The 9 Best Xbox Series X and S Games So Far

We’re in a strange position with Xbox these days – caught between the need to make games and publish them everywhere (including on PlayStation), and the need to give gamers a compelling reason to stick to the Xbox ecosystem. This has led to a bit of confusion around what is and isn’t an ‘Xbox game’.

There are plenty of great games on both current-gen Xbox consoles, the base-level Xbox Series S and the empowered Xbox Series X, though. The fact that some of these games are also available on PC, Nintendo Switch, or PlayStation doesn’t make them any less ‘Xbox’ – it just means more people can play them.

With that in mind, we’re taking a slightly different approach to this list of the best games on the Xbox Series consoles – focusing on games made by, funded by, or supported by Microsoft in some way. You’ll see great RPGs, industry-leading racing, pint-sized survival, and obliterating action in our picks for some of the best games available on the Xbox platform.

In short, if you’re looking for some of the best games to dive into on your Xbox Series X or S, look no further!

The Best Xbox Games at a Glance

• For story lovers: Avowed
• For racing fans: Forza Horizon 5
• For action fans: Ninja Gaiden II Black
• For families and friends: Grounded

1. Avowed

• Xbox Game Pass: Yes
• Genre: RPG
• Developer: Obsidian
• Players: 1
• Release Date: 18 February, 2025
• Metacritic: 80

There’s been a lot of buzz around legendary RPG-maker Obsidian’s new game, Avowed, for a while. Arriving earlier in 2025, the game actually managed to stick the landing, launching to positive reviews and a fan-base ready for more.

See, Obsidian has made some of the best RPGs of all time, such as Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity, and Avowed delivered everything fans of their prior games come to expect: deep character customisation, non-linear story progression, a vast and interesting world to explore, and a surprisingly deep combat system. While it didn’t end up as the Elder Scrolls competitor it was originally billed as, Avowed is a fantastic game by all accounts, and is a good starting point to anyone considering diving into the Pillars of Eternity world (of which Avowed is a part).

Here, you play as an envoy for the Aedyran Empire, and have been sent to a previously unexplored corner of the world, ‘the Living Lands’, to investigate a mysterious plague racking the realm called the ‘Dream Scourge’. From that starting point, characters are free to explore the land, interact with characters and settlements, and help shape the Living Lands’ path forward.

If you’re looking for a traditional first-person RPG, you’ve found it.

2. Forza Horizon 5

• Xbox Game Pass: Yes
• Genre: Open-world Racing
• Developer: Playground Games
• Players: 1, 2-6 (online co-op), 2-12 (online multiplayer)
• Release Date: 5 November, 2021
• Metacritic: 92

Probably still the best racing game on the market four years later, Forza Horizon 5 is a special game. It combines the best of what we already know and love from Forza – that is, about 900 beautifully rendered vehicles that all handle impeccably – in a vast open-world rendition of Mexico, giving you the freedom to choose how you’ll progress.

Do you want to just drive around and do some stupid shit? Do you want to focus on collecting cars? Or are you planning on finishing every race on the map? You choose.

There is actually a bit of a story here: you create your own avatar, who you’ll play as in a ‘underground racing’ storyline which might get in the way if the goal is just to drive cars, but it’s not too intrusive.

Still, it’s the best racing game on the console and will probably remain so until Forza Horizon 6 gets announced.

3. Gears Tactics

• Xbox Game Pass: Yes
• Genre: Turn-based Strategy
• Developer: Splash Damage, The Coalition
• Players: 1
• Release Date: 28 April, 2020
• Metacritic: 80

Gears of War was once an absolute juggernaut of a series, with Marcus Fenix being one of the faces of the Xbox brand, along with Master Chief. I wouldn’t say any of that is true any more, but I would say that Gears Tactics is an awesome side-step in a series that was getting a bit tired. It has a very generic name, though.

Compared to the third-person cover shooters of yore, Tactics is a top-down turn-based tactics game where you control an entire squad of human soldiers through missions largely aimed at dealing with series-enemy the Locust Horde. It takes place a few years before the original Gears of War, following the story of Sgt. Gabriel Diaz as he tracks and hunts a Locust scientist, Ukkon, who has been creating deadly creatures following the Locust Horde.

