Roundabout
There’s absolutely no doubt that No Goblin’s Roundabout – an insane mix of Crazy Taxi and Kuru Kuru Kururin – has been criminally overlooked by a large number of gamers. Now it’s a part of Xbox Game Pass, that’s something that can be set at least partially right. You play limousine driver Georgio, who drives a limo that is constantly spinning like a top. The goal is to travel through the cheesy 70s-inspired game, taking your passenger to their destination while grabbing collectibles, completing tasks, and working out exactly how you maneuver an extremely long spinning (and bouncing) car through and over countless obstacles that are placed in your way. Presented via fantastic – and genuinely funny – B-movie-style FMV sequences, Roundabout is a game that is enjoyable from start to finish and which takes a surprising amount of time to truly master. Great for a Sunday afternoon drive. Or, erm, spin.
Screamride
The Microsoft-published Screamride was a much-ballyhooed title at launch, but its sales performance suggests that it didn’t appeal to enough gamers to really cause any damage at retail. Now that it’s included with Xbox Game Pass, I’d hope that more people give it a spin since it includes a veritable stack of gameplay and is a pretty unique experience. Three modes of play are on offer. You can try out some trick racing as you try to beat the clock (and stay on the track) while steering a high-speed rollercoaster car, destroy as much as you can with projectiles fired by a massive catapult, or slow things down a little with a bit of puzzling, as you try to build short tracks that make your rollercoaster test drivers cause as much damage as possible when they careen off the end of the run. A free building mode is included as well, for those who want to build their own coaster from scratch and challenge the world to beat their best time. There are framerate issues on occasion in the destruction mode, but that’s not enough to stop Screamride from being fiendishly addictive stuff.
Mad Max
Of the more well-known titles included in the initial Xbox Game Pass selection, Mad Max is the one that’s most likely to fly under the radar. Sure, it features in some of Microsoft’s Game Pass advertising, but it’s always going to play a distant secondary role to the likes of Halo 5.
Suffering a hefty delay and releasing a few months after the universally acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road had done decent business at the box office wasn’t optimal, but the game itself ended up being undoubtedly better for the extra development time. A post-apocalyptic open-world action-adventure featuring more than a little vehicular action – including building the Magnum Opus almost from scratch – Mad Max features a beautifully violent back-and-forth melee combat system that makes overcoming even the most pedestrian enemy feel like the climax to a big budget box office smash. If the hand-to-hand confrontations aren’t your bag, you can always just add some spikes and side flamethrowers to your vehicle and use that to even the score. It’s tough to quantify value for money when a game is just one out of over a hundred you get access to for ten bucks a month. If it helps, the 30-40 hours of enjoyable gameplay on offer in Mad Max means that it was well worth its launch price, let alone whatever fraction of ten dollars it’ll cost you to play it here.
Hopefully, this list has helped you find a bit more quality gaming time out of your Xbox Game Pass trial or subscription. Aside from these, which lesser-known titles would you recommend? Let us know in the comments.
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