January 2019 Xbox Live Games With Gold

Woohoo! It’s about to be a new year and with that comes, well, a new month and new Games with Gold.

2018 wasn’t a bad year by any means – it had its high and low points, but on a whole provided a good selection of games and a few that I enjoyed checking out. Others, of course, were whatever, but hey, everyone likes different things. Let’s see how 2019 looks to be starting off.

On the Xbox One, we have Celeste and WRC 6 FIA World Rally Championship.

Celeste looks interesting enough. Apparently it’s a highly regarded enough game and it does look nice, although I will admit it looks a bit like a puzzle platformer and I’m rather tired of those. Don’t get me wrong, I could be mistaken on the games, but I only judge the games in these videos based on what I see in said video or may already know, to try to give the most fair “how does this look in this presentation” type of coverage. I’ll certainly be checking the game out, don’t read me wrong, but it’s going to have to be a bit more unique than it looks here to really win me over.

Later on in the month we get… WRC 6 FIA World Rally Championship … great.. yet another racing game! To be fair at least this one is a rally racing game, which is a bit more my style, but even then I just can’t be made to care that much. I might give it a go but I’m not expecting any miracles from it.

For the Xbox 360 we have Lara Croft: Guardian of Light and Far Cry 2.

Apparently, Guardians of Light was a free game back in 2014, and is showing up in the cycle again. This is ticking off some people who already got the game years ago, and I could understand that, but the occasional repeat of a game also helps people like me who weren’t around for when those games were free, so it’s a bit mixed depending on what you already own. That being said, the game is from the “middle” era of Tomb Raider, as I like to call the games post PS1 / Pre-2013 reboot. It’s a more Diablo like title, which may be more fun to play for me – much like Victor Vram this kind of works for me and the games I like to chill out with.

Lastly we have Far Cry 2. I’ve already got this one physically in a 3 pack of Far Cry games, but incidentally have never opened it. Being as early as it is in the series I’m certain it will be somewhat dated, but I generally like the gameplay of the Far Cry series and feel this one will be fun to give a go. Maybe not try for 100% but at least play through the story and have some fun when taking breaks from other games. This reminds me, though – I still need to finish Far Cry 4.

And that’s the score for January, 2019. Not a bad assortment by any means, but a little mixed for me. No big, though, I’m always happy to get new games into my collection in one form or another, so, till next month, happy gaming!