The 10 best games on Game Pass

Here’s what you should be playing on Xbox and PC

Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service is having another banner year in 2023, with over 450 games now available for console players and over 400 for PC players.

The service has recently been bolstered with the addition of two huge Xbox Game Studios exclusives, Starfield and Forza Motorsport, while Cities: Skylines 2 is a big-deal day-one addition for the PC crowd. Atlus’ JRPG classics Persona 4 Golden and Persona 3 Portable made their debut on Xbox consoles earlier in the year, and Tango Gameworks’ surprise release Hi-Fi Rush told a cathartic rock ’n’ roll story with clever mechanics. Blockbuster titles are well represented with the likes of Assassin’s Creed and Hitman, cult favorites like Lies of P popped up, and Game Pass has continued its strong tradition of curating the best of the indie world with the likes of Cocoon. Even Grand Theft Auto 5 — and its extremely popular online mode — has returned to the service once more. That’s a lot of “free” video gaming to be done!

With the sheer size and the bounty of choice it offers, Game Pass can be a bit overwhelming to digest. But we’re here to help. Here are the 25 PC and Xbox Game Pass games that you should be checking out if you subscribe to Microsoft’s flagship service.

10 PHOTOS

1. ASSASSIN’S CREED ORIGINS

Assassin’s Creed Origins has always been good — but it was only in hindsight, three years after its release, that I began to consider it great.

It’s a phenomenal concoction of historical tourism, sci-fi storytelling, and open-ended combat. It also displays a confidence that the more recent Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla can only partially match. Whereas the two most recent entries embrace the insecure ethos of “content” that has so defined the last decade of open-world games, Origins is content to leave vast swaths of its world empty and to let things burn slowly, in ways both narrative and explorative. Its map unfurls over deserts, mountains, oases, and sun-swept cities slowly being buried in sand, all while its two central figures (Bayek and Aya) navigate one of video games’ most compelling romances.

It’s not completely averse to daily challenges and cosmetic DLC packs. But it’s the rare open-world game that trusts my attention span. It understands that pastoral beauty and tragic storytelling, successfully interwoven, are worth more than any number of distractions its successors can throw at me. —Mike Mahardy

Assassin’s Creed Origins is available via Game Pass on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

2. CHICORY: A COLORFUL TALE

Chicory: A Colorful Tale tells the story of a small dog who accidentally inherits a magical paintbrush. As you travel around the black-and-white open world, you use your new paint powers to bring color back to the environment. Everything is your canvas, and you can color it all to solve puzzles and customize the setting to your liking.

The gameplay of Chicory is cute and relatively simple, even as you unlock new powers. But the reason it made it to the No. 2 slot on Polygon’s 2021 Game of the Year list is the story it tells about the destructive powers of self-doubt — the way it cruelly infects even the greatest artists out there.

Chicory is a game that’s not about coloring in the lines or even making something beautiful. It’s about making something — painting something, in this case — that you are proud of, that makes you happy. And if that creation also brings joy to those around you? Hey, that’s great too. —Ryan Gilliam

Chicory: A Colorful Tale is available via Game Pass on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

3. CITIES: SKYLINES

There’s a reason Cities: Skylines is often held up by literal city planners as the pinnacle of the genre: It doesn’t fall into the trap most city-builders do of treating all its resources and systems as mere data points on a list, gaming by way of a spreadsheet. Cities: Skylines is the real deal, letting you get into the weeds of urban micromanagement and understanding how and why metropolises morph in response to the needs of their citizens. (It’s also proof that planned cities are a crime against humanity.)

Cities: Skylines forces you to grapple with the beautiful, messy truth of what your citizens are: people. In other words, Eric Adams, please play Cities: Skylines! —Ari Notis

Cities: Skylines is available via Game Pass on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

4. CITIZEN SLEEPER

Citizen Sleeper is a hyper-stylized tabletop-like RPG set in space. In a capitalist society, you find yourself stuck on a space station. You’ll need to manage your time, energy, and relationships to survive the collapse of the corporatocracy and the anarchy that follows. You’ll roll dice and make decisions to get paid and help those around you.

Aside from its interesting setting, Citizen Sleeper features a vibrant cast of impactful characters, making each interaction memorable. It follows an excellent trend of table-top-inspired games to encourage you to find your objectives and to revel in the story when things fall apart. It’s packed with tense decisions, great writing, and striking visuals. —RG

Citizen Sleeper is available via Game Pass on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

5. COCOON

A mysteriously beautiful, exquisitely paced puzzle adventure from some of the minds behind Limbo and Inside, Cocoon shares those games’ wordless delivery and stark aesthetic. But it’s more abstract and contemplative, and perhaps even more involving. It’s a game of pocket universes, one inside another, inhabited by buglike techno-organic life-forms — including the player character, a scurrying little beetle-thing. The conceit is that you can step up out of one reality and move it around another on your back, in a gently glowing sphere that also interacts with the world around it, before diving back in — or swapping it for another entirely.

