Halo 3 Free on Xbox Live Games With Gold October 16, 2013

Xbox Live’s Games With Gold promotion continues in the second half of the month of October.  If you happen to currently be an Xbox Live Gold Subscriber, you are entitled to download a new free game on the first and sixteenth of each month up until the end of the year.  It’s a great promotion in that unlike games offered for free to Playstation Plus users, you won’t lose access to anything you downloaded through Games With Gold if your Xbox Live Gold Membership ever runs out.

Starting today, Halo 3 will be free to download through Xbox Live Games on Demand until the end of the month.  The game has a great single-player campaign, which wraps up the story of the Halo Trilogy and finishes the story left hanging at the end of Halo 2.  It also supports four-player cooperative play through LAN or Xbox Live, and two-player cooperative play through split-screen.  In my opinion, it’s not the best game in the series, but it is a must-play for any Halo fan.

If you happen to be interested in any of the game’s multiplayer map packs, just be aware that only two of the game’s map packs are currently free, the others are on sale for about $4.99 US each.  However, you may not need to download all of these map packs if you don’t want to, as all of the bonus map packs (free and paid) are included on the multiplayer disc of Halo 3 ODST.  So, if you happen to have a copy of Halo 3 ODST already, there’s no reason to purchase any of these map packs.

After this month, we have no idea what will be coming next to the service, but Microsoft has promised it will continue until the end of the year.