Looking for some of the best free Xbox games? You’ve come to the right place. These free-to-play gems provide hours of fun without you ever needing to reach for your wallet, so get involved!Free-to-play games are a fairly common sight on Xbox, and they only grew more popular after Microsoft dropped the Xbox Live Gold requirement for online multiplayer in F2P games. However, not all free games are created equal. Some offer little content unless you’re willing to spend, while others fall into the pay-to-win trap of letting paying players splash out for in-game advantages. Conversely, some free-to-play games will let you play for as long as you like without spending so much as a penny, and it’s those we want to focus on here — games you can enjoy as much or as little as you like, and where any spending tends to be optional for things like cosmetics. Let’s get into the great free stuff!Updated August 29th, 2022: Some great new F2P games have launched since we first published this list, so we’ve ditched a few that have fallen out of favour in order to highlight the new free-to-play Xbox hotness… enjoy!Rocket LeaguePsyonix’s car soccer sensation Rocket League wasn’t always part of the F2P family, but it was an extremely welcome addition. Tears were shed when it was announced that Rocket League would be leaving Game Pass… and then folks were left to try and scoop those tears back up and pour them back into their eyes when it they realised that this was due to the game going completely free-to-play. Years’ worth of updates are now at every player’s fingertips, and those who played the game before it went free get the double benefit of a stack of extra unlockable stuff in the F2P version, and something you just can’t put a price on: experience.Rocket League is the perfect example of a game that falls into the ‘easy to pick up, difficult to master’ category — you’ll feel like a god when you tap in your first aerial goal, only to later watch online competitions and see the pros dribble the length of the pitch effortlessly. In the air. While upside down. But you won’t even feel bad. You’ll just want to play more Rocket League until you get to that level. And even if you never do (spoilers: you won’t), anything you pull off that even comes remotely close will send you bouncing off the walls in delight. Rocket League is pure joy in video game form, and the pop-offs when something crazy goes down are like nothing else.The base set of Rocket League achievements was dead easy, but all those updates made the list that much trickier, especially for completionists who now have tons more to do across most of the additional game modes. Not that it should ever prove to be a chore, mind, because free-to-play or otherwise, Rocket League is an absolutely amazing game. If you haven’t played it before to confirm that for yourself, now there’s simply no excuse. Get on it. For fans of: #IDARB, Laser League, VideoballRocket League®PLAY ROCKET LEAGUE FOR FREE!Download and compete in the high-octane hybrid of arcade-style soccer and vehicular mayhem! Unlock items in Rocket Pass, climb the Competitive Ranks, compete in Competitive Tournaments, complete Challenges, enjoy cross-platform progression and more! The field is waiting. Take your shot! MultiVersusMultiVersus is a crazy crossover fighting game from Warner Bros., bringing together characters from across its broad portfolio to duke it out in a Smash Bros.-style platform brawler. Ever wanted to see Superman fight Bugs Bunny, or Finn and Jake of Adventure Time fame take on Shaggy and Velma from the Scooby gang? Now you can! Even though the game is still young, new characters are joining the fight at a pretty impressive pace, so your favourite characters from the Warnerverse could be added to the game any time, and the roster only gets wilder with each new addition. MultiVersus’ main hook is that it is primarily a 2v2 team-based fighter, carving it out a niche in a genre typically dominated by Nintendo’s fighter, and it’s fun to see how much the game evolves even by the week.The MultiVersus achievements are a bit of a slog, but this is designed to be a little-and-often game — log in to do your daily challenges and work through the Battle Pass to earn new cosmetics and other goodies, then put the Gold you earn to good use by permanently unlocking your favourite fighters. Four characters are unlocked for everyone as part of a free rotation that changes every few weeks, so while you’ll struggle to unlock everyone without spending money, regular players will easily earn enough to grab characters they are interested in fairly often — you can try everyone out for free in training or local multiplayer too, so you don’t need to worry about blowing your Gold on a character you don’t end up enjoying. Or, if you’re only interested in local play, everything is unlocked from the off so you never need to worry about buying characters anyway!For fans of: Brawlhalla, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Super Smash Bros.MultiVersusMultiVersus is a free-to-play platform fighter that lets you team up with your friends using some of the most iconic characters including Batman, Shaggy, & more!Apex LegendsTitanfall developer Respawn