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Gotta get some value out of that $30 a month somehow

Image: Yellow Brick Games

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A month has passed since Microsoft announced price changes to Xbox Game Pass, most notably that its top tier, Game Pass Ultimate, will now cost $30 a month, up from $20. In the wake of those changes, the Ultimate tier received two of Microsoft’s biggest games of 2025 as day-one additions, Ninja Gaiden 4 and The Outer Worlds 2. Are those games enough to keep subscribing? That’s up to you.

With this week’s recommendations, we want to highlight some games that feel tailor-made for Game Pass, in various ways. They include an indie delight, the latest in a long-running FPS series, and an overlooked gem from early in the year.

Keeper

Image; Xbox Game Studios

Double Fine’s latest game, Keeper, is the kind of project that’s custom-built for a subscription service. It’s a bit of a hard sell for mainstream audiences that buy games a la carte. The meditative adventure follows a walking lighthouse and its bird companion on a wordless trek through gorgeous landscapes inspired by surrealist painters. It’s an incredible artistic experience, but it’s also a slow-paced, five-hour walking simulator with light puzzling sprinkled throughout. You may not be down to spend $30 on a curiosity unless you’re very aware of Double Fine’s reputation, but it’s the kind of thing that you’re probably more likely to check out if you have immediate access to it. And once you’ll find a thoughtful work of craft that gives you plenty of time to think about what a post-human world could look like one day. —Giovanni Colantonio

Doom: The Dark Ages

Image: id Software/Bethesda Game Studios via Polygon

Part of the Game Pass appeal is the ability for subscribers to dip into the latest AAA, $70 blockbuster without having to shell out those 70 bucks for it, and Doom: The Dark Ages is exactly the game that embodies that appeal. Maybe you’d balk at paying full price for a multiplayer-less FPS that doesn’t evolve much over the course of its 15-20 hour campaign. But if you’re already subscribing to Game Pass? Why not dip in for a few hours and bash some demon skulls in? Doom: The Dark Ages has some great action that’ll easily help you kill a few hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The Slayer’s shield is a welcome addition to the game’s parry-focused combat, and blasting dudes with a shotgun never gets old. —Austin Manchester

Eternal Strands

Image: Yellow Brick Games

Did you know one of the best “Strand” games of 2025 is on Game Pass? No, not Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, come on. It’s Eternal Strands! The debut game from Yellow Brick Games accomplishes the impossible: It makes fetch quests fun. The core loop involves venturing forth from a base camp, picking an environment to explore, fighting a bunch of enemies in said environment, getting a bunch of crafting materials along the way, and using those materials to improve your weapons. That’s when the real thrill kicks in, and you encounter boss fights against skyscraper-sized creatures in which victory mandates doing your best Alex Honnold impression (you have to climb them). Yes, Eternal Strands is a messy, uneven hodgepodge of ideas that have all been executed better in better games, but that’s what makes it interesting — and worth checking out. —Ari Notis