All it takes is a few short months for subscription services to enact rumored, some might say “feared” choices that will pave the way for larger overhauls in the programs. The key one on the Xbox side of the coin being, of course: when will Games With Gold be phased out? For quite a while, Microsoft maintained that their original Gold subscription program would remain a component of their strategy for the foreseeable future, but that foreseeable future may be coming into sight with the elimination of legacy Xbox 360 and OG Xbox games in October as part of the subscription benefits. In contrast to the newer Game Pass titles, which remain eye-catching even if they aren’t high-profile, the energy has been dramatically slumping with what’s being offered through Game Pass – both Xbox One and legacy games – and seems to be slowing down as a way of approaching this discontinuation.

Let’s take a closer look at this month’s Gold titles and some recent Game Pass additions, but before doing so, head over and Grab a 3-Month Game Pass Ultimate Subscription to get the benefits of the Game Pass titles, the regular Gold sales, and of course online gaming.

XBOX Game Pass Ultimate — New and Upcoming

Inside

Many elements went into the success of LIMBO, the grayscale platformer from developers PLAYDEAD, chief among them being the stark shadowy aesthetic that gave it the visual tempo of a classic horror film. The studio had something to prove with their second project, though: that their talents extend beyond the slick gimmick that certainly accentuated the violence of a young, silhouetted protagonist repeatedly meeting their demise in gloomy shadows. INSIDE proves that there’s plenty more to them than that.

The second game from PLAYDEAD scraps the stark silhouettes and brings depth and dimension to their familiar side-scrolling gameplay mechanics, in which another young boy navigates a terrifying dystopian environment. While there might not be much color in INSIDE and the platform mechanics will feel similar, the sights and sounds come across very differently in this textural stream of nightmarish tableaus. Both critics and players have been absorbed by the insistently grim and grotesque experience, engaged by its tense levels and exploring interpretations of what its dual endings actually mean.  

Watch Dogs 2

Ubisoft’s first run at the Watch Dogs concept ended up being marred by potential that couldn’t quite be satisfied, delivering a surveillance tech stealth game that lacked the expected innovation and freedom boasted by its creators. Once the player cuts through those aspects, however, the overall experience delivers familiar stealth action game design with fresh tools at its disposal, eventually earning a reputation after a few years for being somewhat underrated. With expectations more in check and a list of things to improve, Ubisoft Montreal took a second crack at the concept with Watch Dogs 2.

Armed with a superior protagonist and a more engaging narrative that borrows a little from the likes of Minority Report, this sequel centers on a hacker wrongly accused of committing crimes by the predictive aspects of San Francisco’s electronic infrastructure. From there, Watch Dogs 2 takes the general outline of the first game and juices up the mission structure, the flexibility of the user interface, and the general openness of the game design. Both critics and players acknowledge the focus on those improvements while also dinging it for not refining its suspension of disbelief or not letting go of certain things that just didn’t work, landing on a generally more positive impression than the one left by the original.

Torment: Tides of Numenera

There was a glorious period in the mid-2010s where isometric RPGs made a serious run at a comeback in the absence of many other fantasy-RPing options, largely on the energy of wildly successful Kickstarter campaigns that proved the interest is still very much there. Alongside Pillars of Eternity that provides a “spiritual successor” to the likes of Baldur’s Gate, Torment: Tides of Numenera focuses on doing the same as a love letter to Planescape: Torment, concerning itself with dense, layered storytelling that molds to player choices throughout the adventure.

Taking place far into a future where civilizations have risen and fallen, Torment refocuses on the world in a less-advanced state full of scattered settlements and lingering mysteries from before the setting’s “Ninth Age”.  The protagonist has been constructed as the “vessel” for an ancient man who has discovered how to transfer consciousness from body to body, and it’s up to the protagonist to stop the chain and to defeat a force called “The Sorrow” before it consumes them both.  As expected, the narrative and choice-and-consequence versatility in Torment: Tides of Numenera have been widely celebrated and deemed worth playing for any RPG fan interested in those aspects; however, many critics and players view the clunky mundaneness of its combat and encounters as a big obstacle.

Xbox Games With Gold

For those still riding on the Gold train, we’ve got a foursome of middling, yet decent titles that can certainly be described as eclectic. Over on the Xbox One, we’ve got Calico (August 1-31), a management sim in which the player runs their own … cat café, or more accurately reconstructs one within a town and repopulates it with new furry residents. Some who might be drawn into the pastel, magical aesthetic and cat collection and management might want to give it a go, but critics and players have struggled with glitches and bugs since launch. The other title is ScourgeBringer (August 16 – September-15), a colorful and retro-infused roguelike platformer that delivers the kind of fast-paced challenge and rinse-and-repeat learning gameplay that devotees of the genres adore.

In one of the last months of legacy titles to be offered, at least Microsoft’s going out with a banger or two. This month, they’re offering folks the chance to have Saints Row 2 (August 1-15) — yes, the game that’s routinely priced lower than $5 through digital sales — ready to go on their hard-drives for free. As the middle title between the franchise’s slightly more serious first game and the balls-out humor of Saints Row: The Third (my personal favorite), the second one strikes a pretty satisfying balance between those two spectrums as it imitates the open-world gangster gameplay of Grand Theft Auto with a satirical edge. Finally, there’s Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine (August 16-31), a top-down heist management and strategy game noteworthy for being developed by the sole designer behind Pocketwatch Games.

Xbox Game Pass, Gold Freebies for August Keep Excitement on Inside

It’s February and love’s in the air, so that means the folks at Xbox will be extra generous with their Games With Gold and Game Pass offerings this month … right? Well, it was worth a try. In actuality, this month feels a bit different in the other direction since neither of Microsoft’s subscription services have been gifted much in the way of “WOW!” titles.  From lower-tier shooters to under-the-radar RPGs and hidden gem action-platformers, it’s a moderate yet unshowy month in terms of new content that’ll draw in subscribers for Game Pass, and, well, the less said about what’s going on with Games With Gold, the better. Let’s take a closer look at the titles, but before doing so, be sure to head over and Grab a 3-Month Subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate at Amazon.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – New and Upcoming

CrossfireX

Someone who sticks to consoles for their gaming needs very likely hasn’t heard of Crossfire, though most PC gamers who enjoy the online shooter space know that it’s one of the most popular and widely played free-to-play shooting games in existence, remaining as such a decade-plus after release.  For the most part, and understandably so due to the gap in time for in a western release and the culture surrounding several other online shooters, a huge part of this popularity rests in eastern countries.  Despite the rampant regional enthusiasm, Smilegate hopes to further break into the global market, and they’re making an attempt with the Xbox exclusive semi-sequel CrossfireX.

Partnering with Max Payne and Control developers Remedy Entertainment to help craft the campaign side of the game, Smilegate essentially drops CrossfireX as the console representation of their already-popular online offering with a unique episodic campaign tacked on for good measure. Impressions from both players and critics haven’t been kind to CrossfireX thus far, though: the campaign additions have come across as atypically short and generic for a unique studio like Remedy, but it’s the general shooter gameplay that’s getting dragged for being uninteresting and lacking content.  The multiplayer of CrossfireX is inherently free-to-play, whereas the campaign constitutes pay-to-play content, both of which seem to be included with the Game Pass listing for free download.

