Instead of one game this week, I’m going to give you several — because it’s Halloween and I missed last week because I was at Disneyland. So, go and check out this site, which offers a selection of free, spooky Flash games. And don’t forget this free game of the past, which is perfect for Halloween fun.

A few years ago my wife and I played World of Warcraft quite a bit. Actually, we played it in two stints — once for a few months after the original game came out, and then again when we bought the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, and some of our friends from Sacramento started playing as well. It was a great way to connect.

But a game like WOW never ends, and playing it takes a lot of time and a fair bit of money every month, so eventually we canceled our subscriptions and moved on to other things. I’ve missed playing it at times — it’s a fun game, and a great way to stay in contact and spend time with friends who are too far to see often — but not enough to go back to spending three hours a night and $15 a month on it. And that’s how things have stood, until …

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Got little time today, so this’ll be a quickie. No picture or anything. I know, I know!

Anyway, check out “Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War,” yet another game by Midway recently made free for download. It’s a real-time strategy game where you can take direct control of your army’s mythical leader to cut a swath of destruction through enemy forces. I don’t recall it being any great shakes, but it has some neat ideas and the price is right.

I’m pressed for time this week, so this one’s short and sweet.

Title: Dino Run
Developed and published by: Pixeljam
For: Web browsers
ESRB rating: N/A

In “Dino Run” you’re a little dinosaur trying to escape the dino-apocalypse. Keep running right until you reach the end of each randomly generated stage. Eat things as you go. Don’t die along the way. And that’s about it — it’s simple, fast and fun.

Hope you have your hazard suit handy, because this game’s totally rad … -ioactive! Nyuk, nyuk.

Title: Fallout
Developed by: Black Isle Studios
Published by: Interplay
For: Windows
ESRB rating: Mature

Available for free now on GameTap, “Fallout” is a role-playing game set in a future world totally devastated by nuclear war. You take on the role of the Vault Dweller, a player-named and customized character who is sent out from his hardened underground home, Vault 13, to find a replacement chip for the Vault’s water purification system. This initial quest leads to a larger adventure that eventually sees the player facing a monstrous mutant bent on absorbing all the remaining life on the planet.

The graphics look primitive by today’s standards, but they’re effectively gritty, gross and grotesque as the scenario requires. The game is a mix of real-time and turn-based elements. When out of combat you uses the mouse to walk around freely, talking to survivors in their ramshackle villages in the wasteland, taking on quests and doing favors. When fighting a mutant scorpion or a shambling nuclear ghoul or something, you’re given a number of action points per combat round that are used to move, attack and use items and skills. Once they’re gone, you have to wait a bit for them to fill up again.

The game was a bit favorite about a decade ago. The second game is available on GameTap via its pay service, and with the third installment on the way later this month courtesy of Bethesda Softworks, makers of the dense “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” it’s a perfect time to revisit this classic.

(Image from MobyGames.com)

Remember when Star Wars was awesome?

I do. As a teen I used to read all the book; I’ve seen the original movies a dozen times and more. Campy though they are in places, they’re incredibly good popcorn movies. I even like the Ewoks. And though George Lucas tinkered overmuch with the Special Editions in the late ’90s, they were still good fun, and it was worth going just to see them on the big screen.

But after that …

I won’t belabor all the ways the prequel trilogy dragged down the fun times of the original movies. Suffice it to say: If you have a good bad guy, don’t give him a history. And if you have to give him a history, please don’t show him to us as a happy-go-lucky kid and then a petulant teenager. Kinda takes the edge off the 7-foot half-machine monster he turns into later.

Let’s not even talk about this summer’s “Clone Wars” movie.

The best “Star Wars” stories these days are told in the games. Not all of them, of course, but enough. “Republic Commando,” aside from being a bang-up shooter, offered a nifty glimpse into what goes on behind the visor of a Clone Trooper’s helmet. “Knights of the Old Republic” is one of the best “Star Wars” tales, period, taking place thousands of years before the movies during another bitter war between the forces of light and dark.

And now we have “The Force Unleashed,” which is … pretty good. The gameplay borrows liberally from a decade’s worth of action games, but isn’t polished enough to really stand out — there are control hitches, camera problems and opportunities for numerous deaths that can’t be blamed on the player. Still, in giving you control of Vader’s secret Dark Side apprentice it at least tries to make you feel as powerful as the image at the top of this post would suggest.

The most interesting bit is the story — it’s well-plotted and well-told, allowing for the fragmentary nature of game narratives, and Vader’s apprentice is a far more likable character than Anakin Skywalker himself ever was. There’s some speculation that the game’s narrative might be reworked into a movie that would bridge the gap between Anakin’s fall and Luke Skywalker’s coming-of-age.

Who knows if it’ll happen. But I hope it does, or something similar. “Star Wars” has become weighed down by a whiny Anakin Skywalker and a mawkish love story, to say nothing of Jar Jar Binks.

Decent games are fine things, “Star Wars” needs a shot in the arm if it hopes to appeal to anyone past their tweens in the future. Maybe it doesn’t. But I hope it gets one.

(Image from LucasArts)