"Anomaly Zone" is a remarkable tale of shady Russian "devs" doing what they do best... taking someone else's game and putting their own name on it. This time instead of the usual asset flip, this is a "relaunch" of a game that's also been known as SZone and Stay Out... it's unclear whether the "developers" behind this own the copyright or care, for that matter.

As a gamer, what you need to know is that this isn't free, it is abandoned, it's devoid of players, and it's a train wreck.

Don't get me wrong, at some point the original developers probably did want to make a MMO ripoff of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but all that's left of that is this nasty cash grab.

This has some fairly mediocre/dated looking graphics that will understandably be a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost.

You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me.

This isn't really free as you're expected to pay up more money to unlock content/DLC so you can keep playing. In fact the developers optimistically have their hands out for an eye watering SIXTY SEVEN UNITED STATES DOLLARS in DLC for this train wreck. This is some nasty, predatory pricing and PC gamers don't like it.

Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it?

Nope. This isn't worth downloading. While this didn't cost me any money up front, I still feel ripped off.

Bad Game, bad controls, bad graphics