X-Box GamePass Expands With Six Titles in January
If you are one of the millions of GamePass subscribers on the X-Box and Microsoft Windows platforms, there’s good news for you this month. Several new titles are hitting the subscription service in the first ten days of January.
Starting today, Ark: Survival Evolved, a dino-riding, multiplayer survival game is available, along with Farming Simulator 17 and Life is Strange 2 Part 1. On January 7th, Absolver arrives, followed on January 10th by Just Cause 3 and new-release Aftercharge.
In Ark, players vie for materials to build shelters and tame dinosaurs while trying to defend their settlements from opposing players. It’s a game that’s pretty popular, so Ark is a big pick up for the GamePass service.
A sequel to the popular Life is Strange graphic adventure game, Life is Strange 2 Part 1 is a third person action adventure game. Additional episodes will follow as they become available. At this point, it doesn’t appear to be related to Life is Strange 1, but there’s still four episodes left, so it’s entirely possible that the two stories will connect somehow.
Farming Simulator is, well, it’s like a big-screen adaptation of Farmville, with big gun John Deere lending it’s name to it. Basically, it’s a simulator that, like SimCity, entices it’s players to cultivate an environment. In this case, a farm, and all the machinations that go into farming and that lifestyle. Think of it like the Sims for the farmhand set.
Absolver is a formerly PS4 and PC exclusive that’s making it’s debut on X-Box One. A mashup of martial arts and RPGs in an online arena, Absolver should satisfy fighting game fans.
Just Cause 3 is an open world, first person shooter that puts you back in the skin of Rico Rodriguez as he tries to free his fictional homeland from a military despot. The object here is destruction, and the world is truly immersive. You can destroy just about everything, and you can drive or fly almost anything as well.
Aftercharge is a team-based online co-op first person shooter, another in the ever-growing field of FPS, joining PUBG and Fortnite trying to take down industry juggernauts Call of Duty and Battlefield.
More titles get added every month, for $10 monthly charge. You can save some coin right now by signing up for the first month for a buck, or, if you are patient and diligent, you can sign up for Microsoft Rewards, which allows you to redeem points you earn by searching Bing for real life rewards like X-Box Live and GamePass.
Even better, new releases from Microsoft are added to the subscription service when they are first released to the public. For example, Gears of War 4 and Forza Horizon 4 were instantly available to GamePass users upon their release.
GamePass continues to be the best bang for your buck in the gaming realm, with new titles added every month. The $10 monthly fee adds up to about the cost of two new games every year, which if you consider the brand new games you get (like Crackdown 3 next month, for example), is worth the price of admission alone, the other 162 games that are available to you notwithstanding.
Rich Davenport graduated from Concordia University in St. Paul Minnesota with a B.A. in Mass Communication. He is a lifelong comicbook reader, a film fan and a hardcore video gamer. He also makes a lot of funny faces in pictures, much to his wife’s chagrin.
