We’re approaching New Year’s Eve, and several games will be leaving Xbox Game Pass on that day. If you’re wondering what you should play this weekend and are a Game Pass subscriber, you should give these games a shot before they leave Microsoft’s video game subscription service. Specifically, I’m highlighting two charming indie games and a bombastic crossover fighting game this week.
BlazBlue is a long-running Japanese fighting game franchise. It hasn’t managed to break out worldwide in quite the same way Guilty Gear did, but the closest it got was with BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. This game took the hardcore fighting mechanics and stunning anime-inspired visuals of the series and used it for a 2v2 tag-team crossover game. While BlazBlue characters are still part of Cross Tag Battle’s roster, it features several guest fighters from RWBY, Persona 4 Arena, Under Night In-Birth, Arcana Heart, Senran Kagura, and Akatsuki EN-Eins. It’s an eclectic mix of fighters you won’t find in any other game, so Cross Tag Battle is worth a shot if you’re a fan of any of the franchises featured in this crossover.
The PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox Cloud Gaming versions of BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle Special Edition leave Game Pass on December 31. It’s also on the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
The first thing players do in McPixel 3 is eat a bomb and then poop it into a toilet, which perfectly sets the stage for this hilarious game. McPixel 3 is essentially made up of a bunch of small minigames where the titular character is put in hilarious situations that players have to solve to get out of them. There are different outcomes depending on what you interact with, making each of McPixel 3′s goofy scenarios a riot to experience. Think of it as an expanded take on WarioWare’s microgames formula. This is a light, comedic indie game that will brighten up your spirits as 2024 comes to an end.
The PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox Cloud Gaming versions of McPixel 3 leave Game Pass on December 31. It’s also on Switch, PS4, and PS5.
Finally, we have Close to the Sun, which is my recommendation for fans of adventure games. This is a first-person adventure game that follows a journalist named Rose as she searches for her sister aboard the Helios, a giant vessel that once stood as a haven for genius scientific minds. It’s mostly abandoned when Rose arrives, though, so players spend time exploring, slowly piecing together what happened to Rose’s sister and the other inhabitants of Helios. It’s Bioshock meets Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture meets SOMA — an eclectic mix worth experiencing before Close to the Sun leaves Game Pass.
The PC, Xbox One and Xbox Cloud Gaming versions of Close to the Sun leave Game Pass on December 31. You can also check it out on PS4 or Nintendo Switch.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.