I love playing multiplayer games, and when I discovered that there were some free ones I could play on line, I was quite excited. I started off with Club Penguin which was a multiplayer game I found at www.miniclip.com/games/en It only took about 20 seconds to download which was also pretty cool and appealing to me (I never have patience for these lengthy download games). It is easy to begin the game (you just have to set up a free account which is also quick to do).

It is cool when you meet another penguin and check him or her out. I like the clothes that I get too and the fact that I can change my colors. And the more coins I get, the more I can do so it is worth helping out in Club Penguin. It was fun visiting the igloos of the other penguin! One time I actually reported one of the penguins for misbehaving (that was fun!). it is fun to chat with the nice penguins in the Easy Chat section as well. It is a very interactive and fun game and I love the music which is a bit Western and jolly. The game always puts a smile on my face, especially since I saw the movie documentary all about penguins recently. It looks like there are a couple of penguins who are actually playing the music; seems like everyone has something to do in Club Penguin! Then I found myself in my igloo by clicking on your home and it looked very comfortable and spacious in there. I can even throw snowballs around it and there is a map of the whole place so I recently went to town joining my friend Zozo Fashion. Even though this game is geared to children, I think adults can have a lot of fun with it too!

All Out looks innocent (and simple) enough. But that innocent look is its clever and frustrating tool because really All Out is not just an easy puzzle game that, with enough tries, you will solve. With All Out you actually have to be able to really use your brain and understand how things work.

In All Out you are presented with a grid (it looks a bit like a Connect 4 game initially). There are some holes that are black, and others which are lit up. What you have to do is, by clicking your mouse on the lit ones, make as many of them black as possible. But the problem is, once you click on the lit one, another 1 or more nearby can be lit up, thus destroying your work. I have used the "Solve" button when I've gotten really stuck (which is more times than I care to admit) but I pay quite dearly for that so I wouldn't really advise it. First, you feel quite humiliated doing this as a page comes up asking "Will you sell your soul for a solution?" It is not really nice seeing that.

Therefore, what I would advise instead, is that if you do want to win is to think very carefully before clicking on any of the lit buttons; think about how that clicking will affect all the buttons around it and if it is worth your while to click that particular button or if it will ultimately cause you more harm than good.

I had always seen myself as having a pretty good memory and thus being quite good at the old spot the difference game. But when I found Spot the Difference on line, I started questioning that theory. It was certainly not as easy as I remembered. I feel like there is so much pressure with this version of Spot the Difference. Okay so what happens is that you get two pictures (of a person) side by side. Then you have a line (timer) at the top which is moving the whole time (which I found really pressurizing). And then when you find a difference between the two, you have to hit it with your cursor and if you are correct, you get a voice shouting out Yahoo! which, while encouraging, also adds to the pressure (but excitement as well). And then if you get too pressured and you just guess at one of the spot the differences (which I did on a number of occasions, trying to cheat the system I guess) that same voice yells out in glee "Holy Shit." So no, that doesn't do too much for one's confidence! You get 10 points for each correct spot, but 5 points are removed if you get a "Holy Shit" yelled out at you.

I do feel that there is not enough time allocated to find the differences in Spot the Difference, or maybe I am just not as good as I thought I was. But apart from the fact that practice makes perfect, once you have found a few differences, when you go back and try again, hopefully you will remember those differences and click on them quickly, giving you time to find the other differences. I did find that the more I played, the more I wanted to play, determine to beat this game so it is quite a lot of fun and definitely has me biting my nails.

If you’re looking for free online games, you’re search will be a short one, and google is your friend. Just try using the phrase “free online games” as your search term; I tried it, and got 1,750,000 hits. The first ten were all sites that offered free online games to play.

You can also try going directly to game websites. Some good ones are www.ugotgames.com, and www.addictinggames.com. Both of these sites offer more than a hundred free flash games that you can play without downloading any software.

Finally, some of the larger game companies, such as Microsoft Games, offer free trial versions of their latest games. This is a good way to try such games as Age of Empires without shelling out fifty or more dollars for a CD-ROM.