Gratis gaming: real PC games you can download for free

Gaming is becoming a more expensive proposition all the time: games with monthly subscriptions, game services with yearly fees, PC graphics cards that cost north of $500, new games that go for nearly $60 a pop. Having already cooked up a list of great games you could get for a single Andrew Jackson, we decided to up the ante. Presented here are more than a dozen games you can play for free. For one reason or another--often to promote upcoming sequels, for instance, or simply out of karmic generosity--these games have been released as free downloads by their respective publisher, developer, or creator. And each title listed below is a complete game--all but one of them were sold at retail at some point, and there's not a demo, an expansion pack, or a browser-based Flash game among them. So what's the catch? Many of these titles are old (some are downright ancient), some lack a single-player component, and others are notoriously buggy--but hey, what did you expect for free?