‘Fallout: New Vegas’ And 7 More Titles Hit Xbox One Backwards Compatibility

Xbox One owners received a large number of new backwards compatible titles Thursday. The post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout: New Vegas leads a charge of eight new backwards compatible games to enjoy on the current-gen console.

Fallout: New Vegas is now available as a backwards compatible title for the Xbox One along with Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, Blood Knights, Red Faction: Battlegrounds, Joe Danger Special Edition, Crystal Quest, Comic Jumper, and I Am Alive. This brings the total number of Xbox 360 games playable on the Xbox One to 211.

Fallout: New Vegas is the 2010 spin off of Bethesda Softworks’ Fallout 3. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the game was praised for its story and content for both the main campaign plus side missions, as well as upgrades in combat. The game hung around at an 84 Metacritic score largely thanks to the customary amount of bugs that come with such large endeavors.

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is actually two arcade HD remakes packaged together. The two beat’em up and role-playing hybrids offer both online and offline co-op along with some “house rules” options. It is a solid remake that earned a 77 Metacritic score that only provides a sour note due to its aging gameplay.

Blood Knights doesn’t have the distinction of being a well-reviewed game. The 2013 indie-developed hack-and-slash title from Deck 13 earned a dreadful 43 Metacritic score from only eight reviewers.

Red Faction: Battlegrounds is a twin-stick shooter spin-off from the mainline series, that will probably only appeal to fans of the franchise. The title was not critically well-received with only a 52 Metacritic score. It does feature both a campaign and multiplayer to tear through, however.

Joe Danger: Special Edition turned into an XBLA classic when it was released to the Xbox 360 in 2011 following its success on the PlayStation 3. The game harkens back to Excitebike as a side-scrolling stunt bike racing title filled with plenty of humor. It received an 88 Metacritic score.

Crystal Quest is a 2006 remake of a 1987 classic arcade game. It’s a twin-stick shooter in the same vein as Geometry Wars but with a few twists of its own. It earned a 64 Metacritic score.

Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley has all the hallmarks of the twisted humor of Twisted Pixel Games. It’s a slice of old-school side-scrolling shooter combined with plenty of jokes and a far our premise. The challenging gameplay and humor did not appeal to everyone, however, as it received a 74 Metacritic score.

Finally, Ubisoft’s I Am Alive is a survival game set in a city one year after a cataclysmic event wipes out most of the Earth’s population. There are moments when it drags, but also tension filled moments as the player attempt to keep the character alive. It scored a 69 on Metacritic.

As the Inquisitr previously covered, Xbox One manages backwards compatibility by emulating the entire Xbox 360 operating system. This allows Xbox 360 games to run on the Xbox One without any special coding or other workarounds. The major hurdles remaining are the licensing agreements with development studios and publishers to allow the games to be played on the Xbox One and listed for sale on the Xbox Store for the console.

Following that, testing to make sure the game runs correctly on the Xbox One appears to be a time-consuming task. Microsoft has to test each game from beginning to end to ensure the emulator runs the title correctly. This can take hundreds of hours depending on the title.

Xbox 360 backwards compatible titles can be purchased through the Xbox Marketplace website or through the Xbox Store on the Xbox One console. Note that the behavior of purchasing Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One is not the same as purchasing Xbox One titles.

What do you think of the latest slate of Xbox One backwards compatible titles? Sound off in the comments below.

[Image via Bethesda Softworks]