Quick Summary
Sifu is one of several games being added to Xbox Game Pass in the first half of October.
You can also expect the the roguelike deck-builder Inscryption next week.
With the launch of the new Xbox Game Pass Standard tier last month, quite a few of the monthly game announcements for October are titles already available to Ultimate subscribers. However, there are a few new entrants coming that everyone can enjoy.
Perhaps the most exciting is Sifu, a martial arts adventure with a hugely stylised look and superb combat engine.
Set in China, you play the nameless child of a murdered sifu – a martial arts teacher – who embarks on a quest of revenge against his father's killers.
It is played in third-person and has an interesting game mechanic in that when you die, you are resurrected at the same spot but your character is now visually and physically older. This gives you more powerful moves to better handle the area you struggled with, but also puts a finite amount of time on the clock – you only get a certain amount of resurrections.
The best part of the game is easily its combat, with over 150 kung fu attacks available. And new content has been added since its release in 2022, so there's even more to discover in the latest version of the game.
Sifu will be available for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Windows on Xbox Game Pass Standard, Ultimate, Xbox Cloud Gaming and PC Game Pass from 2 October.
Also to be added to Xbox Game Pass this month is Mad Streets, another combat game but far less serious. It's a multiplayer party game instead, with madcap physics-based brawling and cartoon graphics. That will be available from 7 October.
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And finally, Inscryption is a spooky cross between a roguelike deck-builder and an escape room. There are puzzles to be solved as the story unravels, and it's a fitting addition in the build-up to Halloween.
You can play it across all Game Pass plans from 10 October.
Rik is T3’s news editor, which means he looks after the news team and the up-to-the-minute coverage of all the hottest gadgets and products you’ll definitely want to read about. And, with more than 35 years of experience in tech and entertainment journalism, including editing and writing for numerous websites, magazines, and newspapers, he’s always got an eye on the next big thing.
Rik also has extensive knowledge of AV, TV streaming and smart home kit, plus just about everything to do with games since the late 80s. Prior to T3, he spent 13 years at Pocket-lint heading up its news team, and was a TV producer and presenter on such shows as Channel 4's GamesMaster, plus Sky's Games World, Game Over, and Virtual World of Sport.
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