Amazon Luna Games with Prime

Well, Jeffrey, I’ll give you this: You’re the second-most-hated man named Jeffrey. Depending on your perspective, the most hated Jeffrey that’s alive. Anyway, it is that time of the month when I talk about Prime Gaming, or since Jeffrey enjoys diddling names more than kids (allegedly), Amazon Luna. For those who want to know about the Luna (streaming) bits, the highlights for February are Alan Wake II and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants. Anyway, onto the games you get to download and play at a decent quality.

We’ll start with what is available now, and it is another offering via the Epic Games Store for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Released in 2022, a Gearbox game isn’t typically what I’d be happy about, but of all of the Borderlands nonsense, Tiny Tina is the only spark of hope and light in that vapid sea of beige and neon magenta. A spin-off built on the back of the expansion Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, a Borderlands spoof of Dungeons and Dragons, Tina (Ashly Burch) DMs a game with Andy Samberg, Will Arnett, and Wanda Sykes. My veins, you can shoot it in.

Available now via the Amazon Games App (yes, that’s apparently still a thing) is T19 Games’ 2023 Doom-like, Dread Templar. Indeed, this is the first time I’m hearing about it, too, but it aims to be a “fast-paced hardcore old-school FPS, combining classic 90s shooter and modern FPS elements.” Don’t expect Doom (2016) from an indie, as per usual, it is mimicing the 90s graphical style of Doom rather than the modern style, but honestly, I’m not hating other than the use of magenta.

Onto the 12th of February now, and we return to the Epic Games Store, where we’re offered Hexguardian. Released in 2024 by Split Second Games, Hexguardian is a Rogue-lite tower defense game where you build your own maps with hexagonal tiles, hoping to make things as complicated and winding as possible so you can kill the attacking army, I suppose. I don’t hate the idea of this one, but Hexguardian does feel a bit like someone’s first game without really testing the waters of creativity. To me, it just feels like there is something more that could be done to grab my attention as a player.

Oh for f– There is more historical accuracy in Disney’s 1997 film Anastasia than there is for the next offering on the 12th via Legacy Games. Around the World: Travel to Brazil Collector’s Edition is another edition of me moaning about hidden object “puzzle” games filled with more clutter than that one drawer you have in the kitchen where you keep old pens, the gas card, rechargeable batteries, old phones, CDs for albums older than some of your relatives, the instruction manual for kitchen aids you bought 8 years ago but threw out 6 years ago because it stop working, and on occasion, you’ll find something useful in there too.

Swiftly moving on to the 19th of February, before my editor hits me for such a run-on sentence that had to be edited in some way, we move to GOG and Ambition: A Minuet in Power. The year is whatever one it was the last time the French had a good idea before Clair Obscur, and King Louis the 16th rules France from Versailles. However, you play as a woman (indeed Bond) in this historical dating sim visual novel that sees scandal and romance go hand-in-hand. I also don’t hate the art style, if I do say so myself.

From an art style that I don’t mind, to me, once again saying, “hello, early PS3, I don’t miss you.” Sticking with GOG for this one on the 19th, we have Captain Blood, a “pirate-themed action game set on the Spanish Main in the 17th century.” A bit from of a hack and slash affair with naval combat thrown in on occasion, I don’t hate the ideas of Captain Blood, and truth be told, I don’t hate the art style either. I just find it an odd-looking affair for something that was only released last May.

That’s enough positivity for the 19th of February, it seems, as we continue with GOG but also return to talking about another game by Orangepixel. This time we’re talking about Orangepixel’s 2017 release, Meganoid, a “brutal, fast-paced platformer where every descent into its ever-shifting spaceship is a new challenge.” This time, the art style does annoy me, and for that matter, I’ll throw in the gameplay for annoying me, too. Not that the gameplay is bad, per se, but rather just how uninspiring the whole thing is. This is my trouble with Orangepixel’s releases; nothing is particularly inspiring.

Released in 2019 on the Epic Games Store and in 2020 on Steam, I’m one of three people who don’t hate Double Damage Games’ Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. Available from the 26th via GOG, this is one I do suggest picking up. Comparing it to No Man’s Sky or Elite Dangerous might be unfair, but Rebel Galaxy Outlaw tries to do the space trucking thing from a casual perspective and offers enough depth to feel immersive to some degree. Rebel Galaxy Outlaw offers neither the seriousness nor the open creativity of either option, just a focused space merc fantasy with pool.

Returning to the Epic Games Store for this one, we’re going back to 2015 and Creative Assembly’s Total War: ATTILA. Given the timeline is a bit wobbly to fit Creative Assembly’s whims, I’ve no idea when or where this one follows history, given it starts 10+ years before Attila the Hun’s birth and 40 years early for his reign as ruler. Though one might assume there are elements of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains and several other battles against both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.

The final offering for this month is available through the Amazon Games App, and it is Gentle Troll Entertainment’s 2024 release, Tavern Talk – A Cozy Visual Novel. Fantasy tavern-based Coffee Talk, there isn’t really much I can say for this one because neither Coffee Talk nor Tavern Talk is my thing. It is the visual novel idea of having difficult conversations without the reward of someone getting undressed and putting on the nipple clamps for sexy time.