I'm Gonna Get Me A Dog

It's that time of the month again. The day when Amazon Games offer me a whole load of freebies, I turn my nose up at some, grudgingly accept the rest, then come here to snark about it, even though I haven't played a single minute of any of them. Good times!

For once, I'm going to forego the traditional intro, where I drone on about how confusing the whole process is (I'll just say it hasn't got any better...) and cut straight to the part where I tell you what I got and why. Always assuming I know why, that is, which is never a given.

As the graphic at the top of the post reveals, there are seven games on offer for November and I took six of them, although I categorically and for a fact did not actively claim Whispering Willows. I know I said I wasn't going to go on about the confusion that always ensues whenever I open the Amazon Games app or navigate to the web page but this is something new.

I selected one of the other games, I forget now which, and clicked through to see what it was about, then I changed my mind and hit the back button and in the nanosecond it took to flip back and forth the "Claim" button on Whispering Willows had somehow changed to "Collected". I had noticed the "Claim By" date on that one was a lot shorter than the rest, so I did wonder if I'd already claimed it last time, but fortunately I have a blog so I can check to see that I definitely didn't. 

Since we're already there, might as well start with that one: Whispering Willows is the story of young Elena Elkhorn, who "embarks on a harrowing journey to find her missing father and discover the secrets of the Willows Mansion".

It ticks several genre boxes - platform, puzzle, adventure - only one of which really appeals to me, so I probably would have passed on it had it not glitched itself onto my account. That might have been a mistake. A lot of the Steam  reviews, even the positive ones (There are plenty - the game enjoys a "Very Positive" rating on Steam.) describe it as more of a walking simulator with a few, easy puzzles, making it sound a lot more appealing to me. It's eight years old and it costs £6.99 at full price.

Much more interesting from my perspective is Last Day of June, "a deep, interactive adventure... offering an intense, cinematic experience." It's tagged "puzzle, roleplaying, adventure"  and nearly every review I scanned said something like "heartbreaking" or "sad" or "I bawled my eyes out". Something to look forward to, then.

The graphics are very striking, as the trailer shows to great effect, but the music might take a little getting used to. I'm not a big fan of power ballads. Again, this one has a "Very Positive" rating on Steam. It's five years old and it's £14.99 at full price. 

Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade is this month's mandatory LucasArts point-and-click adventure. Add it to the pile. I'm pretty sure no-one needs me to tell them what it's about or how it plays. It's old and if you had to pay for it, it would cost you just £4.79.

The enignmatically-named WRC9 is another in the FIA World Rally series. The ninth, presumably. I claimed the previous one (WRC8 - who'd have guessed?) a while back but I haven't installed, let alone played it, which does raise the question of why bother with this one?

I suppose it's always possible I might want to race around in an off-road vehicle some time. I am absolutely terrible at driving games but I still enjoy one, once in a while. If I do ever get the urge, I might as well indulge it in the most up-to-date version available (For free.) and Number Nine has "more realistic gameplay and more content than ever." It also has "completely redesigned engine sounds". Wouldn't want to miss those.

Despite being the most expensive of Amazon's offers so far this month at £24.99, and the newest, dating back only a year or so, WRC9 also has the least-impressive rating on Steam, only "Mostly Positive", which, of course, is still pretty good.

Next up, we have Facility 47.  I nearly didn't bother to claim this one. It's another from the Legacy Games stable, meaning it's going to be a hidden object game, a genre I don't rate highly. It does look to have a little bit more to it than just staring hard at a still image - there's apparently even a working text adventure included on one of the in-game computers, which at least shows someone was having fun making it.

These games are almost always fairly cheap and this is no exception, currently clocking in at £3.99 on Steam. It's also available on Legacy Games' own storefront as part of the Haunted Horrors pack, in which you get fifteen games for $14.99, making Facility 47 worth a dollar, even.

Last and probably not least for most people we have Fallout: New Vegas, another game that needs no introduction, especially not from me, seeing I've never played a Fallout game in my life. For this one you need a Good Old Games (Aka GOG.) account. I already have one, although I've only ever used it to buy a single game, Neverwinter Nights and I only bought that so I could replay the module I wrote for it twenty years ago.

People really like the Fallout franchise and they really, really like Fallout: New Vegas. On Steam it has an unassailable "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating from more than a hundred and thirty thousand reviews. I probably ought to play it someday. It's not much of a bargain, though, the current asking price being a mere £7.99.

That just leaves one rejection this time around, Etherborn, which I have to say looks amazing. The gameplay, however, sounds horrible, breaking down, as it does, to" an environmental puzzle platformer built on exploring and understanding gravity-shifting structures." "Exploring" is the only word in that description that doesn't make me feel queasy. Yes, well, ok, and the articles and conjunctions. Don't be picky.

So much for this month's games. What about the in-game goodies, of which there seem to be more every time? This month sees giveaways in close to fifty different titles, including quite a few I either used to play, play now or would be interested in playing in the future. 

I would claim for all those categories, only there tends to be a convoluted acquisition process for most of them, involving codes and log-ins and linked accounts, so I try to keep it to just the ones I'm likely to log into anyway. This month that means New World, Guild Wars 2 and Blade and Soul, a game I'm constantly on the verge of revisiting.

There are two separate packs for New World, one containing three desert-themed weapon skins, the other a clutch of "resources to help you on your way in the arid world of Brimstone Sands". They're called the Ancient Relic Pack and the Fruit of the Dunes Cache, respectively. 

Of the three weapons, spear, musket and staff, the musket is the only one I'm using right now. All muskets appear pretty much the same to me but this one, Sniper's Snake, looks lean, spare and elegant, to the extent a stick with a hole in the end can, anyway.

The GW2 freebie is so good I logged in for the first time in months just to see it. It's a pet dog, specifically a Basenji. Mrs. Bhagpuss has had a dog in GW2 for years, in fact since they were first introduced and I've always fancied having one, too, but I didn't want to pay the Gem Store fee. 

Now I've got one for nothing, thanks to Amazon. I'll have to train it to do tricks, of course, which takes a while but it's something to do, isn't it? If you're eligible to collect your mutt and you haven't yet I urge you not to wait. I was late to the dog pound with this offer; it expires in about a week's time.

This month's gift in Blade and Soul is also a pet or, I should say, one of the items in the bundle is. It's something a little more flashy than a brindle dog. It's a rather disturbing "Social Butterfly", a pretty good pun for what looks like a cross between an actual butterfly, a fairy and a cabbage patch doll. 

There's also a bunch of utilities and what I'm assuming is actual headwear, a black beret. I'd log in and try it for size but I know there'll be several gigabytes of updates to download and I can't face it right at the minute. Maybe tomorrow.

I did also grab the freebie for Roblox (Don't ask me why but it was a hat...) and Black Desert. There is a non-trivial chance I'll get back to Black Desert someday, at which point I'll be able to find out what the "class-specific Underwear" I've just received looks like. Only in Black Desert...

And that, I think, is that for now. Until next month, then, when we meet back here and do it all again.