Microsoft has officially announced the games coming to Xbox Game Pass in August 2024 following an earlier leak.
It’s not the biggest month ever for Xbox Game Pass, but two beloved franchises and a “day one” release are included.
Creatures of Ava has already arrived on the service, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is due any minute, and Mafia: Definitive Edition lands on August 13.
Games confirmed for departure this month include Airborne Kingdoms, Offworld Trading Company, Shadow Warrior 3, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. All will leave the service on August 15, should you want to check any out before they’re gone.
Here are more details about what you can expect from the new games.
Xbox Game Pass August 2024 games
Creatures of Ava may end up being the least-played of the new Xbox Game Pass games, but is the only truly new title here.
It’s a day-one release for Game Pass. Creatures of Ava is an exploratory adventure and a “creature-saver” title in which you save native species from a nasty infection that makes them want to attack you.
In effect, you still end up in combat with the creatures but you're trying to cure rather than harm them. The reviews say the game is worth a go, with a super-solid rating of 78% at Metacritic.
There are much less warm 'n' fuzzies in Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. It’s a pack of remastered classics from decades past: Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped.
All three were originally released for the first PlayStation console, from 1996-1998. Remember when games took a year to make instead of a decade?
What you might miss less is the uncompromising nature of Crash Bandicoot’s platforming. Still, it’s likely to prove nostalgia catnip for certain millennials and Gen X'ers. This remake pack is getting on in its own right, too, after its original release in 2017.
Last up is Mafia: Definitive Edition, the 2020 remake of a 2002 game that, at the time, felt like a more sober and story-led alternative to GTA III.
This is more linear than Grand Theft Auto, despite how it lets you roam around a city. It’s set in the fictional city of Lost Heaven, Illinois, in the 1930s.
The remake is now typically considered the best instalment in the Mafia series, the last fully new entry being 2016’s Mafia III. Its main campaign should take you 10 hours and change according to How Long To Beat, making it far less of a commitment than, say, GTA V.
