During April, Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will have four new games to download on Xbox One and Xbox Series X. While this month’s selection won’t include heavy-hitters like Halo or Gears of War, it does have some interesting offerings that should make for a good distraction.
For those unfamiliar, Xbox staggers out the release of Games with Gold throughout the month. Starting on April 1, gamers can download Vikings: Wolves of Midgard and the Xbox 360 title Dark Void. Both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X are backward-compatible with Xbox 360 games.
While Vikings will be available to download all month, Dark Void will leave on April 15. But starting on April 16, Truck Racing Championship and Xbox 360 title Hard Corps: Uprising will be available to download.
Truck Racing Championship will stick around until May 15 while Hard Corps will leave at the end of April. Per a blog post by Dean Shimabukuro, Sr., who’s the marketing program manager at Xbox, the above games amount to $129.96 in value.
The overall quality of the games available this month is more mixed than in the past. Vikings: Wolves of Midgard currently sits at a 64 on Metacritic. Our sister-site Windows Central gave the game a 3.5/5, enjoying the Diablo-like gameplay and Norse mythology, but found that it didn’t match the quality of Activision-Blizzard’s iconic action role-playing hack and slash video game.
2010’s Dark Void on Xbox 360 also had a mixed reception at launch. The sci-fi shooter was hailed for its vertical combat system, but ultimately landed a 59 on Metacritic. Our sister-publication GamesRadar+ gave the game three stars, praising its novel flight-shooting, but marked it for its boring story and uninspiring cover-based shooter mechanics.
Truck Racing Championship didn’t get a ton of press attention when it launched in 2019, and therefore only has a handful of reviews. Adam Dileva of Xbox Addict wasn’t sure what to expect from the game, but found it to be enjoyable. It doesn’t have the production value of Forza, but is a fun distraction nonetheless. He gave the game a 75/100.
Hard Corps: Uprising, first released in 2011, is a run-and-gun action game developed by Arc System Works, the same team behind Dragon Ball FighterZ and the gorgeous Guilty Gear Strive, set for release later this year. Unsurprisingly, GamesRadar+ praised the game for its amazing art, but dinged it for it’s less-than-creative enemy design and stark difficulty.
If you haven’t yet downloaded March’s Games with Gold, you still have time. Three of the games, Warface: Breakout, Viscous Attack Llama Apocalypse and Port Royale 3 are still available. Warface and Port Roayle stick around through the end of March, while Viscous Attack Llama Apocalypse lingers until April 15.