Edge of Eternity

Gaming culture has reached a point where turn-based RPGs really need something extra and noteworthy to be worth the time and energy investment required to pour into them. Whether it’s mixing modern gaming styles and techniques with the old, the novelty of turn-based combat in an unlikely genre (like martial arts in Yakuza), or the resurrection of a beloved franchise whose identity is tied to it, there needs to be a “reason” for players to engage in those legacy designs. More than that, it seems as if simply creating a new world and hoping that turn-based RPG elements will be serviceable enough to carry the player through it doesn’t work as well as it once did.

The aptly-titled Midgar Studio – named after the primary city in the classic turn-based JRPG Final Fantasy VII — have delivered Edge of Eternity on the hopes that its sci-fi/fantasy fusion of storytelling will still get the job done. As the story follows along weatherworn tropes of a corrosive “taint” spreading across the open-world realm due to an advanced race of alien invaders and the chosen pair of heroes hoping to cure it, the gameplay centers on both hex-based and semi-live combat scenarios that pay homage to many classic JRPGs. Both critics and players have pointed out that Edge of Eternity has significant roughness to its execution and drags in pacing throughout, though players have also commended it for the nostalgic spirit, flickers of ambitiousness, and eventual spikes of intensity in the story.

Nobody Saves the World

Guacamelee remains one of the more overlooked action games on consoles. The folks at Drinkbox Games telegraph heaps of Mexican lucha-libre bravado and beat-‘em-up Metroidvania gameplay in a setting that repeatedly shifts between the realms of the living and the dead — long before Pixar did similar things with Coco — all beautifully rendered in vibrant colors and charm. The developer’s success with Guacamelee and its sequel can’t help but make one enthusiastic about what they’d do with the fantasy dungeon-crawling subgenre, how they’ll possibly make it jut as vivid and humorous. The result is Nobody Saves the World, the tale of a stark white protagonist with no personality of their own who must adopt the “skins” of other fallen heroes to power through their dungeons.

With a magical wand in hand granting them the power to transform into an assortment of critters and characters – from rats and slugs to rogues and monks – Nobody delves into a world of procedurally-generated dungeons packed with quests and challenges, which naturally earns experience points.   The signature personality of Drinkbox once again comes through in both the character animations and the ways in which the energized gameplay interacts with the characters. Perhaps the sweetest detail about Nobody Saves the World is that one Nobody doesn’t have to go at it alone: the game not only features multiplayer, but encourages it through how the magical forms can interact. Both players and critics have been enthusiastic about what Drinkbox has created, even if the general dungeon-crawling repetition still seems to set in after a while with the game despite the variety of forms.

Hitman Trilogy

Like many franchises moving from console generation to generation, the Hitman franchise of stealth-action games hit a lull near the end of the Xbox/PS2 era. Eventually, this led to a new release in the PS3/360 era, Hitman: Absolution, but it didn’t quite capture the same tight experience of the originals and, thus, didn’t have the kind of sales performance that’d reignite confidence in the franchise.  Hitman was, once again, put on the shelf for a number of years to better figure out how to make it work in the current gaming era. Eventually, developers IO Interactive and Square Enix made what seems to have been the correct decision: it was time to “soft reboot” Agent 47 without fully starting from scratch, taking the lessons learned from Absolution and applying them to a version of Hitman that gets the series back to its open-ended, puzzle-solving roots.

Despite the minor snafu of initially releasing it in episodic segments, the full breadth of 2016’s Hitman reestablished the franchise as a contender in the increasingly crowded space of quality stealth games. This eventually led to a pair of sequels, the simply-titled Hitman 2 and Hitman 3, that understand their audience and what they want: while IO Interactive does experiment with the zaniness of the missions, landscapes, and skills, they never stray very far from the core enjoyment factors and mechanics that satisfy their player base and connect them into a cohesive trilogy. Thus, it’s no surprise to see them package in a Hitman Trilogy such as this, which utilizes the Access Pass system through Hitman 3 to access all three titles.

Xbox Games With Gold

Sure, the Games With Gold program has been going for quite a while now, and it might be slightly difficult to come up with feasible higher-profile free Xbox One and 360 titles to include with Xbox’s baseline subscription service … but other options are still there. Instead of pinpointing some of these exciting titles perhaps as a last hurrah for a fading subscription service, we’ve once again got a pair of low-attention indies for the Xbox One and less-than-stellar inclusions for the legacy consoles. Now, admittedly, it does make me smile to see something like Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse (February 1-28) available as a free download, since some of my fondest gaming memories come from similar point-and-click adventures (LucasArts, Sierra, etc) to that of the globetrotting adventure and murder mystery it provides. The stylish but repetitive indie puzzle runner Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield (February 16 – March 15) feels like an obligation filler instead of an excitement driver.

On the retro console side, there’s Hydrophobia (February 1-15), an action game that received middling reviews over a decade ago and only succeeded as, essentially, a tech demo for environmental water effects. Rounding out the offerings is Band of Bugs (February 16-28), a turn-based tactics RPG-ish game with a Hero’s Journey type of story, several multiplayer modes, and a level editor for continued enjoyment after finishing the game.  Both have middling critical and audience scores, leaving one to wonder why they aren’t at least pairing iffy titles with at least one solidly good one.

Xbox Game Pass, Gold Titles for February: Nobody’s Saving the World With This Middling Lineup

There’s little use denying that the past year has been a challenge for the video game industry, notably for fans of Xbox systems who haven’t had much luck finding their Series console of choice since November of 2020. There aren’t many ways that Microsoft can really make up for it, either, because of factors beyond their control. However, one could consider their big Game Pass Ultimate addition at least a mild way of softening the blow for those who subscribe to their preferred monthly service regardless of console: the inclusion of the latest title in what’s arguably the most significant, important franchise in the history of Xbox.

Like most other things surrounding it, the rest of the titles are less memorable from both the other Game Pass offerings and the Games With Gold, but there are a few gems that aren’t so sus from among the rest.  Let’s take a closer look, but before we do, jump over and Grab a 3-Month Subscription to Game Pass Ultimate on Amazon to gain the benefits of both sides.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – New and Upcoming

Halo: Infinite

For an entertaining deep-dive into the evolution of gaming and evidence of just how ingrained Halo is with the culture, head over and search through the images on Google for “Halo LAN party”. You’ll spot many things: big, outdated televisions and monitors; bottles of beer and Mountain Dew atop foldout tables; nearly as many smiles or intense faces as there are cables spread out everywhere. Most of these parties focused on the highly refined multiplayer of Halo 2, but all the early titles had their moments of fun like this before online multiplayer really took over … and even now, convenience be damned, people tap into nostalgia with classic LAN get-togethers. In essence, this is the spirit of Xbox as a gaming console, and while Halo has had its ups and down in quality in recent years, this’ll never change.

