14 DAY TRIAL // Gaming experience has for too long a time been corrupted by the various security solutions installed on your computer that in some cases totally disregarded your need for a change. In the last couple of years security product developers understood the urge of the user to keep the system protected even during gameplay and appended a new section to their applications, specially designed for gamers. In some cases real-time protection would be suspended along with all scheduled tasks that may affect your game experience, and alert messages suppressed.
Less than a month since the release of the latest Ad-Aware, Lavasoft prepares the launch of a game edition of their flagship software, designed to keep malware out of the system even while playing your favorite games. Ad-Aware Game Edition is not a new product to its core as it relies on the same protection features available in Ad-Aware product family, but it has been fancied up with themed interface and adjusted in terms of options and default settings.
The set of features Game Edition sports are closer to those in Ad-Aware Pro rather than the Plus version, as you'll benefit from both antivirus and anti-spyware protection, as well as real-time security (the full power of Ad-Watch Live! is available), behavior-based heuristics detection, rootkit removal system, Do Not Disturb mode, scheduler, etc. So you will not be cut back from the major functions of the application (simple and advanced modes stick here as well).
Do Not Disturb mode is the main asset in Ad-Aware Game Edition as it will not halt protection at all, on the contrary, your system will keep deflecting malware as the task is picked up by Lavasoft. At the end of the gaming session there will be a summary with the action response taken against the events that occurred.
Lavasoft minimized the set of skins for this release to only two, both related to the game world. Thus you have the chance to customize its looks with Game or Fantasy skins. The first one is dedicated to old-school arcade fans, displaying pixeled icons and stirring up melancholy for those long gone days. Fantasy is exactly the opposite, as it sports smooth images with elements true to its name but also fit to represent the feature they are assigned to: you have a mage for accessing “Scan” section, a tower depicts Ad-Watch Live!, a chest full of riches for the extra tools present in the interface.
As far as the price is concerned, Ad-Aware Game Edition sells for $24.95 and according to the Lavasoft you will also receive a game upon purchase. The title added to the package is totally your choice, and more information is available here. The 30-day trial awarded for any Lavasoft product stands for this product, too, giving you plenty of time to test and evaluate it before placing your purchase.
If you are accustomed to Ad-Aware, you won't have any trouble navigating through the Game Edition interface as everything is in the exactly same place. But as you probably expected, a lower price on this version automatically brings a cut off in features, compared to the full Ad-Aware available to the home user, the Pro release.
The only Extra present for gamers is TrackSweep, so there goes the Toolbox with its process manager, autostart manager and hosts file editor. These may not be quite the instruments a gamer would resort to, but rather an experienced user's means to pinpoint the source of malware.
TrackSweep comes complete with all its abilities and mischiefs as before. Although the app is clearly built to detect Opera, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox installed on the system and wipe cache, cookies, history, last typed URLs and tabs, the latest version of Opera remains undetected and problems with erasing Firefox history are still present.
Ad Watch Live! is present with all three modules, (compared to Ad-Aware Plus which comes for $26.95 and features a crippled Ad Watch Live!), monitoring processes, registry and network for halting malicious code from getting on your computer.
Getting back to the missing features, we noticed that there is no option for starting a manual scan from Windows Explorer shell. However, you can start scanning a specific folder by using Profile Scan option of the software, which can be customized to search only the location you provide. On the downside, it is task that requires slight more time to set up than the simple right click on a file/folder in Windows Explorer and select “Scan with Ad-Aware”. This glitch was experienced only on Windows 7, as on Vista the feature was present and worked like a charm.
But as far as we could notice in Ad-Aware Game Edition, the amount of options unavailable compared to the Pro edition stops here. As it is after all a modified version of the original Ad-Aware, this issue moves and feels exactly the same. You will not benefit from improved detection, and at the moment of the review, the issues with cleaning the hoards of malware on an infected computer have not been solved (the application takes too long to clean selected items). There is also the lack of multiple selection of detected malware which makes getting rid of the malicious items quite uncomfortable.
The application will indeed keep system resources down to a minimum and protect the system while playing. It will not bother you with notifications or event alerts, but rather preserve them for when you exit full screen. Scheduled tasks will be suppressed during this time, allowing you to resume them at your convenience.
Ad-Aware Game Edition features complete malware protection, Do Not Disturb mode (activated by default so you won't get interrupted your gaming sessions), two modes to fit your needs, customizable scans, scheduler, small footprint on system resources, Ad Watch Live! Expert, plus the innovations brought to the new generation of Ad-Aware (Neutralizer, Genotype Detection).
The Good The price is lower then the Plus version of Ad-Aware and even if the toolbox is not present, you benefit from the full power of Ad Watch Live!.
It is easy to handle and comes pre-configured with settings adapted for gameplay. The two types of interface present, Advanced and Simple, permit any sort of user to deal with the application according to their level of comprehension.
System resources used while scanning were low, which permits working unhindered on the computer.
The Bad TrackSweep does not work properly just yet and issues such as wiping Firefox's history, or the fact that the latest version of Opera is not detected on the system, still have to be addressed.
Ad-Aware Game Edition inherits the same flaws just like the original Ad-Aware reviewed. So cleaning up hoards of malware will still result in pretty long times.
The Truth In what concerns power and detection, Ad-Aware Game Edition is no different than the products in its family. It features a fancied up interface and an active Do Not Disturb mode designed to keep alerts and notifications away when a full screen window (movies and games) is detected. It does an excellent job in this regard.
