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Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.

They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use the shield. Some enemies throw projectiles at you, and your health will disappear quickly if you don't use the space bar to block. Of course, you could just try to blow away everything on the screen before you get attacked, but your gun is unfortunately pretty lame, and overheats if you start clicking too furiously. Good luck protecting yourself from the undead hordes!

Filed under: Games, Windows, Macintosh, Linux

Quake Live goes cross-platform, adding Mac and Linux support in update


Buried way, way down at the bottom of an ID Software press release, there's some exciting news for Linux and Mac users who have been waiting to join the fray at Quakelive.com.

This Tuesday's update will bring with it a number of fixes and improvements. Leaderboards will be returning, but the most noteworthy change is that the browser-based FPS will finally support all three major platforms.

You'll need Firefox installed on your Mac or Linux box to get in on the action. Apart from IE, no other browsers are supported yet. If you don't use Firefox and you've been anxiously waiting to try Quake Live, that's a small price to pay.

As Download Squad regular Kenn will tell you, "Free is good." Head on over to Quakelive.com on August 18 and sign up.

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Windows, Web services, Web, Windows x64

QuakeLive hits open beta, the browser-based frag fest is on!


In case you were a little disappointed that we didn't score any invites for you the last time QuakeLive appeared on Downloadsquad (apart from those generously donated by reader Rocketfactor), I've got some good news for you.

ID Software is ready to open up the beta to the public. No more codes, no more waiting. Just get yourself over to Quakelive.com tomorrow and register.

The site will re-open Tuesday night (February 24th, 2009) following a 36-hour maintenance period today, during which there will be a purge of idle accounts. Stats will also be wiped, though current players will retain their other user data (name, customizations, profile information).

As long as things go as planned, you can expect the doors to be blown wide open as soon as the counter in the corner hits zero.

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Time-Wasters, Web

Grab your BFG and play Doom in your browser - Time Waster


This one really takes me back. As soon as I saw the opening screen, I could picture a dozen people crammed into my dorm room watching my roommate and I deathmatch over our awesome null modem cable.

Yes, Doom 1 has been recompiled in Flash from the original source. It plays just like I remembered the original, and could definitely become a giant Time Waster for anyone else who was hooked on Doom when it was first released.

Playing through a few levels almost made me forget how terrible the movie was (sorry, Dwayne).

There's no music, but I usually had that shut off and listened to my Discman. All the old cheat codes work as well: in case you've forgotten, IDDQD activates "degreelessness" and IDKFA will enable all weapons, keys, and ammo, and boost your armor to 200%. Not that I'm saying you'll need to cheat, but when you remember something like that after 14 years, you give it a try to see if it still works.

You'll need Flash 10 to play, and a non-PowerPC computer to run it.

By the way: if you also enjoyed Heretic (think Medieval Doom with a crossbow), you can find an updated Shockwave version of it on this site.

Thanks, Blake!

Filed under: Business, Finance, Internet, Web services, Beta, web 2.0

Freshbooks tries out Amazon's FPS

freshbooks uses amazons payment serviceFreshbooks is on of a short list of companies invited to try out Amazon's Flexible Payment Service that competes with the likes of PayPal and Google's Checkout.

Toronto based Freshbooks provides an online invoicing and time tracking application. With the integration of the new Amazon payment system, their list of payment options for customers grows to 12. This payment service not only gives a greater variety of payment options, but gives customers a greater sense of trust since many people have already used, and currently use Amazon to buy products online.

Amazon's FPS helps developers get through the complex issues surrounding payments online, just as its S3 Simple Storage Solution does for on demand web storage.

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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