Although free games are always nice, it's even better when they're legitimately great ones, and Amazon Prime Gaming's lineup of October titles is aiming to satisfy in that regard. Available to all Amazon Prime subscribers, Prime Gaming provides an ongoing rotation of free games to permanently redeem, either through the Amazon Games app or through other PC clients. With a constant shuffle of titles, it's easy to let some slip through the cracks, but October's not the month to miss out.

As announced on the Prime Gaming blog, the big highlight of the Amazon Prime October selection is BioShock Remastered, the modern digital version of a first-person shooter that helped redefine the genre when it first released in 2007. The lineup for this month is much longer than just BioShock, however, with Amazon listing a number of highlights:

  • Bioshock Remastered
  • DOOM Eternal
  • Death's Door
  • Scorn
  • DreadOut 2
  • Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Ecto Edition
  • Hive Jump 2: Survivors
  • SCARF
  • Tomb Raider: Legend
  • The Eternal Cylinder
  • Spirit of the North
  • Mystery Box: Hidden Secrets

There's a big focus on horror themes for Halloween, but the overall picture is diverse enough to cover other bases. New titles have also been added to Amazon Luna, the cloud gaming platform, including various modes from Fortnite and the chilling Alien: Isolation.

BioShock Is An Immersive FPS That Changed The Game

The Journey Through Rapture Is Like No Other

BioShock's journey through a broken-down, waterlogged civilization called Rapture mixes wonder, fear, and philosophical musings, with everything coming together in a way that's been critically lauded ever since its release. Although it acts as a spiritual successor to the System Shock games from the 1990s, BioShock's approach still felt ahead of its time, and the way it sprinkles its story throughout its oppressive environment has transparently influenced many other games since.

A cyborg from Judas, which looks like a young woman with pink hair, skin flayed in places to reveal her robotic components underneath, next to a Big Daddy from BioShock - a person in a massive diving suit with a giant drill on one arm.
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Ultimately, the gunplay of BioShock isn't really the point, and some stretches of the game might be spent whacking enemies with a wrench to conserve ammo instead. Interesting environmental possibilities and self-mutating Plasmid effects open up a lot of opportunities when bullets aren't enough.

Prime Gaming's October Lineup Is Perfect For The Season

Every Type Of Halloween Treat

A player fires at demons from Doom Eternal.

BioShock is definitely worth checking out for anyone who hasn't done so until now, and playing it for the first time 17 years later is likely to unlock a string of realizations about other games that took inspiration from it. Even though it's not strictly a horror game, I'd argue that it's more effective at maintaining creepy tension than many titles strictly situated within the genre, making it a perfect October option.

FF7's Tifa Lockhart in front of a hedge maze from the indie horror game Crow Country.
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Beyond that, DOOM Eternal's a great option for a more fast-paced FPS experience, while DreadOut 2 and the divisive Scorn lean more heavily into the horror genre. Death's Door and Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed are good alternatives for those who like the spirit of the season more than the scares. BioShock is definitely the one game that shouldn't be missed, but there's a lot to get out of the Amazon Prime Gaming October selection.