It’s the final month for Xbox’s Game with Gold for the year and it’s a nice surprise with the very first original Xbox title to be included as part of the program. It was bound to happen after it had been announced that some of the first Xbox console’s games were becoming backward compatible so I’m really glad to see it finally here.

All of the games for the month are:

• Q.U.B.E. 2 (Xbox One, Dec 1-31)
• Never Alone (Xbox One, Dec 16-Jan 15)
• Dragon Age II (Xbox 360, Dec 1-15)
• Mercenaries (Xbox via Xbox One BC, Dec 16-31)

Dragon Age II is a divisive title for fans of the series. It was a noticeable change from the first game’s larger scope by being confined to a city and gone are the multiple character paths as it now focused on a single character. It also didn’t do itself any favours with the overuse of cut and paste areas. I didn’t mind it and looked at it as Dragon Age built on the Mass Effect II framework (it looked like it anyway) and that was good enough for me.

Mercenaries has been backward compatible for a while now but since I didn’t have the game on disc I didn’t think much of it at the time. Previously I had only played demos on cover discs… remember those? Soon I think I will be spending a bit of time on it though to see if the open world soldiering still holds up.

What do you think of this month’s games? Feel free to comment below.