Prime Gaming Loot - April 2021

It’s that time of the month again, where I dread looking at the form of gaming I desperately despise. However, we’ve made the decision for both our mental states that I change up how we do these Prime Gaming articles. This is partially for the sake of time and partly so I don’t have to say “Everyone can music” ever again. It is also somewhat so I am not banging my head against a wall into the early hours of the morning hoping I get this in on time. For you, it will look less like the world’s longest list of mobile tripe with smatterings of MMO nonsense. Though, for me, I no longer have to go into detail on something Amazon/Prime outright hate to go into detail on.

So, with that explanation out of the way. Here are some of the games you’ll find have in-game “loot” this month on Prime: Paladins, Valorant, League of Legends, FIFA 21, Grand Theft Auto Online, Red Dead Redemption 2 Online, and AxE: Alliance vs Empire. FIFA 21 players can pick up the “FUT birthday,” League of Legends players can get skin shards, and players of Rockstar’s cash cows still get what was available last month.

I’ll get to what else is available in a minute, but we’ll not dropping long paragraphs about the actual games available with prime. However, I want to go on a bit of a rant because I’ve been playing these games with Prime recently, most notably last month’s Blasphemous. Since I last properly touched the games with Prime, Amazon has made a wonderfully stupid decision to break off the Games section from the Twitch desktop app. As a result, they have given the games their own special little app under Amazon Games.

It is an app that is dreadful at networking. I’d set something to download, leave it for a while and when I’d come back hours later, I’d need to log back in. That doesn’t seem as much of a problem until you realize every time you put in the password, for some reason, you are asked to then fill out one of those Captcha things. You know, the images with the messed up letters and numbers. The ones where they cut off the bottom have of Gs and Qs, so you can’t tell which one is which? I might be slightly (only slightly) annoyed by this. However, when it is every time you sit down after a short while away, it gets very annoying.

Anyway, onto the first of the games released throughout the month. Optica is a simplistic puzzle game released back in 2018. It is so simple in fact, that it only has three user reviews on Steam since then. Only one of the reviews is in English and it is negative. The annoying thing about its simplicity, is that I am without something more to say, other than using it to demonstrate how lacking Prime Gaming can often be in comparison to storefronts with similar/better deals. I’ve said it before, the Epic Games Store is a far greater value most of the time, and that’s free. It is available until the 9th of April.

Alongside Destiny 2, Fall Guys, Apex Legends, Smite, World of Tanks, Rainbow Six Siege, Roblox, For Honor, Magic Tiles 3, UFC 4, Maplestory M, Epic Seven, and Darkness Rises, those still around Fall Guys can get the Boxzilla bundle, as designed by Homer Simpson. For Honor players can get Champion status, Roblox players could possibly grow up, as could UFC 4 fans.

Want another example of the lackluster games available with your Prime subscription? Escape Machine City: Airborne, a point-and-click puzzle game that released last month on PC and on mobile. The mobile version includes microtransactions. You buy later levels, which automatically makes me dislike it out of principle. Regardless it is available through Prime until the 16th of April.

Moreover, your Prime subscription could nab you guff for: Risk: Global Domination, Helix Jump, Agar.io, V4, Rogue Company, Cube Surfer, World of Warships, Hole.io, Aquapark.io, Rocket Arena, Legends of Runeterra, Madden NFL 21, Star Wars: Squadrons, and War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. However, those of you playing Star Wars: Squadrons, can get the final cosmetic drop in the bundle of four, ending on the 5th of April.

For all that I moan about the rather lacking selection of games available through Prime such as that hidden object tripe, there is on occasion something of interest. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics is a turn-based RPG based on the film (and later the prequel series) of Jim Henson puppets of the 80s, set on Thra. I’ll be honest, I opened this one the other day to get a quick overview, but I was having a bit of a hyperactive moment and couldn’t focus on a turn-based tactics fantasy game. Look, if you are a kid of the 70-80s or a hipster (most of you), you are already downloading this one, don’t lie. It is available until the 23rd of April.

Next up is what is available throughout the month, and some of it is a bit of rehashing along with one very interesting selection I’ll be jumping back into this weekend. First up is The Escapists, the game I will forever moan about in regard to the console controls because they are so draggy to the overall pace of the game. In the very quick, frantic, and beautiful indie game about escaping prison, you are thrown in HMP Slade alongside colorful characters. Of course, from there you are trying to Shawshank your way out of prison. If I knew of one other prison-based reference I’d break it out. From here on out, all the games are available until the start of next month.

To continue on the same vein as Sky Drift from March, one of the Aces of the Luftwaffe games is available. I say one of, as I don’t rightly know if it was the first game from 2015 or the second (Squadron) from 2018. My notes don’t define which one either; Good going me! For the life of me, I can’t remember why this World War II top-down shoot ’em up/bullet hell is so familiar, but like most of its kind it is very simplistic.

To continue on that same vague idea, walking simulators are simple. Before I Forget was released just last July and is about a woman seemingly trapped in a house, exploring a mystery and a love story. Where have I seen something like that before? Ok, that’s a spoiler for another game that I spill my love over every time I talk about it. This is the first time I’d heard of Before I Forget, so I am a bit limited on knowledge of it. If you are a fan of the walking sim-thing then you might enjoy it, but I’m too busy thinking about that other game I really do enjoy for being beautifully set up.

Let’s get to the obligatory multiplayer thing I don’t care for: Move or Die. I believe that’s what everyone who owns an Apple Watch is told. It is colorful, 2D, action-based, and has on the nose “comedy.” It is the type of thing that would be fine at a party of drunk people, i.e the people I tend to avoid. If you’ve got kids, it is the type of thing they’d be interested in for a short while at least. This will distract them for a little bit before lockdown boredom kicks in, again.

The final game, and oddly the one I am most excited about playing (again), is Moving Out. In the very Overcooked-style game also from Team17, you are tasked with not swearing at the person next to you on the couch and just getting the sofa out of the house without smashing windows or dropping it in the pool. That’s what co-op gameplay is best for, that “I want to kill you, but we need to get this thing done before I do that” experience. This is one I’d suggest not playing with kids, unless you want to teach them new words for genitals.