Supertuxkart is far better and it's always free: http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net

I WAS WAITING FOR THIS GAME VERY LONG.THANKS GAME GIVEAWAY.WILL IT WORK ON WINDOWS 7

..........................Moderator comment....................

It works on my Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit so should work on any Win 7. (Hopefully)

@ Whiterabbit - Skip GT5, Shift 2 is a far superior racer in everyway, except for the number of cars. I could talk at great length about this, but this is not the place, I reckon. As for this game, not even gonna try it due to control scheme. I'm a wheel guy (in car view also) and I could live with using a gamepad, but mouse and keyboard ?! Personally I'm not sure who their target audience is- certainly not a serious racer as suggested in the description. In your review, you recommended this to people that don't have any racing games, but I would doubt that a bad game would turn anyone into a racing fan. My 1st racer was "Pole Position", and at the time it was fantastic. To this day I can't get enough racing. If I hated that first experience, I would probably be watching football on Sundays instead. LOL I'm about 1/10th finished working on a racing title of my own. It has 3 cars and 2 tracks, but the environments are way more detailed and I have gamepad control, so my thought is that this seems incomplete.


..............................Moderator comment.....................

Hi D I already have Shift 2, got it on pre-order before it was released. Yes it is a brilliant game. what i like about it is (as with the first /shift) was the ability to tweak the game with your first race so that it would set the rest of the game up to be reasonably challenging without being impossibly hard. When i play Race 07, i rarly get in the top 5 , but with the two shift gmes i can win or get good placings becasue of the way the game is set up.

As for your opinion about suggestion this is okay for first time racers, Good point, I never thought of it in those terms previously; you are quite right. I'd actually suggest they try some of the games found in the free games project, There are some created as adverts for specfic cars, but also games like the free Need for Speed: World, which I've linked to above in another post and Trackmania Nations can be a lot of fun.

Is the game you are creating just a project for yourself or are you going to release it as a commercial or freeware title? I'd be happy to alpha and beta test it for you as I love racing games of all types.

Xpadder in the old freeware version doesnt recognize Win7 and is not working....Joy to Key does, I managed to win a Race...;-) but still i found the controls too sensible, means you steer a short time left and hit the left side with nearly 90 degrees....

Sorry for my bad English, I`m german...

My favourite Racing Games are still Trackmania and Gran Tourismo (PS1)


.......................Moderator comment....................

Thank you for your feedback Wiseblood. good to know. i'll have to download Joy to Key, though if the response isn't going to be improved I may just delete this game. :(

I downloaded this game from MyPlayCity a few weeks ago, installed it and it turned out to be an 80% finished demo of a game called "Insane" by Codemasters. The same thing happened with a few other games from MyPlayCity. Not that the game (Insane) is bad - it's actually quite 'insane' in a positive sense - offroad racing galore. But it was annoying to download files of different sizes and names only to end up with the same thing. Now thanks to GGOTD I was able to see the game in its' full... uhm, "looks". I think Whiterabbit's description of the graphics is quite generous. As a fan of racing games, I have a few ones that are older than this, but look much better (eg. E-racer, Offroad 4x4, Total Immersion Racing to name just a handful).
Keyboard steering is always horrible - not because of this game, but because of the way any system handles keystrokes. Try opening any editor (eg. Notepad) and holding a key down. It will type one letter, then there will be a break and then a long line of letters will pop up. This is done to help avoid typos. In games it translates into underreacting and then overreacting by turning the wheel to the extreme. There used to be a program to change the delay after holding down a key, so if you have to play using keyboard you can try using it to eliminate the delay and have a direct link between how long you hold the key and how much the wheels turn (otherwise try pressing keys quickly many times to have any immediate reaction).

For me a game has to allow the use of a joystick to be playable. Therefore my favorite part of today's giveaway is the link to JoyToKey (Thanks Dana).

So thank you GGOTD for breaking the long chain of puzzles and platform games with something other than a helicopter/airplane shooter. The more racing or rallying games the better. And if they got better than today's one, it would be great.


..............................Moderator Comment............................


Thank you for your feedback Joe.

Yes you are right Offroad 4x4 is better than today's game( I'd say much better apart from the actual resolution which isn't as high as today's). The graphics are improved on the previous version of the game, ad for free it's okay, that said it's still missing a lot of detail. I have too many vehicle based games to menton, most of which (at least those released over the last six or so years) are better looking than this game.

