Prime Game Loot - December 2020

If you follow us for the monthly articles, we’re a day late. I’m happy to blame it on crap breaks at the end of November that some like to take. Why you aren’t thankful simply for life itself every day, just once a year, is evidence of how much you are taking for granted. Anyway, taking things for granted and gaming go hand-in-hand. Let’s talk about Prime Gaming and the strange month that is December, shall we? Oddly a month that has blown fresh air into the monthly games available this time around. Though, we’ll get to those later.

If you have been quick enough you’ll be able to pick up the first of the Legends of Runeterra Epic Wildcard drops, which will end on the 2nd. The second (and last) of those drops should be live for those that are a little later (by only a couple of hours) to the article. Similar to the skin shards, as far as I am aware, you can seemingly copy the rarity of other pieces of a skin you’ve already collected. I honestly don’t know: though, for those who do play Legends of Runeterra, the offer should be available for about a month, much like its predecessor.

Also ending on the day we publish is MLB Tap Sports‘ 10th drop. If my indifference in previous weeks wasn’t clear enough, I’m not that bothered. Free-to-play microtransaction-heavy rubbish will always be free-to-play rubbish. Onto the 11th drop, and you can now get three bonus player boxes and 125k in-game cash in the Clutch Cash drop. This offer ends on the 9th, when we switch to the Gilded Gift with three more bonus player boxes and 500 gold. That will be the 12th and final drop that will end on the 16th of December.

The third and final offer ending today seems to be only 20 Leif(s) for Epic Seven, which I still don’t understand the reason for the misspelling. From the 2nd onward, you can pick up the Level 85 Epic Equipment set with 4-parts and exclusive accessories for Prime users. This offer will end on the 16th of December and will switch over to five Greater equipment charms and 500K gold through the rest of the month. There will be a 12th drop coming on the 30th and more going on into 2021.

Continuing with that which needs immediate attention, Last Day on Earth has kept offering what is mostly crap. Last week’s offer, which you can pick up until the 3rd, is a rank three Husky puppy. It will be replaced with 500 caps until the 10th of December. Following that, we get what seems to be the 16th and final drop: a Kevlar armor set with modified Автома́т Кала́шникова (Translate: Kalashnikov’s assault rifle) or AK, which will end on the 17th of December. It is an early Christmas for me, I no longer have to talk about this mobile guff.

Nevertheless, Black Desert Mobile continues into 2021 and currently offers a Tier 5 pet chest until the 8th of December. From there on, you’ll be able to pick up the Hadium’s Chest with a holy vial of light until the 22nd. That offer will be followed by the Boss Stamps and tablets (15,000) bundle, available from the 22nd of December to the 5th of January. Afterward there will be several drops for Black Desert Mobile from January to late April of 2021.

Yahtzee With Buddies continues through the month, with a further two drops following this one. Currently, players can pick up the 11th drop of the Victory Rush Giveaway, which ends on the 9th of December. The 12th drop will follow until the 23rd of December with the Frozen Frame Giveaway, and for the two weeks following that players will be able to claim the Vanity Dice Giveaway. It is another piece of free-to-play mobile tripe I’ll be glad to see the back of by the end of the year.

New to the pile of things to dislike for being mobile trash, we have Square Enix’s War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. If I didn’t already dislike Final Fantasy for being contrived at times, a mobile game with a ridiculously long name won’t help. Currently, you can pick up the first drop of one MR+ Guaranteed unit summon ticket A, whatever that means. From the 9th, that will be replaced with 5-million Gil until the 23rd. That will be replaced with ten NRG Restore (L) until the 6th of January. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius will be part of our weekly and monthly articles until around the 12th of May.

Presently, World of Warships players can pick the Black Friday container with Black Friday ships available for players level 8 and over. This offer ends on the 10th of December and will be replaced with the final drop of the series. Players of World of Tanks can still pick up the Queen Maeve Kit with Maeve as a unique commander, along with tank rentals, blueprints, and XP boosts available until the 5th of January. One might assume both Wargaming titles will end around the same time.

In the second drop for Agar.io, players can pick up the Christmas potion, a 24-hour triple mass boost, and a 24-hour XP boost, available until the 10th of December. It is literal pay-to-win in that sense, as your mass is what calculates “Are you winning, son?” The third drop will be available from the 10th to the 28th with another Christmas Potion and 150 DNA. The fourth drop will be available through to the 11th of January. It will offer players a Golden potion, a skin, and 24-hours of triple mass boost again.

As of the time of writing, players of Roblox still irrationally annoy me with the presence of their game and its characterless design. However, those that didn’t immediately pick up the Hucky Corn Shoulder Buddy drop have until the 11th of December to pick that up. The next bundle will be available from the 11th of December until the 12th of January.

