April is out and May is in which means new games are free for Xbox Live Gold subscribers. That being said, The Walking Dead: Season Two carries over from last month and will continue to be free for Xbox One players till May 15th.

New releases this month include Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams – Director’s Cut till May 31st for Xbox One while Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 is free for Xbox 360 players till May 15th. Thanks to the Xbox One’s backwards compatibility support for Xbox 360 titles, that means owners of the former get two free games.

On May 16th, Lara Croft and The Temple of Osiris will be free for Xbox One till June 15th. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga will be free for Xbox 360 players from May 16th till 31st.

All of the above games are worth playing or at least checking out. What are your thoughts on this month’s Free Games With Gold? Let us know in the comments below.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams won’t be a PC exclusive title for long. That’s right, it’s coming out on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade next year- in Spring 2013, to be exact.

What’s more, it will also be available at retail for the PC. Back when the game was launched a few weeks back on the PC via digital means, the developers said they would launch the game on the PS3 via PSN soon too. So stay tuned, we’ll have more info on that soon enough.

We reviewed Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams recently and gave it an 8.5/0, saying that “while not exactly groundbreaking or in any way particularly memorable, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a charming and extremely enjoyable title.”

“Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a very enjoyable, very charming game that you should definitely play. It’s not as good as some of the other 2D platformers you might find out there these days, but it’s definitely good and worth a try,” our review review. Read the full review through the link.

Short answer? Well, just see the score above. Of course it is! Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams wasn’t on anyone’s radar even a few weeks ago- it certainly wasn’t on mine- but I played it, and I was actually very surprised by how much I liked it.

The first time you start up Twisted Dreams, what will smack you in the face immediately will be the visuals of the game. Now, we’ve seen such art design before with the likes of Trine 2, but one can’t have too much of a good thing. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams has a very charming, a very attractive looking visual style, and looking at the game is almost a better experience than actually playing the game. Almost.

Whats also equally good is the excellent sound design- you will hear everything from metal tunes to soft, soothing tracks. As you switch between the game’s light and dark worlds, what you see heavily contrasts what you hear. In the light world, where you see fat birds flopping around, beautiful trees swaying in the background and rolling hills covered in grass and flowers rising all around you, the game starts playing metal music heavy on guitars. And as you enter the dark world, which is full of skeletons and clouds and a dark colour pallet, the soothing tracks kick on.

It sounds like a very jarring mixture, but it absolutely isn’t. It actually complements what you see visually very well, and forces you to take notice of the soundtrack. The tracks have been composed excellently, and you might catch yourselves humming a few of them when you’re not playing the game itself.

The two world mechanic plays just as well as it looks or sounds. The juxtaposition of the two worlds is done very well, and switching back and forth, using different powers and different characters in each to overcome a specific set of obstacles or puzzles often feels ingenious. The puzzles are very well designed, and require you to use this mechanic plenty. Some doors don’t unlock in the dark world, some ladders don’t exist in the light world, while some of your powers can only work in one of the two worlds.

Exploration is always fun too. Being a side scrolling platformer, you’d think the game wouldn’t have a lot of room for exploration, but it actually does. Going out of your way to collect diamonds so that you can unlock future boss fights is not a chose at all, and even if the game hadn’t offered any incentive on doing so, you still would have been tempted to go up a branching path and see what you find there.

There’s a lot to like here, but the problem remains that Twisted Dreams doesn’t do anything new. Now, not every game does anything new, and it would be unfair to call this one out for not doing so. What we’re calling it out for is the fact that it just isn’t memorable. Couple that with the fact that it crashes and freezes a lot, and it’s clearly certain that the game could be a lot better.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a very enjoyable, very charming game that you should definitely play. It’s not as good as some of the other 2D platformers you might find out there these days, but it’s definitely good and worth a try.

This game was reviewed on the PC