Xbox Live Gold's Final Free Games Are Only Available for 24 Hours

Xbox Live Gold will cease to exist on September 14, which means August is the final month of Games With Gold. As a result, today is the final day for Xbox Live Gold subscribers to claim the final Games With Gold free games as tomorrow September will commence and the offer will disappear. Once claimed, the games will be yours to keep, but you need to claim them today, before September. Both games are usually $19.99, so this deal represents a significant amount of savings. 

The first of the two free Xbox Live Gold games is Blue Fire, a 3D platformer from developer Robi Studios and publisher Graffiti Games. Released in 2021, the 3D platformer boasts a 70 on Metacritic, but it seems it landed with consumers more than critics as its various consumer scores are higher than this critical score. 

The second free game is Inertial Drift, an arcade racer, which was released a year earlier in 2020 via developer Level 91 Entertainment and publisher PQube. On Metacritic, the game boasts a very strong score of 89, which, unlike Blue Fire, is a bit higher than its consumer scores. 

Blue Fire:

"Journey through the desolated kingdom of Penumbra and discover the hidden secrets of this long-forgotten land. Explore mystical temples, where you'll need to master the art of movement to survive increasingly difficult 3D platforming challenges. During your adventure you'll slash your way through daunting adversaries, encounter survivors and take on strange quests to collect valuable items.

Inertial Drift

"Set in a 90's retro future, Inertial Drift is an Arcade Racer with a devastatingly unique handling model and unbelievably satisfying twin-stick drift mechanics. Inertial Drift offers a whole new level of accessibility and challenge to the arcade racing genre – for a driving experience genuinely unlike anything you've played before."

These two games may not seem like the strongest send-off for Xbox Live Gold and Games With Gold, and they aren't, but they are much better than most of the games that have been offered via Games With Gold the last couple of years. Ever since Xbox Game Pass was released, Games With Gold has became a very obvious afterthought of Xbox, which explains why these two games were celebrated by Xbox users, even though if this was a PlayStation Plus offering it would be slammed as a disappointment. 

It's important to note that not only are these games free to those with an Xbox Live Gold subscription, but with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. One of the differences between a standard Xbox Game Pass subscription and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, is the latter comes with an Xbox Live Gold subscription, or at least it does for another 24 hours.