Xbox Game Pass: 10 Must-Plays You Should Try

You've got no excuse.

By Jake Mellor /

Although initially released in 2017, it took a couple of years for the Xbox Game Pass to develop into a subscription service worthy of its monthly fee. Bolstered by the addition of PC games into its Ultimate tier, it's now an obvious go-to for your next quick fix.

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With an ever-changing library of over 100 games to choose from, it's difficult to know where to start, sorting the wheat from the chaff, the Oblivion from the Two Worlds.

Yet the diverse selection is almost guaranteed to offer something to suit anyone and everyone, whether a blockbuster RPG or a chaotic couch co-op; and for no additional fee other than hours spent waiting for them to download.

It's well worth putting your hands to the following titles and seeing for yourself what Game Pass brings to our living rooms.

10. The Talos Principle

The Talos Principle was universally lauded by both reviewers and the public. A narrative-driven puzzler, it's an eccentric fusion of the ancient and the futuristic, as if the set designers for The Crystal Maze got confused and amalgamated two of the zones.

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You control an android awoken in a world void of humanity; the story toys with philosophical issues such as AI self-consciousness, several years before Detroit: Become Human would tread similar waters.

Whilst the puzzles are at the core of the gameplay, you have the power to make choices and influence the storyline in ways which other titles don't; at no point in Portal could you decide that all GLaDOS needed was a bit of WD-40 and intensive robot therapy, instead of blowing her up.

The ability to influence the outcomes makes The Talos Principle far more involving than your average puzzler, and may even prompt players to turn into makeshift philosophers as they consider the ethics behind the story.

It might share similar geometric puzzle pieces, but it's a far cry from the comparatively superficial addictiveness of Tetris. The music is far less of an earworm, too.

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