couldn’t resist having a crack at the battle royale format, and the talented team did not disappoint. Apex Legends was an overnight sensation, attracting over 25 million players in its first week thanks to its fantastic cast of unique characters and Respawn’s trademark silky-smooth, fast-paced combat and movement. Small teams help promote synergy between each Legend’s individual special abilities and make showdowns feel controlled and intense, while the sci-fi setting allows for some incredible places to touch down and throw down, and the user-friendly ‘ping’ system helps teams communicate by highlighting gear and enemies, even when nobody is speaking.The Apex Legends achievement list is surprisingly straightforward for a battle royale game, so it’s doable even if you only rarely come away with a big W. New Legends get added every so often, and the map itself has changed a few times as well, so you might drop back in after a few weeks or months away and find a completely different experience waiting for you. Gameplay content such as new Legends can be unlocked purely through gameplay if you’re willing to put the hours in, although there’s also the option so drop some cash and get them right away if you just can’t wait to try out a new character.For fans of: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Titanfall, FortniteApex Legends™Apex Legends is the award-winning, free-to-play Hero shooter from Respawn Entertainment. Master an ever-growing roster of legendary characters with powerful abilities and experience strategic squad play and innovative gameplay in the next evolution of Hero Shooter and Battle Royale.Phantasy Star Online 2: New GenesisPhantasy Star Online 2 originally launched in Japan in 2012, and was unavailable anywhere else for close to a decade. Then, out of the blue, Sega’s online RPG landed on Xbox One in 2020 with a worldwide release years in the making, later getting a soft reboot as New Genesis. Like its beloved Dreamcast predecessors, it’s a sci-fi action-RPG with a strong focus on multiplayer. Enemies, locations, and some classes will be familiar to fans of the online classics, but everything is much bigger and more connected, as you’d expect from a modern iteration. As well as the usual story missions, dungeons, and bosses, there are a host of large-scale event quests that happen every few hours — raid bosses, special missions, and unique adventures all lean more into large-scale multiplayer, and offer great rewards for those who heed the call to arms and come out on top. A few extremely useful items are cheekily hidden behind a paywall but other than that, free players can enjoy the full experience, if at a slightly slower pace than paid users. New Phantasy Star Online 2 achievements used to be added with each update, but none have been added since the New Genesis update so it looks like it might be capped out at 1,500G.For fans of: Sword Art Online, Monster Hunter World, WarframePhantasy Star Online 2 New GenesisPhantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis, the latest chapter in the Phantasy Star Online 2 series, is here at last!It’s time to jump into adventures beyond imagination!WarframeVery few games have evolved quite so impressively as Digital Extremes’ Warframe, a third-person loot grind in the same vein as Destiny. Despite having an 18-month head start on Bungie’s game, it never quite found the same degree of success, although it has picked up a lot more fans in the seven years since as the game grew to become something almost unrecognisable compared to its launch form. If you played it back in the day when it was all drab corridors and linear missions, you should try it again to see for yourself how far the game has come. Warframe today has open world areas to explore, tons more weapon and gear options, and more content than you’ll know what to do with, and it’s just so much better for all the passion the team has poured into the game over the years.The main downside of coming into a game like this so late in the day is that you’re going to find yourself literally years behind a lot of other players. No, really — if you want the gear options most serious players have got, you’re looking at investing thousands of hours. Or a fair chunk of cash, if you’re willing to part with it, as there’s no shortage of frames and weapons in the Market that would help you catch up at least a little. Otherwise, the grind is going to be really quite real, although all the improvements from recent years have ensured that you’ll have a much better time earning your fancy Tenno variants than the early adopters did getting theirs. If only that sense of smug self-satisfaction was legal tender. Oh well…For fans of: Destiny 2, Anthem, OverwatchWarframeJoin the Tenno and defend an ever-expanding universe. Wield your Warframe’s tactical abilities, craft a loadout of devastating weaponry and define your playstyle to become an unstoppable force in this genre-defining looter-shooter.SplitgateSplitgate feels like the love child of Halo and Portal, fusing the tight yet relatively simple FPS gunplay of the former with the portal-placing shenanigans of the latter to create something that feels truly original in the shooter