Giveaway of the Day - Grand Master Chess 2.5

In Brief

We got the original from Fly games back in 2008, from the look of this game, the basics are still the same, but they have improved the skins and added more functions. You can read the old comments HERE then it was given away again earlier this yar with a name change to Grand Master Chess III, you can see comments HERE. I’m not sure whether todays version is an upgrade from the previous version, or a previous version that was released in between the original and version 3. If you look to the bottom right corner of the version we got back in February it said version 3, so it looks like todays version is an earlier one.

I’ll play the game later to see whats different, but I suspect its mainly textures/skins that are different plus the layout of the game menus. I’ll update the review accordingly if I’m able though basically the game is the same apart from some graphical changes. (I’m off to look at a nice bungalow with a very large garden this afternoon with a view to moving. I need a bungalow as I have already fallen part way down the stairs a couple of times since the accident due to my legs collapsing from under me occassionaly), so we’ve for safety reasons we’ve decided to move from this 2 storey house to a single story.

I need to go back to bed. I spent too many hours earlier this morning (till 4am) deciding what I was going to purchase from the Steam sale. (Already bought over 45 items, lol

Grandmaster Chess v2.5

The game downloads to a 35.3Mb zipped file containing a read me, the setup.gcd security file (that may give your AV software a run for its money, but any positive results will be false positives) and a dual activation and setup module. To newcomers this means just click on the wrapped set up file and select your installation path (if you wish the game to go to somewhere other than the default path). Once installed the game is automatically registered. You can then delete all of the files originally downloaded.

The installed games footprint is 34.3Mb in size (this is around 413MB smaller than the last time we got this program. They have removed the archive folder that had a 363MB file called chess.mdb plus a couple of other files). Basically this contained the introduction to the game, which was in the form of a video; so, when you start the game up it will appear to give an error, saying video missing. Just give the game time to load, it takes several seconds to load then the main menu comes up, which I’ve taken a screen shot of below. (The first image).

It installs to:

C:\Games\Grand Master Chess25

The game plays okay on XP Pro with SP3 32 Bit, Vista Home Basic 64 bit and Win 7 Pro 64 bit, though I’ve only installed and opened up the game, not actually played the game.

No shortcut is installed to the desktop or the start men programs folder nor is there an uninstaller installed so to uninstall you just have to delete the installed folder.

Introduction

Grand Master Chess III will help to improve your chess skills and become a better tournament or casual player. You can either have friendly competitions against friends and family members or try solo mode against the computer. Listen to your own music as you play! An incredible level of detail and realistic chess figurines add to the gameplay experience. With a sophisticated hint system that shows several possible moves to help you learn, Grand Master Chess is an enjoyable experience for any chess player.

Reference accessed HERE 3rd March 2012

The Game

I’m not going to write a full review today, just describe what the game offers . We all know what Chess is; I’m no expert on chess so really can’t tell you whether the Grand Master mode lives up to it’s name. You’d need someone that’s at that level to confirm this. I’ve never really played chess regularily. I used to play with some friends many years ago (over 20), but we were all average players. The game looks well constructed with a load of board and pieces skins that enable you to change the look to a style you like. The game seems to be a reasonable chess game with six levels of difficulty ranging from Grandmaster down through hard, medium, easy adult, child and monkey modes. There is actually another one that’s user defined which allows you to define the number of moves forward, the amount of time you are allowed to move and a fixed time for the game.

You can also toggle off several visual effects such as shadows, reflections, buttons fade, moves animation etc, ad you can also toggle between full screen and windowed from the visual effects section.

As for audio, you can include any MP3′s you have stored on your computer. Just click on the sound Effects link and then the MP3 folder to browse for your music collection. You can also toggle off sound bites (pieces and the soundtrack if you wish). There is a speech mode available, but only via the CD version of this game. It looks like they have removed the speech to cut down on the already large size of this game

You can play the game in 2D or 3D and rotate the board from white to black etc. There are 17 board skins and 34 piece types to choose from.

You can choose to play Fischer rules if you wish.

