The best Xbox games for 2024

Despite some recent price hikes, it's still easy to call Game Pass a good deal for avid Xbox players. For $20 a month you get access to a shifting and growing library of games. The company does a good job explaining what new games are coming and going in advance, so you won't get caught out by a game disappearing from the subscription service just as you're reaching a final boss. The full library is broad, and, while Microsoft's cloud service is still technically in beta, you'll have access to many of the games on your tablet, phone or browser through xCloud at no extra fee.

Why would we not include Elden Ring? The strengths of FromSoftware’s latest action-RPG are many, but what’s most impressive about the game is how hand-crafted it feels despite its scale. Elden Ring is big, but it never feels like it’s wasting your time. Far from it; FromSoftware has created a rich open world, with something surprising, delightful or utterly terrifying around every corner. I’ll never forget the moment I found a chest that teleported my character to a cave full of Eldritch monsters. Elden Ring is full of those kinds of discoveries.

And if you’re worried about hitting a brick wall with Elden Ring’s difficulty, don’t be. Sure, it can be tough as nails, but it’s also From’s most accessible game to date as well. If you find combat overly punishing, go for a mage build and blast your enemies from afar, complete side quests and more. And if all else fails, one of the rewards for exploring Elden Ring’s world is experience that you can use to make your character stronger. — Igor Bonifacic, Former Contributing Writer

The Dead Space remake feels like a warm, juicy hug from a murderous necromorph, and we mean that in the best way possible. The 2023 version of Dead Space spit-shines the mechanics that made the original game so magically horrific back in 2008, and it doesn’t add any unnecessary, modern bloat. The remake features full voice acting, new puzzles and expanded storylines, and it introduces a zero-gravity ability that allows the protagonist, Isaac Clarke, to fly through sections of the game in an ultra-satisfying way.

None of these additions outshine the game’s core loop: stasis, shoot, stomp. Isaac gains the ability to temporarily freeze enemies and he picks up a variety of weapons, but he never feels overpowered; he’s always in danger. Mutilated corpse monsters appear suddenly in the cramped corridors of the space station, charging at Isaac from the shadows, limbs akimbo and begging to be shot off. The first game of Dead Space popularized the idea that headshots don’t matter and the remake stays true to this ethos – yet its combat rhythm still feels fresh.

The 2023 version of Dead Space proves that innovative game design is timeless (and so are plasma cutters). — Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter

Halo has long been the heart of the Xbox canon, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection brings together five of the series’ most evocative games in one package. It also has Halo 4 (heyo)! It’s commendable simply as a historical document, but the games themselves more than hold up all these years later. The original’s campaign remains essential, Halo 2 is surprisingly daring for a blockbuster sequel, while riding around in Warthogs and blasting fools in Halo 3’s or Halo: Reach’s multiplayer never gets old. The overarching narrative goes pretty much completely off the rails as it goes along, but it strikes the right balance between goofiness and badassery. Blasting alien bogeymen with space guns is still good fun.

The most recent game in the series, Halo Infinite, is worth checking out as well. Yes, it’s mostly a nostalgia project, and yes, its semi-open world is half-baked. But zooming around with a grappling hook is a kinetic thrill, and the free-to-play multiplayer hits most of the highs from yesteryear without totally needling you (pun intended) for microtransactions.

The only mainline game you won’t play between these two is Halo 5: Guardians, but let’s just say you won’t miss much by skipping that one. – Jeff Dunn, Senior Reporter

Kunitsu-Gami feels like a throwback to when major developers could just release focused and somewhat weird games without worrying about supporting seasons of content or constant updates. It combines action, real-time strategy and tower defense elements with a package that’s reminiscent of Capcom classics like Okami and Onimusha. You play as a spirit warrior whose goal is to protect Yoshiro, a divine maiden, as she progresses through stages to cleanse evil forces from a Japanese mountainside.

During the day, you rescue villagers, assign them to specific roles and clear out evil contamination. At night, you combat the waves of monsters trying to attack Yoshiro. It’s a simple concept that evolves tremendously throughout the course of the game. Consider it a respite from modern games — Kunitsu-Gami is like a long lost PlayStation 2 gem. – Devindra Hardawar, Senior Reporter

Leave it up to Remedy Entertainment to transform a campy series about a Stephen King-esque author fighting the forces of evil into one of the best survival horror games ever made. Alan Wake 2 splits the narrative between the writer himself and Saga Anderson, an FBI agent who stumbles into Wake’s inter-dimensional mystery and has to race to save her daughter’s life from being written out of existence. It’s not nearly as action-focused as the first game, but the stunning graphics, creepy atmosphere and inventive narrative more than make up for that. Fans of Remedy’s Control will also be tickled to see how the developer weaves that game’s universe into Wake’s. – D.H.

