Prime Gaming – May 2022 | Phenixx Gaming

Another year around the Sun and I’m as bitter as ever, so let’s get this over with before I start ranting about how futile life is. Of course, this month’s offerings in the “in-game content” section contain stuff from PUBG: Battlegrounds, Overwatch, GTA: Online, Dead by Daylight, Destiny 2, RuneScape, and even SMITE now has John Rambo for a day or two. No, that wasn’t a joke, a game about gods battling has a man that was angry about the treatment of his fellow soldiers following Vietnam due to PTSD. Once again, the only thing I can think of as even slightly interesting is Two Point Hospital‘s offerings or maybe Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition‘s US civilization.

Moving on to the games available from this month’s Prime Gaming subscription, it isn’t the best month we’ve had of late. Starting off with a sequel to a game that just had a sequel announced a few weeks ago, The Curse of Monkey Island is still a solid game for its time back in 1997. I’m starting to hate that year every time I have to scroll up to it to find my date of birth. Shifting the art direction and making Guybrush look a bit dull, it aims for whimsy where its predecessor had character and charm. It is not the worst of the Monkey Island games, but it began the downturn.

Out of Line is a 2D puzzle-platformer that I could have sworn Alexx played at some point last year. It is colorful, interesting enough, and has a beautiful hand-drawn art style, so it could be worth checking out at least. It isn’t the star of the month by a long shot, but certainly something that will tide you over for whatever releases in May other than Sniper Elite 5. Personally, I can’t say I’m excited by this one as much as I’d like to be to drop everything else. Nothing seems to be grabbing me no matter how much I look at it.

2017’s Cat Quest is another one that looks interesting, colorful, and has a solid art direction behind it. Nonetheless, I am left with a lack of something to say for the isometric hack and slash adventure RPG with cats, especially after running a café with them. Highly praised for its simplicity and reviewed very well on iOS, Cat Quest might be a fun adventure for new players to RPGs, as well as veterans of the genre. I, on the other hand, want a lengthier and meatier adventure from an RPG if I’m jumping into that world.

If Yooka Laylee could bank off that attempt to revisit the 3D platformer, someone else was going to do with something else soon enough. Released last year, Mail Mole is a colorful 3D platformer that much like everything else thus far leaves me wanting something a bit more. Specific elements give me ‘Nam-style PTSD flashbacks of Effie. Next, I’ll be on a murder spree of local and state law enforcement, eventually turned into a glorified bit of masculinity portrayed as a god in a free-to-play online game that is dull. Either that or I’ll just not play Mail Mole.

Next is the only game that even slightly piques my interest enough to possibly play in a drought of releases. Shattered – Tale of the Forgotten King is an action-adventure RPG released last year. This, of course, means that it is influenced by Dark Souls: If the dark fantasy with a hint of anime about it didn’t give that away already. While it is a little rough around the edges, at the very least it is something within my wheelhouse, as I think is proven by my shower of praise for anything FromSoft ever releases aside from Dark Souls 2. At least it is more interesting than what is left.

I hate Dead Space (the series), not just because it is mediocre horror, but it was the last time the conventual triple-A market took a risk on making a horror game before the jump scare become the standard. A victim of its era, Dead Space 2 is very much like its predecessor. It is lacking in atmosphere, which is kind of fitting with that name, but not the genre it claims to be part of. It is competent but bland, something I assume you don’t want to be said about a game where you get to hack up dead alien monster kids with the frequency Elon Musk tweeting something else just as irrelevant. The simple concept of playing Dead Space again bores me, never mind actually going and doing it.