Dawn of the Undead which I’ve never heard of and is probably terrible – but is supposedly a $36 zombie shooter – is free on the Microsoft Store for the next 20 hours as of this posting.
Huh. I tried to google that game and other than one “deals” site that mentions that it’s free, there’s pretty much no mention of it anyway. No reviews, nothing. It’s a game that seems to have no other presence anywhere except being given away on the MS store.
To make it even fishier, the game is made by JSC Playnesis, a Russian company that seems to only make trashy mobile games.
Their mobile games also have no ratings or reviews. Super shady.
I hope you did play them both. It’s really two halves of the same game. It got split into two for monetary reasons. Syberia feels incomplete with Syberia 2. I’m honestly surprised they’re not just sold together these days.
How does 3 fit in?
Three is the long-awaited sequel that fans had begged for and the creator had promised to make. He said that, in order to do it, it would need to be properly 3D-rendered, and I do find it nice to look at, albeit a bit primitive for the year it came out (2017).
However, I’d say it doesn’t really hold a candle to the first two, though I’ve only played part of it. I’ll tell you my biggest annoyance, but I’m going to spoiler it—not because it actually spoils any plot points but that, once you notice it, you can’t not notice it. The voice actors don’t fit. They all do an American accent, and this little boy character has this big bass voice. It just feels like they didn’t put nearly the effort they put into the voice acting/casting of the first two.
That said, my dad likes it well enough. And they did at least add back the point-and-click controls from the first two games. The “Deluxe Edition” is $5.99 on Steam right now, and I’d say it’s worth that, at least, if you’re interested in seeing where the story goes.
Europa Universalis IV is this weeks on Epic.
Next weeks is PC Building Simulator. WTF? Anyone who has built few PC (and I suspect there’s a fair few here) will know the pain of this and not want to play a game about it. Lost screws. Trying to get that damned heatsink to attach and hold. Cables in the way, got to take out the DIMMS. DIMMs wrong way around. USB3 header won’t attach to motherboard, keeps pulling out. What next? An own face punching simulator?
IIRC from videos I’ve seen, it focuses more on building the right PC with the money provided than on the fiddly bits like that. You actually wind up owning a PC repair shop, so it becomes more a store management sim.
A whole lot of people really like it—people who want to be able to build their dream machine but can’t afford it (especially with pandemic component prices). It only requires a GTX 660, which is about equivalent to the GT 1030 in my experience. So I’d expect modern integrated GPUs to work.
Ha! I have that game. Played the shit out of it, actually. Bought all the DLC and everything. It’s no different than any other simulation game of that type; you’re running a fictional business and everything is just clicking on parts. You don’t have to chase down little tiny screws or find a pathway for wires, you literally just click on the part and it goes on or comes off. Just don’t forget the thermal paste! (reading the Steam forum for this game, this is the one thing that gets everyone all the time)
Yeah, I’ve played PC Builder and it’s an enjoyable little business sim. The PC building is mechanically fairly simple: cables auto-route, screws come out when you need them, etc. If anything, someone experienced might complain that it’s not realistic enough. But I thought it was fun and it’s worth picking up for free. My older kid actually learned a little bit about PC building from it (and more from actually building a PC), just basic “how stuff goes together” sorts of things.
Random amused “complaint”: You might get a request to upgrade the memory in a system. If you install used memory from an earlier build, they might complain and leave a bad review about you going cheap on them. I refuse to believe that the sort of person who pays a shop to put an 8GB stick of RAM in their box is the sort of person capable of noticing if a stick of RAM was used 
My big pet peeve is no tiny screw to anchor your M.2 card is sent with an M.2 card. Run into that one a lot and then spend a couple hours digging through boxes looking for one.
I’ve also had a case with no standoffs. There went two hours running to the store. Not fun.
If you have Amazon Prime, you can claim a free copy of Ghostrunner (redeems on GOG)
Also a free copy of Star Wars: Squadrons (redeems on EA Origin)
Thanks! I had been interested, but wasn’t sure. Free? Yes, please.
The original, twenty-year old, Ghost Recon is free from Uplay (Ubi’s client required)
If you own Ghost Recon: Wildlands, the “Fallen Ghosts” DLC is free as well
Both offers expire on Oct 11.
Epic this week: Stubbs the zombie in rebel without a pulse and Paladins epic pack which sounds like a bunch of fancy hats for a free to play game.
Just came in to make sure Stubbs the Zombie was posted. I played that one to death when it first came out. Fun for everyone!
New Amazon Prime gaming offerings are up (for anyone with Amazon Prime):
Dragon Age Inquisition (Origin)
Control: Ultimate Edition (GOG)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (Epic)
Plus a number of smaller indie titles that I think are direct downloads.