Halo: Infinite ends the franchise’s half-decade hiatus by way of 343 Industries, throwing Master Chief into battle against an alien coalition known as the Banished on the ringworld Zeta Halo. Tied to this is an extension of the saga between Master Chief and Cortana, now a rogue and rebelling AI who’s the target for removal, as well as a more open-world landscape for battle engagements. Players have been notoriously fickle about the recent lore and storytelling of Halo, but for the most part they’ve been satisfied thus far with the directions the plot has taken. Multiplayer is, of course, paramount for Halo: Infinite, and luckily it seems as if the community has remained satisfied with the quality since it entered beta testing in the middle of November. After two decades, Halo delivers once again.

Among Us

The pandemic succeeded in making a pair of games surprisingly popular, likely much more so than they would have under other circumstances, and they’re both for widely different reasons. Animal Crossing provided a creative, stable outlet for people to just … well, tend their garden and mind their business in a calming and cute slice-of-life management simulator.  The other does exactly the opposite. Among Us borrows the gameplay philosophy behind Werewolf, Mafia, and other identity deduction games, and during the pandemic’s peaks it provided ways for players to interact online and play a unique, layered game with one another.

The concept sounds like the classic sci-fi movie The Thing, in which a group of astronauts on an isolated station have been infiltrated by “impostors” whose objective is to sabotage and eliminate the crew. Players, who can range from 4 to now over a dozen, are randomly and discreetly selected to be either legitimate crewmates or impostors; impostors go about fake duties to try and convince others that they’re on the up and up, or they end up being labeled “sus”-picious.  Votes are held as to who gets to stay aboard when something suspicious happens, and the deduction skills – and deflection skills – of the players will determine who gets thrown out the airlock.  It’s a familiar party-game derivative a la Resistance and Secret Hitler, but the personality and online versatility of Among Us make it a quite enjoyable iteration in these trying times.

Mortal Kombat 11

Next year will mark the 30^th anniversary of the release of the original Mortal Kombat, and it’s really tough to wrap one’s brain around that. It started as a taboo gaming experience – one that sparked Congressional hearings – and morphed into a console decision maker during the peak of the “wars”, dependent on whether someone wanted Nintendo’s edited version or SEGA’s unedited release. It all seems like old news now, but the topic of the realistic body models and the gruesome fatalities – end-of-battle finishing moves that involve heaps of blood and broken or impaled body parts – caused an immense stir. The folks at Midway, and now the folks at NetherRealm Studios, have embraced that unsavory reputation and continued to up the ante in the brutal, yet engaging and layered fighting game.  

With that reputation also comes a hefty fanbase that’s ready to scrutinize every title, and the latest installment, MK11, earned a mixture of polarized opinions from among its fanbase. For some, it’s the pinnacle of what Mortal Kombat can be in the current era and heavily satisfies those who “grew up” with the original iconic 3-4 games that started the franchise. For others, the game’s emphasis on flashier aspects over more hardcore fighting-game complexity comes across as trying to appeal to too-broad of an audience. Regardless of where one falls on that spectrum, Mortal Kombat 11 continues to offer narrative progression and bountiful item/cosmetic collection in single player and fluid combat in online and multiplayer formats, and it’s universally regarded as the best-looking MK to date.

It’s also worth noting that the version of Flight Simulator 2020 available through Game Pass has been upgraded to the Game of the Year edition, and that two exquisite narrative-based adventure games — Campo Santo’s Firewatch and Double Fine’s Broken Age — have also snuck in under the radar.

Xbox Games With Gold

Over on the legacy subscription wing at Xbox, they’ve served up yet another passable, unexciting foursome of free titles for the Xbox One and Xbox 360 that fail to prompt one to continue shelling out for the service if that’s their primary reason for doing so.  On current-gen consoles, they’ve made available The Escapists 2 (December 1-31), a prison break sim that taps into a similarly charming multiplayer energy to that of Among Us. Retro pixel graphics mesh with a top-down gaming perspective as the player crafts a strategy to flee, both figuratively and literally through the game’s item crafting system. Players seem to run out of fun with the single player experience after a while, but still enjoy the multiplayer escapes. There’s also Tropico 5 (December 16-January 15), the last installment in the longstanding island construction sim franchise developed by Haemimont Games, which was met with irritation from players and critics alike for spit-polishing the status quo and not improving the wobbly infrastructure of the previous games.

In terms of legacy titles, there’s Orcs Must Die! (December 1-15), a third-person fantasy action game that’s a mix of tower defense and horde mode. It has spawned a handful of sequels, notably one that came out last year on Stadia and ported over to consoles in July of this year, and they’ve all received moderately positive marks from critics and players for its quirky attitude and clever blending of genres. The other title is Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (December 16-31), a side-scrolling spacecraft shooting game that comes across as if a flying saucer with a little blaster has decided to explore the worlds of LIMBO and World of Goo.  

December’s Xbox Game Pass, Gold Titles: More Than Halo: Infinite is Among Us

November has finally arrived, and with it comes some jockeying between the Xbox camp and other consoles for who’ll come out on top during the holiday shopping rush. Thing is, due to the rampant unavailability of consoles across the board because of supply-chain issues, it’s looking like a complicated month – more so than normal — where folks will be beyond lucky to buy a console of any kind throughout the holidays. There’s a lot of distractions going on right now, but at least Microsoft is stepping up with quality releases through their Game Pass program to help out.

While their Games With Gold titles remain lackluster, they’ve provided some real attention-grabbing titles to their other subscription program this month, from a huge new release and an game-of-the-year contended to a highly popular remastered classic … even though that one’s getting dragged through the mud right now.  Let’s take a closer look at the games, but before doing so, head over and Grab a 3-Month Subscription to Game Pass Ultimate on Amazon for access to these downloads and exclusive deals on their marketplace.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – New and Upcoming

Forza Horizon 5

Playground Games’ Forza series has become appointment-worthy over the past decade of its development, providing some of the clearest examples of how the Xbox console’s graphics and tech are progressively pushed beyond their limits. Starting with the original 360 title and moving to Forza 4 on the One, there’s a clear and observable succession of improvement across the life cycle Microsoft’s last-gen system. From game modes and familiar included cars to the general impressiveness of the graphics, the advancements aren’t of the same caliber as sports games that seem to reproduce largely the same experience year after year. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the company’s first installment designed with the Xbox Series X in mind would be hotly anticipated, and it arrives in style.

Forza 5 takes the action to Mexico, producing an open-world driving landscape that’s been crafted with research and reference from across the range of areas there, a purposeful design choice to amp up the variety in gameplay. That is, if the 500+ cars available in this installment can’t do that on their own, on top of the new dynamic weather system, the car and player-character customization, and the scattering of play modes across the otherwise sandbox environment. Both critics and players alike have had nothing but positive things to say about Forza Horizon 5 up to this point, celebrating both its aesthetic polish and its combo of gameplay variety and arcade excitement.

Grand Theft: Auto San Andreas — Definitive Edition

Enough has been said about the quality of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas over the years that it almost feels unnecessary to mention how thoroughly it impacted the PS2-era of gaming consoles, whose popularity could be attributed to reason we’ve got the juggernaut of GTAIV and GTAV today. Unfortunately, there’s another hot topic going around about Rockstar’s game, notably about the quality of the most recent remastering of San Andreas and its predecessors GTAIII and Vice City, being billed as the “definitive edition” of the trilogy. Most would assume that a company like Rockstar – again, the studio behind both these games and the stellar-reviewed Red Dead Redemption series — would effortlessly produce satisfying, crowd-pleasing remasters of these games, but that’s not quite the case.