Forza Horizon 5 deftly walks a fine line by being an extremely deep and complex racing game that almost anyone can just pick up and play. The game has hundreds of cars that you can tweak endlessly to fit your driving style, and dozens of courses spread all over a gorgeous fictional corner of Mexico. If you crank up the difficulty, one mistake will sink your entire race, and the competition online can be just as fierce.

But if you’re new to racing games, Forza Horizon 5 does an excellent job at getting you up and running. The introduction to the game quickly gives you a taste at the four main race types you’ll come across (street racing, cross-country, etc.), and features like the rewind button mean that you can quickly erase mistakes if you try and take a turn too fast without having to restart your run. Quite simply, Forza Horizon 5 is a beautiful and fun game that works for just about any skill level. It’s easy to pick up and play a few races and move on with your day, or you can sink hours into it trying to become the best driver you can possibly be.

Gears 5 tries to be a lot of things, and doesn't succeed at them all. If you're a Gears of War fan, though, there's a lot to love here. The cover-shooter gameplay the series helped pioneer feels great, and the campaign, while not narratively ambitious, is well-paced and full of bombastic set pieces to keep you interested. As they stand, the various multiplayer modes are not great, but Gears 5 is worth it for the campaign alone.

It’s also a true graphical showcase, among the best-looking console games around. Microsoft did a great job optimizing for all platforms and use-cases, with high-resolution and ultra-high (up to 120fps on series consoles) frame rates.

It took more than a while to get here, but Nier: Automata finally arrived on Xbox One in the summer of 2018. And boy, was it worth the almost-18-month wait. Nier takes the razor-sharp combat of a Platinum Games title and puts it in a world crafted by everyone's favorite weirdo, Yoko Taro. Don't worry, you can mostly just run, gun and slash your way through the game, but as you finish, and finish and finish this one, you'll find yourself pulled into a truly special narrative, one that's never been done before and will probably never be done again. It’s an unmissable experience, and one that feels all the more unique on Xbox, which has never had the best levels of support from Japanese developers.

On Xbox One X and Series X, you effectively have the best version of Nier: Automata available, short of a fan-patched PC game. On Series S and One S... not so much, but you do at least get consistent frame rates on the Series S and a passable experience on the One S.

Pentiment is a 2D-adventure-meets-visual-novel set in 16th-century Bavaria. You play as Andreas Maler, a young artist from a well-to-do family who gets caught up in a murder mystery while trying to complete his masterpiece. The game itself hinges on its artwork and writing. Both are remarkable: The former is like a medieval manuscript brought to life, while the latter is at once warm and biting, but always in complete control of what it’s trying to say. What starts as a seemingly straightforward whodunit turns into a sweeping, soulful meditation on the nature of history, power, community and truth itself. Time and again, it subverts the “your choices matter!” promise video games have long tried (and mostly failed) to fulfill. You don’t expect one of Microsoft’s best first-party Xbox games to be a riff on Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, but, well, it is. – J.D.

Hi-Fi Rush is a hack-and-slash action game built entirely around its soundtrack. You can move and jump freely, but all of your steps and attacks are timed to the beat of the backing music. If you time your moves right on the beat, you can do more damage and pull off combos. Everything else in the world pulsates and takes action to the same rhythm, from enemy attacks to lights flashing in the background.

Is this revolutionary? Not really. Every hack-and-slasher has a sense of performance and musicality to it; Hi-Fi Rush just makes the subtext explicit. It’s Devil May Cry on a metronome. But it’s fun. Ripping through a room of goons is satisfying in most video games; ripping through them entirely in rhythm, with each dodge and final blow punctuated by a beat, is even more so. It helps that the soundtrack is actually good and that the combat system never punishes you too hard for button mashing in a panic. It also helps that the tone is that of a cel-shaded Saturday morning cartoon, starring a lovable doofus named Chai as he takes on a comically evil megacorp. 