Just wondering whether keyboards with ghosting will enable better steering. I recently purchased a Razer Black Widow Ultimate Stealth that allows you to press up to six keys and each will work without interfering with the other.. (I've not installed it yet though). I cannot remember the steering being as bad as it felt today though. Every time I tried to corner just a quick press of a key would make the vehicle almost jump off the track. It made for a very poor performance and I wasn't able to win a single race.

I have both Insane 1 and 2, love 'em both. I do like off road games. Fuel being my favorite due to its amazing graphics and wide range of vehicles. Though I also love Rally games, with the Colin McRae games being my favorites. I wasn't too impressed with the latest dirt release, but it was oka. I much preferred Dirt and Dirt 2.

I just installed the free Need for Speed: World earlier. someone reminded me that it had been released for some time now. I though it was only multiplayer, which is what put me off installing it because I prefer to play singleplayer against an AI. Thankfully it does have a singleplayer element; and is not to dissimilar to the Test Drive Unlimited series.

I know it’s a game and my comment says nothing about the actual gameplay.
But please take the time and look at the map on Wikipedia before and after the track of Hockenheim was changed. I’m not speaking about minor details (like tribunes or landsscape) to be recreated fully. The track itself was changed tremendously. (E.g. the famous Ostkurve was removed)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Hokenheimring_%282in1%29.png

And I’m not talking about resent changes, this all happened 10 years ago.
Of course it’s ok to have invented tracks. But when you use existing ones, it should be the real thing.


.....................Moderator comment.........................

Yes of course you are right. I wasn't meanng to be dismissive. I'd not moderated anything for nealry 5 hours so was trying to rush through each comment and answering on its merits. Thanks for the factual stuff. Personally I'd never have known because I don't follow most real life racing, much preferring the fantasy variety. :)

Stephen: yes I did see your reply to last week's question: thanks!

And the name of 'that' program is officially Xpadder and not XPAdder as I originally stated (FWIW!). I would say that if, like my 'old' copy, yours does the job, then "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" :D


........................Moderator comment........................

True

Installed quickly on Vista 64-bit, no problems.

Menu options are simple and easy to use/understand. Choosing the car, driver and track also easy and fun-ish. I like that the drivers had names and countries. If there was music, I didn't notice it, so either there's no music or it's not very good music.

I did a few laps around one track before giving up. The controls are awful and the game seems really slow, no matter what the speedometer said.

The graphics are okay, but the game does look dated. I don't mind them myself, but I've seen better graphics in those free flash games that are all over the internet. When good, simple games with decent graphics are less than a dime a dozen, I think game makers should be more aware of their graphics, especially if they're going to sell it. Dusting off a 4 year old game and putting it out today is an odd decision... Hopefully they're looking for feedback for their 2012 edition.

The controls are what made me quit and uninstall. I won't be playing the game anymore and the rest of this grumpy review goes on about the controls.

Using the cursor keys to move is not comfortable. I know I did it in my Doom/Duke Nukem days, but my right hand has embraced mouse control and I can't go back. Maybe it's just me.

I tried using the mouse to turn, but moving the mouse the complete length of my mouse pad barely moved the car at all, and two lengths still didn't turn me far enough to drive. And it was too slow to do it like that anyway, even if I wanted to. The cursor keys turned the car better, even if it was really loose and hard to control.

Going around turns was hard to get the hang of, not that I got the hang of it. I didn't expect to be able to take turns at full speed, but just letting off the accelerator wasn't good enough. The down-arrow brake didn't slow me down enough (or I didn't press it at the right time, or long enough, or too long) and I managed to flip the car using the spacebar handbrake. The game took almost 30 seconds trying to flip me over again, and while it was amusing, wasn't really good for the game.

I would strongly recommend either improving the mouse control, or changing keyboard controls to WASD, which is pretty common today. Using Tab for boost (or anything, really) is odd when there are better keys closer to the fingers' resting position. I'd only use Tab if there were a lot of other control keys in the area (shift, control, etc) being used as well. Spacebar is fine for the handbrake.

In conclusion, if I'd never ever played a computer game before, this would be okay. As it is, this game is really sub-par and in need of an overhaul. I don't think it would take much to get it closer to today's standard of cheap (or free) games.

I was excited to see a racing game available for the GGAOTD and happy to try this one out. Thanks!




.......................Moderator comment................