Developed by Grove Street Games, formerly known as War Drum Studios and as the folks responsible for other Rockstar ports, these Definitive Editions of the GTA games have been labeled less than stellar for a number of reasons. From sound quality dips and text misspellings to rampant graphical issues related to both character models and the landscape, the grievances have been voiced quite clearly by early players. It’s for this reason that the addition of San Andreas to the Game Pass library should be celebrated, as players are able to try out this remastered iteration for themselves before jumping into a full trilogy purchase; for some, the issues could be overpowered by the improvements and nostalgia factor.

It Takes Two

The title above is a literal expression of what’s required to play Hazelight’s most recent creation: It Takes Two needs a willing pair of gamers to get through it. This can be a hurdle for some players who like to plow through action-platform style games on their own speed, but when it’s from the mind of content director Josef Fares, there’s a sense of confidence in the requirement having enough purpose to justify it. Fares first made a name for himself in the game arena at Starbreeze Studios by developing the under-the-radar hit Brothers, which utilizes siblings with individual strengths to create innovative gameplay situations that are hinged on expressive storytelling. These are aspects he carries over to his own Hazelight Studios in development of the similarly dramatic co-op adventure A Way Out.

It Takes Two transforms those emotional concepts into actual gameplay designs, in which the young daughter of a soon-to-be divorced couple takes doll versions of her parents off to play, then tries to repair their relationship through thrilling adventures in fantasy landscapes. As these Coraline-esque doll versions of the parents – each controlled by a different player – complete tasks in the level design that echo a wide variety of gameplay styles, it brings aspects of their family relationship more into focus as the two characters gain control of new abilities and coordinate them with one another.  Both critics and players have adamantly sang praises for just about everything involved with It Takes Two, from the novel variety of fluctuating genre styles to the visuals and the cooperative synergies.

Xbox Games With Gold

While Game Pass continues to thrive by offering day-and-date megahits and game-of-the-year contenders, Microsoft’s legacy program Xbox Games With Gold maintains its slope in the opposite direction, showcasing little firepower in their monthly included freebies. Let’s start on the Xbox One with a moving simulator … yes, a moving simulator, as in a puzzle game designed around moving out of a house. In the same vein as Overcooked, Moving Out (November 1-31) takes a mundane activity with potential complications and transforms it into a fast-paced, outlandish cooperative experience that’s assuredly more fun than doing the real thing. Also on the current Xbox system is Kingdom: Two Crowns (November 16-December 15), a beautiful 8-bit inspired, side-scrolling fantasy game that combines settlement management with exploration and survival. Critics and players praise the aesthetic, but feel the slower pace and simplicity hold it back.

Over on the legacy Xbox systems, we’ve got a pair of recognizable faces within middle-of-the-road action games that clearly have younger audiences in mind with their inclusion. First, there’s Rocket Knight (November 1-15), an action-platform game featuring a classic Sega Genesis character revived for the current era. While the original Rocket Knight continues to be regarded as one of the better platform titles on the Genesis, this new iteration proves that modern examples of the genre need a little something extra and need more longevity than what it provides. There’s also LEGO Batman 2 (November 16-30), and let’s be real, the LEGO titles are effortlessly entertaining across the board regardless of peaks and valleys in quality, so the inclusion of the Dark Knight in his blocky form will always be welcome.

November’s Xbox Freebies: Game Pass Moving Up, Gold Moving Out

The tides seem to be turning once again for the monthly console subscription services, as one slips into the shadows with a trio of ill-fitting freebies and the other makes its presence well known with timely, substantive new entries into their included catalogue. Xbox Game Pass demonstrates how to please a crowd this month by landing arguably the most popular title to come out this month – perfectly timed in coordination with Halloween spooky season – and still work in a few other noteworthy goodies alongside it, from a unique action-RPG to another horror-tilted title for those who aren’t into shooters or coop titles. While the Games With Gold inclusions remain lackluster, the whole package available here has way more treats than tricks for October. Let’s take a closer look, but before doing so, be sure Grab a 3-Month Game Pass Ultimate Subscription at Amazon to take advantage of both the Game Pass and Games With Gold offerings discussed below.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – New and Upcoming

Back 4 Blood

It’s been over a decade since the release of Left 4 Dead 2, and while the landscape of shooters and cooperative gaming experiences has changed quite a bit during that time, the positive energy and memories generated by that franchise remain quite strong among its fanbase. The original creators of Left 4 Dead, Turtle Rock Studios, still see this as an opportunity despite the amount of time that has passed and how gaming has changed, and they’ve decided to stick to the formula in creating Back 4 Blood. Between the title and the source of the game, the associations and intentions of this squad-based shooter are simple: this is essentially the Left 4 Dead 3 that people have wanted for so long,

This isn’t literally a sequel though, obviously. Instead of borrowing generously from and leaning so heavily on The Walking Dead, Back 4 Blood features a more progressed post-apocalyptic scenario where a much larger portion of the global human population has already been infected with a foreign parasite, likely extraterrestrial, that turns them into pseudo-zombies. As these “Ridden” populate the landscape, a group of experienced survivors known as “Cleaners” battle against them and help purge them from vulnerable zones.  Gameplay follows suit, allowing for 4 co-op players through the harrowing campaign or 8 during PvP multiplayer sessions.  During a spooky season near the end of a pandemic where everyone’s still getting their bearings straight with meeting up in person, Back 4 Blood showed up at the perfect time.

Marvel’s The Avengers

The hype train moved at full throttle for this videogame adaptation of The Avengers, largely on the steam of it being an entirely original story with semi-fresh faces for all the heroes – not just duplications of their movie counterparts – and an all-star cast of game voice talents bringing them to life. On a fundamental level, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal get a lot right with their take on monumental property, in which they’ve crafted an intriguing campaign around a finely-tuned narrative and do just about everything they can to make the player feel as if they’ve gained control of one of the Avengers. While the central new-ish character Kamala Khan takes on the bulk of the gameplay, that doesn’t mean it will shy away from the others, including, yes, giving players control over Thor’s flying and hammer-hurling self.

At its core, Marvel’s Avengers is a fine game … but it’s also surrounded by a lot of widely-reported issues, notably with play longevity and repetitiveness, bugs, and an unrewarding loot system. It’s a game that the developers planned on expanding upon and supporting with new content – specifically, new Avengers as controllable characters — for roughly a year after release, yet players had essentially already played and moved on from it not too long after it hit shelves. This has left the game in something of an awkward state because for it being a dozen hours of Avengers power fantasy, most critics and players would say it’s perfectly enjoyable with those expectations in mind, especially for it being a Game Pass inclusion.  It just isn’t the living, evolving superhero experience many expected it to be.

Scarlet Nexus

Transcending the line that separates mainstream content and anime-styled content isn’t easy to accomplish, even if the likes of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest make it look easier. Scarlet Nexus takes the visual language of modern anime and brings it down a few notches to a more accessible 3D landscape, telling a story about futurist technology involving the physiological makeup of the brain, how society has tapped into it to unlock human potential, and how the gifted ones can have powers unlocked so they  can be protectors of this society. From there, players gain control of their choice of two protagonists, male or female, who are equipped with exceptional sensory and psychokinetic abilities, making them perfect warriors against alien invading forces.

