With so many great games coming down the pipeline, now’s a great time to hop on the Xbox Game Pass bandwagon. If some titles joining the catalog this year have caught your eye and you’re itching to join in on the fun, you can choose between one or three month Game Pass Ultimate membership options at Amazon. Unfortunately, there aren’t any discount deals available at the moment, but we’ll update this when a new one drops.

You can learn more about options for signing up, what’s coming soon to Game Pass this month, and the big releases still to come below.

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Cal Kestis, the hero of EA’s Star Wars Jedi video games, will appear in a spin-off TV series — marking his first voiced appearance in another medium.

The redheaded Jedi will play a role in new episodes of Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy set to debut on streaming service Disney+ next month. A non-canon spin-off set in a “What If?”-style remixed Star Wars universe, Rebuild the Galaxy previously introduced the world to Darth Jar-Jar. Who knows what this second round of episodes will see Kestis (or an alternate universe version of him) get up to.

As in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Kestis will once again be voiced by Cameron Monaghan, in the actor’s first voice role as Kestis outside of a video game. News of Monaghan’s return, as well as Kestis’ appearance on a poster for the series, come amid fan speculation the Jedi may eventually turn up in live-action form — something Monaghan himself has said he is open to.

While Monaghan has said he would “absolutely” want to portray Kestis in live-action, the actor has also said the project would “have to be right” for the character. “By that I mean, it has to continue the story or the character in some way,” Monagahan said in March 2024.

“I don’t want him to just kind of show up to stand around and be there. I want him to mean something and for there to be a significance for the character itself. So, it would have to make sense. But in the right context then, yeah, absolutely.”

Kestis’ appearance in Rebuild the Galaxy marks the latest appearance of his popular character outside of Respawn’s Jedi series, alongside other elements from the games. Kestis already has a spin-off novel, Jedi: Battle Scars, and popped up in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, a smartphone game also published by EA.

What I’d consider the best parts of horror in games aren’t jump scares or gruesome monsters chasing you, rather an eerie atmosphere or a lingering feeling of dread – knowing something is a little off. I’ve long heralded the 2008 cult-classic OFF, an RPG Maker (2003) game from developer Mortis Ghost, for how it wields its lo-fi art style to evoke that powerful sense of dread and reveal things that are truly horrifying. As a small-scale game that only had an English version via fan translation in 2011, this official remaster in 2025 is important for preserving an influential retro-style RPG, especially as it is largely faithful to the original. In some respects, it hasn’t aged quite as gracefully as I’d hoped (partially due to the hindsight of having played so many amazing games it inspired in the years since), but OFF’s blend of goofiness embedded in a deeply unsettling story has stood the test of time.

OFF is one of those games where its limitations are part of its strengths. Color and the absence of it are used to shift the vibe of the overworld in chilling ways as you progress. The hand-drawn sketch-like character designs give a deranged look to enemies that complements their desolate, off-kilter world. And the low-tech pixel art has a way of being a powerful tool for creating a foreboding atmosphere, letting your imagination tease out an underlying psychological horror. These are some of OFF’s defining features, and also remain effective as you unravel its disturbing truths.

You control The Batter, a guy rocking a baseball uniform and armed with a bat who is ready to hit some dingers, and you’re on a mission to “purify” a dystopian world of evil ghosts. Without much explanation, a nightmarish cat called The Judge speaks to you in a philosopher’s tone to ponder how your decisions will be accounted for. Aside from one specific moment, there aren’t choices to make, but it’s interesting context for a story that reveals itself through the actions you have to take. I, as the player, felt increasingly uneasy about where things were going – but to The Batter, it’s just another plate appearance. That contrast is still quite effective, and OFF makes this distinction clear in its breaking of the fourth wall from the very start.

It’s a fairly short game, taking about seven-to-eight hours to finish and defeat the secret bosses, including a few new ones. The world is made up of five zones, some of which represent industrial production where workers are ground to the bone by authoritarian figures. Liquid plastic makes up its seas, meat and metal are harvested ad nauseum, and the sugar mines bring about the worst parts of its society. A few dialogue sequences use obscure sketches like they’re out of an old textbook and items you inspect in the environment feed into its cryptic worldbuilding. More often, however, it’s the unconventional way characters talk to you and accept their meager existences, which grows more disturbing as you see the consequences of your mission.

Exploration is met with basic puzzles that often require you to pay closer attention to the clues embedded in the environment, playing into slightly bizarre changes in the world – door codes hidden in seemingly nonsensical texts, numbers scribbled on the wall guiding you in switch-hitting puzzles, or navigating sets of rooms that break conventional logic. I wouldn’t call these things particularly engaging, but it’s the surrealist subtext tucked within them that adds to its uncanny nature.