Thank you for your excellent feedback. We've had some reasonable racing games in the past. One in particular stands out from the crowd, but I can't remember its name offhand. I still have a copy backed up. It's based on ....ah just remembered. It was called Trabi Racer, based on the Polish budget car and has become something of a cut classic over there. It had reasonable control and reasonable graphics for the time it was released (I think back in late 2007). We've also had a reasonable selection of racing games such as Jungle Racers Advanced, Jungle racers, Trial Motorbikes: African Adventures, Police Recharged Supercars Racing, Deadly Race, Top Fuel Drag Racing, Ultimate Nitro Racers, Super Motocross Deluxe and Monster Truck Trials Complete Edition over the last 2 years most of which had better handling that today's offering.

I posted a thread in the forums called The Wheeled games thread which lists several decent and free racing games, plus you'll find others in the free games synopsis and game discussion forums:


Wheeled Games thread:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/2574#post-17105

For free I highly recommend Trackmania Nations, Death Rally and an online racing game called Darkwind. (Trackmania Nations is also online, but you can play a single player game). However, if you are a real racing aficionado, I can only suggest some of the latest commercial racing games such as Need for Speed: Shift 1 & 2 and the updated Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and the latest reincarntion Need for Speed: The Run as well as a true racing game F2012 though if you want a rally type game you can’t beat the Colin McRae Rally games (including Dirt, Dirt 2 & 3), Richard Burns Rally or for loads of ‘smashing’ fun try out the Flatout series of games (for cost I recommend Flatout 2 rather than Ultimate Carnage because they are basically the same game except Ultimate Carnage has had a face lift so you get a better looking game plus you race against 11 instead of 7 other cars' apart from that all the races are the same). As for the latest version of Flatout (Flatout 3), it was created by a new developer and they have lost the realism and feel of the originals and IMO is a shadow of the earlier games with sub standard graphics and poor handling. Finally, if you fancy an open world racing game why not try Fuel ; which was released nearly 3 years ago. It covers many of America’s beauty spots such as the Grand Canyon via thousands of miles of roads and tracks, or if you’re feeling dangerous explore on freeride There’s over 14 000 sq Km that you can explore; with gorgeous graphics, a day and night cycle plus weather systems that include hurricanes. Fuel is one of my favorite vehicle based games (Check out the video below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85HCuPc5fg

Thanks to all, I`ll try out those two tools...




.......................Moderator comment................

Please do give us some feedback. Thank you.

For those interested, the current version of XPAdder costs a measly £5.99; but I admit that I personally use an earlier freeware version.

.....................Moderator comment..........................

Thanks Cad, I rekon this game would be iproved using X-Pader. Even though I have some superb racing and vehicle based games (ranging from road & track racing to truck racing and beyond, covering the last decade {though I no longer have the earlier NFS titles as I gave them away}), I'd certainly play this game if the handling was improved. I still have a copy of the original X-Padder, but would be happy to purchase the latest edition if it was necessary.

By the way, did you read my reply to your last post from last weeks game. (I didn't see it till Thursday) :)

............................Moderator comment.....................................

Sorry GMMan, you are right as always, but we aren't allowed to post such details. :)

First let me give you my rating of 3 out of 5. Now let me explain why.

The camera views were not much different between each other, however, I did prefer camera view F4. When I attempted to use F7, however, it took forever to see who was behind you and then you could easily run into a wall or the grass giving the computer the advantage. Very disappointing as there should be a quick back view for seeing where the competition is.

I could not easily see where to change cars or teams as seen above. Perhaps this could be made more obvious on the main menu?

I do not seem to be earning money to upgrade cars or another reason to continue to play. Just winning a race or championship makes this a one time play.

However, one major good point for this game is that it WAS fun at first because of the lack of glitches in this game. The graphics were okay for 2008. And the arrow keys are traditional usage keys allowing the comfortable use of the other keys with the other hand.

I do believe allowing players to customize the controls for different layouts, adding a rear view that makes sense (quick look style), ensuring a more obvious location to pick the driver and car, and allowing car upgrades would have improved this game to a 4 out of 5 without the need to improve the graphics much.

Handling, realism, and graphics on top of this would have given you your 5 out of 5.



.......................Moderator comment................

