Hitman: The Complete First Season headlines Xbox Games With Gold for September
Plus Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and more.
A new month means a new confetti sprinkle of games dropped upon the heads Xbox Live Gold subscribers, but thankfully only digitally, because nobody wants a physical game box lobbed at their head. And this month's Xbox Games With Gold include Hitman: The Complete First Season, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and more.
First up, let's do the Xbox One offerings. There's the aforementioned Hitman: The Complete First Season, available between 1st and 30th September, which gathers up all six main episodes - Paris, Sapienza, Marrakesh, Bangkok, Colorado, and Hokkaido - that make up Agent 47's acclaimed stealth adventure. Plus, it features a couple of bonus bits and bobs too.
"Io has resurrected its flagship property with astonishing grace and dexterity," said Edwin Evans-Thirlwell in his Eurogamer Recommended review, "This is among the most expertly-made, engrossing stealth simulations of recent years...Agent 47 is back with a vengeance, and vengeance has seldom tasted sweeter."
Also on Xbox One as part of Xbox Games With Gold in September is We Were Here, available between 16th September and 15th October.
It's a brief, communication-focussed co-op thriller in which two players must work together, solving a completely different set of puzzles in tandem, so that they might eventually find each other and escape the gloom of an abandoned castle. This one never got the full scrutiny of a Eurogamer review, but it seems well-liked on Steam, if that's any use.
Moving on to September's selection of Xbox 360 games, things get going with Earth Defense Force 2025, the 2014 instalment of the cult bug-blasting sci-fi shooter series. As you might imagine, it servers up another helping of slightly ropy, if gloriously over-the-top, shooting action, so if you're already a fan of the series, there's plenty to like here.
Cara Ellison was less impressed with developer Sandlot's insistence on doing pretty much the same old dance for Earth Defense Force 2025, awarding the game a 5/10 back in the day. This, it's fair to say, proved contentious in the comments.
Lastly, then, is the Xbox 360 version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, offering another bout of high-five-ing two-on-two fighting action. "It plays it a little safe in places and lacks a truly killer single-player mode," said Eurogamer contributor Matt Edwards in his 8/10 review, "but by broadening the versatility of the tag system while dramatically improving the online functionality, Namco has crafted a new teamwork seminar that builds upon the original in almost all the areas that matter."
And that's your lot for Xbox Games With Gold over the coming month. Earth Defense Force 2025, incidentally, is available between 1st and 15th September, while Tekken Tag Tournament 2 can be snagged by Xbox Live Gold subscribers from 16th to 30th September.