Both Sniper Elite: Resistance and Citizen Sleeper 2 are making their way to Game Pass before the end of the month, along with a slew of other must-play titles. Although games come and go from the service, Game Pass rarely adds as many notable games at once as it has this month. January is host to several day-one releases, as well as several updates and DLC that promise to change up your most-played games.
Few games can compare themselves to the Sniper Elite franchise in terms of gameplay. Combining stealth and tactical combat, Sniper Elite: Resistance isn’t just a sniping sim. You’ll have to think carefully about your targets and find the right way to line up your shot without being targeted.
The original Citizen Sleeper was one heck of an RPG, and Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector builds on that formula with an amnesiac android with a busted body. Find a ship, find a crew, keep flying. It’s like cyborg Firefly, kind of — and that’s incredibly exciting.
Lonely Mountain: Snow Riders is a follow up to Lonely Mountains: Downhill, a Trials-like experience that has you master the mountain trails on skis, racing against other players in online multiplayer or trying to set the best time possible. Lonely Mountain: Snow Riders is available today on Game Pass.
Flock is what happens when you give sheep the ability to fly. Okay, they’re not technically sheep, but this multiplayer co-op title is about wrangling adorable flying critters. It’s low-stakes and cozy, a great way to pass time with friends that isn’t overly competitive.
No, this isn’t the Rampage you’re thinking of. Gigantic: Rampage Edition is a 5v5 MOBA shooter that tasks you with taking down the other team’s Guardian at the same time they seek to obliterate yours.
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess puts you in the shoes of Soh, a warrior asked to protect the Shrine Maiden Yoshiro from hordes of enemies. It combines tower-defense style gameplay with hordes of enemies that you have to carve through to meet your objective, with permanent upgrades available outside of combat.
A cute game about exploration and cooking, Magical Delicacy is a cozy platformer that has you explore your village and surrounding landscape in search of ingredients. Villagers will request specific dishes, and it’s up to you to find them. Be warned: Magical Delicacy might be cozy, but it poses quite a bit of challenge.
A more traditional open-world romp, Tchia is an open-world game where you must rescue your father from an evil tyrant. The gorgeous art style and physics-driven gameplay make exploration a treat. The game itself is inspired by the Pacific island of New Caledonia, so it has a fair helping of cultural influence, too.
With a unique and unsettling art style, The Case of the Golden Idol is a murder mystery where the player has to hunt for clues and make their own conclusions about what exactly happened to the victims.
If you’re a fan of Terraria, then Starbound is the game for you. It has a greater focus on exploration instead of combat, but the gameplay is quite similar. In many ways, Starbound is something of a spiritual successor.
Eternal Strands is a new fantasy title from studio Yellow Brick Games, founded by veterans of critically-acclaimed franchises like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Assassin’s Creed. This is a day one release where you fight massive creatures to keep the world from crumbling.
Another day one release, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is much like the other entries in the franchise — tower defense meets third-person shooter. It will test your skills as waves of enemies try to overrun your location, but you have a huge array of weapons at your disposal.
This narrative-driven title isn’t a long experience, but it’s one that will stick with you. A young girl and her shadow go on a poetic journey in dreamscape environments with plenty of twists and turns along the way.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.