Thank you for your feedback Steel'; lets hope the developer continues to improve this game and takes on board your suggestions. The game has definitely been improved from it's original release. :lol:

Guys, It’s not Hokkenheim, it’s HoCkenheim. With a ‚c’! And when was the game programmed? The Hockenheimring doesn’t look like that anymore since 2002. That’s TEN years.
And why on earth is the Nürnburgring (Of course your excused for not using an ‚ü’, as you don’t have that.) marked as Europe? It hasn’t been used for the European Grand Prix since 2007. Since then it alternates every year with Hockenheim for the German Grand Prix.
You should REALLY get your facts straight!



.......................Moderator comment................

Thank you for your factual feedback. Remember its just a game. The programmer may have used old information about the various race tracks. I don't think for one moment he/she ever intended to recreate the tracks fully.

Graphics not good enough, the in game sounds are not bad as well as the physical effects. The important missing thing is the controller support. Regarding to its price, i thing that this game is acceptable.


.......................Moderator comment................

Thank you for your feedback. Yes for the price its okay. Though you can get Dirt for less when its on sale via Steam.

btw, sat said:

Hello,

For my part, despite an improved graphics compared to the previous version, the program still suffers from the same problems:
- Orders are desperately short of inertia (turns)
- The behavior of vehicles is often aberrant.


......................Moderator Comment....................

Thank you for your feedback bm. The developer has improved the game prior to giving it away previously. Lets hope the movement can be improved. I'm off to play some Need for Speed Undercover (one of my favorite NFS titles). I love the open world aspect, then I'll jump into Test Drive Unlimited 2 and maybe if there's time Burnout Paradise City. All three games have great handling and gorgeous graphics (though I was disappointed with TDU2 becasue of the lockouts)

nice, got this before, then lost it with a computer meltdown. Nice to try it again, btw, if you like games like these, try NFS, and to use it for free, and legally, try NFSW.

No quotations around legally.

..................Moderator comment...................

Thanks bm, I'd totally forgotten about Need for Speed : World, the free online version of NFS:

http://world.needforspeed.com/intro

Moving the car with arrows is really hard.
Needs to be more stable.

I think you're looking for Xpadder WR...

http://xpadder.com/

....................Moderator comment................

Yep, thats the one. Thank you 2-SHEDS; not seen you around for a while.

Bonjour,

Pour ma part, malgré un graphisme amélioré par rapport à la précédente version, le programme souffre toujours des mêmes maux :
- les commandes manquent cruellement d'inertie (virages)
- Le comportement des véhicules est souvent aberrant.

Good morning :)

A program that maps cursor keys to a gamepad is called Joy to Key. It's available for download on cnet.com, but here's a link to the main page (if I may post that here).

http://www-en.jtksoft.net/

I've used it for quite a while now. Not sure of any alternatives as this was the only software I could find at the time when I wanted such.

As for today's game, I'm not keen on racing games - puzzle girl ftw! Have a great day folks. ^_^


......................Moderator comment.....................

Thank you Dana

Your reviews are ++

Thanx :)

denvullius

@3: I believe it's called Xpadder. I think I still have a copy on my hard drive. If you can't find it on Softpedia, I could probably upload mine.

.......................Moderator comment.....................


Yes, of course. Thanks GMMan


:)

Nice Graphics but absolutely hard to control with the cursor-keys. can someone recommend a tool for mapping the cursor keys to a Gamepad ?

Thanks to Mr. Whabbit , as always, for his info...


...............................Moderator Comment................................

There is a conversion program, which was freeware, but last year they decided to start charging for the latest versions. I think you can still find earlier versions on sites like Softonic, but for the life of me I cannot remember the name of the program. It's been mentioned here in these forums previously. In fact I bet if you follow the links to the two previous giveaways (in the installation section of my review), you may find that someone has mentioned the program, but I can't be sure.

I'm sure one of our community members will remember the programs name. :)

Thankfully some community members have responded with two different programs. The first one X-Padder is a commercial program now, but you may still find freeware versions; just be careful where you download it from. The other one mentioned by Dana is Joy to key. You'll find links below. :)

Found it @ Softonic for $1.75-but I wouldn't download anything from Softonic,because they want to install a toolbar with their downloads,plus,this game is NOT Compatible with Win7.........Plus, whiterabbit gave it a 4.5 ....Thanks for the honest appraisal whiterabbit,,and the other game links !!!! P.S. Hey whiterabbit-Which racing games would you rate the best?...Also, looking for Best Sniper/Long range shooting game.........but need Win7 compatible... Thanks for any and all info !!!

...........................Moderator comment...................................

