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Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a real time strategy space faring empire at war game (worth £30/$39.99) and is free until Wednesday 5pm (UK time) on Steam; with the dlc at 50% off. I found the giveaway via Shareware on Sale HERE. Mikiem2 also posted a link via the forums to the Steam page HERE and I've posted several excellent in-game images and a few videos of game play with some written details about the game HERE. also free on Steam at the moment is Geneshift a GTA (v1 & 2) inspired top down - battle royale where each round lasts only two minutes. You can find the limited time deal HERE

Secret Laboratory

In Brief

A first/third person shooter with zombies and a secret lab :)

Installation:

Secret Lab downloads to a 60.3 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper, the set-up file and a read me). Those with multiple hard drives can save games on any drive they wish by replacing the C drive with whatever drive letter they wish the game to be installed to or if you have multiple hard drives you can save games on any drive you wish by replacing the C drive letter in the path with whatever drive letter you wish the game to be installed to. The newly installed game is 155 MB in size. The game installs to the following path by default:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Secret Laboratory

However, if you prefer a different path for installation for example I use G:\Games\ name of game instead of 'C:\Program Files (x86)\name of game'. You can edit the default path when the Setup - Secret Laboratory - Select Destination Location window appears.

Five shortcuts are installed to the desktop, four of which can be safely deleted (i.e. Falco Space - Online Game!, FalconLine Online Games Website, FalcoGo WebGL Games! and Free Games Downloads!). If you don't want to install the games shortcut to the desktop during installation, just make sure the install desktop shortcut is unchecked when the 'additional task's window appears; you will still get two of the other Falcoware shortcuts installed (i.e. FalconLine Online Games Website & FalcoGo WebGL Games shortcuts). Also, if you don't like icons installed to the quick launch task bar, make sure you also uncheck the appropriate checkbox when the 'additional task's window appears (after the Select Start Menu Folder window).

Introduction:

In a Secret laboratory, experiments were conducted on people. Something went terribly wrong... The subjects escaped the lab and started killing everyone. It is your mission to terminate the experiment while fighting hordes of monsters.

Reference accessed HERE. 17th December 2018

The Game:

Secret Laboratory is a simple zombie killing first person or third person shooter where you get endless waves of zombies attacking you. In between waves you get around 16 seconds to resupply yourself with ammo and/or new weapons. There are loads of weapons scattered around, some more effective than others; to pick them up when the hand icon appears press F. The AK 47 with scope and the shotgun are the most effective weapons, they are able to take out most of the zombies with one or two shots, whereas the other weapons are not as effective. There's even a sword and shield, but I'd only recommend using that if you run out of ammo before the end of the wave becasue it's not very effective. It takes several hits to kill a zombie i didn't discover whether the shield helped towards protecting yourself as each round was over fairly quickly. I died every time i used the sword, wheras using the two weapons mentioned above I was able to survive several rounds before dying.

At first glance the game is okay, with reasonable graphics (though not up to the standards of the bigger and more expensive AAA shooters such as battlefield and Call of Duty. However, after playing several rounds I found the game got boring very quickly. The environments were basically the same throughout with no variation (at least as far as I got.

The controls for this game are a big improvement on previous Falco titles. Apart from the basic movement controls you also have lean (Q & E) Crouch (LCntr), prone (X) Strafe left and right (A& D). You've even got grenades (G), but I didn't find in at the satge i finished at.. There's even a mode called Bullet time (T) where time slows down. You can see all the control keys by pressing F1 while in game. You can pause the game using Tab.

What would improve this game significantly would be a wide variety of environments to explore, a safe room like you get in Left 4 Dead, where you can take a breather. In this game you get 16 seconds to prepare yourself. It would be much better if you had an unlimited time before the next wave, with a toggle to start the next round.

Whiterabbit-uk 17th December 2018

Conclusion:

Personally I wouldn't recommend this game, but I'm spoilt for choice when it comes to zombie killing games (Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, all but the latest Resident Evil games, Dead Rising franchise, Red Dead Redemption, , Day Z, The Walking Dead, 7 Days to die and more. However, if you don't own any Zombie games, then this may be a worthwhile download.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via Steam for £0.99/$0.99 HERE.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Secret Laboratory to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Secret Laboratory and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

IfSecret Laboratory doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).