Prime Gaming for October 2024 (updated)

If this was visual and I could convince my editor to let me do a whole Craig Ferguson bit, this article would be a 10-minute video of me sitting angrily in a chair staring at the camera. I didn’t want to be doing two articles on this nonsense, but I guess waiting a week to inform everyone about what is available through Prime Gaming for October is perfectly fine. It’s not like we’re almost halfway through the month already. I’ll not waste any more time, go check out the previous article for what was initially available, we’ll start with what came on the 10th.

A repeat from only March, SCARF is a 3D platformer in that very colorful PS2 way but with a PS3-4 thought to its design. As I called it rather harshly in March, a bit generic and aimed towards the kids rather than those that grew up with the peak of 3D platformers. Ain’t no Mario Galaxy around these parts, just a simple and inoffensive platformer you’ve probably already picked up. Once again it is available through the Amazon Games App and you can pick up SCARF now.

Another that you may already have thanks to the Epic Games Store weekly, you’ll need to open up GOG for this one. BioShock Remastered is the first and arguably best BioShock that brought the collection of imitators that have since followed. Sadly some of those imitators include We Happy Few. From the story, the gameplay, and the overall feel, the grimy art deco of our first adventure to Rapture is always worth that visit, if you haven’t already.

A rarity up next, after months of Amazon, Epic, and GOG. However, you’ll want to open up the Microsoft Store (where available) to claim Doom Eternal right now. The sequel to 2016’s fantastic evolution to the Doom franchise, Eternal certainly pleases some people despite not explaining what happened to the end of the first one. Though for those of us old enough to have to remember tax and feeding other alive things as a thing, the complexity has been ramped up so you’ll carry around more weapons than Frank West can strap to a shopping trolly. All while smashing your face off of invisible walls with the new traversal options.

Also, can we stop pretending that the guy with the gun has a greater meaning? You are just wasting my time and taking the fun out of what was actually a great commentary on the character in the first place.

Let’s continue with another sequel that we’re getting instead of the first in the series. DreadOut 2 is a 2020 third-person horror adventure about a young woman in Indonesia, of course, she’s old enough to be in this horror set piece and have a chest built like a bookcase, but young enough to be in a school uniform and be vulnerable. Like the first game, you’ll use the camera on your smartphone to Fatal Frame your way throughout, but occasionally melee attacks too. You can download this one now through the Amazon Games App.

We’ll be returning to Epic for these next two which are also available now, but I’ve got a feeling some will be lost on the nostalgia of it. An asymmetrical hide-and-seek game, 4 hunters will seek one hider, it seems in Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Ecto Edition. The only thing about this one that is getting any sort of praise from me with a name almost like “Spirits Unleashed,” you need to have one of your characters in a latex catsuit. I’m sure if you asked Bill Murray nicely, he’ll do it.

I tend not to hang around them on a matter of principle, but I don’t think Priest Simulator: Vampire Show is entirely realistic to being a priest. Not unless there is the sound of banging on the underside of the floorboards. A reskin of the one game made by Asmodev, Priest Simulator: Vampire Show is much like several preachers you hear about, recycling the same thing to make simple people happy and sometimes ignoring the extremely loud ones in the group who are crazy. Like religion, highly praised and I’ve no idea why.

The last of what is currently available and it is the most horrific thing, is a game trying to talk about mental health and mental decline with a walking simulator-esque lack of gameplay overall. The Gap is trying to do something important with something I think games could seriously have a go at trying to tackle, but I think it falls into a similar trap that a lot of other indie titles do. For all the use of interactivity, the balance is never shared, but rather dominated by the story making the “impactful decision” not always land.

From being mature about something to do with mental health to showing maybe I need to work on my own. A Legacy Games code up next from the 17th of October, Mystery Box: Hidden Secrets is a puzzle box that has JJ Abrams rubbing the inside of his pocket. A cheap and simple point-and-click puzzle game, you won’t be missing out on a game of the year with this one.

Much like SCARF, we’re going back to earlier in the year for another Amazon Games app option, Vlad Circus: Descend Into Madness. I’ll say what I said then and it is something I still standby: The point-and-click adventure with pixel art clowns might be interesting, but we’ve got lots of other games much higher on our lists to get to first. Sometime between now and the heat death of the universe, I guess we’ll get around to it, maybe.

Continuing with the repeats of earlier this year, how much do you want to go back to 1930s Germany when some very well-dressed hooligans set fire to the Reichstagsbrand? You know, I think this Adolf guy might be bad news for Germany. Also available through the Amazon Games app and from the 17th, you can pick up (once again) Through the Darkest of Times, a story-focused adventure about running the underground to get the “undesirables” out of Berlin. Or you could just hang about in Western society for a couple more years as we regress and do it again in real life.

Speaking of horrible circumstances that are about as desirable as slamming a heavy fire door on your genitals, Killing Floor 2. It isn’t a bad game, I’d say it is ok and does what it aims to be, Left 4 Zombie-Clowns 3. Multiplayer-focused, this one is available through the Epic Games Store with all those friends you don’t have on Epic because some people are weird about snuggling up to Steam alone.

Let the decline begin, as you have a 2021 remaster, Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol. The original SNES/Sega Mega Drive (Genesis only in North America) game published by Konami in 1993 and its 1994 sequel, these 16-bit “classics” are of the run-and-gun genre. If you’re 12 or something, Sega used to make consoles and the games on them looked like this but smaller and were less annoying because you didn’t have the advancement in tech we have now. The last of what is available for the 17th, you can pick up Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol via the Amazon Games app.

