The third outing for Frontier's excellent F1 Manager series is the best yet, implementing a series of new features that don't reinvent the wheel by any means, but add up to a more enjoyable and in-depth experience overall. Better yet, it's launching at a price of just £29.99 / $34.99 on Xbox consoles, which makes it significantly cheaper than this time last year! Casual fans may be perfectly happy with F1 Manager 2023 on Xbox Game Pass for now, but anyone who really enjoys this series will want to join F1 Manager 2024's starting grid ASAP.
Of course, this all relies on you enjoying the repetitive loop that Rolling Hills offers, and if you don't... well, you're not going to stick with it. That's the downside here - it's a game that some people will bounce off very quickly, especially considering it's very easy in the first few hours. However, if you become as enticed by it as we have, you'll be in for a great experience with Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends on Xbox Game Pass.
Top Spin 4 was so good that it continued to thrive for 10 years past its sell-by date, and TopSpin 2K25 feels just as enjoyable to play in 2024. Sure, the character models don't look great, and the game could do with a few tweaks and additions in certain areas, but the key thing is that developer Hangar 13 has nailed the gameplay. We've been waiting such a long time for a tennis title to really grab our attention like Top Spin 4 did back in the day, and we're pleased to say that TopSpin 2K25 is comfortably the best tennis game we've played in over a decade.
Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator is a pretty addictive new addition to the genre, but it's giving us a rough ride at launch. It does the basics well for the most part, and features an impressively large and detailed version of Barcelona to cruise around in, but the unintelligent AI drivers, poor performance and various other irritations are significant drawbacks. This has all the potential to be a good (or even great) game, but it's going to take a few patches to get there.
WWE 2K24 is undoubtedly one of the best wrestling games in Xbox history, but it's also a game that prioritises incremental upgrades over any kind of major overhauls, so casual fans may struggle to justify a full-price purchase. As dedicated wrestling "marks" though, we think the new MyRise stories, superb improvements to MyGM, nostalgia-driven Showcase mode, additional match types and various gameplay adjustments are all worth the price of admission.
It felt like Hogwarts Legacy was always going to struggle to live up to the hype, but somehow Avalanche Software has managed to deliver an absolutely fantastic open world adventure that will surely go down as comfortably the best game based on the Harry Potter franchise so far. If you've been following its progress for a while and were keeping your fingers crossed for good reviews, we're pleased to report that it's definitely been worth the wait.
For the first entry in a brand-new series, Frontier has done a great job with F1 Manager 2022. The 3D race engine is consistently engaging and visually stunning for a management game, the user interface is well-designed, and even the controls are easy enough to get to grips with on Xbox. There are definitely balancing issues that need to be ironed out at launch, but if Frontier can add some updates pretty sharpish, we'll happily bump this review up to at least an 8/10.
If you enjoyed Two Point Hospital on Xbox Game Pass, you're going to love Two Point Campus as well. It's a great sequel in a superb simulation series, and the college/university setting feels like the perfect next step for Two Point Studios' brand of silly, strategic fun. It's also one of the most enjoyable Xbox simulation games out there thanks to its well-designed control scheme, complete with a single-player campaign you'll almost certainly get invested in.So, does it pass the test...? Absolutely!
So, that's PowerWash Simulator in a nutshell. It's a really chill addition to Xbox Game Pass that you'll likely end up enjoying a lot if you're into this sort of thing, while others will inevitably think it's boring and too repetitive. It does what it says on the tin though, executing on its concept very effectively, while the addition of online co-op with cross-play between Xbox and PC is a great touch.
Matchpoint: Tennis Championships deserves your attention on Xbox Game Pass, as it's genuinely one of the better Xbox tennis games we've seen in years. It has its drawbacks, particularly in the presentation department, but it's also good fun when you get out on the court. Unfortunately, some of that enjoyment has been taken away for us because even on the highest difficulty, the game just feels far too easy at launch, rendering a lot of the strategic elements and Career Mode's features somewhat useless for now. It's still a pretty good game regardless, but definitely in need of a couple of balancing tweaks over the coming weeks and months.
So, we're happy to report that Fall Guys is definitely worth trying out on Xbox, and the fact that it supports cross-platform and cross-progression with other platforms means you can mix-and-match across Xbox, PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, and that aspect seems to be working really well in our experience so far. We've had to wait a couple of years for its arrival, but it's great to see Fall Guys finally joining the Xbox family in 2022!
