Is there a week that won’t be busy? Probably not. This week we tried getting in contact with the System Shock 3 developer amid the rumors of their entire team being laid off. YAGER, the Spec Ops: The Line developer, will continue self-publishing thanks to a Tencent investment. Taylor spoke about the upcoming port for Rune Factory 4, and Dari spoke about the Sega Dreamcast game, Lack of Love, being translated by fans. Then just yesterday, Taylor spoke about the upcoming Nintendo Switch lounges in airports, and Abdul spoke about the upcoming co-op shooter from People Can Fly, called Outriders.

So with the weekly news out the way, let’s get to the free games on the Epic Games Store this week. Once again it’s a double bill, and once again I find myself trying to talk about a brick wall. After a few hours of downloading Kingdom Come: Deliverance, I found out what the subtitle means, the frame rate no matter the settings will be screwed from behind all day long. Usually, I would play a full two hours if there a frame rate that’s at least delectable; a slideshow is not what I will find enjoyment in for two hours. According to Epic, I put up with that for 43 minutes, but I’ve got a feeling 80 percent of that was sitting in menus, crossing fingers, and hoping.

I’ll say this, from what I’ve seen and the little I’ve played, I know I would like it if I had the time. It is a western indie RPG that is somewhere between The Witcher 3 if all the fantasy was removed and Red Dead Redemption 2‘s hyper “realism.” As I said in an article on the trouble dyslexia causes for me with fantasy, sometimes it is hard to grasp the weird spelling of place names and general names. Sure, there are some odd spellings, but for the most part with voiceovers that’s negated. I was excited to try Kingdom Come, but I guess I’ll have to pick up the console edition for that with a stable (30fps is stable enough) frame rate.

The second game this week is Team Colorblind’s strange beat ’em up turn-based strategy fighting indie game, Aztez. It is a very stylistic fighting game with a monochromatic backdrop broken up by the stark contrast of red blood. Though from my understanding it is the Hand of Fate-style turn-based game, where you’re trying to control a map (or play a card game), and within that, there is a whole fighting game. The problem is how little there is to say about it.

This isn’t a redux of last week, the game is a tabletop management of cities and a minute of fighting. The combat system will probably feel like a familiar yet watered-down version of any fighting game of late, which is why I have a problem. Some enemies, such as those with shields, tend to play a game of blocking every hit. This means you have to sweep them from below, something that’s annoying to do with a controller. Out of the three things the game has going for itself, I don’t love the combat, yet I like the art style, and the tabletop sections are just fine. It is a good game, and the only one I’d say I played properly this week.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Aztez are both free on the Epic Games Store this week. They are available from now until the morning of February the 20th, when I’ll have an easy week as it is just one game to download and moan about. Next week’s game is Faeria, a “living board” card game with 300 cards and about 50 hours of gameplay according to the description, though on howlongtobeat.com one completionist run is clocking in at 114 hours. I find myself echoing Mike’s words on seeing high numbers on the site.

As for other admin information that I didn’t fit in at the top, we’ve got a new writer amongst us here at Phenixx Gaming. This week Ahmad joined us and wrote about the 1995 game based on the book of Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Take a couple of minutes to read through Ahmad’s first review with us here. As for shameless self-promotion on my own part, I made a video of myself rambling about F1 2019  for our YouTube channel following the written review back in June.

Update: Via a tweet released on the 17th of February, Epic Games revealed that Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will also be free Friday, February 20th alongside Faeria.

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