If you’re still in the market for something a bit dated and clunky, the 24th delivers Pumpkin Jack via a GOG code. A very PS2-styled “action-adventure” 3D platformer with hack-and-slash combat. I couldn’t hate something so confident in what it aims to be and does so reasonably well. I’m just not a massive fan of everything having to be themed around Halloween to get something like this anymore. Can’t we get someone to make 40 Winks, but good?

Desaturated and eco-centric, it must be Image & Form Games’ 2022 title, The Gunk. Available through a GOG code on the 24th, you play as Rani in this “action-adventure” about clearing the titular gunk from wildlife, turning everything that was black and tarry into something green and luscious. Being an “action-adventure” you’ve got platforming, shooting your de-gunkafier, and a little bit of dodge rolling during boss fights.

Stasis: Bone Totem is an isometric point-and-click adventure set in a very dark and Giger-influenced world with heavy bio-tech elements. Available through the Epic Games Store on the 24th, and released in 2023, Stasis: Bone Totem is a sequel to THE BROTHERHOOD’s 2015 title, Stasis, and building on the studio’s other success with Cayne and Beautiful Desolation. Something, something, depressing set up for characters, something, something, the deep sea holds the answers to the premise of this very grim title.

Speaking of grim, my patience for this nostalgia everyone is drunk on, I think the need for a remaster of the 1995 platformer Gargoyles is about as welcome as a blue fella in his underwear in most public places. An update to the graphics and little else, you’ll find yourself wondering who thought this was a good game when it came out. Well, according to Scott Larry of GamePro, “one of the best games for the Genesis, right next to Earthworm Jim 2.” From the 24th, you can download Gargoyles Remastered via the Amazon Games app and wonder what Scott was on when that was a reasonable opinion.

If card-based Rogue-lites are more your thing, sadly I have to bemoan the looks of Monster Train to you ahead of you picking it up on the 24th via GOG. Artistically everything is colorful or unique looking, but if you think I know what the living Christ is going on in any screenshot or gameplay trailer, I want some of your trust. Maybe the tutorial fixes it and that’s the reason PC Gamer called it the best card game of 2020, but I don’t think at a glance it is intuitive. Not in the slightest.

Why does everything have to be a Souls-like with Lovecraftian elements? Morbid: The Seven Acolytes is the last game available on the 24th, this time via the Epic Games Store. Released in 2020, this not top-down but not isometric-styled title from Still Running called itself “a Horrorpunk Action RPG.” Is [blank]-punk the new colon followed by Redemption, Redeemed, Rejection, Rejoice, Revelations, Redefining my ability to care, and whatever other R-word you want to use. It was reviewed well, so if you aren’t burnt out on Souls-likes, go buck-wild.

Going a year further back, and a bit before Germany was invading France the first time, and I do mean the Franco-Prussian war, not the other two times, we’ve got A Plague Tale: Innocence. Available through GOG on the 31st, you too can be eaten to death by rats as you drag a child through 14th-century France and Monty Python isn’t ruining every mention to the Spanish and the Catholic Church for the rest of time. Yes, I know in-game it was during France’s turn, but if we had to be specific about what John Paul II had to apologize for, we’d be here for a long time.

Another bloody Souls-like, but one that I think isn’t too bad. An isometric offering via the Epic Games Store, Death’s Door has you playing as a crow reaping the souls of the dead as a 9-5. Though the crow’s breast isn’t as fabulous as Dolly Parton’s is. Developed by Avid Nerve and published by Devolver, there is a hint of that Devolver subversion with a whole lot of puzzles and boss fights that can be a touch tricky, sometimes due to the stuck isometric camera.

I’m sorry Souls-likes, will you take me back, I didn’t mean it. I can change! Anything but having to talk about another god-forsaken awful hidden-object game from the purveyors of the damn things, Big Fish Games. Released in 2023, the gameplay of Haunted Hotel: Personal Nightmare Collector’s Edition is the same as the several billion other Big Finish Games games you’ve heard about, maybe even played. Available through the Amazon Games App, you are sent to solve a mystery that is about as cliched as your granny’s decor.

I hear there is something special going on on the 31st, but if it involves people talking about a Bett Midler film from 1993, I’m going to angle-grind someone’s face until they look like they could be in Scorn. An actual Giger-influenced title, right down to the concept art stealing his homework, Scorn is another one of those bump-in-the-night horror titles. Less about the threat and more about being unsettling, Scorn is about making you want to puke like you did after someone showed you that video in 2007. Available through GOG, might want to keep the kids away.

Onto the last game of the month, and I do not want to bash my face against a brick wall, for once. Instead, I want to watch and laugh when Nintendo is told to sling its hook if and when Coromon adds flying mounts to its very obvious Pokémon game that isn’t called Pokémon. Unlike Palworld though, Coromon is putting the frighteners up the Blue, Yellow, Red, Black, White, Diamond, Pearl, Ruby, Jade, Saphire, Salt, Pepper, Tamarind, and Ras el Hanout eras of Pocket Monsters. I don’t need to explain a Pokémon game, you’ve played them, enjoyed them, revisited them, got to the third gym, put it down for a couple of weeks, and gotten lost so you restart again.