Xbox Ends Year With Open-World Bang With December’s Games With Gold

By on December 9, 2016

For the month of December, Microsoft hopes to give players a lot to do with the Games With Gold offerings on the Xbox by dishing out two different kinds of open-world games for them to ransack. Both are unique in their sandbox objectives, from playing the role of an undercover cop in Hong Kong to accelerating along the beautiful streets of a “paradise city”. Alongside those experiences are a pair of acclaimed indies that offer unique flips on their genres, from a survival horror game that avoids combat to a platformer that flips from the past to the present. It’s a strong month for Gold subscribers, so let’s get into the games.

 

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Sleeping Dogs Xbox

Square Enix

Xbox One

Sleeping Dogs (December 1-31)

The genre of urban sandbox games can be a tough nut to crack, since comparisons will be drawn to Rockstar’s longstanding car thievery series. They haven’t cornered the market to a point where the right ones can’t leave an impression, though, assuming they do distinctive enough things with familiar mechanics. Square Enix gives it the old college try with Sleeping Dogs, which was once a sequel in the True Crime series that evolved after the studio took over the rights, and it comes rather close to grabbing enough innovation to set it apart from Grand Theft Auto. Featuring a tighter storyline involving an undercover cop embedded in gang activity in Hong Kong, the game features many of the expected elements with themed twists, such as different experience points based on the types of gang-related activities engaged in and a stronger focus on choreographed melee combat. The Definitive Edition gathers all of Sleeping Dogs’ DLC into a remastered package, with tweaks and improvements based on community feedback.

Outlast (December 16-January 15)

An abandoned mental asylum, warped mad science, night vision stealth and bare-boned resources are the familiar but unsettling elements found in Outlast. This is an example of those survival-horror games that lack combat mechanics, which places the protagonist, an investigative journalist, in the throes of danger with nothing but his wits and quickness to protect him from mentally unhinged abominations. While documenting findings throughout the asylum, the player navigates through a bleak narrative-driven experience boosted by its disturbing atmosphere and eerie tension, one more concerned with spooking and jolting the player than dazzling with its gameplay mechanics. Both critics and players tend to agree that Outlast stands among the best of the modern crop of survival-horror games.

 

Burnout Xbox

Criterion Games

Xbox 360

Outland (December 1-15)

The alternating time mechanics of the indie hit Braid (one of the Noteworthy 360 Games Backwards Compatible on Xbox One) focused upon a novel approach to the side-scrolling genre with its reversals in perspective on the levels, something that other games have further tinkered with and built upon. With its switches between color-coded versions of levels, its Metroidvania progression, and its tribal mythology, Outland marks one of the more successful of these subsequent games. It tells a straightforward story of a heroic mythological quest, which is given a unique twist by guiding the protagonist between the past and the present in their adventuring, revealed in the blue or red tints of the environment and the enemies. The color chosen dictates what’s harmful (and can be harmed) and what’s not, which adds a bit of puzzle-solving complexity to the action. Couple that with beautiful graphics that marries dark silhouettes, vibrant magic radiance, and colorful tropical backdrops, and you’ve got an acclaimed mix of retro and modern gaming.

Burnout Paradise (December 16-31)

Criterion made an arcade racing game that’s accessible, and addictive, for just about anyone with Burnout Paradise, the fifth installment in the series. When it was released fairly early on in the previous console generation’s life cycle, it provided a gorgeous open-world cruise through some of the beauty that high-definition gaming had to offer, then hit the pedal to the metal with its brisk time trials and races. For variety, however, it also includes the absurdly addictive “Showtime” mode, in which the player can initate — at any time — a chaotic crash sequence where the objective is to create as much dollar-value damage as possible. Many came for the eye candy, then stayed for the briskness, versatility, and customization that Paradise had to offer. To this day, it still holds up well.

About Thomas Spurlin

Film, home-media, and videogame scribe who digs green tea and walking his dogs.

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