Prime Gaming – March 2022

I had to stop playing Elden Ring for this, so it better be a good month for Prime Gaming. As usual, I am not going to cover the in-game “loot” because I would rather not go metaphorically dumpster diving. You can still pick up the GTA V Online cash but this time it is available on PS5 too. Additionally, Apex Legends has a new skin for this month. Battlefield 2042, Fall Guys, and Destiny 2 are offering cosmetic bundles. On top of all that, a collection of MMOs such as Amazon’s Korean-developed Lost Ark and homegrown New World also offer complete guff.

Let’s start with the EA title, as there was none of those last month: Madden NFL 22. Yeah, this is the one I spoke about last August when it was released, and I quite enjoyed it. Putting aside the endlessly monotonous live service nature of the Ultimate Team nonsense, the gameplay has been refined in the decade since my previous excursion into everlasting disappointment as a Jets fan. If The Yard mode did more to disregard the rules akin to FIFA Street, I’d have relished that more. Overall the enjoyment comes from the general play of the game as is.

Moving on to the only other game to annoy me, we have Crypto: Against All Odds. On the concept alone, I’m left entirely disinterested. You play as a security expert trying to halt “blockchain threats,” and several hackers in a tower defense motif that is of course coated in the color magenta. If I was left with one brain cell, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t “Defend the blockchain!” for love nor Monopoly money. Yet brain cell deficient crypto bros love it, so Amazon had to jump on the bandwagon.

SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech is the successor to the fantastic SteamWorld Dig 2 with a turn-based card battler akin to your Warsaw and Darkest Dungeon. Despite having all three, my previous disliking towards turn-based mechanics has given me a reason to put off playing such games for a while. Since it is stylistic and colorful enough, Hand of Gilgamech could be an interesting and fun RPG-style few hours throughout the month of March.

Up next, The Stillness of the Wind, something that will please many of those similar to Alexx and Lisa, as it is a story-driven farming simulator. It has a yellow-dominated yet stunted color pallette, though unlike the typical farming simulator of your Stardews, Harvest Moon, and otherwise, there is a creepier and more unsettling tone established below it all. That tone is a dominant force that, personally, I can’t see the appeal of. Especially considering that the farming sims of prior years are about escaping unlikeable positions or uneasy lives. Maybe The Stillness of the Wind can break that idea by surprising some this month.

Pesterquest, a visual novel about simple My Chemical Romance fans doing something of… I am bored of it already. Claiming itself to be funny is like saying its creator has the most perfect genitals, it is an unbelievably high bar set out to cross. I don’t believe that for a second about something so angsty. Points for showing people that aren’t just pin-thin, able-bodied, and concealed in more make-up than the cracks of Le mont Saint Michel though. The trailers and screenshots themselves feature people in wheelchairs, large people, and the typical goths.

Penultimately, LooK INside is a point-and-click adventure about family (hence “K-IN”) and exploring your family linage through books and internet searches in a stylistic world. It is similar to Return of the Obra Dinn, Paper’s Please, or other bureaucracy simulators but with a more familial setting, with an amiable and inviting maroon/brown coating the majority of the backdrops. I’m finding myself wanting to play Unexpected’s little adventure. It is warm and interesting, there couldn’t be more I’d ask from such a concept.

Finally, the one that I am sure will be available through Amazon’s partnership with GOG or Epic, Surviving Mars. I’ve spoken lightly several times on this one before, a sci-fi city building game about doing the very thing the title suggests. You’ll colonize the place where Elon Musk came from. Typically researching tech upgrades to successfully survive on the planet of Matt Damon’s fecal matter potatoes, it is much like Haeminmont’s Tropico series, in that isn’t the most difficult city-builder but interesting nonetheless.