Skip to main content

Xbox Games With Gold for March includes 'Evolve,' and 'Borderlands 2'

The world and other planets can be miserable, dark, and violent. Microsoft apparently wants us to remember this, as March’s Xbox Games With Gold offers a heaping helping of death in a variety of flavors.

From March 1 through March 31, Xbox One owners can acquire the “psychedelic horror” game Layers of Fear. Originally released for the console last year, it was praised by reviewers for its scares and atmosphere, and it offers a more subdued take on horror than some of its contemporaries.

Recommended Videos

Also available for Xbox One owners in March — March 16 through April 15 — is Evolve Ultimate Edition. The asymmetrical multiplayer shooter from Turtle Rock Studios contains the base game as well as the “Monster” expansion pack and two “hunting seasons” containing additional hunters and monsters. The whole package typically retails for $50 on the Xbox store. If you just want the standard version, however, and don’t subscribe to Xbox Live Gold, you can find it at GameStop for just $10.

From March 1 through March 15, Xbox 360 owners will be able to download Borderlands 2. As with all new Games With Gold picks, it’s also fully playable on Xbox One, but doesn’t contain the enhancements seen in the Handsome Collection version of the game, nor does it pack in any downloadable content.

Following Borderlands 2 from March 16 through March 31 is Heavy Weapon, a cartoony shoot-’em-up originally released in 2007. Though a tad older than some of the other games we’ve seen given out via Games With Gold, its retro-inspired action appears to have aged better than much of the Xbox 360 library.

With a selection of old releases and inexpensive indie games, March isn’t the strongest lineup we’ve seen Xbox give us through Games With Gold. What do you think of this month’s games? Are you satisfied, or are you hoping for newer games like Quantum Break and Halo 5 to make the list? Let us know in the comments.

Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
Xbox to give The Outer Worlds 2 the Starfield treatment at Games Showcase 2025
A person on an alien world in The Outer Worlds 2.

This year's Xbox Games Showcase will be streamed on Sunday, June 8 at 10 AM PT/1 PM ET and immediately followed by The Outer Worlds 2 Direct. If you've been waiting for more information on the sequel to Obsidian's 2019 quirky space RPG, this is your chance.

Xbox says this showcase will follow the pattern of its 2023 and 2024 showcases, giving a deep-dive on the biggest game of the show — in this case, Outer Worlds 2 — and will "bring you inside the walls of Obsidian Entertainment, revealing new gameplay, details, and developer insights."

Read more
Moonlighter 2 is a more ambitious sequel to a fantastic indie game
The shop in Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault.

Moonlighter was one of 2018's best indie games. It realized a concept that felt so obvious it was shocking no one had done it that well before: go out and explore dungeons to find loot to sell in a shop players manage. It's a game I'd still highly recommend to fans of 2D action dungeon crawlers, roguelike fans, or shop management game fans to this day, and also one I'm eagerly awaiting a follow-up to.

Developer Digital Sun Games took some time away from Moonlighter to create The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story and Cataclismo. However, the studio confirmed last December that it is making a 3D sequel to Moonlighter. Titled Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault, I recently saw this game in action and asked a developer some questions at an ID@Xbox roundtable.

Read more
All Switch games that don’t run on Switch 2
Two people playing a game on an OLED Switch.

It is easy to get wrapped up in the excitement over a new console and miss some important fine print details. Nintendo was eager to share all the Switch 2 launch games and a massive list of upcoming Switch 2 games to get everyone excited to get their hands on the console, but it also let us know that most original Switch games would also be playable on the Switch 2. We learned a lot about certain Switch 2 Edition games and how they would perform so much better on the Switch 2 vs. Switch, but that asterisk of "most" games running on the new hardware was never focused on in any of the presentations. We all have a massive library of Switch games at this point we would like to be able to carry forward, so let's shed some light on all the Switch games that won't work on the Switch 2.

Every Switch game that has startup issues on the Switch 2

Read more