There are six different character classes you can invoke (Support, Vanguard, Heavy, Jack, Scout, and Sniper), each of which also come with four separate subclasses, branching out to 24 individual character types.

Despite that, there isn’t a ton of replayability in this one. Rather, you’re more than likely going to play through once for the story and then move on, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are a bunch of side missions you can undertake if you want to pad the runtime a bit, but I wouldn’t worry about it too much, honestly. Not everything needs to be a massive, hundred-hour epic.

4. Grounded

• Xbox Game Pass: Yes
• Genre: Survival Crafting
• Developer: Obsidian
• Players: 1, 2-4 (online co-op)
• Release Date: 27 September, 2022
• Metacritic: 83

If you’re like me and love playing survival crafting games – especially with friends – Grounded is going to be something special. You and up to three of your friends are essentially playing out a new ‘Honey I Shrunk The Kids’ storyline as a group of teenagers that have been shrunk down and find themselves lost in a scientists backyard.

While you’ll start off with nothing, and have no idea where to go or what to do, you’ll begin to learn more about the flora and fauna around you as you begin to explore. Bugs and spiders will serve as the main creatures to be wary of, at least in the early game, as the more you play the more you begin to understand the combat and means of survival at your fingertips. Also, arachnophobes don’t worry too much, you can actually change how the little critters look to (hopefully) ease the tension a little.

In saying that, it isn’t an especially scary game – it’s not quite a horror game – but you will be delving into spider’s dens and whatnot so, depending on how you feel about that, it could be on par with the zombies of Resident Evil or the …things… in Silent Hill.

5. Halo Infinite

• Xbox Game Pass: Yes
• Genre: Sci-Fi FPS
• Developer: 343 Industries
• Players: 1-4 (split screen or online co-op), up to 24 (competitive multiplayer)
• Release Date: 15 November, 2021
• Metacritic: 87

While not as influential as Halo’s earlier works, Infinite is an amazing first-person shooter that continues the legacy of Bungie’s seminal sci-fi story. Yes, you’re playing as Master Chief. Yes, you’ll be exploring an alien planet, shooting your way through legion of creatures. And, yes, there’s some fantastic multiplayer in there for you to enjoy when you’re finished up with the single player.

Halo Infinite (Halo 6 in all but name) is the final part of 343’s ‘Reclaimer Saga’, following Halo 4 and Halo 5. As such, it’d be a bit odd to play out-of-order, but thankfully all of Halo’s games are available on Xbox Game Pass, so if you’re keen on Infinite, make sure to study up on the older games first.

In saying that, you’re largely getting an improved version of what we’ve seen before from 343: great shooting and world design, all wrapped up a new approach. This time, Halo is open-world, and encourages a bit of exploration rather than just push players down a list of missions. Whether that works for you will be subjective, but it’s an interesting evolution of the Halo formula, and well worth a play if you’re a fan of Master Chief’s earlier adventures.

Unfortunately, the game’s multiplayer is a bit average compared to prior games. While the gameplay is solid (as usual for this series), 343 has been very lean on adding content, leaving players without much new to do. That’d be fine if there were a new Halo game to play, but, for now, this is it.

6. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II

• Xbox Game Pass: Yes
• Genre: Action adventure, psychological horror
• Developer: Ninja Theory
• Players: 1
• Release Date: 21 May, 2024
• Metacritic: 81

Aside from being one of the best looking games of the current generation (which is saying a lot), Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is a fascinating ride. You’ll absolutely want to play the original Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice before booting this one up, but thankfully both games are fairly short at around 7-8 hours each.

In the Hellblade series, you take on the role of Senua, a Orcadian warrior come to Iceland to free her people. Things aren’t quite as they seem, though: Senua suffers from bouts of psychosis, will occasionally see and hear things that aren’t real, and find herself unable to comprehend the world in a rational way. It’s a very interesting character to play, as Senua is often battling herself as much as she is the Viking slavers she hunts.

You’ll fight in a sort-of souls-like style of combat, though much more cinematic and slow paced, though the majority of this sequel is actually spent exploring the world to uncover a way forward. You’ll use Nordic runes and perspective to solve puzzles, which which will open new paths and allow Senua to progress.

It’s a bit horror-coded, but isn’t a survival horror game by any stretch. Rather, it leans into the psychological horror of Senua’s psychosis, marrying it with Norse mythology in a way that creates something fun and unique.

