With Xbox 360 games retired from Xbox Live Games With Gold, Microsoft is now offering subscribers just two titles per month, for Xbox One and later hardware. And if you don’t recognize October’s titles, well, you’re not alone.
Next month, Games With Gold will be giving out Windbound, which Polygon called a “Moana-meets-Breath-of-the-Wild survival adventure,” when it was announced (and launched) in 2020.
The second game is Bomber Crew: Deluxe Edition which, despite its cutesy-poo characters and generic box art, is actually something different and substantive. We previewed the game in 2017; in the strategy simulation, players try to keep a World War II bomber flying (and its crew alive) through hell and back. In each harrowing raid, players get to know the personal histories of their crew — more incentive to keep them all alive. If nothing else, you can imagine you’re aboard a B-17 with Kevin Costner and Keifer Sutherland, in Steven Spielberg’s unforgettable Amazing Stories episode from 1985.
Both Windbound and Bomber Crew: Deluxe Edition are Xbox One titles, playable on Xbox Series X. Windbound is available Oct. 1 to Oct. 31; Bomber Crew is available Oct. 16 to Nov. 15.
In addition to these games, subscribers can still get three of September’s Games With Gold: Gods Will Fall, for Xbox One, and Portal 2 for Xbox 360, until Sept. 30; and Double Kick Heroes for Xbox One until Oct. 15.
