Whiterabbit-uk,

Notes on Security
The downloaded giveaway zipped file is 464Mb in size. Once installed the game expands to 1.62GB which is too large to scan using the free version of Virus Total.

Using Microsoft Defender to scan the installed game, it found three low level malware hits. I then scanned thedownloaded giveaway zip file instead of the installed game via Virus Total and it found zero hits from 47 antimalware engines. You can see the results of the installed games scan via the following link:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/9c54432eb00e7234c071301b735ff86ecaad855378e11414cdaf00b3eee1d572?nocache=1

If you're not convinced of the games efficacy and want to be absolutely sure that the game is safe to install (after my Microsoft Defender results), please use a sandbox program first, to check that the game is safe to install before installing it to your C drive or other drives on your computer (assuming you have more than one drive).

Personally I've never had any issues with any of falcowares games, even when the Falcoware installer was included.

There are free sandbox programs such as Sanboxie, GeSWall, BitBox, Windows Sandbox, Bufferzone (a six month commercial license was given away via the applications side of the project back in December 2009 HERE), Shadowzone, as well as others. (You'll find them all on the same page from Techwhoop.

Whiterabbit-uk,

You'll find regularly updated details of all the reasonable game deals and freebies that I can find HERE. The Steam sale is live until the 7th July. You'll find some excellent bargains, though I'd check out the other distributors such as uPlay. They have an excellent deal on the base game for Assassins Creed Valhalla, and the Ragnarok edition is 55% off. If you like shooters, there are some excellent deals on most of the Tom Clancy and Far Cry games. My favourite Hunting game Call of the Wild is only £4.79 at the moment, with some great deals on DLC's for the game. The dev's have also just released (this Tuesday) a new reserve based in Finland.

Today is your last chance to grab the latest Epic Freebies (A Game of Thrones: The Board Game and Car Mechanic Simulator 2018; they end at 4pm UK/11am Eastern/8am Pacific. These will be replaced by three games that will be free until the day the Steam sale ends on the 7th July i.e. Geneforge 1 - Mutagen, Hood: Outlaws & Legends and the excellent Iratus: Lord of the Dead (the DLC for this game won't be free). There are also eight new indie game bundles over on Fanatical Games and a new freebie over on Indie Gala. I've just updated my game deals thread over in the forums HERE



I highly recommend the latest Microsoft Flight Simulation, though it's only 20% off at the moment. It comes in three flavours the basic edition (usually £60, the Deluxe GOTY edition at £80 and the Premium Deluxe at £109 before the 20% discount. Very expensive, but the scenery you see when flying is breath-taking and looks real. Apparently if you fly over an area covered by the airports in game (the deluxe and premium deluxe have six and twelve extra airports respectively). Apparently, you can pick out your own house if you live not too far from the airport (whether that's true I don't know yet as there's not a Manchester airport in game yet (I live about 20 minutes drive from Manchester airport). I'm hoping to see a DLC with Manchester airport released eventually. I was going to boycott the game originally because when they sold off Microsoft FS X to Dovetail games with an announcement that they wouldn't be returning to Flight Sims, they then released Microsoft Flight about a decade ago, which looked fabulous. I bought into that; purchasing all of the available DLC for it. Less than a year after release, they dropped the game and for a couple of years I wasn't able to access any of the DLC, though you could still play the base game via Steam with a bit of jiggery-pokery after Valve fixed the issue with Game for Windows Live. They again said they wouldn't be developing another Flight Sim; then comes along this latest edition that was released two years ago.

I've not updated the forum post for a week, but most of the links are still valid.

smurf,

Thanks for the heads up Smurf. Oddly this is the second game from Falcoware that has been repeated this week. This is a very rare occurrence. Also I cannot remeber it from the first time, which shows my interest in the game. Generally I enjoy point and click adventures, but with virtually no Russian to my name; apart from да (da) yes, Нет net (no) and Русский Russky (Russian) ;) It's not an enjoyable experience.

It reminds me of the first time I played Cossacks: Art of War; my brother in law, who married a Polish lass gave me a Polish copy of the game and although I loved playing the game, it took me a long time before I'd sussed out most of the menus and text. I eventually purchased an English version of the game.

(Cossacks Art of War is a brilliant RTS game that's available on Steam for peanuts.HERE (£0.99). You can get all five Cossacks games (these include expansions and DLC's) plus the two American Conquest games for £3.79 in the latest Steam sale. I easily put a couple of thousand hours into those games when they were released 20 years ago. At the time they were ground breaking. Unless you get an emulator, they do tend to run very fast in systems made in the last decade. There was a remake released about six years ago, called Cossacks 3, which runs perfectly. It's got 60% off at the moment with 60% off each of the six paid for DLC's . You can also buy 'the complete' Cossacks set plus the American Conquest games (fifteen items) HERE for £13.85 (80% off).