Both in concept and gameplay, Scarlet Nexus shares some similarities with recent surprise hit Control, wherein the player has the ability to levitate objects with the characters’ mental powers and utilize them in combat and around the level designs. The differences give this game from Bandai Namco their distinctive edge, as the protagonists wield katanas and chain combos with bladework and energy utilization, against a beautiful semi-open urban Japanese landscape. The storytelling in Scarlet Nexus has been infused with stylish, but not overly amped-up anime conversation panels that’ll teeter on the line of accessibility for players out there, concisely getting storytelling beats in there amid what’s otherwise a consistent rush of action-RPG energy.

Visage

It’s been seven years since Hideo Kojima and filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro released what’s best known as PT, or “Playable Teaser”. Essentially a proof-of-concept exercise for what Kojima could do with the medium in the current gaming landscape, inherently making one excited for a new iteration of Silent Hill, the brief experience left a mark on gaming culture that hasn’t eased up. It’s frequently cited as one of the scariest videogames ever created … and then was then removed from download platforms following the cancellation of Silent Hills, the project for which it was developed, causing a panic among gamers who didn’t have the file downloaded. Consoles were sold online at a premium because they had PT installed on them, and remakes of the whole experience have since been built in other platforms.

The above paragraph focuses so much on Playable Teaser because SadSquare Studio uses its design and unresolved legacy as a direct springboard for Visage, their own indie survival horror experience. In a house with a complex layout, the game takes place shortly after the main character has committed a murder-suicide upon his family, causing him to awaken in a roomw while covered in blood and seemingly locked within the house. While he searches for clues on how to get out, Visage separates into focused chapters based on the objects he interacts with inside the house, taking him on a journey through the paranormal and the morbid as he learns more about the house’s history. Visage may not be the next Silent Hill everyone wanted, but its head is in the same space as a spiritual successor to what could’ve been.

Xbox Games With Gold

Xbox’s Games With Gold unfortunately continues a downward slope in substance and quality by making four underwhelming titles available for longstanding subscribers to their legacy program. Starting things off on the Xbox One is Aaero (October 1-31), a music coordination on-the-rails racing game with a retro-futuristic aesthetic that reminds one of Guitar Hero, Wipeout, and Tempest all thrown in a blender, with electronic dance music propelling it forward. Both critics and players found enjoyment in getting into the groove with Aaero, though the game mechanics seem to run out of interest after getting through a few hours of it. The other current-gen title is Hover (October 16-November 15), which also hits is own rhythmic kinetic stride as the player gains control of a parkour running trickster in a bright neon environment. Critics have been kind to the general free-roaming experience, but finding the mission and interface aspects holding it all together to have missed their mark.

On the Xbox 360 are a pair of nostalgic horror-themed titles with highly mixed reputations.  Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (October 1-15) is noteworthy for bringing protagonists from previous installments of the franchise together into a co-op environment, where they work to eliminate Dracula or compete against one another in Survival Mode to see who’s the better hunter. Both critics and players find something appealing in the game design, but also feel there isn’t enough variety or substance to keep going with it. The other is Resident Evil Code: Veronica X HD (October 16-31), an installment in the legendary series that was once revered two decades ago on the Dreamcast, but already stated to feel dated several years later with its Gamecube port and continued to feel even more so with this poorly-received HD upgrade from a decade back.

October’s Xbox Game Pass, Gold Titles: Back 4 Halloween Action

Altogether, combining both the new Game Pass offerings and the Games With Gold freebies, September’s coming off as a tame month for Xbox’s subscription services. That’s a relatively uncommon occurrence: while the quality of the monthly Gold freebies has been on a steady decline over the past year, the high interest levels in the new Game Pass titles typically offsets the legacy program and, advantageously, draws attention away from it.  By most measures, this isn’t really the case for September and its arrangement of lower-key games … except for maybe the retro gamers out there. Slipped into the mix is a rebuilt, gorgeous version of a classic puzzle adventure game from decades ago that’ll likely spark just enough interest to earn the month a pass. Let’s take a gander at the titles, but before doing so, be sure to Grab a 3-Month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Subscription Card from Amazon.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate — New and Upcoming

MYST

When it comes to point-and-click adventures, many gamers with a few years under their belts likely have a blind spot for MYST, the eerie tale of exploration, hubris, and family conflict lovingly crafted by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller of Cyan Worlds. Since exploding into the mainstream and becoming a commercial computer game success in the early ‘90s, MYST has been remastered and retooled numerous times to varying degrees of success, always attempting to keep memory of it alive alongside the changing video game climate. Whether the game itself — its narrative and puzzles — has aged well seems to matter less than relishing the pulse of nostalgia and the inventive art design of the puzzle-based world.

In the current era, there’s been a newfound appreciation for relaxed, atmospheric gaming experiences driven by mysterious storytelling and aesthetics, and it seems like a fine time for MYST to yet again make its presence known. While the original MYST has shown up on the likes of the original PlayStation, this marks the game’s first availability on an Xbox console, and it happens in a big way. Similar to realMYST, this iteration is essentially a PC port of the recent VR version of the game that’s been modified for standard flatscreen play, rebuilt from top to bottom for seamless exploration of a 3D iteration of the environment. It’s a beautiful, modernized reconstruction of a whimsical masterwork from computer gaming’s history, essentially visualizing what people imagined when moving from screen-to-screen in the point-and-click original.

Breathedge

Speaking of the lower-key adventure subgenre, one of the more recent successes from that niche would be Subnautica, in which the lone survivor of a space exploration crash sticks it out on a water planet and discovers the secrets of the mission that brought the crew there. Many people who’ve played it on PC have stated that Breathedge is essentially “Subnautica, but out in space”, and based on the premise itself, that doesn’t seem far off. This game from RedRuins Softworks finds the main character stranded in the debris of a wrecked spaceship, hunting for clues about an underlying conspiracy. 

Here’s the catch: the spaceship was actually a big hearse transporting corpses, and the game’s sense of humor uses that as a jumping-off point. From sassy robots and immortal chickens to the freedom in how one uses propulsion engines with the surroundings, Breathedge aims to be both a survival sim with genuine layers of strategic inventory thinking and a sarcastic playground that invites explosive experimentation. But it also eventually knows when to shift gears and tell the story going on underneath, even though that abrupt shift has led some critics and players to feel like separate, sometimes tedious experiences when progressing through the game.

Aragami 2

Nowadays, most stealth-centered games are centered on variety.  Sure, it’s possible to get from Point A to Point B by being clever and sneaky, but there’s usually enough freedom in those games – Assassin’s Creed, Dishonored, Deus Ex, Batman, even Thief — that they can charge guns blazing to their destination, or use other more volatile strategies to achieve roughly the same result. Aragami cracks the whip on this concept, focusing entirely on the stealth aspects as a supernatural ninja-like spirit uses shadows and maneuvers to infiltrate a city in pursuit of an imprisoned empress.   While some might’ve found the stealth too ever-present to a point of repetitive, many players found the focus to be satisfying.