space. Despite still being in beta, players really took a shine to this interesting concept, and the game is still doing well for itself today, thanks in part to cross-platform play that means you shouldn’t ever be waiting around too long to get into a match. The Splitgate achievements are no pushover, mind, and while some of the situational ones can be boosted with a group, getting 1,047 wins — a reference to Splitgate’s developer 1,047 Games — will likely take hundreds of hours of play, even if you’re bringing home the Ws fairly often. Still, if you’re into FPS games and want to try something a little different, Splitgate’s portals add a whole extra layer to the usual shooter formula that will make you rethink your strategies, and you can’t put a price on that. Nor do you need to — Splitgate is free-to-play.For fans of: Halo Infinite, Portal, Unreal TournamentSplitgateSplitgate is a free-to-play, fast-paced multiplayer shooter that features player-controlled portals. This sci-fi shooter takes the FPS genre to a new dimension with its portal mechanics, delivering high-flying, multi-dimensional combat. IGN describes Splitgate as “Halo meets Portal.”DauntlessMonster Hunter famously isn’t the easiest of series for newcomers to get into. While Monster Hunter World made great strides in that regard, it’s still a daunting prospect for someone coming in fresh. Dauntless’ name checks out here, then, because this F2P MonHun-alike is a lot less to process and a lot more free than Capcom’s title. The setup is the same: grab your weapon of choice from a selection of gear with unique move sets and team synergies, pick your quarry, load in either alone or with some other hunters, fell big beasties, and use their parts to improve your kit and ride this ever-climbing gameplay spiral all the way to endgame. Despite being similar in structure, though, Dauntless does a few things differently. Its weapons offer surprisingly little overlap with Monster Hunter’s vast arsenal of 14 different implements, and its creatures present some unique challenges that even veterans with two decades of hunting experience won’t have encountered before. Also, the general pace of the game feels much quicker, with greater mobility and shorter hunts making for an experience that works better as a little-and-often game. Either as a companion game to play alongside Monster Hunter or as an alternative if for some reason you don’t want to give Capcom money for one of the best games of its generation, Dauntless comes highly recommended. It’s no MonHun, sure, but it’s a pretty beastly game in its own right, even if the short Dauntless achievement list is a bit of a slog. Still well worth a crack, though.For fans of: Monster Hunter World, Dragon’s Dogma, FuriDauntlessAs a Slayer, you are all that stands between your world and the Behemoths that seek to devour it. Take on boss-sized monsters, forge powerful weapons, and craft armour from the very creatures you slay — all in a massive, free-to-play online world.RobloxWhen is a game not a game? When it’s all games! Roblox is a creative platform that lets users make and share their own family-friendly gameplay experiences with the world, and while the tools used to build these worlds might not be available on console, the end products are. This means that Xbox players of all ages (this one is a real hit with younger gamers) have access to vast quantities of user-created experiences, as well as the ability to mess around in them with friends regardless of system thanks to cross-platform play support. There’s always something new to see or do in Roblox and while its knock-off LEGO aesthetic might not be to everyone’s tastes, a lot of games find creative ways to get around it and some are just so much daft fun that you just sort of stop noticing anyway.Half of the Roblox achievements can be rattled through in minutes but the rest will take some work (specifically the login streaks and friend party ones), although perhaps you could kill two birds with one stone and keep the kids busy for a bit every day while they earn you some Gamerscore. The nature of Roblox makes it perfect for players with short attention spans, since you can just jump between games as you see fit, for free, and with friends, if you like. Personalising your avatar is a nice touch given the community aspect of the game, but maybe don’t let the younglings near the store unsupervised if you don’t want to wind up explaining to a bailiff what Robux are and why you didn’t want to spend $20,000 on them in the first place. For fans of: Project Spark, Minecraft, LEGO WorldsROBLOXRoblox is the ultimate virtual universe that lets you create, share experiences with friends, and be anything you can imagine. Join millions of people and discover an infinite variety of immersive experiences created by a global community!Already have an account? Log in with your existing Roblox account and explore the infinite metaverse of Roblox.Create your own experiences for FREE: roblox.com/developFortniteDo we really need to do this? There are undiscovered species of marine life miles beneath the ocean that know what Fortnite is. Urgh, fine. Epic’s battle royale sensation (which has no achievements, for