Elden Ring
You may associate legendary developer FromSoft’s oeuvre with PlayStation. (The studio’s hit game Bloodborne is currently PS4-only, while a recent remake of Demon’s Souls was exclusive to PS5.) But Elden Ring, the studio’s latest chart-smashing hit, is easily one of the best games on Xbox Series X/S. It’s not just “an open-world game.” It is, in perhaps a way no other game has done since Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild, an open-world game that reimagines what an open world can be. Absent heavy-handed direction, you can go wherever you want. You can do whatever you like. You just might get your ass kicked by a building-sized immortal god who feasts on the bones of fallen soldiers.
A Good Match For: All of you who wished Xbox had its own version of BotW or Bloodborne.
Not A Good Match For: Folks with packed schedules.