Hi-Fi Rush has issues — its stages can drag, for one — but it plays like a passion project from the PS3/Xbox 360 era. It has ideas, and its main concern is being a good time. – J.D.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is the kind of game no one but Rockstar, the team behind the Grand Theft Auto series, could make. Only when a studio is this successful can it pour millions of dollars and development hours into a game. Rockstar's simulation of a crumbling frontier world is enthralling and serves as a perfect backdrop to an uncharacteristically measured story. While the studio's gameplay may not have moved massively forward, the writing and characters of RDR2 will stay with you.

While Rockstar hasn’t deemed fit to properly upgrade Red Dead Redemption 2 for the next-gen yet, Series X owners will at least benefit from one of the best last-gen (Xbox One X) experiences with the addition of improved loading times. The Series S, on the other hand, gets the One S version, but with an improved 30 fps lock and swifter loading.

Resident Evil Village is delightful. It’s a gothic fairy tale masquerading as a survival-horror game, and while this represents a fresh vibe for the franchise, it’s not an unwelcome evolution. The characters and enemies in Village are full of life — even when they’re decidedly undead — and Capcom has put a delicious twist on the idea of vampires, werewolves, sea creatures, giants and creepy dolls. The game retains its horror, puzzle and action roots, and it has Umbrella Corporation’s fingerprints all over it. It simply feels like developers had fun with this one, and so will you.

A word of caution before you run to buy it, though: This game doesn’t play great on every Xbox. On Series X, things are great: There's the option to turn on ray-tracing with the occasional frame rate issue, or to keep it off and have perfect 4K/60 presentation. With the Series S, while there is a ray-tracing mode, it’s almost unplayable. With ray-tracing off, the Series S does a decent job, though. The One X’s 1080p/60 mode is also fantastic, although its quality mode feels very juddery. If you own a base Xbox One or One S, though, there’s really no mode that actually feels enjoyable to play. – J.C.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice isn't just another Dark Souls game. FromSoftware's samurai adventure is a departure from that well-established formula, replacing slow, weighty combat and gothic despair for stealth, grappling hooks and swift swordplay. Oh, and while it's still a difficult game, it's another one that's more accessible than most Souls games — you can even pause it! The result of all these changes is something that's still instantly recognizable as a FromSoftware title, but it's its own thing, and it's very good.

This is one game that’s really not had a lot of love from its developer or publisher, as, despite the fact next-gen consoles should be easily able to run this game at 60 fps, the Series S is locked to an inconsistently paced 30 fps, while the Series X doesn’t quite hold to 60 either. With that said, it’s more than playable.

This is private eye Takayuki Yagami’s second adventure; a spin-off of Sega’s popular, pulpy and convoluted Yakuza saga. He lives in the same Kamurocho area, the same yakuza gangs roam the streets, and there’s the very occasional crossover of side-story characters and, well, weirdos. But instead of punching punks in the face in the name of justice or honor, which was the style of Yakuza protagonist Kazuya Kiryu, Yagami fights with the power of his lawyer badge, drone evidence and… sometimes (read: often) he kicks the bad guys in the face.

The sequel skates even closer to some sort of serialized TV drama, punctuated by fights, chases and melodrama. For anyone that’s played the series before, it treads familiar ground, but with a more serious (realistic) story that centers on bullying and suicide problems in Japanese high schools, which is tied into myriad plots encompassing the legal system, politics and organized crime.

Yagami has multiple fighting styles to master, while there are love interests, batting cages, mahjong, skate parks and more activities to sink even more hours into. On the PS5, Lost Judgment looks great. Fights are fluid and the recreated areas in Tokyo and Yokohama are usually full of pedestrians, stores and points of interest. While Yakuza: Like a Dragon took the franchise in a new (turn-based, more ridiculous) direction, Lost Judgment retains the brawling playstyle of the Yakuza series, with a new hero who has, eventually, charmed us.

We expected great things from Hitman 3, but we didn’t expect IO Interactive to cram so much greatness into its final entry in the stealth assassination series. In addition to concluding the globe-trotting spy tale, which kicked off in 2016’s Hitman reboot, the developer later brought over all of the maps and missions from the first two entries—and so, the World of Assassination was born. This final incarnation of the game features everything we love about the franchise: complex machines, a variety of murder options and tons of whimsy. It’s the perfect game for Hitman diehards, or newbies who want to get in on the action. – D.H.

