Later this month, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will receive its biggest day-one release ever with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Until then, we’ll have to bide the time with other recently added Xbox Game Pass games. Thankfully, multiple games came to Microsoft’s subscription service during Tokyo Game Show in September and one particular highlight just landed this week. If you’re looking for something to play this weekend, these are the games you should be looking for on Xbox Game Pass.
Sloclap’s Sifu is an intense action game with intricate hand-to-hand combat that feels like it could’ve been pulled right out of John Wick or a classic kung fu movie. It’s incredibly satisfying for that reason alone, but Sifu’s most unique hook happens when players die. With each death, players get a little more powerful but age up and lose a bit of health. This gives Sifu a one-of-a-kind difficulty curve because it gets easier and more difficult in different ways with each death. With lots of content and accessibility updates under its belt at this point, you’ll have a fantastic time checking out the complete version of Sifu now if you’ve never played it before. Sifu is available to Game Pass subscribers across PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox Cloud Gaming. It’s also on PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.
Katamari is one of the weirdest and most charming video game series out there; there’s nothing else quite like it. From its quirky narrative starring the King of All Cosmos and Prince to its gameplay that sees players rolling up increasingly bigger balls of objects, these games are full of oddball charm you can’t get anywhere else. We Love Katamari was released for PS2 in 2005 but was remastered last year as We Love Katamari Reroll+ Royal Reverie, making it easier to play on modern platforms. We Love Katamari Reroll+ Royal Reverie is available across PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox Cloud Gaming with an Xbox Game Pass subscription. It’s also on PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.
If you’re looking for a weird multiplayer game to play with friends, consider checking out All You Need is Help. This game shadow-dropped into Xbox Game Pass during Microsoft’s Tokyo Game Show live stream and is a multiplayer puzzle game where players control individual tetromino blocks and must work together to fit into certain shapes. You do need a full group of four to get the most out of the experience, but All You Need is Help offers up a kind of simple multiplayer fun that’s getting increasingly uncommon nowadays. The PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox Cloud Gaming versions of All You Need is Help are available with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. It’s also on 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.