Games with Gold February games revealed – Five free games including Gears 5

Microsoft have revealed Xbox Live’s Games with Gold for February 2021, featuring a bumper crop of five games next month.

Gears 5 is the headliner, coming as an Xbox Series X|S enhanced title for the first time. It’s joined by Resident Evil HD and Dandara as a pair of Xbox One games, while Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb from the original Xbox and Lost Planet 2 from Xbox 360 round out the selection as the pair of backward compatibility games.

There’s a lot to like about this selection. Gears 5 gives the long-running series a bit of a shake up, and was a great showcase for what the Xbox One and Xbox One X could do. Updates for Xbox Series X|S have made it look even better heading into the new generation, and with the recently released Hivebusters DLC adding a fresh slice of single player content.

Nick having great things to say in our Gears 5 review:

Gears 5 is a brilliant experience which can be enjoyed alone or with friends in equal measure. It keeps much of the series’ core gameplay and feel, but also takes it in some new directions. It’s great to see Gears evolving, opening the door for even more positive changes in the future.

Resident Evil HD is a HD remaster of the GameCube remake of the classic, no doubt being dropped into Games with Gold to build up a little extra hype for Resident Evil Village (as if it needed any more). Our Resident Evil HD review said:

If you’ve played the original Resident Evil inside out, or the Gamecube remake, you know exactly what you’re getting with Capcom’s shiny re-release. It’s a polished update that never strays far from the template, proving just as faithful as it is hardcore. For those looking for a gateway into the series, however, we advise extreme caution, especially if your notions of Resident Evil are based on more recent instalments. Although perfectly playable, it is likely to defy most, if not all, expectations you may have.

You have to feel that Capcom bundled in Lost Planet 2 alongside Resi, while Microsoft must have got on the blower to Lucasfilm Games after hearing that its founding and the new Indiana Jones games in development at Bethesda. As we speculated at the time, that new game would well end up being an Xbox exclusive.

Still, there’s a bittersweet feeling to this month’s offering. For one thing, Gears 5 is a game that can be found as part of Xbox Game Pass, and then there’s the Xbox Live Gold price hike, which is destined to make the baseline subscription for online play a worse deal for users going forward.

Make sure to grab the games currently available through the rest of January:

Source: Xbox

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