If I was allowed to swear just once in these Prime articles, I’d reserve the use of one of Lily Allen’s songs for Big Farm: Mobile Harvest. Last I spoke of the knock-off Farmville mobile game was that it was leaving on November the 30th, which is when it switched over to offer a paw print key chain/pendant. This offer is available until the 14th of December, with the Super Lures available from then on until the 28th. That is when the final (at the time of writing) piece of “loot” drops with premium dog treats until the 11th of January, 2021.

Players of RuneScape and Old School RuneScape can currently pick up 7-days of membership with their Prime subscription. This offer stands until the 15th of December, with no word so far as to what will replace this offer. One might assume it would be an Umbral chest or two with in-game currency, though it could be anything else. We will cover it once it is announced, either in our weekly articles or if we’re already on our break for the Christmas/holiday period, we’ll share the news on Twitter in a brief note on what is available.

Along with RuneScape on the 15th, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang‘s current offering of one Amazon Prime chest along with the usual hero and skin trial cards ends. It is the 19th drop with a total of 20 listed and the subsequent drop will be available from the 15th to the 30th of December.

Speaking of finals or possible ends, Valorant‘s three drop run of gun buddies and sprays will end on the 17th with the Clip-It spray. I don’t have anything else to say about this one; it wasn’t something bothersome or annoying to cover other than its stupidity of an F-key labeled “Pay Respects”.

With the back end of the month closing right up on us, we’re ready to close out the little bits of final bits of loot for the year. Warframe seems to be wrapping 2020 with that Veyas Operator Prime accessories, with the Necraloid pack and the Ember Warframe offers still available. All three offers seem to be ending on the 22nd of December, so players still have a while before these offers end.

With endings come new beginnings, of course, so Destiny 2‘s latest Beyond Light update will now offer a further twelve drops. The first of which is the Unchained Exotic bundle drop, offering an emote of the namesake, a regal howl exotic sparrow, a Transpose JT-24-X exotic ship, and an Arch shell legendary ghost. So as much as we go on with new beginnings, the more that stays the same as what once was. In short: Same crap, different day.

Smite, I still don’t understand what that game really is though some do enjoy it oddly enough. Players across PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC can pick the Brimstone Cerberus, a three-headed lava-based dog-thing that Hades would call his pet. I’ll be honest, that’s still not making me want to play Smite, so I doubt any of these offers will make me want to play it. The Cerberus offer ends on the 23rd of December.

Skipping a few days past the 25th, Madden 21‘s second Prime Gaming pack will swap over. Don’t worry, it won’t be the end as it seems. At the time of writing the first pack is still available alongside the second pack. Both offer one elite player, two gold players, and three silver players, each for the Ultimate Team nonsense I didn’t care for with FIFA 19 most recently. One would assume this third pack will offer the same from the 28th onward.

Continuing with more EA games, Apex Legends continues to offer the Season 7 skin of Horizon. Seemingly the last drop for Apex Legends, Horizon just looks like that mum that’s trying to make up for forgetting when Halloween is by wearing her costume through most of December. Currently, you can pick up Horizon’s Inverse polarity skin until the 28th.

From one free-to-play shooter to another, Rogue Company seemed interesting at the first look of the trailers, but I’ve yet to hear a good word about it. Nonetheless, we’re onto the third drop with Prime, and this time it is some weapon skins. The Nuclear Winter weapon wrap will paint your guns into a stark white scheme. This offer will end on the 29th of December.

In the third of the Paladins drops, players can currently pick up the exclusive Firecracker Willo skin for the game on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. This offer will end on the 30th of December for those that want to pick it up.

To return to my editorial style for Rocket Arena, is anyone really playing that? According to the past 7-day records for it on Steam Charts, the peak was 47 players. For an EA title that usually means “Off with their head!” For the very literally one-person with Prime while playing Rocket Arena, you can pick up both the Sheriff Topnotch outfit and the Frost Festival Izell outfit for the third-person arena shooter thing that flopped like Peter Parker in Olympic diving. This offer “ends” on the 4th of January, 2021. However, if you are still able to get Topnotch’s outfit, I’d assume it won’t end entirely.

League of Legends is doing something similar with its mystery skin shards, where the first two are still available for players to claim. The third offer will become available on the 3rd of December, though that offer will seemingly end on the 5th of January, 2021. With three skin shards, you can effectively reroll them over into one random skin permanent. Players of League of Legends will understand better than I would about all that nonsense.

