Another month, another reminder that you have an Amazon Prime subscription ticking away somewhere, so you might as well use it to nab some very good, very free games.
This month's crop is headlined by Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, Beamdog's remaster of BioWare's follow-up to the Baldur's Gate games that never quite reached the same lofty heights as its isometric predecessors. It has a whole bunch of excellent modules and expansions, though, and there are still people out there making mods for it to this day.
But frankly, I'm not here to talk about Neverwinter Nights. I'm here to talk about the additional games that Amazon just added to this month's roster of free stuff: Prey (the Arkane one), Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition, Shovel Knight Showdown, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. They're being added to celebrate Prime Day—like it's some kind of ancient Pagan festival—and will roll out over the next few weeks. Here's the full schedule:
- Prey—available right now, ends in 33 days.
- Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition—June 27
- Shovel Knight Showdown—July 6
- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed—July 10
So go get Prey right now. I'm not kidding. 2017's Prey is, for my money, Arkane operating at the height of its powers. It's an expansive immersive sim set on a wide, rambling space station, and it gives you a whole range of unique tools and powers to tackle the many enemies therein. It's not perfect, but the scope it offers for creative problem solving is second-to-none. Plus, now that I've written all that out I realise it's basically System Shock 3. You wouldn't pass up a chance to play System Shock 3, would you?
Baldur's Gate 2 is, well, Baldur's Gate 2. It's on our best RPGs of all time list for a reason, and that reason is its sheer depth, breadth, and quality. There is so much Baldur's Gate 2, and pretty much all of it demands playing. You start out at level 7, just after the events of the first game, setting you up for a plane-hopping, high fantasy adventure right from the off. It's probably the best BioWare has ever been, and it's so old that it'll run on anything with a processor in it.
I've not played Shovel Knight Showdown or The Force Unleashed, but the former enjoys a 91% "Very Positive" rating on Steam and the latter lets you pull a Star Destroyer out of the sky using the Force, so it's probably the greatest game ever made [It's not—Ed].
Prey and Neverwinter Nights are available right now as DRM-free GOG codes, while the other games will all come via the Amazon Games App, so consider this your cue to remember you have that installed, too.
The new subclasses coming in Baldur's Gate 3 are a powergamer's paradise, and I know because I've seen them do terrible work in D&D
Baldur's Gate 3 is going out with a big bang by adding 12 new subclasses, so you can finally become a drunken master or maybe just befriend some bees, along with crossplay and a photo mode