Kao The Kangaroo is a hard one to sum up, then, because while it definitely feels low-budget, clunky and frustrating at times, it's also a platformer packed with plenty of fun and memorable moments. It feels like the developer went the extra mile to inject some ambition into this game and craft something that deserves a place alongside the behemoths of the genre, even if it can't meet the lofty heights of a Crash Bandicoot or a Super Lucky's Tale. It's nice to see Kao punching above his weight in 2022, and not just being relegated to an easy cash grab.
It always felt like LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga would struggle to live up to its lofty promise of delivering essentially the most expansive Star Wars game to date, but the team at TT Games really have done an amazing job on it. We've still got a few nitpicks, and we also wish it included online co-op support, but there's no denying that it's a stunningly beautiful and brilliantly ambitious take on the world of Star Wars complete with endlessly enjoyable gameplay and enough side-content to keep you busy for many, many hours to come. We've been waiting so long for this game to arrive, and we're pleased to report the Force is definitely strong with this one.
In our view, Shredders is an ideal Xbox Game Pass game. It's a game most players will get a few hours of enjoyment from, complete the missions and grab some achievements, and then move on. The dedicated fans will keep coming back for the fluid and rewarding gameplay, and maybe to get perfect scores on all those missions. If you go into it expecting a big-budget rival to the likes of SSX and Amped, you might be disappointed with what you find, but taken at face value, Shredders is a fun time and a worthy addition to the sports library on Game Pass.
WWE 2K22 isn't going to surpass the likes of "No Mercy" and "Here Comes The Pain" in terms of fan favourite wrestling games, but in our opinion, it's the best WWE 2K game to date. The gameplay is improved, the graphics are improved, and there's enough content here to keep you busy for a long time, even if some of the new modes haven't quite reached their potential yet. There are still some unwanted series staples here, such as clunky collision detection, but for the most part it's obvious how much progress has been made across the board over the past couple of years, and it's now up to 2K to take things to the next level with WWE 2K23.
It's a transitional year for NHL, then. It's arguably better than ever on the ice, playing a mostly authentic and enjoyable brand of hockey that implements some subtle, but worthy new features to satisfy hardcore fans. It also looks meaningfully improved thanks to the Frostbite engine (and clearly a lot of hard work). But in terms of content and game modes, it's largely the same offering as last year, and that gets pretty old after a while. Hopefully, now that the engine transition is out of the way, we can look forward to some ambitious new modes and features in NHL 23 and beyond.
Is Back 4 Blood the Left 4 Dead 3 we've been waiting for? Yes! It's a worthy spiritual successor to Valve's classic zombie-slaying series of multiplayer games, and offers a well-designed Campaign mode with some impressive new features such as its strategic Card system. The difficulty perhaps needs balancing a little more, and the lack of meaningful progression when playing Solo Campaign needs addressing sharpish, but otherwise we've had a blast with Back 4 Blood so far, and we look forward to many more Campaign runs in the weeks, months and years to come.
We're pleasantly surprised by FIFA 22 on Xbox Series X. The franchise had a good first outing on next-gen consoles last year, but the gameplay has really been taken up a notch this time around, seemingly proving that "Hypermotion Technology" isn't just another throwaway buzzword. It's not perfect, and there are certain areas off the pitch that we wish could have received even more attention, but this is the best FIFA has been in quite a few years, and we just hope it isn't ruined by unnecessary gameplay patches down the line.
Ultimately, the main impression we've taken away from Golf Club: Wasteland is that it's an alright golf game on its own, but it's really not about the golf. You'll want to settle in with a nice pair of headphones when playing this one, let the game suck you into its unique concept and narrative, and we think you'll have a really good time with it. At a standard price of £8.29 / $9.99, it's a definitely a reasonable fee for an other-worldly round of golf.
All in all, Twelve Minutes is definitely worth a download with Xbox Game Pass if you're even the least bit interested in the premise, as both its story and gameplay combine to create a memorable thriller. There are a couple of downsides if you look for them, and the replayability factor will be pretty low after you've discovered everything, but we think you'll really enjoy your main playthrough regardless, even if you're not the biggest fan of point-and-click games.