Online. I like going to the gaming portal sites. They do the work for you and find the "best" "free" games out there. I gravitate between two, there are certainly others, but these are the two I go for all the time.

Jay Is Games, I like this one because there is a good mix of games. They do everything from role playing games to driving simulations, and they even help sponsor a regular contest for games designers to create their best game around a theme. However, I take the reviews of their main advertiser's games with a wee grain of salt. Because I bought one or two of them on the strength of their review and then said, "Were we playing the same game, the reviewer and I?" But overall a good site.

Lazylaces, Less polished than Jay Is Games, but still appealing because they report on a lot of new games on a very regular basis. Some overlap between the two sites, but on the whole they do pick up some unique games.

And of course each site has its own community with people making comments and writing walkthroughs. Oh, the walkthrough. How often I turn to thee. The people on Jay's site seem to be a bit older based on the way the comments are written. (Wht u mean? LOL, u old gramps! ßð scared of old guy), but Lazylaces really isn't as bad as my sarcasm pretends it is.

Offline. .Well, what kind of games do you like?

The best role-playing game (RPG) to come around in a while is The Last Scenario. Technically speaking, this is a design based on the Japanese RPG (or JRPG, made most popular in the Western world by the Final Fantasy series.) It is really good in that it seems to start off with the same themes as many JRPGs, but then the theme goes off in whole new directions as the question of what makes a hero is explored.

For sheer frustration, there is good old NetHack. In which you descend through a fiendish dungeon to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor and then bring it back to the surface for the greater glory of your deity.

Now, I know this game is winnable. I have seen screenshots from winning people. But I never manage to beat it myself. Because some killer bees poison me, or a treasure chest turns out to be a mimic, or I go downstairs carrying too much stuff while wielding a cockatrice corpse& If you kind of like the Lord of the Rings stuff, and you like bizarre humour and a random number generator that hates you, then NetHack is the game for you.

Strategy? Brass Hats is satisfying without being too deep on micromanagement for a World War I-ish type of combat. Or if you (or your kids, of course) like their strategy games in a fantasy world, then Wesnoth might be your cup of tea. Elvish tea, that lets you write four chapters without needing food or sleep.

First-person shooters? Soldat is a very popular multiplayer game. I haven't tried it myself because in these kinds of games I take two steps and then get told Hey! Someone shot you! so I don't play them much.

But you know what? If you try it and don't like it, who cares? Because it is 100% free. In fact, except for Brass Hats, all the games I've listed are 100% free. So, fill up the laptop, go to the cottage and (cough) hand it over to the kids while you pursue more adult activities. Like priming wells and setting up chemical toilets and the like.