The Game Pass Deluge is Beginning

Game Pass has always been great, but it’s got to the point where it’s now also impossible to keep up with. This is a fantastic problem to have.

For an average adult with broad tastes, Game Pass has now tipped the scales from very cool to overwhelming. And with a mountain of first-party content expected in the first half of next year, that’s a problem that’s going to remain with us for months to come.

This thought occurred to me thanks to the release of Plague Tale Requiem and Persona 5 back-to-back. Both games I’ve been waiting for, both titles that I wanted to play day one… and yet I’m not even half way through Yakuza 2, a game that has taken me nearly a year to get to in itself.

And I’ve been playing a lot of Overwatch 2 into the mix as well.

This isn’t really a Game Pass post. It’s more a backlog anxiety post, and the unexpected outcome that subscription services add to that. Because having lots of top quality games just a click away is fantastic, but it definitely makes it difficult to get into anything.

The Deathloop

I didn’t really like Deathloop. Let me qualify that. Deathloop was fun, but flawed. The gameplay loop didn’t appeal to me. I spent the entire game feeling like I was one step away from finishing it. However, the end just didn’t come.

And that game took up quite a bit of my time for a week there. Every gaming moment – already limited – was spent in Deathloop. Would I have bought it? Probably not. The endless trailers had failed to grab me. Nonetheless, I hit download the second it became available and gave it more than its fair shake.

There was no “eh, I got games to play”. There wasn’t even a second’s hesitation. I hit download, and I played that game until I couldn’t take one more loop.

That’s not the game’s fault. Critics really enjoyed it, and it has more than a few fans in the gaming community too.

But every second I put into that game was a second I couldn’t spend somewhere else. And yet it was designed – like so many games these days – to hold my attention. Game Pass and PlayStation Plus aren’t about “tricking” you into playing long games for the sake of it. They’re about giving you so much selection, you can never get through the list of things you want to play. And damn, if it’s not working.

Games are not movies. They’re more like books. They require a significant investment of time. And when you have 200 of them at your fingertips, you would be forgiven for hesitating.

So when Pentium hits next month, I know it’s already going to download onto my system. And I know I’ll hate not being able to play it. And in 2023, we have Starfield, Redfall, Minecraft Legends and others are going to be rushing to the service too.

In fact, the only game not likely to hit Game Pass any time soon is Final Fantasy VII Remake. I know I’ve said it’s long overdue, but every day it doesn’t release is another day I don’t have to replay it.

Here’s to having too many games and not enough time.