Like so many puzzle adventures, it’s essentially a game of locks and keys, plus the occasional ingenious boss fight. But like the very best of them — Fez, for example, or Portal — Cocoon plays games with perception and reality that rewire your brain in pleasantly tortuous ways. —Oli Welsh

Cocoon is available via Game Pass on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

6. CRUSADER KINGS 3

Imagine if Succession unfolded between the years 867 and 1453, in the throne rooms, banquet halls, and torchlit back corridors of European castles. Monarchs rise and fall, small-time fiefdoms become bona fide kingdoms, and nonmarital children exact revenge after decades of being shunned. Crusader Kings 3 is the story of the Roy family if we could pick any character, see them through to their death, and assume control of their orphaned heir — at which point, we can completely alter the course of the dynasty through petty gossip and underhanded murder attempts.

In Paradox Interactive’s vast suite of grand strategy games with complex systems that give way to thrilling emergent storytelling, none have made me cackle with glee quite as much as Crusader Kings 3. In one playthrough, I wed my firstborn son to the daughter of a powerful neighboring king, only for said daughter to declare a holy war on me one decade later. In another, I strong-armed one of my vassals into remaining loyal, shortly before knighting his cousin and sworn rival; I didn’t want to be a jerk, but my characters were jerks. I was just following the script down the path of least resistance.

Much like Succession, Crusader Kings 3 is at its best when tensions finally boil over between the emotionally stunted members of a dysfunctional family. Unlike Succession, though, Crusader Kings 3 never has to end. —MM

Crusader Kings 3 is available via Game Pass on Windows PC and Xbox Series X.

7. DEATH’S DOOR

Death’s Door is a cute little Soulslike game. You play as a raven who works as a kind of grim reaper for the bureaucratic arm of the afterlife. It’s your job to adventure in the world and claim the lives of a handful of bosses. The world of Death’s Door is charming, as are its characters, with excellent dungeons to explore and puzzles to solve. Some giant enemies will test both your skills and patience.

Still, Death’s Door has a friendly air around it. It wants you to succeed and does a nice job easing you along with easy-to-read enemy and boss patterns. It’s a great, challenging Game Pass game to cut your teeth on before venturing into even more difficult titles. —RG

Death’s Door is available via Game Pass on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

8. DOOM (2016)

2016’s Doom builds off of one of the oldest franchises in gaming history with speed, acrobatics, and a killer soundtrack. Doomguy moves extremely quickly, swapping between a variety of guns, grenades, melee attacks, and a giant chainsaw to blow up demons off of Mars.

The game is bloody, metal as hell, and surprisingly funny. Doom makes you feel like a god, capable of clearing any hurdle the game could throw at you, and it doesn’t offer a single dull level in its lengthy campaign. —RG

Doom (2016) is available via Game Pass on Xbox One and Xbox Series X.

9. FORZA HORIZON 5

Forza Horizon 5 is the latest racing game to land on Xbox and Game Pass. It’s a visual feast filled with some of the most realistic-looking cars you’ve ever seen. But anyone who loves any of these Forza games will tell you that the Horizon series is so much more than its graphics.

Horizon 5 takes place in a fictionalized Mexico and gives you the freedom to drive around a massive map in whatever car you want. You can drive a nice sports car while off-roading, or drive a Hummer off a massive ramp.

Forza Horizon 5 gives you the freedom and choice to drive how and where you want inside a legion of incredible cars. —RG

Forza Horizon 5 is available via Game Pass on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

10. GRAND THEFT AUTO 5

Grand Theft Auto 5 is one of the most celebrated games of the last decade. In that time, it has appeared on three different generations of consoles, seen numerous graphical improvements, and gotten new modes, like its sweeping first-person alteration.

The main story focuses on three criminals from three very different backgrounds bumbling their way through numerous heists in the city of Los Santos — a fictional version of Southern California. To tell the stories of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor, the game implements a feature that allows you to swap between the protagonists at will, offering a new perspective on the city and letting you play multiple roles per heist.

Grand Theft Auto games usually live long past their time, but GTA 5 has remained especially relevant due to GTA Online, the sprawling MMO-like experience that Rockstar Games created inside the world of San Andreas. It’s the massive GTA 5 sandbox — plus a little extra — without any of the constraints found in the story mode.

The parts of GTA 5 that annoy — such as the more misguided aspects of its American commentary, or the occasional tailing mission — are distant memories compared to the chaos you can cause every five minutes. If futzing around a semi-realistic metropolitan area is something you enjoy, it’s hard to imagine anything on this list entertaining you for as long as Grand Theft Auto 5 will. —RG

Grand Theft Auto 5 is available via Game Pass on Xbox One and Xbox Series X.