If you're a Game Pass subscriber or a PS Plus subscriber, say goodbye to your social life and any other plans you might have: two brilliant games are available on the Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X and PS5 subscription services and you should play them all weekend.
The Game Pass title is the preview of Prodeus, a modern take on one of the greatest first person shooters ever made. And the PS Plus one is Superhot, one of the most stylish and challenging shooters I've ever played.
They're not the only new games to arrive on the gaming platforms this month – Game Pass has the gloriously daft Metal: Hellslinger, the classic Assassin's Creed Odyssey and the incredible Immortality among many more, and PS Plus's October free games also include Injustice 2 and Hot Wheels Unleashed. But it's Prodeus and Superhot I think you should be playing.
What's so great about Prodeus and Superhot?
These are two very different games – Prodeus is like a turbo-charged Doom while Superhot is super-stylish and takes place largely in slow motion – but they both boil down gaming to its purest essence: joy.
There's a real joy to both of these games, whether that's blasting through endless waves of enemies in Prodeus or finally working out how to kill all the bad guys in the later levels of Superhot. To me they both feel perfectly pitched: hard enough to be challenging but not so challenging that you'll rage-quit in frustration and disgust. They've both had me cackling with delight after executing some particularly brilliant shots and inventing new swear words during unexpected ambushes.
Don't just take my word for it, though. Prodeus currently has a 10/10 Steam rating and tons of 10/10 and 9/10 reviews, and while Superhot has been out for a while it still feels fresh and deserving of the multiple 9/10 ratings it's accumulated. And if you complete Superhot in its standard edition, I can really recommend the VR version too on PSVR, SteamVR or Oculus. Just be careful with that one: my youngest managed to punch my Samsung TV to death in a particularly frantic level. The villains may be virtual but his punch was anything but.
