REACTION - Game Pass is going to have a banging couple of weeks
Good show Phil.
By Jonathan Garrett
19/03/24
They say variation is the spice of life. Despite sounding like a slightly pretentious opening to an article written by you know who, it doesn’t negate the fact that Xbox Game Pass is about to drop one of its most diverse and juicy content updates in months. We’ve got a decent flavour of how the year is shaping up thanks to the recent Developer Direct, and today’s announcement sweetens the deal.
Unnecessary food metaphors aside, we already knew about Diablo IV, which is the first of [hopefully] many Activision titles to follow. Xbox’s messaging (surprise surprise) has been quite muted on the subject of ActiBliz games; despite potentially being constrained by existing contract agreements, they haven’t come close to capturing the spectacle of the Bethesda game dump. It’s a shame, because mapping out even the vaguest of release windows for some of their bigger titles would go a long way toward reassuring Game Pass subscribers that future updates aren’t tied up in post litigation shenanigans.
As for this months back half update, it really is a banger. Following the NBA 2K24 Game Pass shadow drop, The Quarry is a premium horror title from Supermassive, Evil West offers big dumb AA co-op fun, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 deserves to find that wider audience, and Superhot is a stylish little indie. A great varied mix of experiences with plenty more we haven’t even mentioned. Nice one Phil.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
