Curated playlist

Xbox One X enhanced games

Assassin's Creed IIIAssassin's Creed III went on sale in North America on the 30th of October 2012 with a secret that its own advertising kept from players. Every promotion showed Connor, a half-Mohawk Assassin. The game itself, however, opened with Haytham…
Red Dead Redemption 2Red Dead Redemption 2 is a 2018 action-adventure game from Rockstar Games that puts the player in the boots of Arthur Morgan, an outlaw living in the year 1899. The frontier he knows is closing. Government forces, rival gangs and the march…
Marvel vs. Capcom: InfiniteMarvel vs. Capcom: Infinite cut its fights from three characters to two.
The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimA modder made Falskaar for Skyrim as a job application to Bethesda. Bungie hired him instead.
Assassin's Creed (video game)Assassin's Creed, the 2007 action-adventure game from Ubisoft Montreal, almost shipped with only its main assassination missions. About five days before the team was due to send the final version off for mass production, their CEO…
Batman: Arkham AsylumBatman: Arkham Asylum, the 2009 game from Rocksteady Studios, once kept a single developer busy for two years on one garment, Batman's cape. Eidos president Ian Livingstone said the job involved more than 700 animations and sound effects,…
PUBG: BattlegroundsPUBG: Battlegrounds, a battle royale video game from 2017, once had 2,279,084 people playing it on Steam at the same moment. It reached that peak while still officially unfinished, listed as an early access title. The game began as a…
Assassin's Creed OdysseyAssassin's Creed Odyssey, a 2018 action role-playing game from Ubisoft Quebec, begins its family tragedy on the slopes of Mount Taygetos. A Spartan elder is about to throw an infant off the mountain. The Pythia has declared that the child,…
Fallout 4Fallout 4 begins on the 23rd of October 2077, the day the nuclear bombs fall. The 2015 action role-playing game comes from Bethesda Game Studios, and it is the fourth main entry in the Fallout series. Earlier games in the series start long…
Final Fantasy XVFinal Fantasy XV shipped five million units in one day. Square Enix said that covered its development costs.
Batman: Arkham CityThe blueprints for Batman: Arkham City were hidden in a secret room inside the warden's office of Batman: Arkham Asylum, the game that came before it. Rocksteady Studios planted those hints in the 2009 original while that game was still…
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was blocked from sale in Kuwait before release. Every pre-order in the country was cancelled and refunded, and Kuwaiti officials gave no reason. Publications guessed that the game's Gulf War setting was the cause.…
For HonorIn the sword-fighting game For Honor, you block duels by guarding left, right, or top.
Sekiro: Shadows Die TwiceIn Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, you win by breaking an enemy's balance, not draining health. Then one killing blow lands.
Elden RingGeorge R. R. Martin wrote Elden Ring's backstory, not its in-game story. Some critics found his role unclear.
It Takes Two (video game)It Takes Two, a 2021 adventure from Hazelight Studios, is a video game that nobody can finish alone. It has no single-player option. Every player needs a partner, either sitting nearby or connected online, and the story simply will not…
MinecraftMinecraft, the 2011 sandbox game from the Swedish company Mojang Studios, tells its only story through a poem of roughly 1,500 words. The End Poem was written by the Irish novelist Julian Gough. It scrolls past in about nine minutes when a…
Assassin's Creed OriginsAssassin's Creed Origins is a 2017 action role-playing game from Ubisoft Montreal, and the tenth major installment in its series. Its setting was a reversal. Ancient Egypt was among the places fans of the series requested most often, and…
Persona 5Persona 5 opens in an interrogation room in Tokyo, and it keeps pulling the player back there. The 2016 role-playing game, built by the Atlus development studio P-Studio, is the sixth installment in the Persona series, which grew out of…
The Witcher 3: Wild HuntWhen The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched in 2015, Poland's prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, and its president, Bronisław Komorowski, visited the studio behind it. That studio was CD Projekt Red, and the game was an open-world action role-playing…
L.A. NoireL.A. Noire, a game from 2011 set in Los Angeles in 1947, became the first video game honoured as an official selection at the Tribeca Film Festival. Team Bondi developed it, and Rockstar Games published it. Players follow a young police…
Star Wars Battlefront II (2017 video game)A Hawaii lawmaker called Star Wars Battlefront II an online casino designed to trap little kids.
Dragon's DogmaCapcom executives doubted Dragon's Dogma, the first open-world game ever proposed for a Capcom title.
Cyberpunk 2077Cyberpunk 2077 broke a record within hours of its midnight GMT launch on the 10th of December 2020. More than one million people played it at once on Steam, and one million viewers watched live on Twitch. Together, the figures doubled the…
Control (video game)Control is a 2019 action-adventure game from Remedy Entertainment, and nearly all of it takes place inside a single building in New York City. From the street, the Oldest House looks like a featureless concrete skyscraper. Inside, it is…
Star Wars Jedi: SurvivorStar Wars Jedi: Survivor opens with a break-in on Coruscant, the Imperial capital world. Jedi Knight Cal Kestis, played by Cameron Monaghan, steals military data from a senator named Daho Sejan. The 2023 game comes from Respawn…
Resident Evil VillageResident Evil Village is a 2021 survival horror game from Capcom, and its launch came with a drawing visible from far away. On the 7th of May 2021, Capcom marked the release with a chalk Lycan on a hillside in Somerset. The figure stood 58…
Nier: AutomataNier: Automata, a 2017 action role-playing game made by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix, ends with an unusual request. When the story is over, the closing credits turn into a shooting game that the player must fight through.…
Assassin's Creed ValhallaAssassin's Creed Valhalla nearly had a female-only Viking hero. Senior Ubisoft executives disagreed with the team.
Diablo IVThe first version of Diablo IV was cancelled when its lead designer left Blizzard in July 2016.
Assassin's Creed MirageAssassin's Creed Mirage, released in 2023, started life as an expansion pack for Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Plans changed, and it grew into a standalone game. It is the thirteenth major installment in its series, yet it is deliberately…
Resident Evil 7: BiohazardResident Evil 7: Biohazard, a 2017 survival horror game from Capcom, begins with an email. It comes from Mia, a woman who has been missing for three years. Her husband, systems engineer Ethan Winters, follows the message to a derelict…
Rise of the Tomb RaiderRise of the Tomb Raider, a 2015 action-adventure game from Crystal Dynamics, opens a year after Lara Croft's ordeal on Yamatai. She is an archaeologist who cannot explain the supernatural events she lived through there, and she is…
Hogwarts LegacyOn the 7th of February 2023, Hogwarts Legacy reached a peak of 1.28 million people watching it at once on Twitch. That was the first day of early access, and it made the game the most-watched single-player title the platform had hosted.…