If you need something to play this weekend and rising gas prices took all of your allowance, look no further. The video game industry’s race to the bottom means games are temporarily going free all the time, or staying that way permanently. The following three games aren’t just free to play for the weekend of July 25-26; they also happen to be very, very good.
Metal Gear Solid
The first needs no introduction. Hideo Kojima’s legendary PS1 game Metal Gear Solid is available to play and beat all weekend long on Steam via the Master Collection HD remaster. Anyone with a GeForce GTX 760 or Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 should be able to play it just fine. You can even finish the whole thing in 10-12 hours if you have nothing else to do and are prepared to marathon your way through some of 1998’s most cutting-edge stealth action gameplay and cool storytelling. If you only ever complete 100 games in your lifetime, make sure MGS is one of them. In the words of Solid Snake, “A strong man doesn’t need to read the future, he makes his own.”
Unrailed 2: Back on Track
This one you probably haven’t heard of, but it still rocks. Unrailed 2 came out only last month and it’s essentially Overcooked turned into a tree-puncher. It’s a co-op party game in which you and friends construct a train track in real time to get a locomotive to its destination before it crashes. You have to have the right tool to cool the engine, mine ore, and cut down trees, forcing players to hand off tasks and frantically run around yelling at each other when things inevitably go sideways. It’s also run-based with upgrades, and you get to pick which maps to attempt as your path across the landscape branches, like in Slay the Spire and similar roguelikes. I’ve played a bunch and love it. It’s free to play on Steam through July 27 and has essentially no minimum spec requirements.
Poinpy
Poinpy also isn’t very well known, even though it came out back in 2022. That’s because it was a Netflix exclusive that almost nobody played, despite being one of the most clever and sublimely designed micro-experiences of that year. It’s a mobile game that has now gone free and can be played in very quick bursts, at least until you get sucked in and let 30 minutes pass by. It’s basically Angry Birds meets Downwell. You use swipes to slingshot your Kirby-like green blob around obstacles and knock fruit loose to feed the hungry beast climbing up the screen from below. Instead of going down, you climb upwards as far as you can before getting caught. Way better than doomscrolling or looking at the same reheated memes on Instagram.