Psychonauts 2 (Xbox Series X via Game Pass)

Do not sleep on this game.  I repeat.  DO NOT SLEEP ON THIS GAME.  Early in the year I had the Ori games pegged as my GOTY, and until Psychonauts 2, nothing really impressed me enough to dethrone them.  Psychonauts changed that, and while I'm still not sure where I'll land as there are also a lot of games scheduled to come out this year, this game is a contender.

The basic gameplay loop is this.  You enter different characters heads, either to learn something, or to fix something.  These are your levels.  Think of the castle in Mario 64, each painting is it's own level.  Same premise here, except you enter characters heads.  Some are dealing with split personalites, others PTSD, others paranoia etc. etc.

At it's core this is a platformer, but it has a few open world segments and a nice environment to explore.  The voice acting is top notch, the score is memorable and the gameplay is overall quite relaxing.  Combat is not the games strong suit, but it's more a game of exploration than combat.  I only struggled once that I can remember, and that was at the final boss level.  

My only criticism is that the game is very chatty.  There are a lot of cut scenes, none overstay their welcome, but you do end up watching a lot.  I'd dare say 30% of my 12 hour playtime was spent watching vs. playing.  Still, I cannot recommend this game enough.  Xbox needs more of this.  

The Artful Escape (Xbox Series X via Game Pass)

The Artful Escape is a strange game.  You spend very little time "playing" and a lot of time spectating, but the story and music was so encapsulating that I had to see it through to the end.  There are a few "Simon" like gameplay sequences that are really quite easy, but it's more a story of being true to ones self and not living up to expectations.  It's a tough recommend as it definitely won't be for everyone, but I recommend you at least give it a try.

A Plague Tale: Innocence (Xbox Series X via Game Pass)

As of this writing, I have $71 in Microsoft Rewards Points.  I just switched my browser to MS Edge, switched my search engine to Bing and do their little challenges.  One of this past months quests on Xbox was to complete some minor objective in A Plague Tale.  I had to shoot 5 apples.  Something about this game made me want to continue, and I was really enjoying it until about 2/3's of the way through.  This is going to sound weird, but the word "alchemy" is used so much in this game, I found myself getting angry every time it was said.  Now, I can't discredit a game due to it's excessive use of one word, but I believe at this 2/3rd point, I'd seen about everything the game had to offer and it was starting to feel like a chore.  This is a 3rd person "Action"/Adventure game.  The combat is pretty weak, but that's not the main focus.  It's a really nice looking game on the Series X and the voice acting is really well done.  The story is what kept me going as I wanted to see it through.  I'd say it wrapped in around 10 hours or so with only a couple "combat" segments that had me wanting to throw my controller.  Despite all the alchemy talk, I'd still recommend it, but it went from "must play" to "it's okay" the longer it went on.