Amazon's Black Friday Deals Can't Match These!

I was going to put up a proper post today, as well as the two Advent Calendar entries, but most of the time I'd set aside for writing I used up trying to get Mrs Bhagpuss's phone upgrade to work. My couple of hours' effort was only a partial success. All the personal data transferred successfully, although not the first time I tried, or the second. I got wifi set up nicely but the new phone only takes an eSim and the old one is too old to handshake with it, so at present we have a very small tablet with no phone capability.

I spent about three-quarters of an hour trying to get through on Live Chat and when I finally succeeded a nice chap said he'd sort it out in a jiffy then disappeared for a good while. I could see he was typing furiously but nothing appeared at my end. Eventually he came back and told me security concerns mean a visit to the phone shop with photo ID in the form of a passport or driving license before the number can be transferred to the new phone. 

Honestly, I think it was easier in the 1970s, when if you wanted to change anything to do with your phone you had to book it six weeks in advance then stay in all day for an engineer who never turned up...

Okay, point taken.

So now that's what we're doing first thing tomorrow, before I go to my uncle's funeral, so a fun day in prospect all round. If it doesn't work then I guess we'll be sending that phone back and starting again, this time with a phone you can swap a sim card into, like I thought I was going to in five minutes this afternoon. I didn't even know eSims existed until today.

Anyway, you don't want to hear about my troubles! Luckily, when I came back to my PC after boxing the phone up again I saw the latest Prime Gaming blog post had popped up in my blog roll so I'm going to rip a couple of chunks off of that and stew them up into some gnarly hotchpotch.

I'm not going to go through the whole list. I don't have the time or the stamina. I did spot a few interesting items on a quick skim that are worth calling out, though, starting with what's new on Amazon's cloud gaming service, Luna.

I don't usually bother with the games you get to play free for a month on Luna if you're a Prime member offers but I paid a little more attention this time. I'm contemplating getting a new laptop and if I do I might very well want to use it for cloud gaming, especially on a service I where I get freebies.

Among the Luna games free for Prime subscribers in December are a couple of interesting titles, Death Stranding Director's Cut being the standout. I've read so much about Death Stranding it almost feels like I've played it, even if most of what I've read kind of makes me glad I haven't. I'm not sure it even qualifies as entertainment. It sounds more like some kind of performance art project. Still, it has to be worth a look, just for the cultural cachet, just so long as I don't have to pay for it.

The other game on Luna that caught my eye this month was The Expanse: A Telltale Series Deluxe Edition. I watched and enjoyed all seasons of the Expanse TV show and I have all the books in a stack waiting for me to find time to read them so why not play the game as well? Also, I've never played a Telltale game but I only ever hear good things. 

Moving on to the Prime Gaming offers proper, there's the usual spatter of Star Wars and Tomb Raider titles we seem to get every month. You'd think they'd have to run out of them some time but clearly the well hasn't run dry yet. This time it's Star Wars: Bounty Hunter and Tomb Raider: Underworld, neither of which appeals to me all that much.

Neither does Overcooked 2 or Call of Juarez, the latter of which I already have on Steam, although I've never played it and recently uninstalled it to make room for more games I'll never play. Of considerably more interest is Dredge, about which, once again, I've heard good things. I'll at least claim that one although whether I'll get around to playing it is less likely.

Planet of Lana I always think I ought to take, for obvious reasons, every time it comes up in various offers, something it seems to do regularly. It's a platformer, though, so I never follow through. Although, looking at it more closely, maybe it's not entirely a platformer after all, so maybe I will grab it this time, when it comes up later in the month.

Nine Witches:Family Disruption looks nuts. Some nonsense about a Nazi "Occult Division" in World War 2 and an ancient curse, all supposedly given a comedy spin, which sounds in dubious taste to say the least. It's a point&click of sorts though, so I might take it. 

I also might take the very much better-looking, both ethically and visually, The Town of Light, a potentially grueling and disturbing first-person psychological "adventure", based on the real-life story of a 16 year-old girl incarcerated in a mental hospital during the rise of fascism in Italy in the late thirties. Sounds like fun, right?

I think that's probably about it. There's a bunch of other stuff but nothing that interests me much. Still, it made for a quick post so I can't complain. And if I ever actually play any of them, that'll make for another. Or maybe even more.

One last thing I would add is that all the games I just looked up on Steam are currently on sale, most of them with massive discounts. I'm not sure if the publishers discount them because the games are being given away free on Prime this month or whether Amazon scoops up a bunch of cheap games that the publishers are already discounting heavily.

Granted, the Steam Autumn Sale is on right now but it happens this way every month. Whatever the reason, it does tend to make the offers look a little tarnished. Still, gift horses and all that...