Hogwarts Legacy is free on Epic

Oh bloody joy! Monday, there was a PC Gaming Show that made Alexx join the side of dark jokes, and Fanatical is doing a special bundle. Tuesday, Vampire Therapist dev, Little Bat Games, announced an Eat the Rich sim, and the new Postal game uses AI in the trailer because injecting cancer into everyone’s bloodstream is too expensive. Wholesome and Latin American Games did showcases, with Rhythm Doctor now in its 1.0 release. Women-Led Games did a showcase with unacknowledged Israel-Gaza commentary and a game with AI prompts built in, while Day of the Devs continues to be a delight.

Moving on to the Epic Games Store for this week and, to put it very politely, I’m not best pleased. The Epic Games Store sale has begun, about a week before Steam, because F my life, right? Anyway, that means it is a mystery game, so we had 10 hours less to know what would be on offer, and it turned out to be Joanne’s astroturfy nonsense. This isn’t a joke; I genuinely hate everything Harry Potter-related and have felt that way for longer than a good portion of you have been alive. Is it about the social media posts and actions of her? Kinda, but I’ve hated Joanne since at least the mid-2000s.

This week’s offering, before we go into daily mystery offerings next week, is Avalanche Software’s Hogwarts Legacy, a begrudgingly decent open-world RPG that people elevate to perfection because the iconography of Harry Potter gets them stiffer than dry Weetabix. That could be the whole point that I make, but I won’t deny that for some people, that’s great and fulfills so many of their little fantasies. My problem isn’t entirely with the fans; it is with the fact that, despite bad behavior, Joanne is rewarded constantly, and I mean “Ramsey Shacklebolt” bad behavior. I mean, practically lifting from Neil Gaiman’s (not much better) The Books of Magic.

Listen, you can get your kicks out of any bit of fiction. I hear the church is doing fantastic numbers these days, but the way Harry Potter is held up on a pedestal, you’d think a gun was being held to people’s heads. It is an ok bit of fantasy where people find comfort because they realize they aren’t the weirdo outcast and they can be something, but some of those people defend it like it is the Sermon on the Mount. Those people – who don’t acknowledge the series problems and the issues with Joanne – are the people I have a problem with, and that makes covering this impossible without swearing.

I haven’t even gotten to my point that people (mostly Americans) go to Edinburgh and make me want to smack them. She wrote it there; the architecture was influenced by that, nothing more. If I hear that anyone goes to Fettes College and says it is the school, I’m going to headbutt them. Enjoy the bit of media, don’t make it your entire personality, Karen, you’re meant to be a 48-year-old woman, ffs. You can enjoy it, but acknowledge its problems, you weirdos. It is a bang-average RPG, that’s it.

All this week, you can pick up Hogwarts Legacy on the Epic Games Store for PC until December 18th. Onto next week and… it is still a mystery, didn’t you listen earlier? So if you’re still waiting for the free mobile offering, it is the infinitely better Dead Cells, though playing that on an Android or iOS device sounds like a whole load of faff when you can enjoy it on PC much more. You can also pick that up until the 18th as well. Also, go check out this month’s Prime Gaming, the last of the year.