Hi vanierstein, my score of 4.5 is related to the fact that I'm a bit of an aficionado on racing games, owning more or less all of the racing games released over the past several years and beyond for the PC (I don't own any consoles apart from a Wii as I've always thought they were unecessary, plus some of the games I like such as FPS and Strategy games do not play as well on consoles as they are keyboard oriented. (That said there are several console games I'd love to play such as Gears of War, Red Dead Redemption and Gran Turismo 5 plus more, so when the new generation of consoles are released next year I may buy one of the present consoles as they will be selling them dirt cheap).

If you don't own any acing games I'd consider at least trying the game. The download size isn't very large for a racing game.

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game PLEASE, PLEASE, 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 to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with search engines like Google. 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 more decent games to draw more users to their site. There are a lot of game sites and they all want your business. I really do think if we can improve on the quality and numbers of users leaving suitable feedback more developers will join the project. It's a great environment to recruit beta testers as well; giving the community the opportunity to try out games that aren't on general release yet.

Again PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE leave some suitable feedback once you’ve played the game for an hour or so. It can be positive or negative, but please explain your reasons for the feedback you post. It doesn't need to be a dissertation, just a paragraph or two explaining what you think could improve the game and maybe what you didn't like about the game with suggestions to replace the negative area's. Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment. It will be very much appreciated by the developer, the giveaway team and me. Thank you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Race: Lost Roadsl>




Installationl>


The download is 29.1Mb in size expanding to 51.5.8Mb that installs to the following path by default but you can change the path if you wish:


C:\Games\Race Lost Roads\race.exe

The zip file unpacks to a readme,and a dual activation and setup module (this is different from previously where a separate activation module was given). The game was given away about four years ago then again 2 years ago. You can see the comments from both by following the Sept 2008 and Jan 2010 links below. The last time it was given away the game received poor ratings with only 34% of community members thinking it was worth downloading. That was out of 364 users. Back in Sept 2008 it received a slightly better score of 43% out of 817 votes. The developer had updated the game from that period and had made a slight change to the title. The download size and installed size have changed from the last time it was given away indicating that it may have been updated again. I don't have the last giveaway as I didn't think it was worth keeping at the time considering I had most racing titles for the PC that had been released over the last several years.


September 2008



January 2010

Introductionl>:

Try yourself as a GT class racing cars pilot. 17 most famous courses of the world are waiting for you! The morning half-hour WarmUp is finished, and while Formula I racers are preparing to the main start, "special events" are held on the track. In Italy it's "Renault-Spiders", and in Austria it's "Porsche" bolids. Realistic physics of this free racing lets you feel nuances of driving in various weather conditions. After driving cars is mastered you may take the risk and try your professionalism and guts in a championship, where a minor fault causes flying out off the track and loosing precious seconds and victory. Download free "Lost Roads Races" and receive an ocean of adrenalin!

Reference: accessed HERE 29th Jan 2010

The Gamel>:

There are two modes of play to choose from; 'Single Race' and 'Championship'. The main difference between the two modes is that everything is unlocked for the single race mode, whereas in championship mode you have to work through all 17 race tracks in a particular order. You can select which race track to eace next.

There are six drivers to choose from and 10 different racing teams, each of which uses a different model of classic racing car. I couldn’t detect any difference in how each vehicle responded during a race, however I only tried a few races. Hopper, who posted later in the day has found that each car does have different attributes (thanks hopper). Different speeds and even differences in braking. If you are playing the 'Single Race' mode you can then select one of the 17 different race tracks from around the world, such as 'Suzuka' in Japan, 'Hokkenheim' in Germany, 'Silverstone' in England, 'Montreal' in Canada or 'Indianapolis' in the USA.. Each track map shows the bends that are often named after famous race drivers, plus they also show the world record speeds along each stage of the race track; however, these do not impact on the game.

Once you’ve selected your team and driver you can select the number of drivers you want in the race, there are four choices, 1, 2, 4 and 6. Choosing 1 will enable you to familiarize yourself with the race track. Selecting 'Single Race' gives you two laps to race whereas selecting Championship mode means you have to race 8 circuits for each race. Unfortunately a few of the menus are in Russian so I can’t give full details of the set up procedures. Apart from the number of cars you select in the race there are three other choices, but as these are in Russian. (I tried using Google’s translator, but I don’t have the Russian alphabet installed, so it didn’t work.)

