{"id":37651,"date":"2020-01-15T10:57:48","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T18:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/?p=37651"},"modified":"2020-01-15T10:57:48","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T18:57:48","slug":"xbox-games-gold-january-sneak-new-year-strong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/bens-bytes\/xbox-games-gold-january-sneak-new-year-strong\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox Games With Gold Freebies for January Sneak Into New Year Strong"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As a firm believer that the first actions taken in the new year set a tone for what\u2019s to come for the rest of the year, it\u2019s nice to see Microsoft offer some interesting, quality, if perhaps lower-key freebies for their Xbox Games with Gold program in January. A pair of major franchises are represented, though in nontraditional formats. On the other side of the coin, a sequel to a semi-popular, semi-intriguing stealth arcade game emerges from the shadows, as well as an entry from a legacy franchise with a lot of longevity. There\u2019s action and dialogue, brightness and darkness, magical powers and just regular old non-magic ingenuity \u2026 and thus, more importantly, a nice variety.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take a peek.<\/p>\n

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

\"styx<\/p>\n

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Xbox One<\/h3>\n

Styx: Shards of Darkness (January 1-31)<\/h4>\n

French studio Cyanide Studios rustled up a novel stealth game in Styx: Masters of Shadows<\/em>, a prequel to their Of Orcs and Men<\/em> property, which appeared early in the current gen\u2019s lifecycle during an emptier period of stealth games. Sneaking around a grim medieval atmosphere as a lethal goblin \u2013 or a clone of a lethal goblin — provided what folks wanted from the game, though critics dinged it for having cumbersome combat that discouraged actual fights. The sequel, Shards of Darkness<\/em>, doesn\u2019t veer off the path from the original despite the negative commentary, delivering much of the same maneuvering, trap-setting, and clone-making of the original in a refined package. Critics celebrate how this Styx<\/em> sequel doesn\u2019t succumb to crowd pressure in improving the head-on battle, instead tuning the stealth experience for a deliberately \u2013 some might say a little too \u2013 frustrating experience.<\/p>\n

Batman: The Telltale Series (January 16-February 15)<\/h4>\n

With the success of their interactive narrative in The Walking Dead<\/em>, the recently closed-down studio (and resurrected brand name) Telltale Games found out what makes its potential audience tick on both gameplay and story levels. So much so, in fact, that they branched out to numerous other properties and adapted them in their signature episodic fashion — The Wolf Among, Game of Thrones, Borderlands,<\/em> even Minecraft<\/em> \u2013 and one could even see them spreading themselves too thin with it all.\u00a0 One of the latest projects that they tackled was Batman: The Telltale Series<\/em>, in which they draw from the same moral complexity and mortality of the company\u2019s line of other narratives and bring it to Gotham City. What forms is an amalgamation of aspects popularized in different Batman interpretations \u2013 little bits of Burton and the Nolanverse, the Arkham games, the Gotham TV series, etc \u2013 in Telltale\u2019s flawed but absorbing choice-and-consequence design, focused more on Bruce Wayne than the Caped Crusader.<\/p>\n

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\"tekken<\/p>\n

Xbox 360<\/h3>\n

Tekken 6 (January 1-15)<\/h4>\n

Right around the middle period of last-gen\u2019s consoles, the fighting game culture began its slump, to a point where titles that weren\u2019t highly popular in the \u201890s or weren\u2019t named \u201cSmash Bros<\/em>\u201d had to fight even harder than they already did for attention.\u00a0 That\u2019s nothing new for Tekken<\/em>, which has always battled with street fighters in mortal combat for its piece of the pie, but the emergence of substantive more substantive 3D games on all platforms made the standard 2D fighting style more difficult to engage.\u00a0 Tekken 6 really gives it a shot, offering longtime fans familiar combat styles with their favorite combatants and new mechanics that encourage \u201cjuggle\u201d combo strategies, increasing the speed and complexity of the fight style to compete with other smash<\/em>y contemporaries. Critics don\u2019t think it does enough to take it to the same levels as the upper-tier fighters \u2013 Street Fighter IV<\/em>\u00a0still bested it in the same year \u2013 Tekken 6<\/em> brawls hard enough to provide a challenge and an alternative.<\/p>\n

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (January 16-31)<\/h4>\n

Why not The Complete Saga<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/em> Honestly, that\u2019s the only thing that\u2019ll probably come to mind when seeing LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy<\/em> on this list.\u00a0 The inaugural game is a testament to exactly why the LEGO concept works as well as it does: despite not being everyone\u2019s, uh, favorite Star Wars<\/em> movies, the first one\u2019s adaptation and lampooning of the Prequel Trilogy makes it enjoyable for just about everyone. Indeed, the selection of Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy<\/em> by itself is a testament to variety and avoiding duplicate titles, as Xbox already offered The Complete Saga<\/em> as a free download in May of 2017. Despite that, LEGO Star Wars II<\/em> is the first one that\u2019s built specifically for new-gen consoles instead of being a remastered port, and it does feature everyone\u2019s favorite Star Wars movies \u2026 so, really, it covers the necessary bases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a firm believer that the first actions taken in the new year set a tone for what\u2019s to come for the rest of the year, it\u2019s nice to see Microsoft offer some interesting, quality, if perhaps lower-key freebies for their Xbox Games with Gold program in January. A pair of major franchises are represented, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":37652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[223,2202,25,372,378],"class_list":["post-37651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bens-bytes","tag-batman","tag-styx","tag-video-games","tag-xbox-360","tag-xbox-one"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37651","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=37651"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37660,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37651\/revisions\/37660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}