It’s Black Friday weekend, so there’s a good chance that you just picked up an Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S and are planning to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or Standard. If so, you’ll need to decide what you should play first. While first-party games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 or Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 are good choices, some other new Xbox Game Pass titles are also worth your time this weekend.
If you’ve been on an Aliens kick this year thanks to Alien: Romulus and the announcement that Alien Isolation is finally getting a sequel, then you’ll want to check out Aliens: Dark Descent. This is a real-time strategy game where players control a small squad of Colonial Marines dispatched to Planet Lethe to take care of a Xenomorph threat. It’s a tense, exhilarating title that finds a middle ground between the bombastic shootouts of Aliens: Fireteam Elite and the quiet horror of Alien: Isolation. Aliens: Dark Descent flew under the radar when it launched last year, so I’m happy it has another chance at notoriety by getting added to Game Pass.
Aliens: Dark Descent is available with Game Pass Standard, PC Game Pass, or Game Pass Ultimate. It’s also on PS4 and PS5.
Nine Sols is an underrated Metroidvania platformer from Taiwanese developer Red Candle Games released earlier this year. It just came to consoles and was added to Xbox Game Pass. This has been a great year for Metroidvanias with excellent combat, and this is yet another title to add to that pile. Its world and style, which combine cyberpunk aesthetics with an Eastern mythology influence, also give Nine Sols a memorable vibe, making for one of 2024’s biggest sleeper hits.
Nine Sols is available via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass. It’s also now on PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.
Little Kitty, Big City made waves when it hit Xbox Game Pass earlier this year because it’s an entertaining open-ended game where players can explore and interact with a lot of things as a cute little cat. Unfortunately, when the Game Pass Standard and Ultimate split happened, Standard subscribers lost access to this gem. That changed earlier this month when it was added back to the Game Pass Standard catalog. Regardless of which tier it’s on now, this is one of the best indie games on Xbox Game Pass and worth checking out if you haven’t played it yet.
Little Kitty, Big City is available through PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard, and Game Pass Ultimate. It’s also on PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.
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.