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Posted February 1, 2015 by Peter in Deals
 
 

February: Games With Gold

IDARB logo
IDARB logo

And with 2015 flying past far too quickly, we hit February already with another handful of games on the Xbox One and 360 for those with Xbox Gold membership. Now, if you’re anything like me you’re still trying to catch up with the games given away a few months ago and wondering if you’ll ever have free hard disk space again – but let’s not argue with a little something extra in return for a subscription already paid for…

The Xbox One gets #IDARB this month, an indie game free for the first month of its release. Indeed, you’ll likely have already grabbed it – while it was meant to be released free today, it actually went live a few days early at the end of last week.
IDARB screen
A fast platformer/sports game with a sense of humour (listening to the commentators after goals can be fun, let alone seeing or creating some of the random teams you can have), #IDARB is playable online but really encouraging local multiplayer, with anything up to eight players competing. Yes, that’s a lot of sofa space, and a lot of extra joypads for that matter – but also a discrete rude gesture thrown at the PlayStation 4 which can only accept the input from four controllers.

There is also a single player game to work through if you can’t get people together, of course.

Brothers A Tale Of Two Sons boxFor 360 owners, as ever there are two releases this month, with the usual “smaller title/big hitter” split. From today until February 15th, XBox Arcade game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (originally out in 2013) is free.

Extremely well received on release, Brothers is a puzzle/platformer where the siblings of the title seek waters from the Tree of Life to save their father. Both characters are controlled at once, meaning your ability to make them work to their strengths, support each other, and generally co-operate is key to success.

Sniper Elite V2 boxThen from February 16th to the end of the month we get something a little more violent, with 2012′s Sniper Elite V2. Set in 1945 as the Second World War is coming to a close, you are put in control of an elite American sniper tasked with assassinating various scientists before they can either defect to the Soviets or cause further wartime destruction.

The Sniper Elite games are more tactical than arcadey; taking a shot can involve steadying your breath, lying prone, allowing for bullet drop, wind direction and so on. And it is also one that earned its mature rating in very graphic fashion – successful shots are often shown via an X-ray cam, with bullets depicted tearing through bones and organs. It’s a grim way of showing a grim act – does it glorify it, or does it make you take these things more seriously? Certainly, it felt less violent against the mindless hordes in the spin off title, Nazi Zombie Army, which uses the same game engine.


Peter

 
Peter can be described as an old, hairy gamer, a survivor of the console wars of the 1990s, and a part-time MMO addict. He has an especial fondness for retro gaming and observing the progressions in long running gaming series. When scandalously not caught gaming, he can also be found reading comics and fantasy fiction, or practising terrible photography.