, but you can download it for free from Freeloader. Jimmy Whites 2: Cueball is also a few years old, and Hidden & Dangerous is about a year old.

While the obvious attraction may be to go for these older, commercial games, Freeloader also offer exclusive games of their own – the two that spring immediately to mind are Halcyon Sun (a Wing Commander type of game) and their own
online fantasy football game which has cash prizes!

It’s an attractive, well laid out web site with links arranged in a logical order. This means that you never have to hunt for games, information or further links for too long.

Download times vary (for me anyway!) depending on when you log onto the site, and how busy the world wide web is in general, but I have no real complaints about this.

I like this idea and I like freeloader.com – I think it’s a good idea which has been well realised, which is a bit of a rarity on the internet these days. If you’re into gaming in any way (as a serious or occasional player) then you have nothing to lose by signing up and having a look around the web site!

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