Award season never ends with Xbox Game Pass. What are you into? Narrative? Game design? Acting? If you want to dive into some of the top noms, Xbox Game Pass is the go-to you need. 2025 was a great year for games. Here are six that set themselves apart from the pack.
Doom: The Dark Ages
We love Doom, but what about Doom with a battle axe? Since the 2016 revival, this adrenaline-soaked series has had us mowing through scores of demons with gusto. Doom: The Dark Ages is the third in the series and delivers a more melee-focused combat style to pair with the fantasy-steeped environments in a departure from Doom’s sci-fi origins. In our review, PC Gamer called The Dark Ages “doom at its most indulgent and deliciously violent,” which, you know, is pretty indulgent. The Dark Ages walked away with a special recognition from the Game Awards for Innovation in Accessibility, ensuring as many people as possible can both rip and tear.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Is there an actor more closely associated with the art of video game performance than Troy Baker? With classic characters, including Joel in The Last of Us and Booker in BioShock Infinite, under his belt, Baker is one of the most in-demand actors in games today. His performance as the titular archaeologist in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has garnered award recognition and, perhaps even more importantly, earned compliments from Harrison Ford himself. Our review called Indiana Jones and the Great Circle “MachineGames’ best game to date,” and Baker’s acting is no small part of it.
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Ball x Pit
Not since Peggle has watching a ball bounce around a screen been so enjoyable. Our review starts with the following warning: “There are certain games where you can tell immediately that they’re going to ruin your life for a week. Five minutes into Ball x Pit, I knew I was in danger.” Ready to ruin your life, too? This Breakout meets roguelike has you blasting specialized balls around a battlefield, clearing a path, and gaining rewards to spend back at your base. The premise is simple, but the execution gets its hooks in you and doesn’t let go. Ball x Pit proves that sometimes more is more.
No Man’s Sky
No Man’s Sky is one of the most remarkable stories in gaming. From a middling beginning, the team at Hello Games has released 35 named updates, expanding on base building, space combat, and planetary exploration while adding biomes, alien races, and entire world types. When starting a game of No Man’s Sky, there’s no telling where you’ll end up. Exploring alien-infested starships? Fishing off the coast of a barely inhabited planet? If our update page is any indicator, few games evolve as fluidly as No Man’s Sky.
Rematch
The easy-to-play but difficult-to-master Rematch is one of the year’s most awarded sports games. Brought to you from the team behind the slick third-person brawler Sifu, Rematch delivers a five-on-five soccer experience that is hard to put down. With tight controls and style to spare, our review called Rematch “as intense an arcade sports game as I’ve played in a long time.” Hop on the pitch and see if you agree.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has received a ton of love from awards committees, but there’s one that might be most notable to you, dear reader. It was PC Gamer’s Game of the Year. Chock-full of interesting interactions, persnickety (in a good way) systems, and a difficulty curve that will have you laid low against your standard bandit, KCD2 is “already regarded as a beloved RPG classic.” What more is there to say?
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