what it’s worth… all the Fortnite achievements are tied to the co-op Save the World mode) hasn’t once dropped out of our gameplay chart in the years since we started the weekly feature — in fact, it has barely even budged from the top three. Fortnite has been tussling with another battle royale game (the one just below, as it happens) since that launched, and has changed a bunch since it first dropped in. We’re now well into Chapter Three of Fortnite, which brought with it another new map, lots of new gear, modes. and features, and more cosmetics than you could ever know what to do with.That side of things has been getting more and more exciting as the seasons have flown by, and it seems no franchise, brand, or celebrity is safe from getting the Fortnite treatment. Marvel’s mightest heroes; anime legends from series such as Dragon Ball and Naruto; WWE superstars; movie icons like Indiana Jones, John Wick, and Darth Vader. Fortnite fancies itself as the ultimate crossover game, and the longer it goes on, the harder that is to argue.For fans of: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Apex Legends, Call Of Duty: WarzoneFortniteIn Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 3: Vibin’, the Island is one giant party. Bounce around in Reality Falls, ride atop creatures, brave the Screwballer coaster, and revel with new arsenal. Drop into Season 3 and spread the good vibes!Fortnite is the always evolving, multiplayer game where you and your friends battle to be the last one standing or collaborate to create your dream Fortnite world. Play both Battle Royale and Fortnite Creative for free or purchase Fortnite’s PvE Campaign mode, Save the World. Download now and jump into the action. Call Of Duty: WarzoneCall Of Duty: Warzone breathed new life into the battle royale genre and took the world by storm. A colossal game map, 150 players per match, and a steady stream of rotating game modes and content makes Warzone one of the best free-to-play games available on Xbox today. It’s perfect to jump into with a few friends and try to be the last squad standing.Unique to Warzone is The Gulag — a sudden-death scenario that pits you in a one-on-one deathmatch against another opponent that’s also been knocked out. The winner gets redeployed back to the game in progress, while the loser gets ejected. This gameplay mechanic can create exciting and tension-filled moments. With other battle royale games, players have a tendency to camp. While campers are still present in Warzone, Infinity Ward has tried to eliminate that way of playing by adding in Contracts, such as Bounties and Recons, which provide the player with an incentive to get involved in the action.Warzone’s fantastic gameplay, ever-changing map and semi-permanent game modes make the battle royale an interesting and exciting experience each time you jump into a match. Shame there are no achievements in this free version, though…For fans of: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, FortniteCall of Duty®: Modern Warfare® – Digital Standard EditionIncludes:- Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare®- Warzone™, featuring a Battle Royale mode- Battle Pass system*- In-game XRK Weapons Pack- In-game Tactical KnifeExperience a visceral Campaign or assemble your team in the ultimate online playground with a mix of Multiplayer maps and modes, the franchise’s premiere Battle Pass system, and Warzone™ – included for all online players.Fall GuysFor a good while, we wondered whether or not Fall Guys was ever coming to Xbox. Then one day, Mediatonic announced that the hit online party game would be going free-to-play across all platforms… and that included the bean-tastic game show finally getting an Xbox release. It’s seen huge success in this new F2P form, getting a massive surge in player counts and opening the doors to anyone who wants to jump into the colourful nonsense of this new kind of battle royale game — one where the aim is to be the last bean standing out of the 60 who start each show at the end of a string of increasingly taxing mini-games and obstacle courses. The quick-fire nature of the rounds makes this a lot of fun, and when you get knocked out, you can choose to either hang around and watch the bedlam, or hop right back in the queue to have another go at getting yourself a crown.Some of the Fall Guys achievements can look quite nasty on paper, but with the game running special events every few weeks, there are often new modes in rotation that can make some of the most difficult achievements a lot easier to unlock. The chaos of Fall Guys is like nothing else, so become the bean and give it a try for yourself to see why the world fell in love with this quirky party game.For fans of: Dorito’s Crash Course, Gang Beasts, Human Fall FlatFall GuysFall Guys is a free, cross-platform, massively multiplayer, party royale game where you and your fellow contestants compete through escalating rounds of absurd obstacle course chaos until one lucky victor remains!World of TanksWargaming is really good at what it does, so the choice between whether you should try out World of Tanks or World of Warships will come down to personal preference. Both are hovering at around