Secret Level Bonus

I didn't make a point of it, when I posted about December's Prime Gaming offer a few days ago, but at the time I did think the list felt a bit light, at least compared to the richness that was November. Turns out there's a reason for that.

Yesterday, a second Prime Gaming blog post popped up in my feeds. Two in one month? In one week?? What was going on?

The Amazon Prime series Secret Level, that's what. Announced earlier this year, the fifteen episode first season is "a new adult-animated anthology series featuring original stories set within the worlds of some of the world’s most beloved video games", the games in question being

• Armored Core
• Concord
• Crossfire
• Dungeons & Dragons
• Exodus
• Honor of Kings
• Mega Man
• New World: Aeternum
• PAC-MAN
• PlayStation (Not a video game...)
• Sifu
• Spelunky
• The Outer Worlds
• Unreal Tournament
• Warhammer 40,000

This news seemed to pick up remarkably little traction with any of the gaming sites I follow, possibly because they tend to be MMO-oriented and the only MMORPG on this list is New World, which Amazon would like everyone to stop calling an MMO anyway.

I know I sometimes try to make out I'm not a gamer but I do usually at least recognize the names of most well-known or popular games, even if I couldn't tell you what they're about or even what genre they fit into. It doesn't in the least surprise me that there are only two games on the list I've played but it does that there are half a dozen I've literally never heard of, not to mention that two of the entries aren't video games at all. They're either franchises or platforms.

The show, which debuts in just a few days, was put together by Blur Studio, known for making "epic" trailers for video games and also as the  people behind Love, Death + Robots, a series I seem to remember being praised by a couple of people in this part of the blogosphere. 

I'm not a fan, myself. I watched a couple of episodes and didn't feel any desire to watch more. The connection actually put me off paying much attention to Secret level. 

Nothing I'm seeing so far is making me feel any more enthsiastic about jumping in when the series starts on Tuesday. Reviews so far have not been encouraging. Radio Times, with only the first four episodes to go on, highlighted the extreme and unsatisfying brevity of what they'd been allowed to see. The longest was "just shy of 18 minutes long", leading the reviewer to observe that "every episode still feels like you’re watching a trailer for something bigger."

Still, they did at least find a few positive things to say, unlike The Verge, whose reviewer saw all fifteen episodes and didn't enjoy any of them:"The 15 shorts are almost universally dull and manage to neither make their source material seem compelling nor provide new insights for existing fans."

I had no plans to watch the show and I still don't. The only reason I'm writing about it now is that it's the reason we got that second Prime Gaming post and also quite possibly why the December slate seemed a little lackluster compared to last month.

In recognition of the arrival of Secret Level on our screens next week, Prime subscribers are getting nine bonus free games, all somehow related to titles covered in the show. Not to that many of them, though. I make it just four: Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer 40,000.

For the first two, we get the actual games, which is great since I've had The Outer Worlds in mind as something I'd like to play for a while now. I claimed it right away. When I'll get to play it is another matter but it's on the longlist.

Spelunky is a platformer so I passed. The D&D titles are "Enhanced" editions of Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, which sounds great but I already have multiple editions of both. I can't be bothered to work out what's been enhanced so I'm just going to claim them anyway.

The Warhammer titles I'll need to look at more carefully (There are five of them.) before I decide if there's anything there I want. I doubt it but you can never be sure. I like Warhammer well enough as a setting and as a franchise but the games that come out under the banner are rarely in genres that interest me.

Luna users also get Mega Man 11 although for how long isn't clear. December, presumably. As for New World Aeternum, unsurprisingly Amazon have chosen not to give their "new" game away for nothing but Prime members who play will get "a surprise" and "some free in-game items" when the show starts on 10 December. Or more likely a surprise that is some free in-game items.

As I type it all out it occurs to me that it's not such a great celebration as all that. Most of the games aren't represented at all and some of those that are come in the form of variants of titles that have appeared in previous Prime Gaming giveaways. Still, I suppose we can't complain. They're not just freebies - they're bonus freebies.

I'm just happy to get an extra game I wanted.