Xbox Game Pass: The easiest and fastest completions (December 2022)

Glad to see Scorn make the updated list.

Must be played--screenshots or videos do not do justice.

Gang Beats really is aggravating so I'd approach with caution. It is touched on in the article, but it feels completely random whether you'll get the achievement the first time, the 20th time, or not at all.

TymanTheLong said:Clearly it's not for you but a lot of people enjoyed it for what it is - a creepy puzzle game. If you're complaining about the shooting you're playing the game wrong. You're not meant to get into frequent combat with the creatures, the weapons are a last resort in most situations. If you back up almost all the creatures will leave you alone (and leave the area).

Xeroxcoco said:Hence why I skipped all the dialogue once I realised I didn't like the writing and the plot.

The Cherished said:You didnt know before starting It was a Sam Barlow's game? 😂😂 You are funny

vSully said:Dude, appreciate this post! I didn’t even realise that Slain was on sale! RAD I’m very interested in, too.

+1 from me though in regards to more articles highlighting tougher completions - whether on sale or just in general! I find myself leaning more and more towards harder games these days. I have absolutely nothing against easy Gamerscore (plenty of games I still want to play fall here), I’m just personally really enjoying the sense of accomplishment when overcoming pretty challenging lists so a spotlight on games of this nature would be greatly appreciated by me!

Boots Orion said:I've learned that the sweet spot for AAA games that I love the most (that aren't super damn long) is 15-20 or 20-25.

For indies, it's all over the spectrum. There are some fucking amazing games that are like 2 hours max even after getting all achievements with no guide, yet a bunch of good games show up at all time ranges.

My point is I absolutely agree with you. 20-25 hours can fly on great games though I feel like it depends on the style of game for whether or not it feels short to me.

vSully said:This is a great idea. I'm getting a little tired on the site's shift to focusing more on how to get GS the quickest. That was never what TA was about before. It was about the quality rather than the quantity.

The closest this there is to what I would like to see is the weekly "TA Staff picks" articles. I enjoy those detailed recommendations and I've purchased a few games that I was previously uninterested in or even aware of, before I read the article. But the problem with those articles, is that only 4-5 games are highlighted as opposed the 50-100 quick games that are highlighted in the weekly sales articles.

As for your idea, it would be a simple thing to do. Just as easy as the "Quick Completions" articles.

I really don't care if certain people only want to play quick and easy games - that's up to them - but there should be more of an effort by TA and its staff to provide some information to its user-base that enjoy harder games. We shouldn't have to find it ourselves.

PangoBara said:For sure - and thanks for understanding my point. I enjoy all sorts of games, and I've played enough to know that time can pass quite differently depending on the game in question. 20-25 hours over the course of a 4-7 days can definitely fly by if it is a great game, whereas I've played some 2-3 hour games that I couldn't wait to be finished with.

Your 20-25 hour estimate for a AAA sounds about right...especially for platformers and shooter games. Any more than that and most of them have worn out their welcome. For me anyway. I know some people love playing games until they absolutely perfect them - and that would require much more than 20-25 hours - but that's not how I play games for the most part.

Open-world, RPG, Sim and Strategy/Managements, and some Metroidvanias, games take much longer than 20-25 hours, and that's fine too as the attraction to those types of games is different than platformers and shooters (usually). You play those games knowing they are time sinks and you'd be pissed off if you had done EVERYTHING you can in less than 50 hours.

Boots Orion said:Yep. I would say that that sweet spot is still kind of good for (many) open world games too.

Open world games in the style of like Far Cry or Saints Row are perfect in that time frame if not a little shorter.

Stuff like Skyrim or Red Dead can definitely squeeze a lot more playtime out tho.

That may just stem from me not really liking open world games anymore more than reality tho

Xeroxcoco said:I don't even know how Sam Barlow is lmao
I personally just stumbled into a game pass game and didn't care for it.

Edit: Only other game he's done that I've played looks to be #WarGames. RIP all those Discontinued achievements I'll never be able to unlock lol

Scorn shouldn't be played just for achievements. I've yet to finish it, but I already know it's the type of game that's most rewarding when you just piece it all together yourself. If you're playing games just for an arbitrary number of fake points, you need to ask yourself why you're playing video games in the first place.

Haven't played all of these but have played quite a few and a lot of them were worth a play and probably wouldn't have tried them if they weren't on GP. Contrast, Genesis Noir, Artful Escape, Hellblade, Space Warlord were all time well spent, although on Space Warlord I got hung up for longer than expected due to the random nature of some of the spawns.

I must be really bad at Gang Beasts, because I'm 3+ hours in and haven't even done the hard ones yet. I didn't know about Hello Neighbour 2 speedrun though, that's pretty cool!

Belindo152 said:The gameplay on the initial level was so awful I just uninstalled it. I was hoping for something a lot more polished than this game looked at first glance. Be warned if you start this (though you can fly through the initial level quite a bit and not pop an achievement if you want to try, or at least I did not).