The controls are keyboard, but you can use the mouse to steer. (See the conclusion for further discussion on this subject).

>Controlsl>:


Left Arrow………………………………….…….turn left
Right Arrow……………………………………..turn right
Up Arrow…………………………………………Accelerate
Down Arrow……………………………..……..Break
Space Bar…………………………………..……Handbrake
Tab……………………………………………..….Extra Power
F1 to F7…………………………………….……Cameras
Esc………………………………………….……..Game Menu
Mouse left and right axis……………….…Turn left or right

Featuresl>:

. 17 famous tracks
. 10 class GT cars
. Racing at different times of the day
. ODE physics engine
. Soundtrack




-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Useful Informationl>:




Imagesl>:



You can see a slideshow of over 60 images HERE. Alternatively you can see all the images on one page by clicking on the Grid button to the bottom right of the slideshow images, just above the thumbnail film strip. There's also a slider for increasing the size of the images when in Grid view.



Musicl>:


There are two MP3 music folders, one for the game and one for the menus. These can be exchanged for music more to your taste if you wish. You may have to rename the mp3 to the same as what you find in the folder (i.e. 001 for both MP3's), though you may also just be able to add onewithout changing its name.


If you installed to the default location you will find the MP3's by following the path:


C:\GAMES\Race - Lost Roads\Race\sounds\mp3\game (or menu)





System Requirementsl>:


- Operation system: Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista
- Processor: Pentium III 600 MHz
- RAM: 256 MB
- Disk space: 64 Mb
- Video: 32 Mb
- DirectX 7






-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Conclusionl>:


The overall look of the game is rather dated considering it was made in 2008, but that said, it’s still a decent looking arcade racer. Unfortunately what spoils the game for me is keyboard controls which are appallingly bad. Trying to turn corners is a bit of a hit or miss affair and if you crash against some of the barriers it it's almost impossible to return to the race track . That said, I found I was able to complete races reasonably well by using the mouse to turn the vehicle left or right.


There wasn’t much difference between the look of any of the race tracks available. Basically driving around one race track looked much the same as any of the other race tracks apart from the different layouts. If the locations had been reflected by the environments you expect to see at each of these locations, the game would have been a little more interesting for me as I love racing games and enjoy the scenery that usually comes as part of the game ( for example Fuel a open world racing game I bought three years ago and many of the more recent racing games like Dirt 2 & 3, the Need for Speed Franchise and F2012 have some amazing scenery). Sadly I think this is a poor excuse for an arcade racer. Most of the ones I’ve linked to below are easier to play and in some cases much better and a lot more enjoyable to play, (IMHO).

Note to the developerl>:


You really need to improve the keys related to movement as well as the camera views as I found there wasn’t much difference between most of the camera angles. The graphics need updating and the menus need to be corrected so that there isn’t any bilingual sections.


In all honesty I can’t give this more than a 4.5 for game play, graphics and entertainment value; (though I'm sure some will enjoy the game). If each of the races had felt different with respect to environment, or the cars had responded differently; I reckon it would improve the game significantly. As it stands at the moment though, I don’t think its worth any money and should be given away as freeware rather than being sold.




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More GamesL>



Up until a few weeks ago I'd stopped posting links to MyPlayCity games because you were required to install toolbars and have your home page hijacked before you could play any of their games. It seems that they have changed their policy yet again and removed that requirement. You will still get the check-boxes so you need to make sure the boxes have been unchecked before installing the game. also they have a very large collection approaching 600 premium quality arcade games ranging from Match 3, Time Management and Hidden Object games, Action and Adventure games to Shooters, Flying, Car, Brain Teasers, Board games, Mahjong, Games for Girls, Card games, Sport, Arcade and several more categories (most can be found in more than one category.), so make sure you do check becasue they may not have removed all of the negative stuff yet.


Some more good news, if you remember I used to post links to another free site called FreeGamePick, but stopped for the same reason I stopped posting links to MyPlayCity. They have also stopped the practice of forcing you to install toolbars etc. You can get the previous weeks games such as Helic and two of its sister games from FreeGamePick, though it's called Helicopter Wars and the other two are called Sky Battle and Sky Battle: WWII. Helicopter Wars and other previous game giveaways are also available from MyPlayCity.

You can find more games over on FreeGamePick HERE




Apparently Gametop has gone the other way and now forces you to install toolbars etc.I can't confirm this as I haven't checked in a few weeks. they certainly didn't a few weeks ago, but I read in the forums that they had last week.

