While Xbox One owners continue to have access to the same two Games with Gold November 2014 free games, there’s a new Games with Gold November 2014 Xbox 360 title available today. Gone is Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, and online now is Red Faction: Guerilla.
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise was the free Games with Gold Xbox 360 game from Nov. 1 through Nov. 15. Starting yesterday, November 16, Red Faction: Guerilla was available for free to all Xbox 360 owners who are Xbox Live Gold subscribers. Red Faction: Guerilla will be available as a free download for those XBL Gold members until Nov. 30.
Microsoft has not yet announced the Games with Gold December 2014 free games lineup. That announcement will likely hit on Black Friday or during the long Thanksgiving weekend.
Unlike previous games in the Red Faction series, Guerilla takes place in an open world and has the Earth Defense Force as the enemy rather than your allies. Fortunately, the core of what makes the Red Faction franchise so cool is still intact: you can blow everything up. Using a host of weapons and even vehicles, players can demolish almost every part of the game’s fully destructible buildings, as well as select cover objects and parts of the environment.
Xbox One owners also have two titles in the Games with Gold November 2014 free game lineup. There are two key differences from Xbox 360, however. First, both games have been and will continue to be available all month long. Second, only one of them is technically “new” to the Games with Gold program.
The new game is called Volgarr the Viking, a hack-and-slash platformer that’s a lot like those games we all grew up playing on a console and in the arcades in the ’80s and early ’90s. Not only is the art style a bit of a throwback, but it’s also surprisingly difficult and requires just two buttons to control your on-screen avatar.
The second Xbox One Games with Gold November 2014 free game is Chariot, which made its Games with Gold debut in October. Chariot is a colorful co-op puzzle platformer in which players must control a prince and/or princess as he/she/they navigate their dead king’s coffin through labyrinthine levels. Pushing, pulling and using the coffin as a platform are all part of the experience.
If Microsoft follows its months-old pattern, the Games with Gold December 2014 free games will include Volgarr the Viking and one new title. It may be an indie game, as has happened in the past, though it would be great to see the the new Games with Gold December 2014 free game be a high-profile title from the Xbox One’s launch.
Most likely, both Xbox 360 games on the Games with Gold December 2014 free game roster will be entirely new, with one being a higher-profile game. That has been the case for months, including the Games with Gold November 2014 lineup, which included a decent kids game but a once-AAA game from the now-defunct THQ.