There’s a preferences button that enables you to toggle the following:

!) … Think when Idle

… Randomize moves

… Use Quick Start

… Show Quick Tips

… Show intro

… Use Quick Save Slots

…Select Skill on new game.

There’s also a network option, with input for server IP, so i’m assuming this is a true online game not just local area networking. Which is very cool.

As with most computer based chess games you can undo moves if you want to cheat

Features

1) … Standard, Fisher Style and Blind game rules to choose from;
2) … Easy to use interface that includes highlights and button hints;
3) … Includes a collection of chess problems as well as a Problem Solver and a built in Problem Editor;
4) … More than 100 high quality chess piece/board skins;
5) … Includes a built-in mp3 player so you can play your own music while playing;
6) … Network mode lets you play with your friends.

Controls

• Mouse

System Requirements

- Windows 98/XP/Vista- 300 MHz CPU- 512 MB RAM- 700 MB Hard disk space- 1024×768 graphics card- DirectX compatible sound card

Conclusion

I’ll leave the conclusions to the players who profess to know more about chess. I’ve only ever been a casual player so cannot in all honesty give a true statement as to whether this game is good or not. To me it seems a decent game. I played the original on Grand Master and Hard and easily lost (but then I really didn’t think through the moves because I was really just trying to get a feel for the game). I seem to be able to hold my own when the difficulty is set to medium (that is, I’m holding my own), but I’ve not played this version yet, only the original.

(As is usual at the moment I didn’t get a copy of the game until very early this morning and I was more concerned at choosing games from the Steam sale, so didn’t get time to even check the game for updates from last February’s version.)

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More Games

If today’s game doesn’t take your fancy then check out the game discussion forums and the free games synopsis. We’ve posted a couple of thousand free games over the last four years, many of which are excellent alternatives to their commercial cousins.

The Steam Thanksgiving sale is on until Monday, with 48hr sales, flash sales that last around 10 hours plus loads more on sale. Well worth checking out. You can find the sale HERE.

Check out Gamersgates offers. They are having great reductions on four games every day until January. you can find the Gamersgate site HERE and Desura

I’ve also posted several links to sites where you’ll find loads of decent game deals. Just look in the Game Discussion sticky section for the thread.

This months Alawar game is still The Curse of Montezuma (despite being on for six weeks – hopefully they will change it for another soon). for those that are new to the game giveaway project you will need Alawar’s free game box to be able to download their free monthly game. this months is an excellent match three. You can download the game box HERE.

Oh yeah, nearly forgot, you can see all of the live indie bundles that are available HERE . They don’t update it every day (Indie Gala X is showing as still live, but that ended a few days ago), still it’ll give you an idea as to whats still available. alternatively you can visit the giveawayoftheday Game discussion forums as all bundles are detailed there as well.

Also check out the latest game available on IndieGame stand HERE. You can pay as much as you want but no less than $1. The present game has just changed to Aztaka, which is an RPG. There are several $5 bundles available from the Indie bundle site HERE, each bundle has three games. There’s quite a few decent deals over on Desura HERE

You’ll find details of all the bundles still available over in the first two pages of the game discussion forums as well as several of the main game distributors that seem to have permanent sales HERE

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Problems:

If you have any problems with the game, either installation issues or getting the game to work check out the FAQ’s section over in the Game discussion forums. you can find it HERE

If you are posting requests for help late in the day I would suggest posting in the main giveaway forums in the game Game Discussion . If you’ve installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn’t guaranteed). It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them as well.

Request for Help:

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of ‘potential’ cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

There is no installation routine with this offering. Instead you unzip the game to a folder of your choice. The folder size when unzipped is 34.2 MB. The game play has not changed much but it is a good one. I am not a chess expert by any means but I enjoy an occasional game. I found the game to be a challenge and would recommend this to anyone that has an interest in chess. Thank you GGAOTD and to Fly Games.

……………………..Moderator comment…………………..

Thanks for your feedback. (I was updating my review as you posted yours, so you wouldn’t have seen my updated info on file sizes)