Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking In any other world, a service like this would consist primarily of the bargain bin trash they couldn’t wait to get off the shelves. But since its launch, Game Pass has been home to some of Xbox One’s biggest releases, day one; Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 4, and Crackdown 3 were all available on Xbox Game Pass the day they were released. Despite a buffet of massive releases to sink your teeth into, the real beauty of Game Pass is that you can try out lesser-known titles you might not have taken the time to check out otherwise. We’ve been burning through the list of included games over the last few weeks on the hunt for the service’s greatest hidden gems. Here’s what we dug up. Rime is an easy sell for Studio Ghibli fans, but it should also satisfy fans of Team Ico’s Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian. Riptide GP: Renegade is like a grittier version of Wave Racer that punched way too many Red Bulls before starting the race. The tropical beaches, sandy shores, and deep blue seas have been replaced by a futuristic metropolis with a cross-city ravine to race through. It’s the perfect game to wet your feet with if your enthusiasm for Mario Kart 8 has dried up. Every time the player dies, its permadeath for the unlucky prisoner you control. The game’s narrating AI then “rehydrates” a new character with new skills and afflictions. Like the classic dungeon-crawling platformer Rogue Legacy, each death introduces a new character with unique abilities and ailments (positive and negative). There’s a ‘Smoker’s Cough’ that gives away your position, a ‘Shallow Breather’ that consumes oxygen slower and just someone that’s ‘Overly Familiar’ and calls everyone by their first names. It’s a wonderfully weird way to get your first-person shooter fix. I bashed my head against this game for months before making serious progress. Unlike Cuphead, GoNNER is more of a tough-as-nails traditional roguelike that boots you back to the beginning each time you die. Despite its crushing difficulty, GoNNER is always a pleasure to play, thanks to its tight controls, superb style, and bopping soundtrack. All in all, The Gardens Between will only take you roughly 2.5 hours to complete, and it’s an entirely stress-free adventure if you need a break from the usual hard-hitting action fare. If you’re planning on mainlining DOOM Eternal, The Gardens Between is the chamomile tea to calm your nerves. Yoku’s relatively ordinary day job leads the dung-hoarding protagonist on a quest to reawaken Mokumana’s sleeping deities to protect the island from a sinister force. The game’s unique traversal and puzzle-solving mechanics are a breath of fresh air and make you wonder why more games don’t rely on the classic pinny machine for inspiration. The first hour or so is almost too easy, as the game acclimatises you to its unique gameplay. Still, like its titular Lovecraftian Creature, there’s a much more significant challenge waiting under the surface. If you don’t bounce off too early go full tilt, you’ll be rewarded with some seriously tricky pinball puzzles to flick through. The art direction is also offensively stylish, so even in the game’s slower sections, you’re treated to a gorgeous playfield. You play as Anja, a rebellious villager who discovers her dormant, mystical powers when her home comes under attack. Indivisible’s addictive traversal and exploration fall into the Metroidvania bucket, but its combat sways more towards classic real-time RPGs. The difficulty curve is a bit wonky, but that’s easy to ignore because the world is just so wonderful to inhabit. True to its name, Minit is played in short 60-second bursts. Each playthrough begins the player’s village home. From there, you’ve got 60 seconds to get out there, solve puzzles, defeat enemies and find essential items. Each playthrough, you push a little further into the game’s world to lift the time-bending curse. Flame in the Flood is a procedurally-generated world where the floods have split the vast land into islands disconnected by flowing rivers; you’ll have to build a few rafts to get around. As an (almost) roguelike, the game has a permadeath system; once you’re dead, it’s back to the drawing board. But the campaign isn’t quite as brutal as most roguelikes and offers checkpoints along the river the further you venture out, so don’t discount it if you’re allergic to the usual progress-robbing fare of the genre.