Aragami 2 engages the player’s Shadow Spirit in a different sort of mission, pursuing the key to freeing those warriors from their other-worldly curse and the invaders who frequently imprison them. Stealth once again appears paramount to the game’s intentions, with new bells-‘n-whistles centered on elevating those techniques instead of straying from them. The inclusion of 3-player co-op and a bevy of new customization options for your particular aragami  character suggest a heightened level of variety and features this time around, though, which will hopefully deepen the experience. Aragami 2 will be ready for action on September 16.

Xbox Games With Gold

With the release of the remastered resurrected Diablo II coming later in the month of September, it’s unsurprising yet still mildly satisfying to see Microsoft provide an Xbox One substitute of sorts in their free Games With Gold for those who might not be delving into those particular dungeons.  Warhammer: Chaosbane (September 1-30) goes crawling through the same hack-‘n-slash subgenre as Dark Alliance, Champions of Norrath, and Torchlight, only through the popular Warhammer 40K universe. While it scratches the same itch, players and critics tend to agree that it’s too short and unpolished to be considered among those higher-tier crawlers. Also available for the Xbox One is Mulaka (September 16-October 15), which also vaguely satisfies the same kind of desire with players hacking and slashing their way through an indigenous tribal atmosphere centered in Mexico. Both critics and players seems to agree that the novelty of its setting makes the everyday Zelda-like gameplay and map clearing worth the time.

Over on the legacy system offerings, there’s the cult classics Zone of the Enders HD Collection (September 1-15), which includes both games of the mech battle franchise produced by Hideo Kojima. A critical evaluation of the games in 2012 by both players and critics reaffirmed that the second game in the series, 2^nd Runner, is vastly superior on almost all fronts. Finally, there’s Samurai Shodown 2 (September 16-30), a decade-plus old port of the original SNK sequel frequently described as being better than the original. Whether that’s still a viable position will likely depend on the player’s threshold for flavorful character models and vintage fighting games without the speed of others from the era.

September’s Xbox Game Pass and Gold Titles: Shadows, Space, and MYST

The decision-makers at Microsoft responsible for picking what titles should be available on Game Pass this August were on top of their game this time around.  It’s no secret that the month’s full of distractions, both in terms of real world back-to-school prep and football season revving up and in terms of Madden being the big video game of the season. Instead of resting on their laurels, the Game Pass folks have made available some rather desirable action titles aimed to fill another, different void with whimsical escapism and step-by-step upgrade management.

Are these heavy-hitting AAA titles? Debatable, but not really, and that’s perfectly fine considering the substance of what’s being offered.  From a hotly-anticipated console port of a PC darling to a pair of long-awaited sequels with substantial cult fanbasres, there’s plenty to unpack and enjoy throughout the month. Let’s take a closer look, but before doing so, be sure to head over and Grab a 3-Month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Subscription at Amazon to enjoy all the titles here.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – New and Upcoming

Hades

As mentioned in our new video game release coverage for August (click here to read!), Hades has up until now enjoyed a healthy degree of exclusivity for the PC crowd, only moving over to the Switch after leaving early access. The roguelike dungeon crawler has become one of many envies of the big console owners, with them unable to take on what’s been proclaimed as one of the best of the genre, though naturally the difficulty of the title will vary depending on the level of player you’re asking.  Some find it quite difficult and others with genre experience find it more manageable, but both camps agree upon the quality of the storytelling, atmosphere, and addictive repetition gameplay.

Now, the rest of the console crowd will be able to gain control of the Prince of the Underworld as he battles his way through the realm in an escape to Mount Olympus, who utilizes gifts from other godly observers to get through the randomized sequence of rooms and obstacles. Due to the upgrade systems, the revolving nature of the rooms, interactions with characters both in the Underworld and beyond, and the purge-and-try-again nature of the upgrades, Hades delivers a consistent rush of fresh experiences for each beautifully rendered isometric hack-‘n-slash run.

Dodgeball Academia

Dodgeball video games aren’t very common, yet despite the existence of the National Dodgeball League and the memories of countless people who played the game in their youth, there hasn’t been much of a push for it. That’s likely because the mechanics can end up being similar to other sports titles – passing, tossing, or volleying a ball to connect with a target – or even old-school arcade ball-shooting games. Therefore, the dodgeball premise needs an extra hook to make it appealing, like robots on wheels that explode upon ball impact or outlandish obstacles cruising through a circular arena instead of a rectangle.  

Dodgeball Academia goes deeper with its ambitions. While it stays true to the rectangular arena of the sport, the game that exists around it makes the experience something that’s both unique and familiar, incorporating social and role-playing aspects of Pokemon and Rockstar’s Bully alongside the elevated version of dodgeball being played. In the arena, generous powerups and delightfully flashy animations add zest to what’s otherwise a sidescrolling dodgeball experience that’s trying to be as normal as possible under those circumstances. Both critics and players young and old alike have raved about Dodgeball Academia, hinged on a charming RPG storytelling design and sharp arcade gameplay.

Psychonauts 2

As Tim Schafer’s reputation for quirky writing and vibrant, open-audience designs has strengthened through his efforts with the likes of Costume Quest and Broken Age, the demand for a return to Psychonauts has also continued to mount among its fanbase. It’s not on the same mythical level as, say, Half-Life 3 or a FFVII remaster, but this sequel has established a similarly meme-worthy demand among its niche audience that sparked every time the folks at Double Fine would succeed with another project. At long last, folks get to regain control of Raz as the psychokinetic action-puzzle gameplay again delves into themes of anxiety and mental health, embarking on a mission to get the Psychonauts back on track.

Even though it only lasted about two months, the exclusivity window for the original Psychonauts often ties people’s thoughts to it being an “Xbox title”. Because of this, something feels inherently right about the sequel emerging as a day-one offering through Xbox’s Game Pass program, though naturally Xbox Game Studios has plenty of control over that as the game’s publisher. Other consoles won’t be getting the optimized version of Double Fine’s long-awaited return to the Psychonauts universe, though, as that’ll be an exclusive Xbox Series X offering. Psychonauts 2 will be released and available for download through Game Pass on August 25.

Xbox Games With Gold

Xbox One

Surprisingly, Games With Gold shows a bit of a pulse for the month of August, including a significant recent sequel to a popular action franchise.  On the Xbox One side of the coin, Darksiders III (August 1-31) returns to the mythical open-world ambitions of the first two games after a lengthy hiatus, with publisher THQ Nordic passing the baton to the developers responsible for the successful “Deathinitive” remastering of the second installment, Gunfire Games. While Darksiders received heaps of praise for being a one of the best non-Zelda Zelda action games ever created and Darksiders II expanded the concept into a fantastic open-world design, Darksiders III and the introduction of protagonist Fury didn’t strike the same chord, enduring technical glitches and clumsily borrowing from the Souls brand of tough dungeon crawling. The second half of the month gets Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (August 16-September 15), a side-scrolling puzzle platformer featuring an animal duo that’ll stir up some nostalgia for a few classic Nintendo titles.

