While the first half of October was fairly light on new Xbox Game Pass additions, the back half of the month is a lot more exciting. Of course, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is the month’s biggest release, but that’s still a week away. Meanwhile, this week saw two great RPGs and an excellent indie game hit Microsoft’s subscription service. If you’re wondering what you should be playing this weekend, all three of these new Xbox Game Pass additions are worthy of your time.
While this year’s South Park: Snow Day was a disappointment, the two Ubisoft-published games that preceded it narratively are stellar. One of those, the superhero-themed South Park: The Fractured But Whole, just came to Xbox Game Pass. This game perfectly captures the handcrafted look of the show with its art and the franchise’s crass humor through its increasingly ridiculous story about Cartman, a new kid, and their other friends pretending to be superheroes. It’s a surprisingly well-made grid-based tactical RPG, making it a significantly better game than it may seem on the surface.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole is available across PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Cloud Gaming with a Game Pass subscription. It’s also on Nintendo Switch and part of the PlayStation Plus Extra game catalog on PS4.
Some of the best indie games take one charming idea and explore it to its fullest. Donut County is one such game, as players control a hole that gets bigger whenever something falls into it. Developer Ben Esposito found so many clever ways to utilize this mechanic, both for puzzles and to create some Katamari Damacy-style satisfaction as the hole gets bigger and bigger. On top of all that, it features a charming story following the residents of the titular Donut County, who have all fallen into the hole. If you haven’t played Donut County before, it’s worth checking out on Game Pass as it takes just a couple of hours to complete.
Game Pass subscribers can check out the PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Cloud Gaming versions of Donut County. It’s also on PS4, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.
Finally, we have MechWarrior 5: Clans, the latest entry in a long-running series of Mecha games. It takes a more focused approach than 2019’s MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, with a delicately handcrafted narrative. Still, it features the same satisfying mecha action and RPG elements the series is known for. While BattleTech, the universe MechWarrior is set in, can be tough to breach for newcomers, I’d suggest checking MechWarrior 5: Clans out now that it’s on Xbox Game Pass if the above trailer has done enough to intrigue you.
MechWarrior 5: Clans is available across PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox Cloud Gaming with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription. It’s also on PS5.
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.