Do I have to say it at this point? I’ve said it, and so has everyone else. The best deal in gaming right now is Xbox Game Pass, with Ultimate allowing you to cross between your PC, phone, and console. So let’s cover everything being added to the service in the final two weeks of May 2021.

Coming to Console and PC on May the 20th – The Wild At Heart

In March, I said that The Wild at Heart was a beautiful cross between the Don’t Starve top-down gameplay and the Stranger Things/80s nostalgia rolled up into one charming little bundle. Releasing Thursday onto the Microsoft Store, the game about adventure, wonder, and two young kids escaping a darker story than the colorful look would suggest will be the top of some folks’ list of downloads.

Coming to PC on May the 20th – Secret Neighbor

The multiplayer-focused version of the YouTuber yelling at a webcam simulator is coming to Game Pass for PC. First released in 2019, it follows the Evolve-style of gameplay where there might be a total of six of you entering the house of the creepy neighbor, but one of you is really the titular neighbor secretly in disguise. I can honestly say, beyond the aforementioned YouTuber and their webcams, I’ve yet to see anyone recommend any of the Hello Neighbor series. If you find five others, enjoy it if you like.

Coming to Cloud via EA Play on May 20th – Peggle 2

Do I need to honestly explain Peggle to you? What next, Bejeweled, Tetris, and Zuma? You fire balls at blockades with the goal of breaking them. It is satisfying, your simple human brain goes away happy because you cleared the screen of all the barriers while getting a high score. If you’ve gone this far in your life with playing a Peggle game, you’ve simply not been born yet, or you are young enough to say, “I’m not young anymore, I’m 11!”

Also coming to Cloud via EA Play on May 20th – Plants Vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville

I think I can honestly say this. I’ve never played a single Plants Vs Zombies game. Another PopCap ‘classic,’ the tower defense game with the titular plants and zombies gained popularity with the “casual” gaming market. Later it became part of EA’s love of microtransactions, which has never dissipated over the 12-years since its first release. So it only made sense that the series aimed at people on mobile was turned into a third-person hero shooter 10-years later. Yep!

Coming to Cloud, Console, and PC on May 20th – The Catch: Carp & Coarse Fishing

I was offered a spot to go fishing at the end of this month, with my only other experience being fly fishing where I caught 2 fish within 20-minutes. Anyway, The Catch is the type of thing you’d find in the 00s in a bargain bin for several quid a few months after release. It is a typical hunting/fishing game with enough to satisfy a very small niche. This is where I think Game Pass works best, you can try out something outside of your own niches without too much of that “risk” with buying it outright.

Coming to Console and PC via EA Play on May 21st – Knockout City

Right, so the Plants Vs Zombies hero shooter didn’t get you excited like an afternoon delight, but what about an extreme-dodgeball game set in a cartoon city? Honestly, this sounds like another Rocket Arena, but less stupid, if I’m quite honest. Some are going to claim that it is the hot new thing, like they did with Fall Guys, and then several months later there is almost nothing said about it. I can’t wait to find out on Friday when I ignore it.

Coming to Cloud, PC, and Console on May the 25th – Maneater

Hear me out here, you play as a shark and it is an action RPG, it is a Shark-pg. I’m in! I don’t mind the Hall and Oats reference, but if you tell me I can chew a man in half with one bite, I’m instantly in and want to play it. I don’t need “Ohh, here she comes,” I’m going to be humming the Jaws theme to myself and giggling like a maniac as I score a hole-in-one with a golfer’s eyeball that popped out as I ate him.

Coming to Cloud and Console on May the 27th – Conan Exiles

What would happen if you made Minecraft, but it was an MMO and worse? You’d get Rust, but if you wanted to use an existing IP that would get attention from boring people, you’d get Conan Exiles. If you like to wake up in a hostile land naked, alone, and afraid, move to Russia without learning the language and get drunk. Though if you want to play a game Conan Exile might be for you.

Coming to Cloud on May the 27th – Fuzion Frenzy

What would happen when the Xbox released in 2001 and needed a party game that was perfect for Xbox players? Fuzion Frenzy, a miss-match of tens of mini-games that if memory serves me correctly, weren’t that good.

Also coming to Cloud on May the 27th – Joy Ride Turbo

An Xbox Live Arcade arcade kart racing game, I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve heard of it. However, a brief bit of research told me that it was a sequel to Kinect Joy Ride. You can already tell that wasn’t a good start to a series that was trying to be Mario Kart but generic.

Coming to Console on May the 27th – MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries

Releasing on May 27th on Xbox One and Series X/S alongside the Steam release after over a year on Epic exclusivity, MechWarrior 5 is set to be giant robot wars. Don’t worry, the BBC will cancel it after two series. Though Mike wrote a review for it back in 2019, I still have no idea about it because once you tell me it’s about mechs fighting. I should be interested but I’m simply not. It seems that now would be the perfect time to give it a shot.

Coming to PC on May 27th – Slime Rancher

I’m pretty sure I own Slime Rancher on a handful of platforms, and I can honestly say that I still don’t know what it is. I know you go about with a sucky gun, trying to Wallace and Gromit were-rabbit some slimes into captivity. Beyond that and a niche reference to a movie tie-in game for the PS2, I honestly couldn’t tell you anything else. It is pretty, colorful, and cute, but you can tell that already.

Coming to PC on May the 27th – Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Making its full release from several months in Early Access, Solasta: Crown of the Magister is a D&D turn-based RPG with a UI that gives me flashbacks to the early 00s. Filled with magic, horrid monsters, and several people with pointy ears that don’t make toys in Santa’s slave camps, it is your typical D&D thing from the outside. This is the problem when you have me doing these articles, I don’t know the first thing about D&D or the game itself.

Coming to PC on May the 27th – SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest

It was probably a bad idea to admit that before getting to SpellForce 3: Souls Harvest. First released in 2019 as the standalone expansion to SpellForce 3, it is another one of those high-fantasy RPGs but with an RTS twist. Magic, dwarves, sleepy short people, and more grim-looking people with pointy ears, it has already made some of you mark your calendars.

Available right now on Cloud, Console, and PC – SnowRunner

I played a bit of MudRunner the other month when it was part of the Epic Games Store thing, and I quite enjoyed it. That’s an odd thing to say when all you are doing is driving through difficult to navigate terrain. Nonetheless, the treacherous conditions of Alaska are intriguing for those of us boring enough to enjoy that type of thing. It is well worth checking out while you can with Game Pass.

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