For the past month, we've been running regular suggestions for the games we are enjoying on the Game Pass service. This is a chance for us to highlight underrated titles or just discuss our favorite games. For this week, though, we have to kick things off by tackling the obvious issue: Microsoft's recent anti-consumer updates to the Game Pass subscription.
On Oct. 1, Microsoft announced a series of adjustments to its subscription service, with the most notable affecting the service's Ultimate tier — that provides the largest game library plus immediate availability to new games from Microsoft's game studios. The new price is $30 a month, up from $20. As expected, users expressed dissatisfaction, with many being vocal on social media and in discussion forums about how they were going to cancel their plans.
This marks the conclusion for the service as the former “best deal in gaming” has ended. Instead, gamers have to contemplate if $360 a year for the premium plan is worth it to them, particularly when everything else in life continues to rise.
Should you maintain your membership, or looking for reasons to keep it active, read on for our current picks. These feature a top-tier exploration-platformers of all time, a potential award-winner from 2025, and a delightful JRPG sequel. Alternatively, should you prefer to cancel Game Pass, see our guide on how to change or cancel your Game Pass subscription.
The Lost Crown: A Prince of Persia Adventure
If you do happen to stick with your Ultimate membership, you might require more excuses to use it. A strong argument for the higher fee is that you’ll now have access to a suite of Ubisoft+ Classics. This provides plenty of Assassin's Creed games and Far Cry titles for your $30 a month, but the best perk is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
This side-scrolling adventure makes fantastic use of the series, returning to its origins in a trap-filled labyrinth that’s a exciting to explore. Combine this with exceptionally rich, diverse battle mechanics the category includes, and it creates a premium exploration game. Add in both Hollow Knight: Silksong and The Rogue Prince of Persia and you’re already breaking even on three months of your subscription cost.
Blue Prince
This investigative puzzle title Blue Prince launched with impressive numbers and a committed player base on PC platforms, but console adoption was buoyed at launch by subscription services (it also appeared on other services). Player recommendations combined with its ease of access led to the game attract two million users.
Checking out a game for a few hours to discover if it's your jam or not is a key advantage of Game Pass, and those seeking immersion in a mystery should check out Blue Prince. You take the role of the heir to an estate and significant wealth, but provided that you can find the mansion's secret room. The challenge? The mansion's layout is constantly changing, making Blue Prince a roguelike with new information to uncover regularly. After several sessions with it and have been gradually uncovering mysteries and puzzle clues surrounding the mystery at the core of the story, and I'm curious to see where the game goes as I uncover more.
The Prince's Edition: Ni no Kuni 2
Am I recommending Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom just because the edition available on Game Pass is the Prince's Edition version and that creates thematic harmony with our preceding two recommendations? That remains unconfirmed. What I will tell, though, is that Ni No Kuni 2 is excellent sequel to one of the best JRPGs of all time. Despite the whimsical Ghibli aesthetic and emphasis on youthful protagonists, Ni No Kuni 2 doesn't shy away from serious themes, beginning with an seeming act of violence on a modern-day city before quickly transporting the main character (the literal president) into an other world where they find themselves involved in a violent Medieval-era coup. Compared to the first game, the battles are real-time — resembling a Tales game than a Pokémon one — and features a truly complex and complex management in which you must oversee a kingdom. While called the Prince's Edition, but it feels more like royal treatment to me.
