Prime Gaming – January 2025

Another year, another month, another one of these Prime Gaming articles where I need to talk about the good, the bad, and the downright ugly Big Fish Games games (currently un)available throughout January. As always, Lost (T)Ark has some dried, shriveled-up, piles of free-to-play MMO tripe, at the time of writing it’s the “Holiday Cache.” There is also something for another Amazon Games’ nonsense MMO, Throne and Liberty. There is a daily challenge offer for 2048, Topsoil, Putt Putt Problems, and What The? also; with the Cloud Gaming section highlights being Guacamelee! 2, Fortnite, Fallout New Vegas, and Fallout 3.

First up for the month, available through the Epic Games Store you can pick up a fantasy, Asian-inspired side-scrolling action title Eastern Exorcist. Oddly enough it isn’t the obscenely racist cut of White actors with taped-up faces reshooting 1973’s The Exorcist. I’d hardly call Eastern Exorcist a Souls-like in terms of the Metroidvania influence, but I certainly see the elements of the 2D Souls-like inspirations such as Blasphemous along with the overall art style. It is something for those who enjoy the genre, but not for everyone.

Also available now through the Epic Games Store, you can pick up The Bridge, again. A puzzle game that uses a lot of visual trickery and that typical Penrose Steps style that M.C Escher used in his art. If you like a monochromatic, slower-based puzzle game that does just enough, then you’ve got a winner for the month. However, many of us already have Ty Taylor and The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild’s 2013 title and maybe even played it once. Unlike Return of the Obra Dinn or Golden Idol, you’ll probably not want to play it again.

Oddly enough, that’s what I’d say about the first GOG game you’ll pick up too, BioShock 2 Remastered. A (very slight) refinement of the first game’s mechanics and expansion on the story (which was never needed), but if I had to say something about BioShock 2 it is the fact that it just doesn’t do anything better than the first game that makes it feel different. Burnout 3 and Revenge are direct sequels but feel entirely different as games, but BioShock 2 is to BioShock what Portal 2 is to Portal, which is to say more of the same but less interesting or witty/smart.

It might be a new year, but I’m still the same grumpy person I’ve always been. With that, I get to moan about Spirit Mancer available now through the Amazon Games App. The answer to what if a JRPG fan wanted to make a 32-bit side-scrolling platformer, which is so “colorful” (for video games) that the word Magenta should be in the title somewhere. Certainly not bad, but given Spirit Mancer was released on Steam in November of last year and released with three sets of DLC that are gameplay-based, I don’t know why I should care.

I actually played this one to figure out if it was either a mouse-based on-rails sort of racer/shooter or if I wanted to hurl up the mountain of spaghetti I just had. Neither sounds good, but Skydrift Infinity, the last of what is currently available through the Epic Games Store is somehow worse.

Probably a hundred million times better played with a controller, you are a pilot flying through mountains and other unexplained nonsense to race other pilots in an arcade-y action-racer. The trouble is at some point the camera will climb so far up your poo pipe that you’ll smack every mountain.

Very much the same game and a repeat of what we’ve seen before, probably from Epic, you can get a code for GOG to play GRIP on the 16th. A semi-blend of Wipeout and other racers of that kind, you also have car combat and wheels (it’s sort of in the name). Do you really need me to explain Car vroom, car go brrrr, or car go bang? Now if you excuse me, I need to go scream at whoever thought mentioning Star Wars Podracer in the game’s description was a good idea, and then maybe kick them to death.

I’m also going to kick the next person who makes me have to think about Mark Burnett, simply because I’d rather defecate in my own hands and clap with my mouth open. Something to put on when your racist nan is in, Massive Miniteam’s genuinely ugly and utterly horrendous Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader(?) asks simple questions and you have to answer them. Reports last year suggested that Amazon is set to bring the show back with Taylor Swift’s other half, and I’ll be honest, American game shows are terrible. Almost as bad as America’s attempts at panel shows.

