Summary
Amid the panic over exclusivity and Xbox’s uncertain future this past week, I’d like to opt out of the conversation entirely and instead talk about how neat Game Pass is. Gosh, I sure do love the flexibility and convenience of Game Pass. It’s a great way to try out new games when you’re not sure you’re going to spend a lot of time with them, or catch up with some older games you weren’t enthusiastic about when they first came out. I love using Game Pass on my PC, Android devices, and even my Quest 3. Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we could access this extensive library of games on other platforms like PS5 and Nintendo Switch too? I digress.
This month’s Game Pass lineup is full of the kind of games that keep me subbed between all the big ones. I know I’m going to be signed in for all the upcoming first-party Xbox stuff like Hellblade 2, Avowed, South of Midnight, Clockwork Revolution, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (unless it comes to PS5 too, haha, could you imagine?) but the thing that keeps me from putting my sub on hold in the months between is the steady drip of small, easily digestible games that I can knock out on a random Saturday. If you like those kinds of low-impact palette cleansers too, this is a great month to be on Game Pass.
Next week we’ve got Resident Evil 3. WhenI reviewed this remake in 2020I thought it was a decent romp, albeit far too short and far less satisfying than Resident Evil 2 remake from the year before. Its shortcomings made it a hard sell as a full-priced game, and its included multiplayer mode, Resident Evil: Resistance, didn’t increase the value at all. It may have been tough to recommend back then, but now that it’s on Game Pass it’s a no-brainer. If you’re playing RE2 (also on Game Pass) you’ll definitely want to give five more hours to RE3. Hey, remember when Capcom announced that every Resident Evil game was going to be exclusive to Nintendo consoles. Boy, that would have sucked!
On Valentine’s Day, the adorable and overlooked A Little To The Left comes to Game Pass, a simple puzzle game about organizing messes in creative ways. After Unpacking got so much buzz a few years ago I thought A Little To The Left was destined to become a viral indie hit, but I never heard much about it. I played it on Switch for a half hour before bed every night for a week and found it incredibly charming and strangely cathartic. As a chronically messy person, it helped me realize that part of my problem was not having a place where my things are meant to be. This has been out on Switch and PlayStation since last November, so it’s great news that Xbox fans will get a chance to play it now too, right? Say you agree.
PlateUp! comes out the next day, and boy,do I have a lot to say about PlateUp! While undoubtedly in the same arcadey, restaurant-sim genre as Overcooked, it trades the frantic chaos for a roguelike progression system that allows you some control over the pace of the game. Complicating your menu with new dishes and adding more seats will make things more complicated for you and your crew, but it will also lead to greater profits. My friends like to split up the work and designate ourselves waiter, cook, and dishwasher, which made our responsibilities clear and gave each of us authority over different parts of the restaurant and our progression. It feels great when everyone works together towards a common goal, instead of fighting each other in some kind of meaningless culture war driven by parasocial relationships to faceless megacorporations that don’t care about you and only exist to create value for shareholders at any cost, am I right?
Console exclusivity is a pox that has plagued gaming for decades and turned normal people into brain-rotted drones defending the interests of trillion-dollar companies in their free time. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is coming to Game Pass too, it’s basically the modern Castlevania Konami refuses to make and it’s pretty good. Every time I tell someone about a cool game and their first question is “but is it available on the console I own?” I die a little bit inside. you’re able to check out Train Sim World 4 this week. I’ve never played it but I heard it’s cool.
