Xbox Games With Gold for June

Every month Microsoft flaunts the big perk that people receive when they sign up for Xbox Live Gold, free games.  Xbox’s Games with Gold program has been very polarizing over its lifetime- some months are full of quality and value, and some just don’t live up to the hype.  Which category does June  2018 fall under?

Right off the bat the game that stands out the most is Smite.  You wouldn’t be blamed for immediately shouting at the closest person, “Wait that game is ALREADY free!” Now go ahead and apologize to the person who’s hearing you just ruined, Smite is free to play definitely, but Games with Gold is giving you some of the microtransactions found inside the game for free.

It turns out Xbox is trying something a little different this month, instead of a full game for free- they are giving PARTS of a free game for free.  The Smite Gold Bundle is described as 20 gods and 50 bonus items like skins and caster packages.  A quick check of the Xbox marketplace shows that this bundle doesn’t already exist, so it seems to be thrown together just for this month.  The $99.99 value assigned to it is probably how much these items would cost if you used the in game currency, gems.  I’m not sure that a free game is equivalent to some microtransactions inside of a game, but Xbox apparently thinks so.

Also for free is another installment in the spin off series of Assassin’s Creed games, this time set in Russia.  Several of these Chronicles games have been part of the Games With Gold program in the past, this is the last one that hadn’t been.

Lego Indiana Jones 2 is here as well, but the one I have seen the most excitement for is Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed.  Sonic is sitting at an 81 on metacritic, which is pretty high for a Mario Kart clone that noone has ever heard of; apparently those that HAVE are beyond excited, so it seems fair to say it’s the game to try out when these Games With Gold go live come June.