Street Fighter 6 is a stylish return to form for Capcom’s flagship series. It’s easy for newcomers to pick up and play, thanks to the introduction of new “Modern” and “Dynamic” input modes. They both simplify the traditional Street Fighter controls, so you don’t have to deal with worrying about three separate kick buttons and three punch buttons. Longtime fans don’t have to worry though, as they’ll be right at home with familiar characters, a breezy Arcade mode and lag-free online play. A new World Tour mode also transforms the game into a semi-open world RPG, where you’ll train a character, earn experience points and pick fights with random bystanders. As I wrote in my review, “Street Fighter 6 is a reminder that Street Fighter is for everyone, and that's a beautiful thing to behold.” – D.H.

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is incredibly dumb, and I mean that in the best way possible. It’s a big, loud action game in which you jump in big mechs, shoot big guns, fight big bosses and generally blow up everything in sight. You don’t walk; you fly, glide and speed-boost. It has a story, but its themes are direct and bluntly told. It filters the spirit of an over-the-top anime or a heavy metal album cover through cold sci-fi. It’s the kind of game you play when you want to feel like the coolest person in the world. Importantly, it’s not mindless. Those boss fights are true duels, and much of the game is spent min-maxing builds for your death machine to suit the mission at hand. That flexibility makes the game wonderfully varied in movement: You can just as easily zip around like a robot ninja on ice as you can trudge into dudes with a dual-grenade-cannon-wielding tank. – J.D.

One benefit of the Xbox Series X/S is the way it embraces older games, as there’s a sizable library of original Xbox and Xbox 360 titles you can easily go back and play today. If you’re looking for a dose of nostalgia, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and its sequel are particularly timeless emblems of the 360’s Xbox Live Arcade era. Retro Evolved 2 adds more game modes and a few gameplay tweaks, but both are throwback arcade shooters where the main goal is to survive and get the highest score possible. They’re difficult, but playful and ruthlessly focused. Their action is emergent in that Tetris way, the kind that can put you in a panic or “the zone” in equal measure. Each round becomes a sensory overload of techno sounds, score multipliers, exploding shapes and bursts of color. A third game, Dimensions, is also available and perfectly fine, though it can get a bit too cute with new ideas. – J.D.

Psychonauts 2 is a charming and colorful 3D platformer that casts you as Raz, a 10-year-old boy with psychic powers who can dive into other people’s minds. Like its predecessor — and most other games from developer Double Fine — much of its appeal stems from its writing and world-building. Its style and setting are weird without feeling forced, and Raz is the rare video game child that’s written like an actual child: sweet, idealistic and often unsure, not just a hero in a kid’s body.

Its narrative can get heavy, delving into guilt, isolation, alcoholism and anxiety, but it navigates its themes with warmth, humor and no excessive sentimentality. The actual gameplay and level design could stand to be more adventurous — people’s minds are wild, yet much of what you do here should feel familiar to platforming fans. Still, it works. You don’t need to have played the first to enjoy it, either. – J.D.

While many may dream of it, few will ever have the opportunity to pilot a plane themselves — but you can at least recreate that experience with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Since it debuted in 2020, the reboot of the iconic flying game has improved considerably, thanks to smarter Azure AI enhanced maps and hauntingly beautiful VR support on the PC. There’s a bit of a learning curve, since the game accurately recreates the cockpits of real aircrafts, but once you learn the basics it won’t be long before you’re flying a crop duster or a massive commercial airplane through the clouds. It’s a simulation in the truest sense — the only goal is to vibe out in the air, and hopefully also make a safe landing. – D.H.

The original Dishonored was overshadowed by Bioshock Infinite when it was released in 2012, but it has since become a critical darling, followed by the sequel Dishonored 2 and the spin-off Death of the Outsider. You initially play as a bodyguard, Corvo, who’s framed for the death of the Empress he was protecting and who finds himself on a mission for revenge. Assisting you throughout the journey are a variety of supernatural abilities and weapon upgrades. It’s not too long before you go from being a capable soldier to a super-powered killing machine.

What makes the series unique is the open-ended approach to taking down your targets and their minions, as well as the variety of narrative choices you can make throughout each entry. Do you want to be stealthy and quiet, or unabashedly paint the walls with blood? The choice is yours, and your ending will reflect that. – D.H.