A big welcome back to all Loot Happens subscribers. Loot Happens is a weekly newsletter that is emailed and posted on LootHappens.com.
It's important to note that for premium subscribers, game offerings and in-game content, every week is different. Sometimes it's in-game codes, Steam keys, and giveaways, but premium members will always get something special every mailing. We also occasionally get mind-blowing early access or premium games that pay for an entire year's subscription.
Each newsletter is generally structured as Premium Loot > Free Sub Giveaways > Game Feature > Game discounts.
Key Giveaway For Premium Subscribers: Master Lemon: The Quest for Iceland
Master Lemon: The Quest for Iceland is a beautiful game that the developer created to honor his friend who passed away. It begins with a world on the brink of forgetting itself, as a memory-eating plague spreads across the Bashires Islands and threatens to erase entire languages. You follow Lemon through pixel-bright landscapes inspired by Iceland and distant cultures, solving linguistic puzzles that turn real-world words into tools for reshaping the environment. Every character you meet feels like a tribute: to heritage, to friendship, to the cultures that shaped André Lima’s life and the game built in his memory.
The journey blends warmth and melancholy, asking you to fight the darkness with curiosity, compassion, and the power of shared language. By the time the mystery unravels, the adventure feels less like a quest to save the world and more like a celebration of the connections that keep it alive.
We are also going to give a key away to one free subscriber at random. No need to 'reply' for this game.
Keep Driving: Key Giveaway For Free Subscribers
Keep Driving drops you into the early 2000s with nothing but a used car, a paper map, and a long summer stretching out like a dare. Every mile becomes a small story — hitchhikers with tangled pasts, backroads that feel both lonely and alive, and a turn-based “combat” system that turns dead ends and broken engines into tiny puzzles of resourcefulness. The procedurally generated world unfolds in pixelated swaths of highways, dirt trails, and quiet Swedish sunsets, inviting you to drift rather than rush. You upgrade, patch, and personalize your car not just to survive the trip, but to make it yours, a rolling scrapbook of every choice you’ve made. And when the road loops back to where you started, the game gently asks the only question that matters: what if you drove it all differently this time?
If you would like to be in the running for a key, hit reply and just put 'driving'. We will pick a winner and send over the key in 48 hours
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered: Key Giveaway For Free Subscribers
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered pulls you back into Cyrodiil, now reborn with sharper light, richer ruins, and landscapes that feel newly alive. You wander through golden fields and daedric wastelands that once lived in memory, only to find them transformed into something strikingly modern yet unmistakably familiar. Freedom still defines the journey, whether you slip into the role of noble knight, quiet thief, wandering mage, or something stranger that only this world could shape. Every road bends toward discovery, from the eerie charm of the Shivering Isles to the quiet villages that seem to breathe again. Oblivion Remastered doesn’t just update a classic; it reminds you why stepping through its gates once felt infinite.
If you would like to be in the running for a key, hit reply and just put 'oblivion'. We will pick a winner and send over the key in 48 hours
Historically Low Prices
This section of Loot Happens tracks historical discounts right now on games and throughout the industry! Our tireless web crawlers scour the web daily, sniffing out the best deals across the gaming landscape.
These aren't just any games – they're titles we adore and highly respect. And right now, you can grab them at prices we've never seen before!
Elden Ring Nightreign [Steam]
Join forces with other players to take on the creeping night and the dangers.$̶̶46.65 $34.87
Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow [Steam]
The City is a place of shadows, ruled by the powerful and feared by the oppressed.$̶̶34.99 $21.21
Grand Theft Auto Online [PS5]
Experience GTA Online, a dynamic and ever-evolving online universe for up to 30 players.$19.99 $9.99
Ghost of Tsushima: Legends [PS5]
Ghost of Tsushima is an online co-op multiplayer experience inspired by Japanese mythology.$19.99 $9.99
Overcooked! All You Can Eat [Nintendo Switch]
Enjoy hundreds of levels of cooperative cooking experience.$39.99 $13.59
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection [Nintendo Switch]
12 arcade classics in one collection.$29.99 $9.99
Featured Game Review: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond swings for the fences in a way few long-dormant franchises dare. Some hours feel like the triumphant return fans have waited two decades for — dense atmosphere, razor-clean lock-on gunplay, and that singular quiet only a Metroid game can deliver. Other stretches feel stuck in a time capsule, weighed down by a desert hub that mistakes size for intrigue and companions who talk just a bit more than they should. Yet after a full playthrough of scanning, solving, and wandering in near-perfect silence across some of the most stunning areas Nintendo has ever shipped, it's clear Prime 4 hits far more than it misses. When it finds its rhythm, it reaches heights that remind you exactly why this subseries became legendary.