7. Hi-Fi Rush

• Xbox Game Pass: Yes
• Genre: Rhythm-based Action
• Developer: Tango Gameworks
• Players: 1
• Release Date: 25 January, 2023
• Metacritic: 87

From the people who brought you The Evil Within comes Hi-Fi Rush, a music-based character action game bringing together the smooth gameplay of something like Devil May Cry with the rhythm-based input of Guitar Hero: players are incentivised to attack to the beat, with well-timed inputs getting a damage increase.

You play as Chai, a guy dreaming of becoming a rockstar who volunteers to be a part of an experimental program to replace his non-functioning arm. During surgery Chai’s tape player is accidentally lodged in his chest, which gives him a musical connection with the world around him and, after being pursued by robotic security forces for being a ‘defect’, he escapes into the world and begins investigating just what is going on.

It’s an incredibly fun and colourful game that seeks to deliver something a bit more memorable than a lot of big-budget games, channeling the heart present in so many indie games with the skill and budget of a bigger team. And, surprise surprise, it works.

Tango Gameworks got laid off by Microsoft in early 2025 despite the game’s quality and success, and the team was quickly scooped up by PUBG-publisher Krafton. It’s possible we’ll see a Hi-Fi Rush 2 at some point, but for now, you can enjoy the original.

8. Microsoft Flight Simulator

• Xbox Game Pass: Yes
• Genre: Flight sim
• Developer: Asobo Studio
• Players: 1
• Release Date: 18 August, 2020
• Metacritic: 91

While games like No Man’s Sky get to say that they’ve procedurally generated entire planets and universes, no game but Microsoft Flight Simulator can say that they’ve actually mapped the entirety of our own Earth. That’s cool enough, but the fact that you can also jump in any number of planes – from small single-motor planes, like the one pictured above, to larger commercial vessels – allows anyone with an interest in aviation to live out their dreams of soaring through the skies.

It’s very much a one-trick pony, though. It’s a game in the sense that it’s on a gaming console, but it’s much more interested in providing the simulation part of the arrangement than giving players any real sense of progression or purpose in the world.

It’s one of those ‘you-make-your-own-fun’ games, in other words. Sure, you can take photos, and perform various challenges like safely landing in dangerous weather, but it’s not enough to keep someone uninterested in the sim aspect playing long.

However, there’s a real sense of freedom in being able to simply pick a plane and head off in a direction – exploring the world in a way that we probably never will in our daily lives.

9. Ninja Gaiden II Black

• Xbox Game Pass: Yes
• Genre: Character Action
• Developer: Team Ninja
• Players: 1
• Release Date: 23 January, 2025
• Metacritic: 80

One of the most beloved games from the Xbox 360-era, Ninja Gaiden II has been in need of a re-release for a while, and now, thanks to Microsoft, we’ve got it. Ninja Gaiden II Black delivers a beautiful graphical update to one of the best character action games of all time, while making it playable on current-gen consoles and PCs – it’s the best of both worlds.

You take on the role of Ryu Hayabusa, legendary ninja and demon slayer, as he aims to stop the return of a great demonic evil. Along the way you’ll cut down hordes of fiends, take on the Black Spider Clan, and descend into the underworld to save humanity. It’s pretty typical character action stuff from a story perspective, but it’s in the gameplay where Ninja Gaiden shines.

A master warrior, Hayabusa is a force to be reckoned with. Blade in hand, you’ll be dismembering enemies left-and-right, absorbing their essence to heal and empower yourself, and using the game’s ‘obliteration techniques’: stylish finishing moves that allow you to kill off an enemy close to death before they can take you with them. Despite being incredibly skilled, Hayabusa is still only human, and can be seriously hurt by the foes he faces – he’s no Dante, and isn’t some immortal demon hybrid – and so players will want to avoid damage wherever possible.

While Black doesn’t include many of the extras included in the previously released Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma, it does bring one of the best action games ever made back into the modern era and signals a return to Ninja Gaiden. Bring it on!

There’s Plenty More

While these are a few of our favourites, there are literally hundreds of other fantastic games available on the Xbox Series X and S, many of which can be played through the platform’s Xbox Game Pass service. This generation is still going strong, and has some fantastic games to come, so we’re looking forward to seeing what Microsoft delivers in the next few years!

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