Video games based on the Lord of the Rings franchise have been a mixed bag at best, but, as you know, there's one sure-fire equalizer when it comes to quality: Freeness (or is it freeosity)? Using that logic, Kongregate and ArtLogicGames' Epic War, an LOTR-inspired strategy game, may just be the best of the lot.

The premise is simple: you defend your castle with a turret and an army of Tolkien-created creatures, all the while trying to get your forces to the enemy castle to demolish it. No, it's not exactly canon, but that's good news, because it means you can inexplicably throw out an army of dwarves, elves and hobbits with no worries of watching a favorite character die.

As you progress through the battles on the world map, you'll earn experience you can use to train your units, acquire new types like wizards and dragons and gain new powers for your turret. It's hard to break the addiction cycle when the upgrade or character is just a quick battle away.

Give it a whirl, let us know what you think. And if you know of a free game that you'd like us to feature, let us know in the comments.

We don't talk about it a lot, but we have a secret love for online Flash service Kongregate. Not only does it offer achievements (truly the only good reason to play games) but it's brought us Flash obsessions like the soul- and time-sucking behemoth that is Desktop Tower Defense.

Now, the service is expanding into one of our other, even more secreter, loves with the Kongregate Facebook Challenge application. Though the features are limited at the moment, you'll soon be able to challenge friends to games through the Facebook service. You know, because the internet just wasn't distracting enough.

[Via 1UP]

A panel of game publishers, analysts, and investors met at this SXSW presentation to discuss the numbers and trends involving the female audience for casual games. For this talk, "casual games" comprises mostly web games and downloadable shareware games, and not, say, Wii party games or console downloads.

Parks Associates' Michael Cai began with some charts. According to the data, female gamers heavily prefer computers to consoles: female gamers spend an average of 70% of their gaming time on computers, versus male gamers' 56%. Female gamers make up 62% of the casual game audience, and this group, especially those age 13-17, play more sessions per month. There is less diversity among genres for female gamers as well: across age groups, puzzle and card games are the most popular casual games.