Two current racing games will join the already-announced GoldenEye 007 and Hi-Fi Rush in the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass libraries over the next two weeks, Microsoft said on Thursday. Speed demons can plunge into the narrative-driven world of Codemasters’ Grid Legends, or shrink down to die-cast toy size in Milestone’s Hot Wheels Unleashed – Game of the Year Edition.
Grid Legends is available to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers, who get access to the EA Play catalog of games. Codemasters’ driving game launched in February 2022. We were rather fond of it, especially for its wonderfully hallucinated international racing series, in which Ncuti Gatwa (Netflix’s Sex Education) and Natsumi Kuroda are both rivals and teammates of the player character, facing down the ruthless Ravenwest Motorsport racing team. Grid Legends joins the Xbox Game Pass/EA Play lineup on Feb. 2.
Hot Wheels Unleashed, which launched in September 2021, was likewise one of our favorite racing games of that year. The Game of the Year edition, which includes three post-launch car collections, arrived in September 2022. Milestone’s title marries high-fidelity racing physics with arcade action, plastic tracks and candy-flake paint jobs spanning 30 years of the classic collectible cars. It’s available via cloud, console, and PC on Feb. 7.
The other games coming to Xbox/PC Game Pass, and their dates, are:
- Hi-Fi Rush (Cloud, PC, and Console). Available Jan. 26.
- GoldenEye 007 (Cloud and Console). Jan. 27
- Roboquest (Game Preview, Console). Jan. 30
- Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition (Cloud and Console). Jan. 31.
- Inkulinati (Game Preview, Cloud, Console and PC). Jan. 31.
- JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R (Cloud, Console, and PC). Jan. 31
- Darkest Dungeon (Cloud, Console and PC). Feb. 2
Leaving Xbox and PC Game Pass on Jan. 31 are:
- Donut County (Cloud, Console, and PC)
- Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master (Console and PC)
- Telling Lies (Cloud, Console, and PC)
- Worms WMD (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Those who want to keep playing those titles can pick them up at discounts up to 20% off from the Microsoft Store before they leave the Game Pass library.
Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass both cost $9.99 a month. PC Game Pass includes EA Play access, which offers another 70 games on PC. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, at $14.99 per month, gives subscribers access to everything — the PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass libraries, EA Play on both console and PC, and the Cloud Gaming beta — as well as Xbox Live Gold membership, which is needed for online multiplayer.