Games With Gold February 2014: Dead Island, Toy Soldiers Cold War

The two games Xbox Live Gold members will be able to download for free in February as part of the Games With Gold promotion have been announced today by Microsoft: Dead Island and Toy Soldiers: Cold War.

Dead Island will be the first of the two released for free. Beginning tomorrow, February 1, the open-world zombie game will drop from its usual price of $19.99 for two weeks. While it had technical issues, it was well received upon its release in 2011, earning an 8.0 in IGN's review. The game went on to be a major success, having sold 5 million copies as of early last year. Those strong sales led to a sequel, Dead Island: Riptide, being released last April.

On February 16, Dead Island will revert to its normal price and Toy Soldiers: Cold War, usually priced at $14.99, will be made free for the remainder of the month. The XBLA game is the 2011 sequel to the original Toy Soldiers and, like Dead Island, it too was received positively, earning an 8.5 in our review.

As always with the Games With Gold promotion, these games are available only to Xbox Live Gold members. They are free to keep and re-download the games forever -- even if their subscription lapses -- but a download of them must be initiated during the two-week span that they are free.

Both of these games, as with all of the games since the promotion started, are for Xbox 360, but we know there are plans to begin including Xbox One games sometime this year.

Chris Pereira is a freelance writer who spends his spare time agonizing over the final seasons of The X-Files. Check out what he's saying on Twitter and follow him on IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com