A mix of random battles and NPCs patrolling the overworld make up encounters, and this is one aspect of OFF that hasn’t really held up: its primitive turn-based combat system. The Batter and the floating circles called Add-Ons, which are very nondescript party members you gather throughout the story, each have a basic attack and special attacks with turns running on an ATB-style system. While The Batter is the heavy hitter, Add-Ons provide more of a support role. Other than prioritizing certain targets and accounting for a few elemental affinities, there isn’t much depth or strategic nuance to combat, which becomes a tired exercise outside of a few challenging secret bosses. OFF isn’t really about its combat as it’s more of a vehicle for everything else it does, but it’s a shortcoming nonetheless.

OFF doesn’t necessarily tell a complex story with tons of layers to peel away, nor is it a straightforward one where everything is spelled out for you. It doesn’t try to be too clever, yet leaves room for interpretation where all roads lead to a… well, really sad story. For all its accomplishments as a uniquely disturbing experience, something beyond that still sticks with me – it’s a strange kind of emotional resonance because of how blunt and unapologetic it is, increasingly off-putting especially with what it ultimately asks you to do. And with each bizarre twist along the way is a unique artistic vision that makes for a memorable experience.

There are a few things that have changed in this remaster, one of the biggest being the soundtrack, which is somewhat polarizing to those familiar with the original such as myself. In light of not being able to bring the original composer back on board, this version of OFF features new songs that try to capture the unsettling, industrial, and discordant sound it once had. It largely succeeds, even if I do miss the specific low-tech flavor of the original. In a full circle moment for both parties, Toby Fox (of Undertale and Deltarune fame) contributed to a few tracks, lending his sound in small ways, which was nice to hear. This isn’t a soundtrack you’re going to bob your head to or throw onto a playlist to evoke memories of a whimsical experience, but it’s an important part of OFF’s identity. It’s one that complements the ghastly barks of its characters and faint ambient sounds that feed into its discomforting vibe.

I appreciate OFF as a relic of the old gaming forums where it gained traction and tumblr blogs that harnessed dedicated fandoms, and as a product of a certain era of the internet I look back on quite fondly. Discovering the original felt like unearthing a gem you wouldn’t find anywhere else, shaping my taste in horror and helping identify what it is that activates that part of my brain, alongside other RPG Maker hits like Yume Nikki. Evidently, it resonated with others, having paved the way for games like Omori and being a stated inspiration for all-timer Undertale. Replaying OFF was like dusting off the blueprints of some of my favorite games, fascinating to revisit and one you have to put some respect on in spite of the ways it aged.

Coming hot off of Deltarune’s latest chapters and having been deeply moved by the series so far here in 2025, I have a certain fondness for its progenitors and I can’t help but see how OFF’s influence persists to this day. Indie games that delve into morality, break the fourth-wall, and subvert expectations have grown and evolved in the years since, meaning OFF doesn’t come across quite as deep as it once did in retrospect. But it is foundational material for the indie RPG scene, and this is a good excuse to play it all these years later regardless of your history.

This week is the Pokémon World Championships in Anaheim, and with it, the first playable demo of Pokémon Legends: Z-A. I had the chance to play two different ten-minute segments of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and though I’m still left with a lot of questions, I did play just enough to develop some first impressions about the mechanic I’m the most curious about: its battle system.

But first, a quick aside, to answer a big question many of you no doubt have: I played the Pokémon Legends: Z-A demo on a Nintendo Switch 2, and it ran well and looked moderately better than the new Switch 2 versions of Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet. Of course, this is just a demo, and thus I didn’t get to experiment with draw distance or put it to the test with dozens of wild Pokémon on screen.

Back to the demo: one portion of my play session was set in the early-game of only the fourth main mission: Battling in the Z-A Royale. Here, I entered a Battle Zone marked by a red area on the map, where I needed to earn enough ticket points in trainer battles to get a Challenger’s Ticket, which is needed to take part in a Promotion Match. Winning that Promotion Match for the Z-A Royale would upgrade my rank from Z to Y.

We already knew about this core gameplay loop, which I assume we’ll be taking part in repeatedly until we reach Rank A and earn the vague prize of a single wish. It’s an entertaining enough system, where, at night, you roam the streets of a predetermined area to face other starry-eyed trainers. In expected Pokémon fashion, as soon as a trainer sees you, the battle is on–but in Legends: Z-A, if a trainer attacks you when you aren’t looking, that means the opponent’s Pokémon gets that free first attack on your Pokémon, which is also a guaranteed critical hit.

Personally, I find this to be an incredibly rude tactic that goes against the friendly competitive spirit of Pokémon, but of course, I took advantage of it myself when one of my stylish teammates, Lida, suggested I try it out. The tight corners of city streets mean it’s easy to get surprised, but it also offers opportunities for you to crouch and sneak in close to a target yourself.

