Microsoft has unveiled the next batch of games coming to the Xbox Game Pass for PC. In a nice move, the company says it's going to make separate announcements for the console and PC games they're adding to the pass in order to avoid confusion about what's going up where.
The headliner for September, obviously, is the Gears 5 Ultimate Edition. This is a more open game than Gears of War has ever been, and the early reviews have generally nice things to say about it.
The rest of this month's games are a solid selection of indies. There's the excellent Dead Cells, a platform combat game that earned our Best Roguelike award in 2018. Bad North is a deceptively demanding little RTS about soaking adorable little watercolour islands in the blood of invading hordes. There's also GoNNER, which is a very strange little roguelike platformer about bugs and skulls.
Then there's Shadow Warrior 2, which is a slicey-dicey loot-shooter that has bad jokes but a song by none other than Stan "You Got The Touch" Bush. Rounding out the pack are Enter the Gungeon, a roguelike shmup with adorable baddies and hilarious guns, and Creature in the Well, which is a top-down dungeon crawler that's been cursed by the Pinball Wizard.
Xbox Game Pass for PC launched in beta during E3 this year. It's $5 / £4 per month, but you can get a month for $1 / £1 (or your regional equivalent).
Marvel Rivals is blissful chaos, which makes me worry that—like Overwatch—it'll have all the fun drained out of it once the balancing wars begin
Space Marine 2's huge Obelisk Update adds a long-awaited new mission, reworked melee combat, bonus XP, and goat-bird-wizards hurtling towards you on living flying saucers
