Xbox’s pushing of its Game Pass subscription service is a clear indicator that the company expects to see the video game market shift away from players buying and owning games, and into more of a Netflix-style library for games. With Xbox Live being packaged with the subscription service in the form of Game Pass Ultimate, very little is now heard or promoted about Xbox Live’s exclusive features. But Xbox hasn’t given up yet on one of Xbox Live’s most popular offers, the free Games with Gold.
Though now often hidden behind sub-menus on the home-screen, Xbox has kept up with its offer of four free games per month, consisting of two Xbox One games, and two Xbox 360 games. Going into the second half of April 2022 the next two free Games with Gold for the month are now available to download.
The free Xbox One game is Hue which originally released in 2016 and was praised as a charming and unique puzzle-platformer. In online gaming marketplaces with hundreds of indie-developed puzzle-platformers vying for attention, it takes a truly unique concept or gameplay loop for a game to stand out. Hue has this with its color wheel mechanic that changes the level environment and is used to solve the game’s puzzles.
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The free Xbox 360 title for the second half of April is MX vs. ATV Alive. This long-running, acronym heavy title has a new game releasing next month named MX vs. ATV Legends. Alive's online racing mode still has a surprisingly active player base, who enjoy the game’s mix of physics-based controls and arcade style racing.
This month has seen some fairly solid games be given away, but many fans think the quality of 2022’s Games with Gold titles are still a far cry from the games that were released back when the program first started in 2013. This has led many to believe the Games with Gold program may be nearing the end of its run. This has happened to other Xbox programs in the past, which in the beginning would have taken front and center on the Xbox Live Dashboard, but then slowly slipped behind sub-menus before being quietly discontinued.
April's second batch of free games have been added one day early and will be available for download until May 15 for Hue, and May 30 for MX vs. ATV Alive. Not many players with an Xbox Live or Game Pass Ultimate users are subscribed simply for four free games a month, two of which are at least a decade old. But it is still a nice perk and gives players the chance to enjoy a game they perhaps wouldn’t have bought otherwise.
Source: Pure Xbox