With both Rockstar’s microtransaction hellscapes still making money and their end dates listed for August, let’s talk about them here. Red Dead Online players can get their one-time sign-up bonus of $1,000 of in-game money, a further $100, and a Breton horse. Players of GTA Online can get 200K of in-game cash for every week you play online, a further 200K for four consecutive weeks of play, along with an in-game rebate on a Vespucci Canal nightclub property ownership.

Finally! The last thing to talk about is the Carolingian Dynasty gear pack for Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Players can get this on PC, Consoles, and whatever this Google Stadia thing is that no one has ever heard of is. You will receive an offering of some armor, one mount, a raven skin, a shield, a weapon, and a naval skin set. This offer ends on the 13th of January, 2021.

Onto the games, we’ll start with what has been available for quite some time now. The SNK bundle offers 22-games along with the games available in the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection. If you are a fan of retro arcade and console games, this is one you will want to pick up. Metal Slug, The King of Fighters, and the Samurai Shodown series are just one small part of it all. There are a metric ton of games available, and it is only one small part. All are on offer until Wednesday, the 31st of March, 2021.

Along with those is what was available last month with Prime and the weekly games. The first thing disappearing is Bridge Constructor: Medieval on the 4th. Followed by A Knight’s Quest, Smoke and Sacrifice, Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan, Victor Vran, Lethis, and Genesis Alpha One. These are all leaving on the 11th. Leaving on the 18th is Ironcast, which won’t really be missed. Then Friday’s games will be leaving on the 25th of December: Deep Silver’s 2010 point and click adventure Lost Horizon and Ripstone’s first-person puzzle game, The Spectrum Retreat.

The first of the games available for December is one of the lesser-known games of 2020, though is among the Game Award noms announced the other week. HyperDot is a minimalist puzzle game about avoiding everything around you. The perfect encapsulation of an immunocompromised person in 2020, believe me, I know. With Prime, it is a “risk-free” look at something more experimental, which I’m sure after some hating Watch Dogs: Legion, sounds perfect.

Time for me to break out the usual phrases around these articles: Top-down, action, Rogue-like, pixel graphics and “adored by many, yet I’ve not played it”. Wizard of Legend is that dungeon crawler thing we’ve come to know well, though with a wizard-y magic sense around it instead of the horrid nightmare of Isaac and the Greek underworld of Hades. If you are much like Alexx or Mike, you’ll curl up in that comfy Rogue-like that you’ve come accustomed to in recent years. Not that I’m begrudging you of that.

I have to give a bit of a warning for the next one, as developer and publisher Goblinz Studio provided me with a key for Sigma Theory: Global Cold War. The only reason you’ve not heard me go into depth on it is both that I’ve yet to play it for days on end and… I’ve yet to understand it? I don’t know, the tutorial doesn’t do a great job at succinctly making the game understandable and fun. At least to idiots such as myself, I like the concept, though part of it is lost of me either through boredom or dyslexia. David did a lengthy video on it back in February when Global Cold War added Nigeria as a playable nation.

Following that we’ve dipped once again to a repeat, not that I’m taking it for granted. The year is 1899, and while there is a man called Arthur Morgan burning KKK members with their own cross in a forest at night, you spend the day drilling for oil in Turmoil. A Theme Hospital-style of Tongue-in-cheek management games, always worth a quick look if you’re interested.

The fifth game of the month is Wired Productions’ Close To the Sun, which was recently available on the Epic Games Store. It is an 1897 Nikola Tesla-inspired jaunt of wanting to be Bioshock while not understanding the more subtle portions of Bioshock. I mean, look at the name. If you aren’t thinking of the Icarus myth and long-standing Craig Ferguson joke, you are flying too… Close To The Sun. Ok, I’ve done the joke, my actual opinion is that it is a fine game trying too hard to actually be something much better. All while trying to worship a dead man I don’t like.

However, that’s not all! It is the season of good-will, cheer, and if you’re in America, shouting at your uncle over a Zoom-based family dinner about politics. So with that, there is one further game available for a shorter period of time. Those five games are on offer until the 15th of January 2021, with the possibility of more appearing over Christmas/New Years. If that happens we’ll mention them over on our Twitter during our break to be with family. This sixth game is available for Prime members until the 30th of December 2020.

Yes, Battlefield 3 is DICE’s 2011 first-person shooter mostly known for its multiplayer and the stupid name of “level-utions.” A series of maps that change during play in multiplayer, which sounded interesting in 2011, but seems standard in 2020 as Fortnite has you constructing and destroying buildings mid-battle. What seems to be strange about it is that as a result of this (among the others) Alexx and I agreed that Prime isn’t always worth its salt comparing it with the likes of Epic, PlayStation Plus, or Game Pass, the first of which gives games away for free. Is it a possible turning point for a while, or a December blip? Who knows!