Over on the legacy console offerings, there’s Lost Planet 3 (August 1-15), the divisive conclusion to EA’s third-person shooter franchise. Critics and players were warm enough to the improvements in shooting and atmosphere that resulted in decent enough action, but were left in the cold by other clunky, repetitive aspects of the gameplay and questionable storytelling choices. Rounding out the month is Garou: Mark of the Wolves (August 16-31), also known as Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves and the last installment in the 2D fighting franchise. Originally released to arcades in 1999, this marks one of many ports across consoles over the past 2 decades, and mostly remains a title for the die-hard fans of the genre and Fatal Fury itself.

August’s Xbox Game Pass and Gold Titles Go Through Hades to Deliver Action

Between last month and this one, there’s a lot of pretty great new video games to play across all platforms, and it’s possible that Microsoft hopes that’ll be enough to make one shrug off their inclusions for June’s Xbox Games With Gold. It’s tough to know what they’re really thinking with their choices nowadays, though, as this month’s roster makes it seem like they’re evading obvious ones and instead picking less desirable or dated substitutions.

At this point, they have to know baseline subscribers are less than satisfied with what they’ve been offering recently; whether something will be done about it remains to be seen. Until then, Live subscribers will have to settle for a borderline mediocre month of dungeon crawlers, 2D platformers, and outdated fighting games.  Let’s take a closer look, but before you do, consider Grabbing a 3-Month Subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from Amazon for access to a plethora of titles alongside these freebies.

Xbox One

The King’s Bird (June 1-30)

After the likes of LIMBO and Outland left their mark on the console arcade scene, the “silhouette platformer” has slowly formed into its own subgenre. The sharp contrast of black shadows against vibrant backgrounds makes for visually involving experiences, ones that also take some pressure off the creators in rendering character models so they can dedicate their energy to creative level design. The King’s Bird follows in those same artistic footsteps, yet takes them a step further, both in the artistic nature of it all and the challenging aspects of the level design.

As the game’s visuals become inherent to its avant-garde storytelling, the briskness of the gameplay takes the challenge to another level, resembling the timing and coordination of the likes of Super Meat Boy in how the character scales and bounces between walls of the vibrant atmosphere. Critics and players both have been mixed on The King’s Bird, embracing the visuals and momentum but dinging the difficulty and conceptual narrative.

Shadows: Awakening (June 16-July 15)

Roughly half a decade back, there was a welcome spike in new isometric role-playing experiences, marked by “spiritual” returns to the Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment realms with Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera. While the games differ in their combat styles, neither are twitch hack-‘n-slash experiences, and their sustained popularity and the energy of Kickstarter campaigns ensured that others in this lower-key vein would come out of the woodwork. 

Released at the end of 2014, Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms responded to the mounting demand for old-school RPGs and quietly slipped onto the scene little earlier than those. It leans more into the real-time tactical combat design as the player gains control of a demon who consumes the souls of the human realm, leading into heavy choice-based gameplay and variety of combat based on the types of souls consumed. Awakening compiled both the story of Heretic Kingdoms and a new extension of the narrative into one experience, one that’s praised for its versatility, visuals, and gameplay systems while also critiqued for repetitive puzzles and combat.

Xbox 360

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum (June 1-15)

The rising popularity of Marvel vs. Capcom and Super Smash Bros. Melee proved that mashing together popular characters from a bunch of franchises, whether they were similar or not, was a desirable idea. Already in a downward slope, the SNK/NeoGeo fighting game arena decided to hop on this bandwagon by releasing NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, which brings together popular characters across the company’s key franchises – mostly fighting games of varying types – into a familiar tag-team fighting setup.

There’s no denying the draw to being able to pit popular characters from across the sometimes overlooked SNK roster against each other – Terry from Fatal Fury, Ryo from Art of Fighting, Haohmaru from Samurai Shodown – and Coliseum delivers on that promise. Unfortunately, both critics and players agree that there isn’t enough in the execution to keep the game from seeing like it’s just playing catchup to its competitors, though the obvious pleasures in seeing familiar characters squaring off against one another will have its own distinct reward for SNK/NeoGeo enthusiasts.

Injustice: Gods Among Us (June 16-30)

Not entirely unlike NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, the attraction to Injustice: Gods Among Us will obviously be the opportunity to pit popular characters from across a universe against one another. Only with this one, the folks at Netherrealm Studios – essentially Midway – bring together the bigger-than-life personalities of the DC comic books into their arena, allowing hand-to-hand fights between Superman and Batman, Flash and Green Arrow, even Bane and Doomsday to happen in near Mortal Kombat style.

Seeing certain superheroes and villains battling against each other without one immediately losing to another might be a tough pill to swallow — *nudge, wink* — but Injustice: Gods Among Us finds a way for it to make sense and, in the process, ends up telling an above-average story for a fighting game. Both players and critics agree that regardless of the zaniness of the story’s setup, the fighting itself delivers on all levels and reflects the effort put into it from Ed Boon and the MK team. It’s a shame that this isn’t the Ultimate Edition, though.

Xbox Games With Gold Freebies for June Far From Super

For a number of months now, the games being offered as free downloads through Microsoft’s Xbox Games With Gold program have been notably lacking in strength and any sort of excitement factor. It’s been stated and restated before: there are no plans to phase out the standard Xbox Live program. However, the disparity between the quality of games offered under Xbox’s longstanding subscription program and their other program – Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate – has grown wider and mote prominent.

It’s at the point now where the rallying outcry from subscribers (mostly through social media) against the monthly offerings has been covered by online publications, with this month reaching a particularly loud point over the lackluster slate, which contains no next-gen title, a few poorly-reviewed ones, and nothing high profile. As Game Pass remains a highly-recommended program with a fantastic revolving door of playable games – Click Here to grab a Three-Month Subscription of Game Pass Ultimate from Amazon – it becomes harder and harder to recommend being solely a Xbox Live subscriber, and certainly not just for the free games and deals.

Xbox One

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard (April 1-30)

While Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla has received heat for a slightly rough launch and questionable design decisions – seriously, no one-handed viking swords? – the game has still come out on top as one of the most reliably enjoyable things to play on the next generation of consoles. While players were awaiting the arrival of a “viking simulator”, Games Farm quietly released Vikings: Wolves of Midgard several years back, a beat-‘em-up action game that aims to tap into similar aesthetics and attitude.

From the isometric gameplay to the skill trees and control objectives, this one can essentially be summed up as “Diablo, but with Vikings” as players can explore open landscapes and grind their way through battles and player levels. Being frank, it’s really not that tough to satisfy fans of the dungeon crawler subgenre so long as it offers a taste of what they love from the experience, and this one manages to do that.  However, players and critics alike have been less than thrilled with how Vikings: Wolves of Midgard doesn’t do enough to break apart from the pack.

Truck Racing Championship (April 16 – May 15)

Believe it or not, the sport of semi-truck racing has existed since the mid-‘80s, and it’s about as nuts as it sounds with how the action puts heavy pressure on the trucks not to tip or burn out their brakes. Controlling a vehicle like that in a high-speed racing environment comes with its own challenges, something that also translates to the video game arena, such as piloting the bulkier, slower, yet forceful Darkside in the Twisted Metal vehicle combat franchise.  It’s a different control experience, but fun.

