{"id":35800,"date":"2019-09-14T15:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-09-14T22:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/?p=35800"},"modified":"2019-09-14T15:00:36","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T22:00:36","slug":"septembers-xbox-games-with-gold-freebies-arent-heavy-hitters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/bens-bytes\/septembers-xbox-games-with-gold-freebies-arent-heavy-hitters\/","title":{"rendered":"September’s Xbox Games With Gold Freebies Aren’t Heavy Hitters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Microsoft likely has a strong grasp on what\u2019s going on during the month of September in terms of their catalog of Xbox games and elsewhere, what gamers will be absorbed in and not. This month, they\u2019re releasing another proper Gears of War<\/em> sequel, and with that will come marathon session — the equivalent of this industry\u2019s \u201cbinge-watching\u201d — of the entire franchise to revisit what folks know and love about the exclusive third-person shooter. And then, shortly after, there\u2019s another lengthy, time-sinking shooter across many platforms that\u2019ll again draw people\u2019s attention away from much of anything for the rest of the month.\u00a0 Therefore, it isn\u2019t much of a shock (though still underwhelming) that their Games with Gold roster isn\u2019t packing a lot of heat in September, in which they attempt to provide lower-tier, alternative experiences to those AAA new releases and end up missing the mark. Let\u2019s take a look.<\/p>\n

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Click Here to Grab\u00a0a 12-Month\u00a0Xbox Live Gold Subscription\u00a0at Amazon<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"hitman<\/p>\n

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Xbox One<\/h3>\n

Hitman: The Complete First Season (September 1-30)<\/h4>\n

No, this isn\u2019t a Telltale-style interactive novel version of the popular stealth franchise, and no, it isn\u2019t a complete, blunt-force reboot as the simplicity of the title might suggest. Hitman: The Complete First Season<\/em> does attempt to bring Agent 47 to modern consoles after about a half-decade out of service, though, and with that comes a concentrated effort to both update the infrastructure and sidestep what\u2019s gone rogue in previous iterations, cobbled together in an episodic fashion with story accessibility and stealth competitors (Dishonored, Far Cry<\/em>) in mind.\u00a0 The result from iO Interactive sneaks around the linear design of the most recent installment in the series and gets back to more open maps and availability, allowing the player to execute missions in a variety of ways while continuing Agent 47\u2019s story in the current era. High praise has followed this complete Hitman package that contains all prior released episodes, with critics celebrating it not only as one of the best Hitman entries, but among the finest stealth games, period.<\/p>\n

We Were Here (September 16-October 15)<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s been a while since Microsoft has delivered an entirely new game as one of their free Gold titles, so there\u2019s a natural amount of built-in excitement with We Were Here<\/em>, a first-person exploration game from developer Total Mayhem Games. Granted, this is a port of the PC release from a few years ago, one whose iteration on Steam can be downloaded and played for free there already \u2026 but the effort and initiative involved to provide a new experience entirely for free to Xbox users is to be commended. Two players must be involved to engage in the We Were Here<\/em>\u00a0experience, fulfilling different roles as arctic explorers who must communicate over radio to solve the puzzles with an eerie castle that they discovered. It\u2019s a novel spin on the legacy of first-person adventure games, though the shortness of the We Were Here experience is often cited as a notable drawback.<\/p>\n

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\"edf2025<\/p>\n

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Xbox 360<\/h3>\n

Earth Defense Force 2025 (September 1-15)<\/h4>\n

A sprawling, deep narrative shouldn\u2019t be what you\u2019re looking for in the Earth Defense Force series, as each installment revolves around once straightforward description: giant insectoid aliens are invading, again, and it\u2019s up to the player\u2019s organization to kill \u2018em all before it\u2019s too late. With each entry, the team at Sandlot refines the grandeur of the monstrous warfare to degrees that make this relative absence of narrative pretty easy for its fans to swallow, reaching a high point for EDF 4<\/em>, or Earth Defense Force 2025<\/em>. Despite the franchise\u2019s dated graphics, the reactivity of the big-creature chaos from the battles is routinely celebrated by both devotees and critics, though this entry did get some heat for the sagging performance and same-old, same-old BDAM (Big Dumb Action Movie) aspects of it. Those who\u2019ve enlisted against the bugs before should know what they\u2019re in for, though, and enjoy it.<\/p>\n

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (September 16-30)<\/h4>\n

It may be hard to believe, but the Tekken franchise of fighting games has been around for almost as long as the more mainstream heavy-hitter competitors. That has resulted in an expansive cast of characters they can be used for future installments, and the sprawling nature of a fighting game\u2019s roster is, essentially, what defines its interest levels: the variety of techniques and aesthetics that interact with the game\u2019s assumedly engaging combat system. \u00a0Tag Tournament 2<\/em> brings together nearly the entire cast of characters from nearly two decades worth of games — totaling almost 60 choices — while operating around the game\u2019s on-the-fly tag mechanic, where a selection of three total fighters can sub out at any point during the match and can chain off with tag-team combos. Bandai has been doing this for a long time, so it\u2019s no surprise that Tag Tournament 2<\/em> was met with a strong reception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft likely has a strong grasp on what\u2019s going on during the month of September in terms of their catalog of Xbox games and elsewhere, what gamers will be absorbed in and not. This month, they\u2019re releasing another proper Gears of War sequel, and with that will come marathon session — the equivalent of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":35802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1261,25,372,790,378],"class_list":["post-35800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bens-bytes","tag-games-with-gold","tag-video-games","tag-xbox-360","tag-xbox-live","tag-xbox-one"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35800"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35805,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35800\/revisions\/35805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}