With respect to all of these free game sites including Jenkat Games always make sure you uncheck the toolbars and home page changers. If they wont let you, it means you'll have to mess around recovering your home page. when this happened to me several months ago via MyPlayCity it took me ages to get rid of the extra browser that went straight to Ask.com.








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 three years, many of which are excellent alternatives to their commercial cousins.

Recent additions include a shmup called Grid Wars 2 (similar to Geometry Wars), Passagebalt (a Cannabalt/ Parkour type game), Yeti Hunter a horror suspense game, a platformer called Bit of war a first person spooky walkthrough called The Stairwell, Retroblazer an FPS, another FPS called Open Arena, an update to the flight simulator Flight Gear, a free FPS game called Red Eclipse, an Experimental Puzzle called Cut & Paste (from the Indievania site I've mentioned further down this section). An update to a game posted over 2 years ago called open Transport Tycoon, Mari0 (a portal like version of Mario); there's also another Doom port called DoomRL (roguelike FPS) and finally from week 177 an adventure game called The Journey Down. I was going to post Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge, which was freely available until GOG hoovered it up (like they have with many older games over the last few years for example Darklands, Decent and many more decent oldies). Actually I've just found a legal fan remake of Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge that is free which I will be posting details of soon. :)



All of the major game distributors such as Steam, Impulse and GOG all have some sales with savings as good as 75% in some cases.

For example GOG (Good Old Games) has loads of games with 50% off for example Roller coaster Tycoon 2: Triple Thrill Pack, Roller coaster Tycoon Deluxe, B-17 Flying fortress: The Mighty 8th, Darklands and Blood 1 & 2 (yet another 3 games that GOG has hooverd up, that used to be freely available on most good abandonware sites), Desperado's 2: Coopers Reach, Otcast plus loads more all for between $2.99/£1.88 to $4.99/£3.13 each. (most are at the lower price apart from the second Roller coaster Tycoon game & Master of Orion 3.

Steam has a great sale on at the moment with all of the

Square Enix titles at 50% off plus each day one franchise has 75% off. Todays 75% deal is the Tomb Raider franchise. Other Square Enix titles include the Hitman collection, Just Cause 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Kane & Lynch 2Dog Days, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Dungeon Siege III plus others. The 24 hr deal is the Kings quest Collection,










Gamestop also has some excellent deals with anything from 33% to 75% off. Gamersgate has even more sales and Greenman Gaming (GMG) has some deals to offer as well, though not many at the moment; you will have to Google GMG as they aren't included on Didimatic

You can check out all of the main distributors deals via the Didematic Site

There are some 'no strings attached' freebies from Alawar and Realore (well you do have to install Alawar's gamebox and register a free account over at Realore, but there's nothing in game to disturb your gameplay). You can get 'Magus: In Search of Adventure' from Alawar and 'Jane's 2 Reality' (last week it was Jane's Reality) from Realore. The Alawar freebie is usually available for around a month (it changed last week) and the Realore game changes every Friday. At the moment I think you can get still get 'Awakening: The Dreamless Castle' game for free from Big Fish Games though you will need to visit Freestufftimes to find the coupon code to get it free. It's a puzzle HOG. (You'll need to look back at least 2 weeks plus a few days to find the coupon).

If you are interested in Indie Games check out the Idievania site for great deals (and some freebies to) on obscure and new indie developers who've put there games up for sale. All money goes to the developers. Included on the Indievania site are alpha stage games like Kenshi which are well worth buying at a lower price than the eventual release price. (There's nearly 240 obscure and little known indie games, though some may be familiar like 'Xotic' and 'Inside a Star Filled Sky', both of which are now available on Steam. You could also visit Kickstarter that highlights new projects. At the moment there are a couple of up and coming games that still require funding such as 'Wastelands 2', 'Bacillus' and 'Kenshi', plus there are several other projects hanging around that are still in alpha such as 'Driftmoon', 'Tomes of Mephistopheles', 'Double Fine Adventure' and 'Code Hero' to name just a few.

