Prime Gaming for October 2024

I’m not going to say rude words, even if I desperately want to, and threaten some very violent things. So Prime Gaming for the month of October, 2024. Your best guess is mine. I’m sacking off the whole “in-game content” bit because it is a collection of daily challenges for mobile games that want to be Wordle and some tripe for Lost (t)Ark that disappears in two days. Either there is a drastic change on the horizon for Prime Gaming, or someone is being a bit lazy on their useless, shiftless, feckless billionaire hole.

The first game of the month is actually one of my favorite games that I think about more than I think about all the good stuff: Being suffocated to death by a million cats, breasts, nice bums, my double promotion Football Manager save, and food, you know, the good stuff. Originally released in the PS2 era, Tomb Raider: Legend (I believe) was the second reboot after that whole The Last Revelation–Angel of Darkness period. However, unlike the 2013 reboot, I’ve played it more times than Rocky fought cold meat. Oh, and it restored faith in the series too.

You know how the story goes: Bruce and Martha get shot or stabbed, Uncle Ben gets killed but his rice business goes on, and Lara’s parents are about as alive as Garry Glitter’s career. From there, some artifacts that savage native peoples have held on to for hundreds of thousands of years are in danger, and the only one who can truly protect them is an English woman with an upper-RP accent. I’ll hold my comments on the British Museum. It’s a Tomb Raider game through and through, it’s just a shame Tomb Raider: Legend via GOG runs about as well as a drunk donkey in a marathon.

You can get it to run with some file tweaking, but by the time you do, a new release is out and I’ve got work to do. Fun game, something that is just behind the originals and their Remasters from earlier this year, I can’t recommend Legend enough, it’s a shame it takes some jiggery-pokery to get working right.

I wonder if I’ll talk as much about the other games currently available for October. Spoiler, I won’t. Spirit of the North is another one of those indie platforming emotional titles where you push right to progress, just in third-person this time. Available through the Epic Games Store, you may already have this one saved for a rainy day when games like these are mostly enjoyed. What, you don’t wait for rainy days to make chocolatey drinks and have a big sob? It’s cheaper than therapy, sometimes.

What in the Dark Billy Crystal Christ is The Eternal Cylinder? I actually want to know, as it seems to be a surrealist puzzle adventure with a bunch of Snuffaluffagus’ adventuring through a world full of elephants with teeth on their trunks and a couple of Babyface’s cousins from Toy Story (1). I’d like to say I know what I’m talking about, but ACE Team’s 2022 title is strange, possibly quite dark, and if I’m honest, I quite like the look of it. Despite being creepy as hell.

Cue the children with their “cringe” and “yeet.” Look, I’m an old man, I don’t understand you young people when you say these things, I don’t care how unbelievable OFK or other musical-based games are, including today’s choice, No Straight Roads. Released in 2021 as Metronomik’s debut title, you “start a rock band & end the EDM empire.” Listen, I’m not challenging Baxxter, I know my place in music but when the city bans all forms of music other than EDM in this not-Double Fine Double Fine game, you’re damn right I’m rebelling and will still be “Jumping All Over The World.”

I guess it is time to talk about the final game that we know of because Jeffrey is too busy polishing his… rockets. Hive Jump 2: Survivors was only released on Steam in 2024, but I think we already knew that since it is a “Bullet-Heaven” with the title “Survivors” following a colon. Seen as a sequel to the mediocre 2017 sci-fi retro platformer/Rogue-like, Hive Jump, there isn’t really much of a connection. Art direction, title, and very little else, people at least enjoy it more than the original.

Without the rest of the month, that’s basically it. If we’re getting a weekly update like we did during the pandemic, I’m not going back to write those as well as Epic every Friday. I’d sooner be hit in the head with a toolbox by Chancery Montgomery Punk than try and bleed out words on a Big Fish Games game which is like all the other ones, but this time with a witch, or some ghosts, or my complete apathy.

Either I have the information ready to go around the start of the month, or I start kicking a bald man in the teeth for every week’s worth of games I miss out on mentioning. For legal reasons, I won’t, but I want to.