Prime Picks For September

After yesterday's massive post (Almost four thousand words; took me pretty much all day to write.) I am not in the mood for another epic. Luckily, here's Amazon Prime Gaming to do most of the work for me.

It's ironic that almost as soon as I decided to stop covering each month's free games because the scraper had clearly reached the very bottom of the barrel, someone at Amazon decided to do something about it. Not only has the quality of the games returned to something not too far off what I used to expect but the quantity has increased considerably and claiming the numerous titles that come from somewhere other than Amazon has been made a lot easier.

Dealing with that last first, for quite a while the majority of the giveaways have actually arrived as codes to be redeemed at a third-party website, usually either Good Old Games or the Epic Store. To get your games that way you obviously had to have an account with the outside company as well and you needed to link it to your Amazon Prime account. 

As far as I remember, until last month you also had to log into that other account every time you claimed a game, navigate to wherever codes could be redeemed there and paste in the code Amazon gave you to get your game.

Now, you don't. 

I'd already opened GOG when I realised that, when I'd claimed the game on the Prime Gaming website, not only had the code appeared but Amazon had generated a direct link to my GOG account. All I had to do was click on it to go straight to a Redeem screen with the code already entered. One click and the game wasadded to my GOG library. All done in a moment.

Games claimed via Epic now work that way, too. It's surprising it took so long. (Unless it'sbeen like this all along and I never noticed...) Not only does it make the whole process significantly quicker and easier but from Amazon's perspective it also has the benefit of keeping the customer firmly within their ecosystem. 

Sending someone to a competitor's storefront, where they might see something they'd buy, always felt like a strange choice. I don't think it's going too far to say that in my case it's mostly Prime that's been reminding me I even have accounts with Epic and GOG. This way, the chances of me actually stopping to look around when I get there to see what I might be missing are minimal.

So much for the back end. What about the games?

I am not going to go through them all. There's a lot this month. If you care to see them, they're all listed on the Prime Gaming blog along with the dates when they become available. By my rough count there are twenty-eight free games to claim for your permanent collection and about a dozen you can play on loan at Amazon Luna, assuming you live in one of the "supported" countries.

Highlights include three Borderlands titles (They must have been hoping the movie was going to be a lot more popular than it was.), three Lord of the Rings titles (Ditto the second season of the TV show.) plus a Hobbit game, a Tomb Raider title, LEGO Indiana Jones, Greedfall and Kerbal Space Program. Not all of those would be my picks but at least they're games and IPs I've heard of, which was far from the case a few months ago.

It's also very encouraging that when I went to Steam to harvest the links (Isn't it revealing that even in a post about Amazon giveaways, the natural thing to do is provide links to Steam?) I noticed pretty much all of the games I'd chosen had good to very good reviews. Also, just about all of them were on heavy discount, which I don't imagine is any kind of co-incidence.

The games I claimed were:

LEGO Lord of the Rings - I really don't like LEGO as a base for other IPs. The aesthetic does nothing for me. This looked like it might be a decent game in itself though, so I thought I'd get it anyway. It's odds on I'll never play it but what the hell.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - I seem to remember reading a few people talking positively about this one. Probably too action-oriented for my tastes but again, why not? It's free.

Borderlands 2, Borderlands the Pre-Sequel! - I have never played a Borderlands game but I've always thought the series looked interesting. There's a third title due later in the month. I'll grab that as well. I also must be about the only person on the planet who thought the Borderlands movie trailer looked more interesting than the one for the Fallout TV that released in the same week. I still want to see the Borderlands movie more than I want to watch the Fallout show even now but then I have Madam Web in my watchlist. There must be something wrong with me.

Greedfall - I've seen this one mentioned all over the place. It does look to be right in my wheelhouse. Likely to be the first of the bunch I actually fire up and play although when that would be is anyone's guess. I'll have to finish Solasta first for a start.

Eternights - This is slightly out of my comfort zone but I thought it looked worth a shot. It's a "dating action game, blending a love story with adrenaline-driven combat", plus everything happens on a timer, which sounds like a car-crash combination to me but the screenshots are pretty and the actual gameplay sounds like something I might enjoy so, once again, what the hell. I could probably do with stretching myself a little.

I also claimed a couple of titles I seem to have missed from last month

The College Atlas - I don't even know for sure what genre this is but it looks very odd. It's described as a "pen and ink adventure" and it looks like the adult coloring books that were popular a few years ago. Took it out of curiosity more than in any expectation of actually playing it.

Spells and Secrets - Harry Potter without the license, basically. I don't even like Harry Potter all that much but tactical combat and puzzle-solving using spells sounds fun.

Later in the month I will definitely claim Kerbal Space Program, about which I have only ever heard good things and the third Borderland giveaway, Tales from the Borderlands.

LEGO: The Hobbit is a possible and there are a couple of others I might think about but I'd want to take a closer look at them first. There's no link to the upcoming titles in the blog and I'm not interested enough to google them for myself so I'll wait until they appear on the slate.

Finally, for anyone who wants it but doesn't already have it, which is going to be no-one reading this, and also for anyone who hasn't already bought it when it was incredibly cheap in a sale and thinks it ought to be free anyway, well now it is: Black Desert, that is. Last one to drop in September so set your calendars.

As the Prime Gaming blog warns, though, "Please note: The Black Desert offer is not available in select regions." I can't help but think it would be nice if they'd said which regions but then what can you expect for nothing?