Games with Gold: June 2016

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and it happens every month! It’s June 1, so here’s a peek at this month’s Games with Gold, a set of free Xbox One and Xbox 360 games for Xbox Live Gold subscribers.

Note: Remember, all Xbox 360 games in the Games for Gold promotion are now guaranteed to work on Xbox One in compatibility mode too. So that means Xbox One users are now really getting four free games each month. (I’m also now curious when Games for Gold will no longer include Xbox 360 titles. I assume they’ll continue throughout this calendar year at least.)

I’m a lot more interested in the 360 games this month, though I already own the excellent Super Meat Boy, which, by the way, is featured in the documentary Indie Game: The Movie. Which you should watch. (I think it’s still on Netflix and/or other streaming services.)

Anyway, here’s what’s free this month.

Xbox One

Goat Simulator
Normal pricing: $9.99
Availability: June 1 to 30

Description: Goat Simulator is all about causing as much destruction as you possibly can as a goat. It has been compared to an old-school skating game, except instead of being a skater, you’re a goat, and instead of doing tricks, you wreck stuff. Destroy things with style, such as doing a backflip while headbutting a bucket through a window, and you’ll earn even more points! When it comes to goats, not even the sky is the limit, as you can probably just bug through it and crash the game.

The Crew
Normal pricing: $29.99
Availability: June 16 to July 15

Description: The Crew is a revolutionary action-driving MMO that connects players online like never before. The Crew takes you and your friends on a wild ride across a massive, open-world recreation of the United States that is richly detailed and loaded with endless challenges. Generous in content and tailored for the connected generation, The Crew is the next-gen game that redefines action-driving.

Xbox 360

Super Meat Boy
Normal pricing: $14.99
Availability: June 1 to 15

Description: Super Meat Boy is a tough as nails platformer where you play as an animated cube of meat who’s trying to save his girlfriend (who happens to be made of bandages) from an evil fetus in a jar wearing a tux. Our meaty hero will leap from walls, over seas of buzz saws, through crumbling caves and pools of old needles. Sacrificing his own well being to save his damsel in distress. Super Meat Boy brings the old school difficulty of classic retro titles we all know and love and stream lines them down to the essential no bull straight forward twitch reflex platforming. Ramping up in difficulty from hard to soul crushing SMB will drag Meat boy though haunted hospitals, salt factories and even hell itself. And if 300+ single player levels weren’t enough SMB also throws in epic boss fights, tons of unlock able secrets, warp zones and hidden characters.

XCOM Enemy Unknown
Normal pricing: $39.99
Availability: June 16 to 30

Description: From the award-winning creators of Civilization comes an action-strategy game about humanity’s last stand. Threatened by an unknown enemy, the Earth’s governments unite to form a secret paramilitary organization, known as XCOM, to combat this extraterrestrial attack. As the commander of XCOM, you control the global defense team in a battle against a terrifying alien invasion. Control the fate of the human race by creating and managing a fully operational base, researching alien technologies, planning combat missions, and controlling soldier movement in battle.