http://www.kickstarter.com/

Oh yeah, nearly forgot, the next Indie Royale bundle is now available Indie Royale Ninja Pack which you can find via the following link:


http://www.indieroyale.com/


For those who are not familiar with the concept, its a pay what you want (almost) deal. The bundle is the St Patricks bundle and includes five games, three of which include Steam keys, all are downloadable for a DRM free version and four have Desura keys included. The gaes you get with the bundle are Hard Reset, Lair of the Evildoer, DLC Quest, Jolly Roger and Vertex Dispenser, plus if you donate above the average donation which is around $3 or $4 you get a sound track as well (can't remember what it is as i've not downloaded it yet). Just the three steam games would cost you 3p short of £24 thats approx $36 on top of that you get two non Steam games. As i said above you also get DRM free downloads of the game as well. You can check the Indie Royale site out via the following link:

http://www.indievania.com/games

Theres a couple more bundle offers still valid which you can check out via this link:


http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10915

for example theres one from Milkstone studios that has three games called Zombie Football Carnage, Infinity Danger and Motor Heat. I think you'll find those via the indievania site (see second link above).







Other free racing/vehicle based gamesl>:



Check out the Wheeled games thread for lots of free racing games such as the online game Darkwind, or the brilliant freeware game Trackmania, or if you like the Grand Theft auto games but don’t have the originals there’s links to get the first two for free. I’ve not maintained the thread for a long time, but there’s plenty to keep you occupied if your forté is racing games. Just click HERE to be redirected. You’ll also find some racing games in the free games synopsis HERE



Here’s several related games that you can download from Gametop ( Please heed my warning above about how Gametop have changed their policy). Please be aware that during installation you may need to uncheck tick boxes otherwise you’ll find new toolbars in your browser and also it’ll be opening up to Gametop’s page when you boot up your browser. . Both are easily remedied if you do happen to miss the check boxes in your enthusiasm for getting the games installed. But it’s also even easier to avoid the problem altogether and make sure all tick boxes are unchecked. The here are a few games similar to today’s game such as City Racing and Extreme racers, theres also some top down racers, a couple of bike and ATV type racers and even a space racer. Just click on the name of the game to go to the download page. There are a few more games added since I created the list below (for example Sky Track, Nirto Racing and Motoracing , so check out the racing section as well Here There’s 29 games including online games, plus you’l find a few over at freegamepick Herehttp://www.freegamepick.com



• Mad Race


• Mad Truckers


• Real Racing


• KGB Hunter


• Street Racer





The following games are all third personl>:



• City Racing


• Extreme Racers


• Nitro Racers


• ATV Quadro Racing


• Motoracing






Other vehicle gamesl>:


• Monster Truck Challenge


• Star Racing

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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following - for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn't offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn't work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it's online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.


If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition. You can also try compatibility modes for XP, epecially if the game is quite old.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI (now AMD) both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you'll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

If you are asked to turn off your Data Execution Prevention for this game to run. You can create an exception so that the game will run without having to turn DEP off. Please bear in mind it's rare that anyone even mentioned getting a DEP warning. If you are not sure how to create an exception read THIS article, which tells you how to do it.


If you are having problems unzipping the game giveaways zip file, for example getting a message saying the file is invalid try using a different file archiver such as 7-Zip, J-Zip, CAM UnZip, Hamster Free Zip Archiver, GZip, B Zip2, peazip, ZipUnzip, FreeRAR Extract Frog, RAR File Open Knife, ALZip, The Extractor, RarZilla Free Unrar

Okay, that should be enough. There are actually many more free versions available. also there are other commercial titles such as the well-known WinRAR, Stuffit, WinAce, NXPowerlite and Corel Winzip Pro, but IMO 7-Zip is probably one of the better freebies. I did purchase a copy of Stuffit when it was on sale a few years ago and recently repurchased a more up to date version when it was o offer via BitsDuJour, but didn't like the interface for some reason, so hardly ever use it.

In response to the following problem“the file is in use of another process” –
I suggested that you try rebooting your computer. If that doesn't work, check what programs are running in the background and turn off those that you know are not needed as there may be a conflict with something (Game Booster is a useful free program that will automatically turn off all unnecessary windows programs and you can add others to the mix via a configuration screen. Once done you can then switch everything back on via a single button.

you can download Game Booster from IOBit:

http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html

Also try clearing out your internet cache and refresh the page (F5).

W.r.t. Netbooks and problems with resolution, Markus posted a possible fix via registry editing. He said the following:

"If you install the latest Intel GFX driver and
1) Run regedit2) Search and modify all values “Display1_DownScalingSupported” from “0″ to “1″3) Restart the system
New resolution 1024×768 will be available then.#"

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.

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