Hollow Knight (PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
Hollow Knight asks the question: what if Dark Souls was a cute Metroidvania platform game? The answer is: it would be brilliant, addictive and challenging – and one of the finest indie titles you can download on Xbox Game Pass for PC!
Explore a vast interconnected world as a mysterious silent protagonist, fighting monsters, negotiating devilish challenges and learning new skills as you uncover the story behind a civilisation’s decline and fall. With its pixel-perfect controls, melancholic presentation and superbly designed environments, Hollow Knight is a game that every fan of old-school platformers should try.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (PC, Xbox Series X/S)
We’ll be honest: when it was announced that MachineGames’ much-anticipated Indiana Jones game was going to be first-person, we were a bit underwhelmed. How can you have an Indy game that doesn’t let you see his iconic hat during your adventure? We were just as sceptical about Troy Baker stepping into the very large shoes of Harrison Ford. But we’re very happy to say we were double wrong. It isn’t controversial to say that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the best Indy game yet, mixing whip-crackingly enjoyable first-person combat and stealth gameplay with excellent puzzles and exploration that takes you across the globe.
Troy Baker’s turn as cinema’s most famous archaeologist is almost scarily good, to the extent that you’ll often forget his lines aren’t being delivered by Ford himself, while the overall presentation is so authentically Indy that the game feels like it belongs alongside the series’ most beloved big-screen outings. If you’re any kind of Indiana Jones fan, or just a fan of really confident game design, you have to play this one.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (PC, Xbox Series X/S)
When Microsoft successfully acquired Activision Blizzard, the publisher of the biggest game on earth, it was inevitable that Call of Duty was going to become one of Game Pass’s main draws. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 also happens to be the best entry in the long-running series for some time, thanks to a relentlessly entertaining and impressively varied single-player campaign that appears to be inspired by everything from the tense stealth set pieces of Splinter Cell to Far Cry’s open-world maps; a back-to-form Zombies mode, and multiplayer that benefits from the new Omnimovement system.
Black Ops 6 is CoD firing on all cylinders, then, which couldn’t be said for some of its more recent predecessors, and there’s enough in here for it to be the only game you play until the next entry. The fact that you get it all at no extra cost if you’re a Game Pass subscriber is nothing short of incredible.
