Three Game Pass Games We Are Enjoying This Weekend (October 3-5)
For the past month, we have been sharing weekly recommendations for what we're playing on Game Pass. It's an opportunity for us to highlight underrated titles or just discuss our preferred titles. For this week, however, we need to begin by addressing the elephant in the room: the latest anti-consumer updates to the Game Pass subscription.
On Oct. 1, Microsoft announced a bevy of changes to its subscription service, the most significant coming to the service's Ultimate tier — that provides the most games available plus immediate availability to new games from Xbox Game Studios. The new price is $30 monthly, up from $20. As expected, users expressed dissatisfaction, and numerous voices on online platforms 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” is no more. Now, gamers have to contemplate if the annual $360 cost for the premium plan provides value to them, especially as everything else in life continues to rise.
If you're keeping your subscription, or seeking justifications to keep it active, check out our current picks. They include a top-tier exploration-platformers of recent years, a 2025 Game of the Year contender, and a charming role-playing game follow-up. Alternatively, should you prefer to do away with your subscription, see our guide on how to change or cancel your membership.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
If you do happen to stick with your Ultimate membership, you might require more excuses to justify it. A strong argument for the higher fee is that it includes to a suite of Ubisoft+ Classics. You’ll get multiple Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry titles for your monthly payment, but the standout benefit is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
The 2D Metroidvania makes fantastic use of the series, taking it back to its platforming roots in a dangerous maze that’s a thrill to mantle around. Combine this with exceptionally rich, most varied combat the category includes, and it creates a top-shelf Metroidvania. 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.
The Blue Prince Mystery
This investigative puzzle title Blue Prince launched with strong sales and a dedicated community on PC platforms, but its console player base was buoyed at launch by subscription services (it also appeared on PlayStation Plus). Player recommendations combined with its ease of access eventually helped the game reach 2 million players.
Trying a title for several sessions to see if it suits your taste or not is one of the core appeals of the service, and anyone looking to get lost in a mystery should check out Blue Prince. You take the role of the inheritor of a property and large inheritance, but provided that you can find the mansion's secret room. The catch? The mansion's layout is ever-shifting, 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 the service is the Prince's Edition version and that creates thematic harmony with our preceding two recommendations? I'll never tell. What I can share, however, is that Ni No Kuni 2 is delightful follow-up to a top role-playing game of recent memory. Despite the whimsical Ghibli aesthetic and focus on younger characters, Ni No Kuni 2 doesn't shy away from heavy topics, opening with an seeming act of violence on a contemporary metropolis before immediately throwing the main character (a world leader) into an alternate dimension where they end up smack in the middle of a historical power struggle. Unlike its predecessor, the battles are real-time — resembling a Tales game than a turn-based title — and features a truly complex and complex management in which you must oversee a kingdom. It might be the Prince's Edition, but it feels more like royal treatment to me.