Since its launch in 2017, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service has become a mandatory must-have mega-deal for Xbox and PC gamers – with unlimited access to a curated library of over 500 (!) games from R99 per month, you’d be stupid to skip it.
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But let’s get real. You’re a gamer, and “choosing a new game to play next instead of the same game you’ve been playing since 1993 and it’s not even fun now but you can’t help it” is, inconveniently, not a class stat. Choosing a new game to play next out of 500 options? Take 50 existential panic damage every three seconds.
NAG to the rescue!
Control
Probably my top game ever, Remedy Entertainment’s trippy dream logic sim is one of those games I wish I could play again for the first time. I can’t, obviously, but you can. And like fridge duty, it’s an obligation.
The Game Pass version doesn’t include the two DLC expansions, but those are recommended extras when you’ve finished the campaign.
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console.
Frostpunk
This is how my Frostpunk review sums up the game:
Amputations. That’s what I got wrong. Kids can’t wave protest flags without hands.
You’re intrigued, aren’t you? In 11 Bit Studios’ bleak post-apocalyptic dystopia, accidents are an inevitable occupational hazard. If you’re employing kids in your factories, even more so. The thing is, maximising your production quotas and maintaining a reasonable level of safety at the same time is hard – but take it from me, investing in prosthetic tech had consequences. Civil disobedience is inevitable, so you’ve got to think strategically.
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console.
Deep Rock Galactic
You’re a space dwarf, which is a lot like a regular dwarf because you’ve got a beard and you drink beer and you mine things – except instead of some subterranean city spelled with more consonants than vowels, you’re in space. So, space dwarf. That’s how you tell the difference at family holidays, I guess. Have you met my cousin Grukhuruthr? Guy with the beard. With the beer. You know, the miner. No, not him. The space dwarf. Yes, that one.
Featuring co-op for up to four players and randomly-generated levels, Deep Rock Galactic mixes FPS and mining gameplay with a casual indifference to xenobiological ethics. So what if the bugs got there first? We’re here to extract every mineral, every fuel compound, and every other viable resource from this planet and the local bugs won’t stop us because space capitalism. I mean, it’s their fault for not defining a legal property system, anyway. Noob mistake, lol.
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console and PC.
Resident Evil 7
Mashing up campy Texas Chainsaw Massacre hillbilly cannibal panic, gross-out body horror, and claustrophobic, disorienting level design, Resident Evil 7 is a Friday date night classic. Kiss every time that granny in the wheelchair turns up and spooks the shit out of you. So romantic!
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console.
Destiny 2
Loots! Space magics! Retro sci-fi hoverbikes! Dance emotes! The guy from Fringe! Destiny 2 is a repetitive cycle of chores dressed up as SUPER FUNS. But it’s also actually super funs, so it’s okay, and with multiple expansions and DLC included for free-with-your-Game-Pass-subscription, it’s a lot of super funs. Try out Gambit mode for an innovative break from the tediously obligatory us-too battle royale mode of other FPS games.
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console.
The Touryst
I dunno how to describe this one – it’s a sort of open-world game, but it’s also a puzzle game and a platform game, and it’s a got a photo mode and mini-games, including a photo mode mini-game. Maybe in ten years, we’ll describe other games as “like The Touryst” and immediately know what that means? It’s topsy-turvy like that.
What makes the game special, though, is its unique tilt-shifted, voxel-based aesthetic. It’s like playing an interactive Lego movie, except it’s not Lego, obviously, it’s more like those cheap Leq-O Blox clones your deadbeat dad who divorced your mom and hooked up with a 19-year old Herbalife bossbabe and missed most of his custody weekends used to get you for birthdays instead of the real Lego you wanted. And you wouldn’t cry, not this time, but you’d tell him “I don’t think this is Lego, dad”, and he’d tell you “it’s Lego, kid, now quit whining and go get me and your step-mom some cake”, and she’d tell you she doesn’t want cake because she’s on this Cosmo detox diet and she has to lose two kilos before beach season but she’s not even your step-mom, she’s your dad’s girlfriend (ex-girlfriend now, you can’t keep count of them), and dad forgot to get a cake, anyway, but he didn’t forget his beer and smokes. You remember exactly what those Leq-O Blox smelled like.
But just the fake Lego, not the other stuff.
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console and PC.
Children of Morta
It’s a roguelite so expect frustration, clumsy mistakes, and inevitable failure, but it’s also a family drama so it’s… a metaphor? Maybe, probably not. Less Dead Cells, more Risk of Rain on the roguelite-o-meter, Children of Morta features seven playable classes, and – oooooh, this is different – synergistic unlocks that improve each others’ skills and stats. Levels are randomly-generated, and inevitably so too are your prospects of making it out, but because you can finish most levels in 30 minutes or so, a game over isn’t that tragic.
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console and PC.
Sunset Overdrive
It is the future. It is the post-apocalypse, because it’s a video game, and the future is the post-apocalypse. I don’t make the rules. In this future post-apocalypse, however, most of humanity got turned into mutants by a fizzy energy drink so that’s provocative. Mix in some Memebase jokes, pop culture parody, gratuitous swears, sick grinds, and one homicidal balloon, and maybe this future post-apocalypse thing isn’t so bad.
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console and PC.
Titanfall 2
TEAM UP WITH YOUR RO-BRO BT AND SAVE THE GALAXY!
IN SPACE!
ON THIS CONSPICUOUSLY EXOTIC ALIEN PLANET!
AND THROUGH THE CONVOLUTED NARRATIVE PARADOXES OF TIME ITSELF SO DON’T THINK ABOUT IT TOO MUCH!
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console.
What Remains of Edith Finch
I’m cheating with this one because I haven’t actually played it. But according to The Internet™, it’s some kind of indie chef d’oeuvre so I probably should. You too. It can be our secret.
Available with Xbox Game Pass on console and PC.