While there are other devoted semi-truck games out there, few others take the concept as seriously as the simulator Truck Racing Championship; after all, there’s no competing with American Truck Simulator. ETRC racing has its own set of regulations and distinctive attributes, and the folks at N-Racing aim to bring the uniqueness to the video game realm with a standard realistic simulator design. Generally, the consensus is that the game brings the unique heft of the racing experience to consoles, but it takes a little long to get through the (necessary) tutorial and it lacks both visual and AI polish once it’s actually embroiled in the action.

Xbox 360

Dark Void (April 1-15)

Somewhere between the whimsy of The Rocketeer and the contemporary appeal of Iron Man lies the desire for some people to strap on jet engines, fly through the air and save the day. There are a lot of aspects to this concept that would be difficult for any developer, such as getting velocity and a sense of gravity right in the control, something that might be extra difficult for a studio on its first venture into the gaming realm.  That did not dissuade Airtight Games from making Dark Void, though.

Taking place before World War II for a little of that retro Rocketeer feel, the plot centers on tossing a cargo pilot onto another world – by way of the Bermuda Triangle — and into the fray of battle between humans and aliens for the ability to return home. Critics and players seem to think they’ve applied functional controls to Dark Void in guiding the character through the high-flying, guns-blazing setup, but it doesn’t deliver enough in the gameplay to offset a lackluster story, lack of depth, or short play time. At least Airtight Games stuck with it and eventually got around to Quantum Conundrum and the underrated Murdered: Soul Suspect.

Hard Corps: Uprising (April 16-30)

There’s always a niche market for retro-style video games, but we’re in the middle of a period right now where developers are creating devotedly nostalgic titles that truly celebrate what they’re “copying” instead of trying to conceal it.  This goes doubly for those developers and/or franchises who decide to revive or spin off from a longstanding series with those vintage gaming roots. How much updating should be done and how much old-school attitude should be preserved is a quandary that has stumped many popular franchises from previous gaming system eras.

Hard Corps: Uprising stealthy conceals its roots, as it’s actually a spinoff from the Contra series, specifically from a Sega Genesis title – Contra: Hard Corps – from over a decade and a half before its release.  While it doesn’t sport the yellow-and-red C, it still captures the familiar side-scrolling intensity through its updated levels, gameplay, and character selection. And both critics and players are quick to emphasize the fact that it is, indeed, hard, so it also has that carried on through its lineage.

Xbox Games With Gold for April Are Way Off Track

Several months back, Microsoft assured current Games With Gold subscribers that the baseline Xbox Live subscription service wasn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future, despite some changes in marketing and a notable downward slope in the profile of the included monthly free games. Since then, the quality of the titles has undergone big shifts: one month might not feature any desirable or AAA games, another might have older or remastered favorites yet nothing big, and then the next month may have a Series X/S gen title added with a few other suitable offerings.  

The pattern leaves one with hope that they’re going to figure out a sustainable middle ground between offering considerable titles without “giving away” any of the big moneymakers … but March isn’t going to help that with its forgettable, iffy-reviewed slate of freebies. Let’s take a closer look, but before you do, be sure to jump over and Grab a 3-Month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Sub from Amazon to get these titles and the others available through Game Pass.

Xbox One

Warface: Breakout — March 1-31

As soon as someone hears the name Crytek, most gamers usually conjure memories of the graphically stunning yet technologically complicated sci-fi shooter Crysis, as well as the sequels.  Crytek’s network of studios engaged in other projects, though, and one of them was the tactical shooter Warface from Crytek Kiev — who later formed into Blackwood Games — and published by My.Games. Breakout is a spinoff game from the original, and has been developed by Allods Team under the My.Games label. It’s a bit of a confusing development history for the series, but that also reflects the meandering popularity of the franchise.

A tactical player-versus-player shooter that has essentially mimicked other series since its conception, Warface: Breakout arrived in 2020’s climate of online battle royale games like PUBG and Fortnite, not to mention the ebb and flow interest in Call of Duty and Counter-Strike. It’s tough to claim a stake in that arena, and Warface: Breakout doesn’t seem to do enough for either players or critics to think it stands out from the rest of the troop, with most comments led by mentions of other popular franchises and/or a lack of other options.

VALA: Vicious Attack Llama Apocalypse — March 16 – April 15

You’ve likely killed hordes of many different types of baddies in your gaming life, from zombies to aliens to insects, but the folks behind VALA are banking on the fact that you’ve never thought about having to do this to … llamas. That’s right, the furry, adorable creatures of pop-culture and baby-room lore have turned into the frenzied tools of the Llamanati, and it’s up to the player to pilot mechs from a distance away to mow all the incensed creatures down in the wake of the “apocalypse”.

Intentionally ridiculous, VALA (Vicious Attack Llama Apocalypse) operates on twin-stick shooter controls to manage the overwhelming isometric fast-paced action, in which the mechs patrol neon-bathed city streets and take out as many llamas as needed. As one might expect, there’s a longevity issue with the humor, with critics quick to point out that the game’s variety dries up pretty quick after players are used to the joke. They also praise the pacing and intensity of the shooting, though, which gives VALA a raw excuse for players to suit up and engage the Llamanati for at least a few waves here and there.

Xbox 360

Metal Slug 3 (March 1-15)

Let’s jump back a few decades, though, to the point where these endless shooting experiences originate. In the mid-‘90s, run-and-gun side-scrolling military games continued a rise in popularity largely created by Contra. Metal Slug may imitate the formula, but its specific brand of personality and the vigorousness of the action earned a place for itself, both at the arcades and at home as one of the heavy hitters on Neo-Geo consoles. It’s a franchise with over a half-dozen primary entries and a bunch of spinoffs, and has been ported onto numerous consoles over the years.

Metal Slug 3 marks an overhaul point for the franchise, arguably the pinnacle of what it’s capable of, taking its core gameplay style and juicing it up with new options.  It also marks the point when it started becoming available on a broader selection of consoles, notably its eventual debut on the first Xbox. The 360 port dedicates itself to being true to the original retro experience, both in controls and in graphical presentation, but the addition of online co-op on the console gives it an extra kick.

Port Royale 3 (March 16-31)

Pirate simulator games have existed in some form or fashion since the late-‘80s, but they always struggled to harness a lot of mainstream popularity until recently.  The combination of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag and the TV show Black Sails holds most of the responsibility for changing that, which eventually funneled into the development of the more whimsical, yet still very much simulation-based Sea of Thieves, a flawed but popular title on the Xbox.

Just before all this happened, in 2012, Port Royale 3 embarked onto PCs and consoles from Kalypso Media.  It’s the third installment in the “merchant simulator” line of games, in which players can choose how to conduct their business – either as a legit businessperson, an allied buccaneer, or an outright pirate – and travel across the seas doing so. While there’s plenty of freedom in how to handle the resources at the player’s disposal, critics and players agree that it moves at a leisurely pace and has a lot going on with its simulation aspects, which can weigh down one’s investment in the experience. Port Royale 4, released last year, seems to have received slightly stronger marks.

March’s Xbox Games With Gold Unleash Lots of Shooting, Little Firepower