As much as I enjoy games like Ka-50 Black Shark for their depth and challenge, there are times when I want something that doesn’t take quite so long to load.

It probably take 5 to 10 minutes to get going in Black Shark and similar games when you account for loading the game and then the mission or save. Frankly I don’t have the patience at the end of the day when I can only allow 30 minutes for a quick blast.

A faster and cheaper alternative that can be just as much fun, is to enter the world of online flash games. There is an important warning though, it is possible to spend (should that be waste?) huge amounts of time on these sites.

I’ve found more than enough good quality flash games to keep me happy at Kongregate.

Protector has kept me interested for ages. It’s a strategy game where you have to place units on a map to stop monsters from getting past. It sounds simple but there are right and wrong ways of doing it, as I’ve found out the hard way.

Warfare 1917 was good but didn’t last long enough for me. It is a good alternative to the fantasy setting that is use for so many of these games.

Gemcraft is similar to Protector but I’ve found it a lot more challenging.

Another way I’ve dealt with this is to restrict myself to really old games and rely on the relative speed of my newer computer. Deus Ex served quite well for a while. At nine years old it was really quick, even on the highest quality settings. The same goes for Morrowind.

You could go even further back in time and play some old DOS games with D-Fend Reloaded. A large collection of games can be found at Abandonia.com