Xbox Gold For May Announced – Includes One of the Best Metal Gear Games

Are you an Xbox Gold member? If so, you may want to check out what games are up for grabs this month. There’s a lot on offer, including what is considered to be one of the best Metal Gear games.

In this article, we have taken a look at all of the games available for free for all Xbox Live Gold members this month. All four games can be played on the Xbox One, whilst two are also compatible with the Xbox 360.

Learn more about each game and how you can get them for free, forever, below.

What Is Xbox Games With Gold?

Xbox Games With Gold is a special promotion that’s available to those that pay for their monthly Xbox Live membership.

With Xbox Games With Gold, paying members can get free games each week. The games that are on offer vary, but there’s usually a mixture of old classic titles and arcade games. Some months, however, the titles are incredible.

What’s great about the free Xbox Games With Gold promotion is that once you’ve claimed a game, it’s yours to keep forever, even if you cancel your membership. With this in mind, it might be worth getting a month’s membership just to get the free games this month.

All Xbox Games With Gold For May Games Listed

Below, we have provided a list of all Xbox Gold for May games coming to Xbox players over the next 30 days. The dates for each game and the platform the game is on has also been provided.

Super Mega Baseball 2 On Xbox One – May 1 to May 31
Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage On Xbox One and Xbox 360 – May 1 to May 15
Vanquish On Xbox One and Xbox 360 – May 16 to May 31
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain On Xbox One – May 16 to June 15

If you’d like to learn more about each game, we’ve provided a description of them below, starting with Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.

What Is Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain?

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is the final Metal Gear game lead by the legendary Kojima before he and Konami Studios departed. Not only is this the last true ‘authentic’ Metal Gear game, but it’s also the most ambitious game yet.

The Phantom Pain shares the premise that all previous games have presented – it’s third person stealth shooter game with a huge story driven campaign. This time around, players are given the freedom to move about in an open world setting, and gameplay is less linear than previous Metal Gear games.

The story isn’t any less confusing than past titles, but that’s something that can only be attributed to Kojima’s genius level of creativity (or madness) when it comes to creating video games.

What Is Super Mega Baseball 2?

Super Mega Baseball 2 is a wacky baseball game that surprisingly gets the basics of baseball very close to real life. Despite the caricatured character designs and cartoon style graphics, Super Mega Baseball still manages to blend realistic baseball mechanics and gameplay into the fun.

Super Mega Baseball 2 is essentially the kind of baseball game out there for people who want to have fun playing a sports game, and it’s far less serious than many other sports games or sports sim games currently on the market.

What Is Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage?

Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage is the perfect throwback game to the old arcade days. This is a remastered version of the arcade brawler title that released in the 1990s.

This is the kind of game you’ll see in popular culture a lot – you walk through a dimly lit street beating up crooks and bad guys along the way. Streets of Rage is undoubtedly the start of what made the fighting genre what it is today, but it is very far from what defines a modern day beat ’em up.

New elements have been added to this remastered version, including a two player mode for both local and online play.

New leaderboards have been added, so if you are old enough to be nostalgic about competing for the top of the leaderboard after your run is over in an arcade game, this will take your fancy. There are also a number of achievements added.

Ultimately, Streets of Rage is very basic in both gameplay and overall execution. It’s not going to win any awards, but it still stands out as a game that can offer an hour of two of fun here and there.

What Is Vanquish?

Vanquish is a third person sci-fi action shooter that originally launched in 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It recently received a port to the Xbox One and PC in 2017. Vanquish is a game that got relatively little attention when it launched, but it has since gained some momentum thanks to its re-release.

It’s hard to explain what is so special about Vanquish, but it’s certainly worth playing. This game is one of the most fast paced action shooters you’ll get your hands on, but it is paced out by different boss battles.

Players are given a lot of opportunity over how the play, as well. Players can use their thruster pack to quickly move through levels, upgrade weapons, and fight enemies in exciting ways.

Once the story is over, which lasts about 6-7 hours, players can come back to the fun by playing wave based challenge stages. All in all, you’ll probably get about 10 hours of fun out of Vanquish before the content runs dry, but those 10 hours will be spectacular.

I’d love to see a sequel to Vanquish – it touches a niche that really hasn’t been fully explored. We’ve seen tons of horror themed action third person shooters, but sci-fi action shooters seem to be almost nonexistent.

Summary

Will you be taking advantage of the free Xbox Games with Gold games this month? Besides the Phantom Pain, are there any titles that take your interest?