Another week, another bunch of games from Amazon.

* Planescape Torment: Enhanced Edition
"Planescape: Torment" is an amazing game. It's unfortunate that it's
really hard to get into, because it's first few hours (or first few
dozen hours) are so uninteresting. But stick with it and it will take
you on an amazing journey. It was - for its time - head and shoulders
above most of its competition, and even today (where many modern CRPGs
have been improved by its example) it still stands out. It's great
that modern audiences are being given another opportunity to try this
classic.

* Lake
A mail-delivery sim! At long last, the sort of game the world has been
demanding! But it's actually more of a walking-sim, where you wander
about interacting with the local inhabitants of a lakeside town,
engaging in 'slice of life' adventures, and, yes, delivering mail. A
bit rough around the edges, sure. A bit repetitive? Maybe. But
interesting nonetheless.

* Last Resort
A cheap co-op shooter; essentially, "Left4Dead" with aliens. It's an
obvious Indie game - a literal student project, based on the
involvement of Breda University - it's unfortunately buggy and
probably doesn't have the server population to keep things
interesting. But it has obvious potential and maybe an influx of
people from this freebie will spice things up.

* Robo Army
Yay! Another SNK game/Neo-Geo port! A side-scrolling punch-n-kick
brawler, it's basically "Double Dragon" against robots. It's not the
greatest of games, but competent enough for what it is. If you enjoy
the genre, you'll probably like (but not love) this game; if you don't
care for this style of game, you might as well give it a pass.

Not a bad collection of freebies this time. None of them are "must
haves" (not even Planescape, I'm sorry to say; it's a great game but
it no longer feels as novel and revolutionary as it did when it was
new), but no real stinkers either. They're good filler games for your
library; something fun to play between the greats. And they're (sort
of) free, so why not grab them?

On Tue, 16 May 2023 11:10:50 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>* Last Resort

Oops, I made a mistake. The "Last Resort" being given away this weak
isn't the aforementioned Indie co-op shooter, but instead is another
SNK/Neo-Geo port of the same name. It still has oyu shooting aliens,
except this time they're in spaceships (so are you!) and it's a
side-scrolling shooter instead of a first-person co-op game. Fairly
generic, not the most exciting example of the genre, but satisfying
nonetheless.

We apologize for the confusion. The people responsible for the error
have been denied any jaffa cakes for the rest of the day.

On 16/05/2023 16:10, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> Another week, another bunch of games from Amazon.
>
>
> * Planescape Torment: Enhanced Edition
> "Planescape: Torment" is an amazing game. It's unfortunate that it's
> really hard to get into, because it's first few hours (or first few
> dozen hours) are so uninteresting. But stick with it and it will take
> you on an amazing journey. It was - for its time - head and shoulders
> above most of its competition, and even today (where many modern CRPGs
> have been improved by its example) it still stands out. It's great
> that modern audiences are being given another opportunity to try this
> classic.
>

I actually enjoyed the first several hours although I think a lot of
that was the setting was quite different, for a fantasy one, and it
didn't lean towards everything is about combat. Where I think it was let
down was the last few hours (or something like that) in that it felt
that the devs had run out of ideas but needed to finish the game.

> * Lake
> A mail-delivery sim! At long last, the sort of game the world has been
> demanding! But it's actually more of a walking-sim, where you wander
> about interacting with the local inhabitants of a lakeside town,
> engaging in 'slice of life' adventures, and, yes, delivering mail. A
> bit rough around the edges, sure. A bit repetitive? Maybe. But
> interesting nonetheless.
>

I have fired it up and yes it a walking sim, yes it shows this is not a
big budget game but it is my sort of game.

<snip>

> Not a bad collection of freebies this time. None of them are "must
> haves" (not even Planescape, I'm sorry to say; it's a great game but
> it no longer feels as novel and revolutionary as it did when it was
> new), but no real stinkers either. They're good filler games for your
> library; something fun to play between the greats. And they're (sort
> of) free, so why not grab them?
>

Very much agree, I think it's difficult to justify having Amazon Prime
just for the 'free' games but as an overall package I get my money's
worth even if it does pain me to think where my money is going. How bad
does a company have to be to choose to make adverts saying what a great
place it is to work?