Onto card-based battler SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. Available through GOG this is Image & Form Games’ 2019 evolution of the SteamWorld series. Though I may not be a fan of the evolution as a player, I certainly appreciate the series as a whole for having the ability to be a Metroidvania twice, a side-on turn-based X-COM style game (twice), a card battler, and that one-time when it was Dungeons 3. As a standard RPG, the SteamWorld games always look so beautiful, and Hand of Gilgamech is no exception.

Can I get a printout? Because I think I’ll need it for the 198 buttons you need to know to make Warren Spector’s Deus Ex even work. The Game of the Year edition is available from the 23rd of January via GOG, you too can play 2 hours of Deus Ex, realize you’ve maybe not specced right for the character, get stuck, and come back several months/years later to do the same again. I don’t think since 2007 there has been someone who has said “I’ll play Deus Ex” and has actually completed it without a guide. While it is a proper action RPG, 25 years later it is completely incomprehensible.

Adorable and delightful, you can also pick up Little Rock Games’ 2021 title To The Rescue!. Available through the Epic Games Store, you run a dog shelter in this almost RPG-Maker-like management title focused around… running a dog shelter. You weren’t going to run a dog shelter for goldfish now, were you? It is that simple, run a dog shelter, don’t kill dogs (good advice for life really), and maybe keep the place running for a long time. It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but at least it ain’t water with bubbles in it.

You only need to go back to last June to find this one, which I remember because Taylor did a write-up about its release. Released around that faux-E3 period of the year and available through Epic from the 23rd, Star Stuff may be looked upon unfairly as we all get told how amazing games that release in 2032 will be.

As a small, programming-based puzzler, I’m typically a fan of these types of games, but Ánimo Games Studio’s Star Stuff doesn’t excite me for some reason. Maybe it is the use of almost neutral, almost pastel-y colors that are very inoffensive (which makes everything look bland) but maybe I’m just reaching.

Speaking of inoffensive but bland games, we’ve got Massive Miniteam’s 2020 title, Spitlings. Anything that describes itself as an “unforgiving Hardcore Arcade Game” just isn’t. It is like a politician who says they care about children or wants to preserve the fact you can breathe. You play as a blob that spits at other blobs in an arcade 2D box that just so happens to be about the size of your screen. If you’re like me, I don’t really care for this small party game style before Gang Beasts appeared on the scene, so you probably won’t like Spitlings. Available through the Amazon Games App.

Oh hi Rebellion, can I get a code for the new Sniper Elite? Ok fine, I’ll do that more privately. For now, I’ll put my lips around and maybe give Zombie Army 4: Dead War a bit of that tongue action as I cradle. Despite thinking whatever I’ve just written is probably being cut, you can pick up Zombie Army 4: Dead War through the Epic Games Store on the 23rd of January.

A bit like Left 4 Dead, you take Karl and the gang off on a Nazi-Zombie killing spree in the Mystery Machine with all those Sniper Elite amenities, multiplayer, and zombies. A series build for people that get excited by COD‘s new zombie mode.

Onto the 30th of January and it is ENDER LILLIES: Quietus of the Knights, another with a sequel in the series set to make its full release at some point soon. Alexx and I both did reviews of ENDER LILLIES back when it was released, and unlike Eastern Exorcist this one actually has all the trappings of 2D Souls-like. Despite the art being a bit puppeteer-y, overall Quietus of the Knights is a brilliant little 2D take on the genre that maybe isn’t Hollow Knight but is certainly around that Blasphemous, Salt and Sanctuary sort of level.

Oh, back to GOG we go for the penultimate offering, Blood West. Inspired by Doom and Quake right down to the very strand of DNA that shot out of Carmack and Romero, this stealth-based western FPS is what happens when a small developer feels the need to make a game the length of triple-A releases. Or more accurately Triple-A 10-20 years ago. Not bad, certainly interesting from a visual standpoint forcing that retro style with modern graphical developments, but either you like Doom games or you don’t.

The same could be said of the final offering for January in Prime Gaming, Super Meat Boy Forever, again. The “evolution” of Super Meat Boy, Team Meat may have ever so slightly defecated the bed when the autorun “feature” was added for no real explainable reason. Released in 2022 and still hasn’t gone above mixed reviews on Steam, you can pick up this one on the Epic Game Store but if we’re honest it is another disappointment for the end of these articles.