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Xbox Games With Gold for March 2022 Revealed

Microsoft has announced that March 2022's Games with Gold are The Flame in the Flood, Street Power Soccer, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, and SpongeBob's Truth or Square.

As revealed on Xbox Wire, the four Games with Gold will be available to anyone with Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, with The Flame in the Flood and Sacred 2: Fallen Angel available on March 1.

The Flame in the Flood is a survival game where players take control of Scout, who must venture down a treacherous river with her dog, Aesop.

In our 7/10 review, IGN said "The Flame in the Flood is a beautiful procedurally generated survival sim that gains a welcome sense of momentum from the need to stay on the move," though "its unwieldy menus and tendency to crash ruins some of the fun."

Also available on March 1, but only until March 15, is Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. This RPG was released in 2008 and features Diablo-style combat through a range of characters.

IGN said it was "okay", as "for players looking for an action-RPG loot grind offering plenty of gameplay hours, enemies to kill, and numerous ways to kill them, you'll find it in Ascaron's Sacred 2: Fallen Angel." On the other hand, "you'll also find an inconvenient interface, mediocre visuals, and a few technical drawbacks that keep this from really being a standout experience."

Street Power Soccer becomes available for free on March 16 and will be available until April 15. It injects a bit of chaos into your regular game of soccer, providing players with a variety of game modes, playgrounds, power ups and tricks to try out.

Finally, SpongeBob's Truth or Square will be available from March 16 to 31. This 2009 release can be completed in less than ten hours and features a mix of exploration and puzzle solving.

Be sure to redeem February 2022's Xbox Games with Gold before they leave the service, that includes Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse, Aerial_Knight's Never Yield, Hydrophobia, and Band of Bugs.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.

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Avengers: Endgame Director On Multiverse Trend: ‘Don’t Expect Corporations To Surprise You’

In the wake of Spider-Man: No Way Home, classic characters are back in vogue. Already other comic book films are moving to team up multiple versions of their own favorites, whether it's Michael Keaton's Batman or the heroes from Blues Clues. But how much is too much?

At a wide-ranging talk at DICE 2022, Avengers Endgame director Joe Russo said that it's a question that the industry has consistently struggled over, leading to decisions like killing off half the MCU in Infinity War (and then bringing them back). He also said that the corporate agenda lacks innovation, arguing that creatives need to rein in corporations that want to run popular trends into the ground.

"The corporate agenda is: Do you like chocolate ice cream? Well here chocolate ice cream with sprinkles, here's chocolate ice cream with fudge...It's their job to turn the money printer on," Russo said. "It's the creative's job to say, 'Well shit, I don't know if I want to watch that.'"

Russo said that it's the task of creatives to "push back against the money printer" and attempt to do something radical that defies expectations.

"So yeah, too much of one thing is a bad thing, but I think there are enough creators and innovators in the space where you can expect to be surprised," Russo said. "Just don't expect corporations to surprise you."

Russo's comments come amid a flood of interest in movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which have successfully leveraged classic properties to create wildly popular movies. Both The Flash and Batgirl are expected to bring back classic characters of their own, and there are rumors that Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier will make his way into Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness.

Star Wars, which is also owned by Disney, has relied more and more nostalgia. Book of Boba was loaded with references to older movies and other media, including villains who have mainly appeared in comic books. The self-referential nature of the Star Wars universe has spurred discussion about Disney's reliance on familiarity to placate fans.

Asked how he might tackle the Star Wars universe, Russo demurred, saying that "there's always a creative engine behind [franchises like Star Wars] that's passionate about the material, that lives for the material, that bleeds for the material," and that it's up to them to partner with other creatives.

Russo himself is working on other projects beyond the MCU right now, including a television adaptation of The Warriors. He's also developed a health interest in the games industry, saying that he expects games to surpass movies and that the "future isn't 2D."

For now, classic characters are as popular as ever, and plenty more movies are likely to use the multiverse conceit to bring back old favorites. Expect it to continue with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which launches in May.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN

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Avengers Endgame Director Isn’t Impressed By All the Monkey NFTs

Avengers: Endgame Director Joe Russo sat down with Epic Game CCO Donald Mustard at this year’s annual DICE Summit to talk about a range of topics, from the future of storytelling to the metaverse. Naturally, Russo was asked about NFTs during a Q&A following his talk.

When asked about his opinions on the metaverse and NFTs Russo first said that the metaverse is essentially a shorthand for virtual and not something new, despite how companies like Facebook might try and package the concept.

As for NFTs Russo is less convinced of their current utility.

“NFTs I have a harder time understanding only because I haven’t seen the quality of work yet that I go, ‘Oh if I buy that JPEG and the market crashes and I’m stuck with a $50,000 JPEG, I’m really happy about that you know?” Russo joked. “I don’t see the quality of work yet where the monkey with a cigar is really the thing I’m gonna talk to all my friends about.”

Russo did say that the concept of NFTs could set the stage for bigger ideas but that in its current form there is not yet enough credibility to back the concept saying, "it will evolve into something else."

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are essentially non-interchangeable units of data stored on a blockchain. You may see the term popularly for virtual art that has been sold for cryptocurrency. Though you may also see them in the news for the many high-profile thefts and scams that have occurred in the space as well.

Russo and Mustard were on stage at DICE to discuss the future of media where Russo said he believes gaming, not film, will be the most dominant force in storytelling in the future. Gaming’s leadership in topics like virtual reality and the metaverse is a hot topic at this year’s DICE

The keynote from EA COO Laura Miele also touched on the metaverse and how gaming is the best industry to lead the virtual world given its decades of experience.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Credit: GettyImages

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Gaming Will Dominate the Future of Storytelling, Avengers: Endgame Director Says

Leaders in the games industry have spoken at length about how video games are the original metaverse, which is quite convenient for the games industry. But now Avengers: Endgame director Joe Russo agrees that if the metaverse comes to fruition, gaming will be the leader.

“I think the revolution comes from the gaming side because that’s where the technology is,” Russo says in a conversation with Epic Games chief creative officer Donald Mustard at the annual DICE Summit.

In a talk titled, ‘The Future of Media: World Building and Universe Expansion’ the two spoke at length about the future of technology, especially in media and storytelling. Russo in particular is convinced “The future is going to be virtual.”

Russo says that the technology for the future of storytelling is in the games industry, not film saying “traditional film studios do not understand [the technology] nor is it part of their business plan to curate technology, house it, pay for it, pay for its development, hang on to it.”

Later in the talk, Russo doubles down and says, “It’s a gaming company in my opinion that is going to be the most potent entertainment company in the world.” Russo also took some jabs at tech companies like Meta, formerly Facebook, saying gaming will “pull the world forward in a way Facebook can’t. They destroyed the world and now they’re going to create a Metaverse we can all escape to.”

The metaverse has been a popular topic at this year’s DICE summit. The keynote speaker EA COO Laura Miele also spoke about metaverse and how it needs "some world order and no industry can do it better than ours."

In an interview with the Sway podcast, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that tech’s metaverse is “an extension of what gaming has been doing” and that a whole generation of people has grown up through social connections created in video games.

While this has been a popular talking point among gaming execs, to hear a filmmaker as Joe Russo agree is certainly a boon for the game industry’s claim that they are leading the field towards the metaverse.