Skip to main content

April 2019 Xbox Game Pass additions include Monster Hunter: World and Prey

Xbox Game Pass Deal April May 2019 Monster Hunter World Prey

Microsoft is hoping to entice gamers with a hot new deal on the company’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service and there are some upcoming new additions to the library that sweeten the deal further. April’s Xbox Game Pass lineup includes the additions of Prey, Monster Hunter: World, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, Life is Strange: Episode 2, Resident Evil 5, and The Golf Club 2.

Available now, gamers can purchase a three-month Xbox Game Pass subscription for $1. The deal works for new and inactive members, so no one’s left out, and it will be available until May 13, 2018. Since it runs for such a long time, you’ll be able to dig into all of the new additions coming to the service this month before deciding if you want to continue at regular price.

Monster Hunter: World earned four stars in our review and is one of the more dense offerings to hit the extensive library. Fully invested players shouldn’t be surprised if they surpass 100 hours as they collect items, craft, and battle it out with a large cast of creatures. Prey also received a four-star rating and is a more linear experience, though it is ripe with content Arkane Studios added post-launch. In addition to the main story set on the space station Talos I, the Mooncrash expansion adds a rogue-like escape mission while Typhon Hunter adds an asymmetrical multiplayer mode where five Mimics chase one human player.

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and Life is Strange: Episode 2 slow things down a bit with some story-driven adventures and you can turn things right back up with a buddy in Resident Evil 5’s full campaign before finally winding down with The Gold Club 2.

In addition to the new titles coming throughout April, PC players can look forward to experiencing the major Halo titles for the first time as part of the Xbox Game Pass. The titles are due to be released one by one so that the developers can avoid any technical issues, and test flights for Reach are going live later this month. If you’re interested in participating, you have to be a Halo Insider member.

Editors' Recommendations

Atlas Fallen unexpectedly gives Forspoken some real competition
Two Atlas Fallen characters stand together in key art.

Atlas Fallen has the potential to surprise a lot of people. Although it's launching in just two months, we haven't seen much about this new game from The Surge developer Deck13 and publisher Focus Entertainment since its reveal at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2022. That's a shame because after going hands-on with an early build of it, I've found that Atlas Fallen has the potential to appeal to people who didn't like one of the year's most divisive titles: Forspoken. 
Atlas Fallen - World Premiere Reveal Trailer | Gamescom Opening Night Live 2022
Square Enix's open-world action RPG featured some neat ideas with its fast-paced magical combat and freeing traversal abilities, but many people couldn't get into it. While more focused on melee combat than magic, Atlas Fallen is a similarly ambitious open-world game that delivers satisfying movement and action that's different from the norm. That makes it a game that might scratch some itches that Forspoken didn't fully reach due to its heavily criticized writing. If it's not on your radar yet, you might want to know what Atlas Fallen has to offer.
Encouraged exploration
Based on my demo, I'm not fully sure what to expect from Atlas Fallen's mysterious story yet. The basic premise is that player was a person from the lowest caste in this world's society who was bonded with an ancient gauntlet. That gauntlet has an amnesic spirit named Nyaal living inside it and is now trying to save the world from gods that have left it in desert-filled ruins. The narrative wasn't a big focus in my preview build, though, and the script is full of jargon that probably will only make sense once I play more of the game.
A talking companion bonded to the player's arm and hand is already an unexpected narrative coincidence between Forspoken and Atlas Fallen. But neither game's story is the appeal of either to me: It's their fun traversal and combat that interest me. The few seconds of Atlas Fallen's sand-surfing and fighting in its Gamescom trailer caught my eye last year, and both lived up to the hype.
 
As I worked my way out of a cave at the start of the demo, I learned how to raise large structures out of the ground, surf across large patches of sand, and dash through the air with the help of my gauntlet. After I entered the game's open world, I could play around with all my movement options and found them to be a treat. Open-ended games with large worlds like Atlas Fallen can live or die on how satisfying they are to explore, and making movement fun is a crucial way developers can make traversal enjoyable.
Forspoken was able to capture some of that magic despite its problems, and it looks like Atlas Fallen has too. Of course, that's only one part of the game, as players will run into many enemy Wraiths and need to fight them. That's where Atlas Fallen's engaging combat system comes into play.
Satisfying combat
Deck13 and Focus Entertainment had yet to go into much detail about Atlas Fallen's combat before now, so I was shocked by how unique it was. The core combat revolves around attacking, dodging, and parrying, with weapons shapeshifting as you use them in different ways. It's faster-paced than I expected from a developer who previously made Souslikes, but it's the Ascension system that really caught my attention.
In between fights, players can equip their character with Essence Stones that buff or add abilities, assigning them to one of three tiers in the process. Once they are in a fight, attacking and defeating enemies causes players to gain momentum, which fills a bar at the bottom left of the screen. As this bar fills, or "ascends," players gradually gain those Essence Stone abilities, getting more powerful the more aggressive they are.
Ascending does come with a catch: The more momentum you build, the more damage you take. Players can counteract this by equipping defensive or health-related Essence Stones or using "Shatter" once an Ascension tier is filled to deal lots of damage and crystalize enemies for a short while. To succeed in Atlas Fallen, I needed to fight aggressively, but fights would quickly turn in the enemy's favor if I missed a crucial parry or dodge when I had lots of momentum.

This system gives each fight a push-and-pull feeling not common in action games. Most of the time, games like to make players feel significantly more powerful or weaker than everything around them; Atlas Fallen does both. This unique system hasn't gotten more attention and promotion, but it ultimately is what makes Atlas Fallen stand out the most at the moment.
There's something exciting about how mysterious this game still is to me, as that means there could be lots of surprises when players finally get to try the whole thing in a couple of months. It's shaping up to be an unexpected, almost accidental alternative to Forspoken. If you're still looking for an action-heavy RPG with innovative movement and combat gameplay ideas, Atlas Fallen should be on your radar.
Atlas Fallen will launch for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on May 16.

Read more
5 features we’d need from a PS5 Pro to justify an upgrade
The Playstation 5 system standing upright.

A new version of the PlayStation 5 may be on the horizon – at least if you believe the leaks. Earlier this week, Insider Gaming reported that a PS5 Pro is in development and is scheduled for a late 2024 launch. Considering that the rumor site previously claimed that a PS5 with a detachable drive would launch this year, you might want to take the claim with some skepticism. Insider Gaming provided no actual details on specs or what a Pro model would entail, only claiming that a source says it's in the works.

There’s not a lot to go on there, but just about any educated gamer could predict that a PS5 Pro is coming in the next year or two. Sony previously followed the PlayStation 4 with a PS4 Pro, which would improve the system’s power three years after its launch. It’s reasonable to think that PS5 would get the same treatment four years later -- which would likely be near the halfway point of its life span.

Read more
Former PS5 exclusive Ghostwire: Tokyo Comes to Xbox Game Pass in April
Akito with KK and the neon colors of Tokyo and invading spirits.

Former PlayStation 5 exclusive Ghostwire: Tokyo will launch for Xbox Series X/S and Windows PC on April 12. A free update called The Spider's Thread will release on the same day for all platforms, including Xbox Series X/S,  PC and PlayStation 5. The game is being added to Xbox Game Pass.

Ghostwire: Tokyo was first released on PS5 and PC on March 25, 2022. Despite Microsoft owning Bethesda at the time, preexisting agreements were honored and the game remained a timed console exclusive on PS5. The same situation occurred with Bethesda's Deathloop, which initially launched on PS5 and PC in September 2021 and then came to Xbox Series X/S a year later.

Read more