A return to form built on atmosphere, upgrades, and precision
Prime 4’s smartest decisions happen inside its self-contained regions, where the old trilogy’s DNA resurfaces with confidence. Samus’ new psychic abilities fold naturally into her classic toolkit — more a clever remix than a reinvention, but one that leads to satisfying puzzles, layered platforming, and a few striking set-pieces built around manipulating the environment in unexpected ways. The upgrades aren’t wildly new, but they’re consistently rewarding, especially when paired with the thrill of scanning rooms that feel hand-crafted rather than procedurally stitched together.
Combat stays grounded in the familiar lock-on rhythm, yet feels sharper thanks to snappier dodges, quicker visor switching, and elemental beams that shift both strategy and style. It’s still at its best in moderation: scattered encounters that punctuate exploration instead of overwhelming it. When Prime 4 leans into spectacle — towering bosses, multi-phase duels, aggressive enemy swarms that test your dodging instincts — it absolutely delivers. When it dips into mid-2000s corridor-shooter repetition, it’s less exciting, but those sections never linger long.
The lone outright stumble in this core loop is the bike-centric desert hub tying everything together. It’s functional, occasionally pretty, but rarely engaging — an over-wide connecting space that feels more like padding than discovery. The energy-collecting quest tied to it doesn’t help; riding in circles and smashing green crystals feels like filler in a game otherwise obsessed with intentional design. Fortunately, you spend most of the campaign outside this dust bowl, in spaces where Retro still knows exactly what makes Prime tick.
Worldbuilding, isolation, and presentation carry the adventure
Where Prime 4 truly shines is in its sense of place. Each region you enter feels like a fully imagined biome with history, logic, and mood — gothic factories echoing with forgotten machinery, shimmering alien ruins drenched in choral ambience, storm-lashed canyons where Samus’ visor fogs with every temperature spike. This isn’t just environmental dressing; it’s worldbuilding that reinforces the series’ signature solitude, and Retro knows exactly when to let that silence breathe. Companions do appear, but they’re mostly light touches — charming personalities, a few memorable scenes, and occasional nudges that sometimes overstay their welcome — yet long stretches without radio chatter restore that classic, lonely Metroid pulse.
The visual leap on Switch 2 only deepens the immersion. Clean 4K 60 fps (with a slick 120 fps mode) makes Prime 4 one of Nintendo’s most technically impressive releases, while still holding its own on the original Switch. Lighting, architecture, and environmental detail frequently border on breathtaking, and the way each room frames itself as doors slide open — a Prime signature — returns with cinematic confidence. Some locations genuinely rival the standout areas from the original trilogy, balancing mystery, clarity, and scale with remarkable finesse.
Structurally, Prime 4 leans more toward modern 3D Zelda than the dense, interwoven labyrinth of Prime 1, and the tradeoff works. Each region behaves like a massive, atmospheric dungeon with its own identity, upgrade loop, and boss payoff. There’s backtracking, of course, but it’s cleaner and more focused, helped along by smart map-marking tools and streamlined progression that keeps the campaign moving without aimless wandering.
Verdict
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond doesn’t hit every ambitious target, but it nails the ones that matter most. The desert hub is flat, the companion chatter could be trimmed, and a few story threads — especially Sylux — don’t land the way longtime fans might hope. Yet none of these issues outweighs the remarkable strength of the core experience. When Samus is alone in a haunting corridor, visor glowing as alien machinery hums in the dark, Prime 4 feels every bit like the revival fans imagined. With gorgeous art direction, sharp combat refinements, clever twists on classic abilities, and some of the best handcrafted environments Nintendo has ever produced, this is a confident, atmospheric return that reaches heights worthy of the Metroid name — even if the path there isn’t perfectly smooth.
Next Week
Every newsletter has a lot to look forward to, and we are in active communication with several developers and studios. More to come next week!
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