3 Game Pass Games We're Playing This Weekend (Oct. 3-5)

Over the last few weeks, we have been sharing weekly recommendations for the games we are enjoying on Game Pass. It's an opportunity for us to highlight underrated titles or just discuss our favorite games. This time around, though, we have to kick things off by addressing the elephant in the room: the latest unfavorable changes to Game Pass.

Starting October 1, the company revealed a bevy of changes to the service, the most significant coming to the service's Ultimate tier — that provides the largest game library plus immediate availability to new games from Microsoft's game studios. The new price is $30 a month, increased from $20. As expected, subscribers were not happy, with many being vocal on social media and in discussion forums about their plans to terminate their plans.

It's the end of an era for Game Pass as the once celebrated gaming bargain has ended. Now, players must consider if the annual $360 cost for Game Pass's top tier is worth it to them, particularly when daily expenses gets more expensive.

If you're keeping your subscription, or looking for reasons to continue justifying it, read on for this week's recommendations. 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. Or, should you prefer to cancel Game Pass, see our guide on how to change or cancel your Game Pass subscription.

The Lost Crown: A Prince of Persia Adventure

If you do happen to stick with your Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you’re probably going to need more excuses to justify it. A strong argument for paying the extra cash is that it includes to a suite of Ubisoft+ Classics. This provides multiple Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry titles for your $30 a month, but the best perk is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

The 2D Metroidvania brilliantly leverages the series, returning to its origins in a trap-filled labyrinth that’s a exciting to explore. Pair that with some of the deepest, most varied combat the genre offers, and it creates a premium exploration game. Pair it with both Hollow Knight: Silksong and The Rogue Prince of Persia and you’re already breaking even on a quarter of your annual fee.

The Blue Prince Mystery

This investigative puzzle title Blue Prince launched with strong sales and a dedicated community on PC platforms, but console adoption was buoyed at launch by subscription services (it was also available on other services). Player recommendations combined with its ease of access eventually helped the game attract two million users.

Checking out a game for several sessions to discover if it's your jam or not is a key advantage of Game Pass, and those seeking immersion in a mystery should check out Blue Prince. You play as the inheritor of a property and large inheritance, but only if you can find the mansion's secret room. The challenge? The mansion's layout is ever-shifting, making Blue Prince a procedural game with fresh clues to discover every day. After several sessions with it and have been drip-fed secrets and hints related to the enigma at the heart of its manor, and I'm curious to see how it develops as I progress further.

The Prince's Edition: Ni no Kuni 2

Is this suggestion Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom just because the version included on Game Pass is the Prince's Edition version and that makes it tonally consistent with our preceding two recommendations? That remains unconfirmed. 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 emphasis on youthful protagonists, Ni No Kuni 2 doesn't shy away from serious themes, opening with an apparent terrorist attack on a modern-day city 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. Compared to the first game, the combat is more action-focused — think more like a Tales game than a Pokémon one — and features a genuinely deep and detailed simulation in which you have to manage a kingdom. While called the Prince's Edition, but that sounds more like king shit to me.