Microsoft has announced November 2018's collection of free games for Xbox Live Gold subscribers. This month's lineup includes Battlefield 1 and Race the Sun on Xbox One, as well as Assassin's Creed and Dante's Inferno for Xbox 360. As always, the Xbox 360 games are backwards compatible on Xbox One.

This month's line-up is one of the more solid collections in recent memory as Microsoft is offering a nice collection of AAA games for Gold members, although none of them are all that recent. Previous installments of Games with Gold have gone for smaller titles with not a huge following behind them. Battlefield 1 alone sets November 2018 apart from the previous months in that regard - but it's hardly the only game worth getting excited over.

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Battlefield 1

A WW1 soldier pointing a gun in Battlefield 1 as a zeppelin flies overhead.

Battlefield V will arrive on Xbox One in late November but for those looking for an older war and older video game to play there's Battlefield 1 on Games with Gold. Available the entire month of November, Battlefield 1 is an online shooter from EA and DICE from 2016. It explored the almost completely untapped video game arena of World War I. At the time, Battlefield 1 was a huge departure from other online shooters as it went back in time when most other games, mainly Call of Duty, were going into the future. Even now Battlefield 1 is unique experience due to the WWI setting. It's well worth a dive into even if most of its player base might move over to Battlefield V by the end of the month.

Battlefield 1 is a rather perfect title to include in Games with Gold as a Gold subscription is necessary to use most of the multiplayer shooter's features. However for those who do want a FPS single-player experience Battlefield 1 does have one as well. The focus might be on big multiplayer brawls in the game, but a single player experience does chart the big moments of World War I in a very cinematic style.

Race the Sun

The other Xbox One game on offer, which’ll be available until the middle of December, is Flippfly’s Race the Sun. A geometric arcade game, Race the Sky launched on Xbox One in 2017. Games with Gold will likely open it up to a wider audience than it’s ever had before in its life cycle.

Race the Sun puts the player in control of a solar powered spacecraft. It’s built for quick sessions with the goal of high scores. Each level of Race the Sun has the player speed toward the horizon as the sun sets. The objective is to stay in the light and rack up as many points as possible. If the ship goes into the dark or the sun sets, it's game over.

It’s not a deep or emotional gaming experience, but it does scratch a specific arcade gaming itch. Race the Sun might not stick with you for days, but its good for pick-up and play sessions, especially for a free price tag.

Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed original Altair

Assassin's Creed Odyssey has moved the series completely to a RPG set-up but Games with Gold is offering a dip into the franchise's origins. From November 1 to November 15, the first Assassin's Creed title will be available for Gold subscribers. This isn't the first time that an Assassin's Creed title has been available on Games with Gold and it probably won't be the last. After all, Xbox One is the only console that can play all of the Assassin's Creed games. Still, Assassin's Creed hitting Games with Gold less than a month after Odyssey makes for an interesting dichotomy.

Assassin's Creed hasn't aged particularly well. It doesn't compare at all to Odyssey or even some of the other older Assassin's Creed games in terms of scale and scope. The map of the first Assassin's Creed is ridiculously small compared to that of Origins or even Syndicate. The story is also a fraction of newer Assassin's Creed games, with the focus just on a handful of assassination missions and not much else. At the very least, Assassin's Creed is a nice history lesson for fans, new and old, to compare to the franchise's current outings.

Dante's Inferno

Dante's Inferno EA Still

Dante’s Inferno is a game that almost shouldn’t exist it's so wild. It’s very loosely based on the 14th century epic poem Inferno but a name is really all the two have in common. Whereas Inferno was an incredibly influential piece of literature that informed the entire Western world's perception of Hell for generations, Dante's Inferno is a mindless (but fun) hack and slash video game. Dante’s Inferno is a God of War-esque action game that’s all about killing monsters with increasingly bloody methods. There is a story involved, which has some poetic basis, as the main character Dante is trying to save the soul of his doomed love Beatrice in the Nine Circles of Hell, but the violence is the star here.

Dante’s Inferno didn’t exactly set the world on fire when it originally released in 2010, pun very much intended. It ended up being compared too much to God of War and coming up lack. Yet with God of War moving away from its hack-and-slash roots for a more mature story, Dante’s Inferno could fill a monster-killing void on Xbox One for Gold subscribers while it's available from November 16 - 30.

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What do you make of this month's Games with Gold? Have you played any of them before or will this be your first chance? Are you interested in playing any of them in November or will your gaming time be spent with new titles like Hitman 2 or Fallout 76? Sound off in the comments below!

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Source: Microsoft