Here we go again.
After raving about how great Games With Gold was in my review of last months “freebies” and what a bang up job Microsoft had been doing over the last few months this load of games get announced and, quite frankly, they’re not very good.
Obviously they can’t just cater to me, I mean I’m sure there’s a reason that they can’t I just haven’t figured it out yet, but from a personal perspective there’s not one thing on the list that gets my blood flowing.
First up you have Earthlock: Festival of Magic, a brand new RPG from Snowcastle Games that has been described as having elements of Final Fantasy about it and that could be great an all (hey, who DOESN’T like FF?) or it could just end up being another cheap knock-off. I’ve played enough “Final Fantasy” type games over the years to know that more often or not it’s usually a bad cut and paste job, so I’m not really holding my breath for this one.
Then we have Forza Horizon. Now I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest racing game fan. Sure, I loved the old TOCA games and have room in my collection for the Dirt series but as a rule I usually stay away from them. That said, I’ve heard nothing but positive things about Forza Horizon so part of me is looking forward to trying it out, but at the same time a bigger chunk of me is thinking “Oh hey. Yet ANOTHER racing game free this month. Mmm-hmm, that’ll be about as much fun as cutting my nose off with a rusty butter knife”.
 |
| Hit the road in Forza Horizon |
From the 16th we get the obligatory two more titles added to the collection, in the shape of Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China, a side scrolling adventure that seems to miss the whole point behind the Assassin’s Creed franchise and has always stuck me as yet ANOTHER attempt at a quick cash grab that just waters the series down to the point that it’s almost transparent. Finally we get Mirror’s Edge, a good if somewhat short game which I own anyway, so balls to that.
All in all this month is a hell of a swing and a miss as far as I’m concerned but, being your friendly neighbourhood reviewer, I’ll suck it up, fill more of my hard-drive with these “freebies” and let you know sometime mid-September if my initial fears that we’re just being fobbed off with filler rings true.
You never know, I might be wrong, there’s a first time for everything after all, but at the moment I’m not holding out much hope.
Anticipation Rating: 4 Out Of 10.
Neil Gray | @neilgray007