It’s my one proper day off in weeks, and what am I doing? Staring at a download queue on my Xbox Series X that’s longer than a CVS receipt. Thirty games, people. Thirty. I’m absolutely gobsmacked because I know, deep down, my SSD is going to wave the white flag long before half of these finish. But how on earth do I pick which ones to keep? I’ve been dying to replay Fable 2 for a decade – a decade! – and suddenly it’s just… there. I finally blitzed through Yakuza 0 last month and I’ve been itching to jump into Kiwami. And then there’s Titanfall 2, which every mate I know has crowned the best shooter ever made, and I can finally see if they’re full of it or not.

Honestly, it’s bonkers. The Witcher 3 – one of the most sprawling, jaw-dropping RPGs ever – is just chilling on Game Pass like it’s no big deal. The entire Mass Effect trilogy, plus Andromeda for the curious, is right there. Dragon Age, Halo, Gears of War, Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Space, Destiny 2, Sea of Thieves… it’s ridiculous, mate. All of this under one roof for 14.99 bucks a month with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate? That’s less than the cost of a cheeky takeaway, and you get over a hundred games plus full online support. Even in 2026, with inflation doing its thing, that’s still an absolute steal. And let’s not forget the cherry on top: every first-party Xbox game launches on Game Pass day one. No ifs, no buts.

The real magic, though, is that Game Pass doesn’t just flex with AAA blockbusters. The very first game I installed was Monster Train, purely because I’m a Slay the Spire nut – and yep, that’s on here too, which is just showing off at this point. I’ve been sleeping on Outer Wilds for years while my friends wouldn’t shut up about it, and now it’s finally my turn. Hollow Knight is calling my name as well; as a die-hard Ori fan, I’m proper buzzing to face off against its biggest rival. Speaking of which, both Ori games are installing as I type, rubbing shoulders with Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy 7, neither of which I’ve ever touched. I’m a gaming disgrace, I know.

I’ve had Game Pass on PC for a while, but experiencing it directly on a console hits different. When you’re looking at that home screen and every tile is a full game, ready to rock, with twenty more in the queue and an endless library waiting to be scrolled, it’s a vibe. It weirdly takes me back to those Saturday mornings at GameStop, nervously plopping a stack of old discs on the counter and hoping the clerk would throw me enough store credit to grab something decent. ‘Thirty quid? Nice, let’s raid the secondhand shelf – maybe a big name for twenty, and a couple of wildcards with what’s left.’ If a game didn’t click, you’d bring it back, trade it in, and roll the dice again. That cycle was my entire teenage personality.

I found some of my all-time favorites that way. Back in 2011, I picked up a random copy of The Witcher 2 for 32 euro, having never heard of it, and it rewired my brain. Now The Witcher is my favourite series across games and books. That never would’ve happened if I hadn’t dug a bunch of dusty games out of my drawer and bartered them at the counter. Game Pass captures that exact same magic of secondhand browsing – the thrill of the hunt, the deliberate scrolling, the ‘I have to choose something’ pressure. It’s almost a meta-game in itself. I’ve genuinely spent two whole hours optimizing my install queue, weighing time-to-beat against file size and how the games talk to each other thematically. You can browse any digital storefront, but it’s not the same. Dropping sixty quid on a single new release feels like a commitment; with Game Pass, you’re armed with that store-credit freedom. The service doesn’t discriminate against older gems either, which makes it feel like a permanent secondhand shop. Right now, I’ve got Yakuza 3 from 2009 downloading, and – I kid you not – Brutal Legend is installing. Twelve years after launch, I’m about to clobber demonic overlords as Jack Black swinging a Flying V battleaxe on a current-gen console. This is the stuff of dreams.

I know we’ve all heard the Game Pass hype since it launched, but let me be crystal clear: in 2026, it’s still the best deal in gaming, bar none. From the nostalgia of flipping through a used-game bin to the pure, undiluted joy of just scrolling and dreaming, to the frankly outrageous value for money, it’s a no-brainer. Midway through writing this, I popped to the kitchen to make a coffee. My brother asked what I was working on, and as I showed him the download queue, I got so animated that I knocked the entire tin of instant coffee across the floor. There I was, furiously hoovering and yelling ‘Yakuza! Yakuza!’ like a madman. If that’s not a testament to how much this service rules, I don’t know what is.

So, I’m off to sink into the rest of my weekend. Maybe I’ll stumble across the next game that grabs me by the soul the way The Witcher 2 did all those years ago. With this much on offer, it’s basically inevitable. Game Pass truly has something for everyone – and I, for one, am never leaving this queue.