Battle begins seamlessly, just like in Legends: Arceus, but Legends: Z-A does away with Legends: Arceus’ slightly modified version of the core turn-based battle mechanics we’re all most familiar with. Instead, Z-A is full real-time action. At least, that’s how it presents itself.

To attack, you essentially use Z-Targeting by holding the ZL button and then pressing the face buttons to instruct your Pokémon which move to use. This is the same whether you’re in battle, initiating a battle, or instructing your Pokémon to attack an obstacle–like some rocks I saw at the beginning of the mission that none of my Pokémon were strong enough to break.

As expected, each Pokémon can know four moves at a time, and those are the moves you have access to on the four face buttons. Surprisingly, the moves don’t seem to have PP (Power Points), meaning that they can be used an unlimited number of times, with consideration to their cooldown, a new mechanic for Pokémon commonly used for skill-based action games. Different moves have different cooldown times, but the moves I had access to this early in the game all had relatively short cooldowns (around six or seven seconds) and short “casting” times as well that aren’t communicated in any menus.

Regardless of these limitations, I was pretty much always able to attack with another move as soon as my Pokémon was done attacking with the first. The moves will “fill up” with color as the cool-down counts down, indicating when you can attack with it again, but I do wish that feedback was more clearly communicated. I ended up just using almost all of the moves available in rotation pretty mindlessly. You can’t instruct your Pokémon to dodge or perform any other maneuvers besides those four attacks, though Pokémon can miss attacks if the opponent is too far from the attack’s range.

Battle actions appear on the right side of the screen, informing you of things like attacks performed, debuffs, and critical hits. The feedback for missing attacks, however, seemed to be nonexistent, so I can see learning when the best time to attack could be a bit difficult.

In trainer battles, you can’t be damaged or take the hit for your Pokémon (I tried. Mareep still fainted.) But you can get hurt in battles against wild Pokémon and the more dangerous Rogue Mega-Evolved Pokémon, the other core gameplay plot device in Legends: Z-A. (And you still can’t take a hit for your Pokémon, at least it seemed to be that way.)

The second part of the demo pit me against a Rogue Mega-Evolved Absol after following the dog-like Zygarde 10% forme to it as part of another early-game mission, this time, the ninth. Somehow, the small-ish Zygarde carries you up to the roof where the Absol is, but apparently your character closes their eyes while this happens as the screen fades out and suddenly you’re on the roof.

Anyway, this early in the game, you don’t have the ability to Mega Evolve a Pokémon on your own, so the mysterious AZ lends you a Mega Ring, a Lucario, and the Lucarionite Mega Stone so you can face the Rogue Mega Absol without getting your butt categorically handed to you.

In this battle, you must dodge to avoid the opponent’s attacks, as Absol is coming for you–not just your Pokémon. I found it a bit cumbersome to balance attacking and avoiding enemy attacks, as you can attack only while you’re locked onto a target with ZL, but you can’t dash or dodge while targeting. I’m sure this is something I’d develop better muscle memory for as I play more, but it felt odd to have my actions restricted like that.

There’s also a secondary goal to pay attention to when up against Rogue Mega-Evolved Pokémon: you must collect Mega Power orbs to build up enough energy to Mega Evolve your Pokémon, and keep collecting them so your Pokémon doesn’t de-Mega Evolve. Attacking the Rogue Mega-Evolved Pokémon forces the Mega Power orbs out of them, which you then must pick up yourself. It’s a pretty clever way to force you to put yourself in danger and use the dodge mechanics.

This fight was much more interesting than the trainer battles, as is expected considering all the extra things I needed to worry about besides pressing the attack buttons. Another thing I noticed is that, although you can’t tell your Pokémon to dodge, they will default to returning to your side when you’re not locked on to an opponent. So if you start avoiding the enemy’s AOE (area of effect) attacks, your Pokémon will too, as long as you give them enough time to retreat.

Overall, Legends: Z-A didn’t feel like a full action game to me, but kind of more like an MMO, with its casting times, cooldowns, and behind-the-scenes math happening. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I do hope Legends: Z-A gets challenging enough to make me more intentionally dish out commands and think about switching Pokémon at just the right moment. I can see the potential, but with just twenty minutes of experiencing the early game, it’s much too soon to tell if this real-time battle system will scratch the strategy-itch Pokémon games usually do for me.

Some last-minute housekeeping, as I did briefly explore the menus: Pokémon have the common six-stat spread, no abilities (just like in Legends: Arceus), but do have Natures that affect their stats (unlike in Legends: Arceus). I also found a shop that sells Mints to change these Natures while I played through the ninth story mission.

Like I said before, I have a lot of questions and I’m very keen to play more Pokémon Legends: Z-A, but for now, we’ll have to wait until it’s out on October 16 to know more.

Casey DeFreitas is a deputy editor of guides at IGN and has been catching Pokémon since Red and Blue. Catch her on socials @ShinyCaseyD.