Prime Gaming – December 2021

One last time, it is just one last time before I actually get a break and I can just clear the decks. This month’s Prime Gaming is a little different given its length, but once again, I’ll refrain from listing all the “in-game loot” for my own sanity. Nonetheless, you’ll find new stuff you can pick up for Blade & Soul, Apex Legends, Smite, League of Legends, Fallout 76, Far Cry 6, Genshin Impact, Fall Guys, and lots more. Festive cheer might be in the hearts of some, but even with Slade playing as I write, my cold black heart shrinks two sizes as every year passes. So, on to the games!

Spellcaster University is a strange game about simulating being a gay bloke watching over a school where the students poo on the floor. You didn’t think I was going to do that reference for a magic school management simulator? Clearly, no one taught you the Praemeditatus spell. Joking aside, this might surprise my editor given how much I’ve said fantasy and magic are about as interesting as the rivers of excrement being magicked away, but I am interested in this one. The art (of all things) is the only thing putting me off, looking a bit like a child’s drawing of a person more than a proper face.

After getting through some Young Adult novels recently, there is only one thing left to do: child labor! Yes, it seems we’re continuing the Epic Games, GOG, and EA partnership thing and I’d hazard a guess that this one might be on GOG. Equally, it could be available for Epic. Nonetheless, I reviewed Frostpunk a while back on the Xbox One, and despite some troubles translating management/city builder menus perfectly to controllers, I like it. Of course I do, you can force children into work, make them eat grandma, and generally do the most sensible things to do when you have the mind of a heartless cretin.

OK, get this: what if there was something you could do when you get onto planets in No Man’s Sky and, instead of nothing being there, there was an entire mystery? Directed by the bloke behind Far Cry 4, Assassin’s Creed 3, and one of the designers behind The Sims 2 and Spore, Journey to the Savage Planet might not have space exploration with millions of bland-looking planets, but it does have one colorful and interest space adventure on ARY-26. Sure, there are lifeforms on the planet, but you don’t go about hitting things too often. You are mostly collecting, cataloging, jetpacking, and grappling about the planet, but your point is exploration. Is this the story of a side character in an interesting episode of Doctor Who?

Balls, I don’t understand them and I don’t understand people’s fascination with them and their games. Nonetheless, this is the other one that could be interchangeable with Frostpunk for GOG or Epic. On either storefront, I’d suggest picking up Football Manager 2021 if you are the type to sit managing your dull little team to the Premier League.

I’ll admit, outside of the occasional FIFA and prior experience with the Football Manager series (and maybe the US women’s team), I don’t care. I enjoy the management much more here than We Are Football. Even if you aren’t a fan of the “sport” of overpaid millionaires falling down, I’d give Football Manager a chance.

I nearly committed crimes for two reasons this week: there is a woman playing the Doctor, and someone saying “creator economy” with a positive tone. I hate YouTubers (subscribe to Phenixx Gaming on YouTube!), but I find the mindset behind YouTubers Life OMG! completely mental. The game is a series of disconnected gameplay segments and maddening ideas of what it is to be that fabled “YouTuber.”

You don’t spend days working on videos, reading comments/mild death threats, dealing with depression, failing, or anything else that is moderately realistic of the experience. While 97.8% (don’t look up the numbers) of YouTube channels crash and die shortly after they are created, this tells you anyone can be the next star.

Speaking of grim realities smacking you square in the face like a shovel to the back of the head, Stubbs the Zombie In Rebel Without A Pulse is not a great game. Sure, it uses some interesting ideas for gameplay for something back in 2005, but overall, it was both ahead of its time and behind on the times. When it was recently free on the Epic Games Store, I said that while the game might not entirely satisfy, the soundtrack of modern bands/artists covering ’50s-era pop is what I am here for. I love Death Cab for Cutie’s cover of “Earth Angel,” and that makes Stubbs worth it.

There is always at least one indie title that is relatively unknown outside of a niche, and I assume these will return in the majority when January rolls around again. Morkredd is a puzzle game about guiding light. Given the dark contrasts so starkly with the light, I thought for a second it might be a sequel or moderately connected game to Lightmatter. Both are light-based puzzle games published by Aspyr Media in the stark ends of 2020. There are connections, but not enough, I guess. It is an interesting niche puzzle game that is waiting for its audience.

You can paper over the cracks of the old adventure games, but you’ll never be able to retain their gameplay and all the cracks that form with those puzzles: Babel Fish particularly. Nonetheless, Telltale was going through a series of other people’s IPs before they got to The Walking Dead, one of which was Tales of Monkey Island. By far not their worst one (hi Batman, Minecraft, Guardians of the Galaxy, Borderlands, Game of Thrones), but this was before The Walking Dead when they were going in circles. It is good, but not blowing any socks off anytime soon.

This was my first and only foray into the Need for Speed series in the PS3 era, mostly because the rest were pushing into a trend we now know as live service. I think it always surprises people to know the Need for Speed series is much older than they think. While Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered is available, it is a remaster of a reboot of a 1998 game called Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit. Yes, we’re already in a world where a reboot has been remastered. 2020 was a hell of a year. Generally, it is good, but don’t expect Underground 2, Most Wanted, or Carbon of the PS2.

We did it, that’s it for 2021! Wubbalubbadubdub and all that stuff, I am going to have a Sex on the Beach and then maybe find someone to copulate with in the hotel bar. Who knows if I’ll be back for 2022, I might have a lover named Javier.