Rising Storm 2: Vietnam & Abzû Free On Epic

Good news everyone, I don’t have to ramble on about twelve news stories! Monday, I ran down what little I had to cover for Prime Gaming. Tuesday, I used one of the many languages I’ve bothered to learn to translate Japanese and talk about the PS5 changing people’s decisions. Wednesday, Alexx spoke about the mind-bendingly wonderful Superliminal coming to Steam. Alexx and Lisa both gave a 10, and I called it my game of the year last year. Again on Thursday, Alexx spoke of something he’d reviewed, as Manifold Garden is also coming to Steam later this month.

Onto the two free games that I haven’t bothered to play for this Epic Games Store article, somehow I believe that will be apparent. Abzû is a strange little exploration game about finding Shamu, or something like that. As someone bored by aimless and unsatisfying exploration for pretty views, I didn’t care too much for it last year. It is one of those games that if you like the open-ended indie exploration game, you’ll love it, but if you don’t, you’ll find it lacking in something to do. More of the experience-type of game, instead of the more traditional game.

The second game is Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, a multiplayer shooter set in a war-torn Vietnam. It is the type of shooting gallery multiplayer thing Call of Duty does, rather than the tonally fitting Spec Ops: The Line. Multiplayer war shooters seem to feel less dirty when they turn up everything to 11, not just in the Call of Duty sense of Zombies and NRA-futurism, but also in Battlefield‘s large scale battles making it feel like a war. 64-people on grimly realistic maps continues the issue I have with most multiplayer shooters, they are mindless fun and don’t provide context to the true horror that is war, killing, death, blood, mud, guts, and gore.

There is a clip from the Doctor Who Christmas special “Twice Upon A Time,” it is a few moments I hold close from 12’s run because it is Doctor Who at its best. It is right after the 1st and 12th meet, and they are approached by a WWI soldier, Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart. The 1st Doctor is adamant that this blue box in the middle of the arctic in 1986 is his. He pulls the other two in only to his shock along with Archibald. It is when 12 is using his upper hand, 12 describes Archibald’s outfit as being from “World War 1.” It is Mark Gattis’ perfectly timed and delivered “World War One?… Yes, but what do you mean, ‘One’?” That is a perfect shot in the heart of emotion and gives perfect context; That is what is always missing.

Both Rising Storm 2: Vietnam and Abzû are free on the Epic Games Store until the morning of the 15th of October, when we’re on another double-bill. Next week I’ll not be playing two games again, as I’ve previously covered one and I don’t care for horror. For those under 18 (though we know you’re lying to Epic), you will get Kingdom New Lands, a fun little resource management game where you try to balance safety, land ownership, and yelling when you die to one of those little imp gits. The second is Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, a game (allegedly) about hiding from a former British Prime Minister.