the same (rather positive) community rating here on TA, and the pair are suggested to take over 200 hours a piece for a full completion, so it’s not like one is going to spit out the Gs more readily, either. Just go with your heart, strap into your chosen historically accurate war machine, and go do a war on someone.Well, not a full war. It’s just tanks vs tanks (or boats vs boats) in these gentleman’s-agreement-powered military conflicts, and only 15 vs 15 in regular play (double that for Grand Battle/Frontline skirmishes, with slightly lower counts in Warships). It’s nowhere near as limiting as that sounds, though, and it always feels like there’s loads going on. Grinding up through the ranks in order to unlock the more powerful vehicles might prove a bit of a chore these days (especially with so many other players already rocking top flight hardware), but the huge research trees of vintage tanks and ships will have history buffs hooked. Wargaming has done a terrific job of capturing every detail of these old metal death crates and making them all handle differently and fill specific roles, so whether you want one to ogle in the menus as you might a scale model kit in a hobby shop window, or simply to crush fools online, you’re going to want to work your way to the upper echelons to get the best stuff. See you in a few hundred hours…For fans of: War Thunder, Birds of Steel, Battlefield 1World of TanksWorld of Tanks is a global online multiplayer free-to-play game dedicated to tank warfare in the mid-20th century. Custom built for Xbox, World of Tanks features realistic vehicles and environments, enabling players to command history’s most powerful tanks and experience combat on Xbox like never before.Gems of WarIf you’re looking for a free-to-play game where you can lose not just hours but entire years to the grind, look no further than Gems of War. This hybrid puzzle-RPG is the successor to the Puzzle Quest crown, and if you recall how difficult those great games were to put down, you can probably see why people are still going back to Gems of War almost a decade after it first released. The game is just massive, and just when you think you’re starting to make a dent in it, it layers on new systems and mechanics that give you even more to do (and to worry about) — assembling and evolving your perfect battle team is an almost never-ending pursuit, especially with additional events and distractions popping up frequently to drag your attention all around this expansive puzzle game. We need to talk about the Gems of War achievements, though, because after 30+ title updates all adding a few achievements at a time, the list now has over 100 achievements — some of which are absurdly grindy — and it’s getting to the point where it’s not even realistic to try and put an accurate time estimate on the completion beyond it taking thousands of hours. If you can commit to the grind (or not worry about the achievements) then Gems of War is great, but that list will absolutely look daunting to new players, especially those here on TrueAchievements who can see the game’s astronomically high TA ratio…For fans of: Puzzle Quest, Hexic, Puyo Puyo TetrisSmiteMOBAs (or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games, in case you’re allergic to acronyms) were long tipped as the next big thing. While that’s certainly been the case on PC, where League of Legends continues to be one of the most-played games to this day, the genre never really got off the ground on console. Not for want of trying, mind — a few studios had a pop at traditional style overhead MOBAs with mixed results and games like Overwatch and Battleborn clearly took inspiration from the genre, while it was more action-based twists on the formula like Paladins and Smite that proved to be the best compromise for console players.Despite the third-person perspective, Smite is actually about as close to a traditional top-down MOBA as they come, and anyone who has played League (which seems to be most people on the planet, according to Riot’s numbers) will load in already knowing the vast majority of the systems, progression, and needlessly convoluted terminology. As the name suggests, it’s based around a battle of the gods, with stars from most of the major historical and mythological pantheons to pick from as you throw down in five-on-five battles to destroy the other team’s divine MacGuffin.There are now more than 300 Smite achievements worth well over 4,000 Gamerscore, but don’t expect that to be in any way easy to get your hands on. It’d take years of mastering every single deity to tick off the lot, and you’d probably die of sodium poisoning (or just general toxicity) before you managed to pop them all. We’re praying for you already.For fans of: Paladins, Anarchy Reigns, BattlebornSMITEJoin 35+ million players in SMITE, the Battleground of the Gods! Wield Thor’s hammer, turn your foes to stone as Medusa, or flex your divine power as one of 100+ other mythological icons. Become a God and play FREE today!Anything here that you already play regularly, or plan on starting soon? Maybe you’ve got your own F2P suggestions for us? Let us know below!
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