CrossCode

Game Pass of the Week

In terms of a conventional comparison, think the charm and design of a traditional top-down Zelda title but with the mechanical and gameplay depth of Path of Exile.

I am sure this will not be the last time this happens, but this week the game I want to talk about actually just left Game Pass! A firm reminder that this is a revolving door service and with the exception of first-party and tightly coupled third-party deals (ie. EA Play), games will leave Game Pass. Then again, that is sort of the whole point of this weekly article, high lighting the games in the here and now so you can stay up on the zeitgeist without so much effort. In this case however, I enjoyed (and continue to play) this game after it left the service that I am going to talk it up anyways.

Play It

This is one of those games where talking about it is plainly a disservice. It harkens back to the golden age of Super Nintendo 16-bit titles but with the good sense to modernize mechanics and controls. In terms of a convectional comparison, think the charm and design of a traditional top-down Zelda title but with the mechanical and gameplay depth of Path of Exile.

That probably sounds pretty cool and very hard to imagine at the same time, and it is. That is why I think you should just play it. It actually depresses me slightly that I was slow on the trigger with this article. I started playing the game while it was in Game Pass and it left (a few days ago) in the time I was playing it. It says a lot about this game, that the moment I realized this I just went and bought it; zero hesitation. That is why I decided to write the article anyways. The beauty of Game Pass is discovering games you might not have otherwise and this is exactly that case. It will definitely be on sale at some point if you crave the deal, but it is worth every penny regardless.

An Aside on Why Cover Art Matters

This might seem like another weird turn, but I wanted to spend a moment to talk about how much the splash art / cover art of games really matter. The image above is the art you will see when you look for CrossCode in the Xbox store. After playing the game I know this is an art style choice and it is actually really cool but before I played the game the art style, for whatever reason relayed to me that this was not a quality game. I think this in part is due to how the image scales down and what it looks like when contrasted by other games it will be flanked by in the store.

This is one of those “don’t judge a book by its cover” moments but on the other hand, the entire point of a store front is to confer what a game is, so player interest can translate into game purchases. So in some sense judging the game is the purpose of the art.

Regardless, I was dead wrong about my prejudgments of this game, and if not for Game Pass I probably never would have played it. I actually really like the art choice now but without the context of playing the game it just did not grab me. It is interesting to think about and how much art matters when it comes to people discovering a title organically. The art has to do so much work to capture the attention and imagination of the people scrolling through the store.