Right off the bat we’ll admit to being pretty impressed by the four free games which the Xbox Games With Gold scheme will be running with for December 2021. In fact, we think it’s possibly the strongest line up of free titles for some time.
On the back of a November which has seen Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S players given the chance to download the likes of Moving Out and LEGO Batman for nothing, comes November, and right from the get-go it’s blasting away the myth that the Games With Gold programme is rubbish.
In fact, December sees the removal in price of four titles which should pretty much be played immediately. Forget the free love that Xbox Game Pass continues to provide on a near weekly basis, through December and into January 2022, if you’re the holder of a valid Xbox Live Gold membership then you’ll be able to take home free downloads of The Escapists, Tropico, Orcs Must Die! and the brilliant Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet for nothing.
Those games will be stripped of their price as follows…
- The Escapists 2 – 1st-31st December 2021
- Tropico 5 – 16th December – 15th January 2022
- Orcs Must Die! – 1st-15th December 2021
- Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet – 16th-30th December 2021
Setting our stall out and we’ll admit to absolutely loving Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. Yes, it may be a native Xbox 360 title, but it definitely holds up today and should be right up there as your must-player of the month.
The Escapists 2 is a neat little addition too, if only because more The Escapists madness that we can get our hands on, the better, whilst Tropico 5 is a title that will see you losing hours upon hours, as the afternoons and evenings slowly turn dark.
And then we have Orcs Must Die!. We’d love this to be the recent release of Orcs Must Die! 3, because that is a stunner, but we’re not going to turn our noses up at the old Xbox 360 title now that it is going free. If anything, we’ll play this and then pop back into OMD3 for even more good times.
You should expect to see The Escapists 2 and Orcs Must Die! stripped of their price tags in the coming days, but we’ll follow this piece with another article letting you know when the other two games are also free.
Of course, it does mean that time is running out if you haven’t yet downloaded November’s games for nothing.
As always, let us know your thoughts surrounding the free titles coming our way via Games With Gold for December. Do you like it as much as us?
