Sort of like one of the bigger titles they’re offering this month, Microsoft has a team of three trigger-happy shooters squaring off against one drastically different, somewhat menacing type of game for March’s Games With Gold.  Two possess more conventional first-person controls as they focus upon hunting down a monster and collecting weapons on a futuristic desert planet, while the third … well, it involves firing bullets at the sky in a military setting.  The fourth, however, features no combat whatsoever, standing alone as a spooky survival-horror experience that embraces its atmosphere and premise.  In all, it’s a rather solid month for the Xbox, so let’s get into the fray.

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Bloober Team

Xbox One

Layers of Fear (March 1-31)

Like successful horror movies, entries in the horror genre can vary when it comes to the urge to revisit the experience. Largely, that’s because the viewer already knows what scares are coming around the corner. This can be particularly tricky for games that focus more on the atmosphere than the actual fun of controls, ranging from ;the clumsy combat of Silent Hill 2 to the total concentration on avoiding attacks in Amnesia: Dark Descent.  Bloober Team’s combat-free dark mystery Layers of Fear borrows from both of those experiences in its depiction of a crazed painter who goes to outlandish extents while creating his masterpiece, tapping into twists on metaphysical and psychological perspectives as the player moves through an ever-shifting, seemingly haunted house. Like its influences, it also contains several endings depending on one’s choices and play style, adding incentive to completing this painting over again.

Evolve (March 16-April 15)

Turtle Rock Studios, the makers of the wildly popular team-based multiplayer shooter Left 4 Dead, had a stroke of brilliance when they came up with the concept for Evolve.  Have you ever wanted to ditch the thrilling heroics of military “dudes”, in the vein of Alien(s) and/or Predator, and instead embody the powers and strategies of the monster they’re trying to hunt down? This novel, lopsided hybrid of cooperative shooter and head-to-head competition does precisely that, allowing players to take on the role of the monster(s) and square off against bands of weapon-packed soldiers aiming to wipe them out … and vice versa, of course.  The goal of the hunters is self-explanatory — to track and kill before being killed — while the goal of the monster is to evolve into something greater and more intimidating, making them more difficult to take on. The theory is sound and the gameplay received acclaim, but critics have pointed to Evolve’s level design and progression structure as hindrances to the beastly experience.

Gearbox

Xbox 360

Borderlands 2 (March 1-15)

It’s tough to dispute the influence that the Borderlands franchise has heaped upon the gaming industry since the original’s release in 2009, spawning imitations that range from quasi-MMOs like Defiance to current-gen shooters like Bungie’s Destiny. This isn’t so much for the atmosphere they’ve created, essentially a colorfully cel-shaded futuristic spin on Fallout, but in the raw gathering of endless gear and a consistent dose of levity in its attitude. Borderlands 2 can be, and has been, deemed “more of the same” in relation to the original: exploring vaults, checking off missions, and gathering randomly generated loot. But that’s okay, especially in how well the folks at Gearbox tightened the bolts and rubbed the polish on what already works, which gives the Vault Hunters another raucous adventure to complete on Pandora and the players an endless supply of single-player and multi-player shooter shenanigans to pursue.

Heavy Weapon (March 16-31)

PopCap’s Heavy Weapon just recently celebrated its 10^th anniversary.  Around the time that it was released, the side-scrolling military arsenal game struck a chord as an alternate example of what donwloadable arcade console games could do, and not because of its complexity or innovation.  For a reasonable price, it offers fluid, classic arcade-style controls involving a tank firing shots at airplanes, inbound missiles, and other aggressors in an incredibly familiar setting. It also comes equipped with 4-player online co-op play.  This isn’t a complex game, but it’s a brisk reminder of how addictive this pick-up-and-play style of game can be.

Xbox’s Games With Gold For March Scare Up Lots of Firepower