Xbox Games With Gold’s final August line-up is here and it’s a little disappointing.
If you’ve missed the news, Microsoft is closing the door on Xbox Live Gold and is instead introducing Xbox Game Pass Core. Core will grant you access to online play and a limited number of Xbox Game Pass games.
As we noted, this change is more than a little problematic, both for consumers and Xbox’s own marketing. But we hoped that, at least, Xbox Live Gold would get a proper send-off with, at least four Xbox One games instead of the regular two.
At the very least, we figured we’d get some absolute gems, a suitable farewell for a service that’s been around for ten years. But no, there are a measly two games on offer and while they’re okay, they’re not what we expected.
The first game, Inertial Drift, is an entertaining enough race though its multiplayer is a little disappointing. In our review, we called it “..a satisfying arcade racer.. best suited for those who like to play by themselves.”
The second, action adventure Blue Fire, isn’t quite as much fun. Reviewing it, we said that it was “..a game that doesn’t appear to know exactly what it wants to be.” It has platformer and Souls-like elements but doesn’t really nail either.
And.. that’s it. That’s the end of Xbox Live Gold. If you’ve got an Xbox Live Gold subscription it’ll convert to Xbox Game Pass Core, with the service beginning this September 14th.
