Paying subscribers to Xbox Live can grab four games for “free” in September, two for Xbox One and two for Xbox 360. At least one of them is a very good game, maybe more!
Microsoft announced September’s offerings today in a blog post. The two Xbox One titles are:
- Earthlock: Festival of Magic – A Kickstarted turn-based RPG that you can learn more about here.
- Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China – The first of a trilogy of Assassin’s Creed console sidescrollers that were just OK. We reviewed this one.
The Xbox 360 games, which will also run on Xbox One, are:
- Forza Horizon – A more casual take on Microsoft’s Forza driving series, though we’re more partial to the game’s sequel. Bear in mind that a third instalment is about to hit Xbox One and PC on September 27.
- Mirror’s Edge – Just a terrific first-person parkour game by EA. The recent sequel got a lukewarm response, but the first game is generally beloved.
Comments
17 responses to “September’s Xbox Live Games With Gold Include Original Mirror’s Edge And New RPG”
Another solid selection. One day Sony might return to AAA form with its monthly freebies instead of jacking up the price of PS+, but today is not that day.
No arguments PS+ has been lacklustre, but an indie game and a poorly received budget title for the XOne feels exactly like a Sony month to me.
Seeing as it’s backward compatible, I’m really excited for Mirror’s Edge myself. Never gave it much of a go.
Wow it just made me realise, after all the fuss, Mirrors Edge 2 kinda came and went in a flash didn’t it?
Ok. Here I was still awaiting its release……
I bought myself a months worth of EA Access and played what I could during the early access week. It’s a great game, but just came out in a time where there were better games to play.
Sony have AAA on PS+ right now – Yakuza 5. And it is awesome. They’ve actually lifted their game a bit lately – NBA2K16 on PS4 was on there a month or two back. Not really my kind of game, but definitely AAA.
“A month or two back” is the problem though. The last great title on PS4 I can think of is Rocket League, and even that was an indie, so I’d have to Google to find a AAA-published title that made membership worth it.
Some of the PS3 titles have been fairly solid (and I’d bundle Yakuza 5 into the ‘PS3’ category there as well), but I, and I’d think many people, have long since gotten rid of or traded in (well, mine was stolen) last-gen consoles. At least a AAA last-gen title on Xbox is still playable on X1 and, if Phil’s to be believed, Scorpio and future Xbox products. Both Mirrors Edge and Forza Horizon meet that benchmark.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m trying hard not to fanboy on Xbox – I have every belief that they’ll eventually bring up the walled garden again, just like every other major tech company have been doing over the last eight years – but I’m going to enjoy this while it lasts.
Problem is that back in the PS3 days, online was free so Sony needed better stuff to get people to sign up for PS+. Now that it’s needed for online play and Sony are pounding MS in sales, they really don’t have much incentive. Maybe if Scorpio shakes up the sales situation a bit, Sony might feel compelled to compete a little harder in this area again.
Whether a game is great or makes the membership worth it is pretty subjective, though. For me, the last few months have been worth it for Yakuza 5, Ultratron (love playing that on Vita, haven’t tried the PS3 / PS4 versions), Gone Home, Tropico 5, Zombi and Broforce. That’s not counting a few others that I also enjoyed but already owned (Rebel Galaxy, Galak-Z). That’s a mix of AAA retail and indie – there have been others that might have had higher retail price tags (NBA 2K16 and Saints Row Gat Out Of Hell) that I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as some of the cheaper ones.
So yeah, I still think it’s worthwhile for the stuff we’ve been getting (plus the PS+ discounts on the store which I think people tend to under-rate in terms of the value they add to a subscription), even if it isn’t the same utterly insane value it used to be in the PS3 glory days.
I would guarantee that’s the defining factor in the massive drop in PS Plus game quality this generation.
Again, though, I think it’s a drop in value rather than a drop in quality. There have been some absolutely fantastic games on there from the very start (the very first PS4 game on PS+ was Resogun, which I love and still play regularly now), but they’ve been mostly indies. Not so much AAA, and not the calibre of AAA it used to include (Red Dead Redemption, Deus Ex HR, Uncharted 3, XCOM etc etc). I doubt we’ll ever see anything like that again on PSN or XBL as long as people have to subscribe anyway to access online play.
Deus Ex HR and XCom were free just a few months ago on Xbox! But yeah as long as Sony is winning they will not be pulling out the stops on the free games I guess
That Earthlock game looks pretty sweet. Never heard of it before so a nice surprise to wake up to!
I wonder if I’ll bother to boot Mirrors Edge back up and finish it. I think I was almost at the end and got stuck in a flat, underground carpark that had with guys with guns, decided it was annoying having to fight them and gave up.
Nothing else on that list I’ll bother to play.
I download all these older/B-rate games in case there’s ever an apocalypse and I can’t get AAA games to play. Then I realise that the apocalypse will likely kill the internet and render them unplayable anyway.
MORE IMPORTANTLY: SKATE 3 is apparently imminent on Xbone BC! Now…. if only I could play a custom soundtrack.
Didn’t they add background music without requiring it to be snapped in last update? Haven’t tested it myself but noticed an app called background music in the App Store
You’re right, apparently they updated Pandora in the last week or so to allow people to actually use the feature that they said they added in the last update.
Apparently if you search ‘background’ on the app store you can find a 3rd party Simple Background Music Player app that runs off a USB.
We’re back to 360 launch functionality! YAY!!! Only 3 years late!
Just in time for Scorpio, which will probably launch with an absence of all of these things once again! 😛
Some of the PS3 titles have been fairly solid (and I’d bundle Yakuza 5 into the ‘PS3’ category there as well), but I, and I’d think many people, have long since gotten rid of or traded in (well, mine was stolen) last-gen consoles. At least a AAA last-gen title on Xbox is still playable on X1 and, if Phil’s to be believed, Scorpio and future Xbox products. Both Mirrors Edge and Forza Horizon meet that benchmark.