What to play classic Square Enix games like Hitman: Blood Money and Tomb Raider: Underworld for free? Now you can, thanks to a new service launched by the publisher called Core Online.

Man, it still feels weird to think of Hitman and Tomb Raider as now being Square Enix games. But, anyhow.

Core Online—found at beta.coreonline.com—is a new browser-based cloud gaming portal that Square Enix has now launched, where you’ll be able to play a variety of games in a number of ways. If you want to go the totally free route, you can earn 20 minutes of free gaming time for every minute of advertisements that you watch. If you want to skip the ads, you’ll be able to buy chapters of a particular game to play for $0.49 each, or spend $4.99 to unlock the entire game for good.

Core Online currently offers up Hitman: Blood Money and Mini Ninjas, with other titles such as Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light coming in October, followed by Tomb Raider: Underworld and Gyromancer soon after that.

I have to say, the idea certainly is an interesting one; I’m actually a fan of the “watch ads for gaming time” concept—I think the way Square Enix has set things up here is an absolutely fair trade-off. And if ads bother you that much, you’ve got reasonably prices alternative options.

So, I’ll be watching with curiosity to see if Core Online takes off.

Source: Gamasutra