Game Pass April 2025 – Review

With April's Game Pass line-up I think we can finally say that the service is absolutely essential for any Xbox owner that wants to play more than one or two games a year.

To see last month’s review click here. March wasn’t the best month we’ve seen on Game Pass, but it was a case of the calm before the storm, as there was a litany of big hitters from first and third party studios in April. Read on for the numbers.

April 2025 – The Additions

An almost unheard of swathe of 15 games dropped in April, and with no big batches of related games (such as when the Yakuza series arrived to the service), we’ve got impeccable variety and quality across the batch.

Where to begin? South of Midnight is probably the headliner, but it’s a close call, with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 top of many people’s list even before the reviews started coming in (but we’ll get to that). The Oblivion Remaster was heavily leaked but nonetheless the shadow-drop and well-received game is also a brilliant addition, before we even get to the likes of Towerborne (finally arriving on console), Diablo III, Borderlands 3, Far Cry 4, the critically acclaimed Blue Prince and a little game called Grand Theft Auto V. What a month.

Critical Reception

You only need to see how much this batch of games outperforms the Game Pass average to know just how high quality the new additions for April are. An increase of over 3 points per game compared to the Game Pass Metacritic average. Leading the way is GTA V with a quite frankly insane Metacritic of 97, but Clair Obscur and Blue Prince (both 92) are certainly no slouches either. Diablo III (88) is next in the ranking, followed by Far Cry 4 (85), with Oblivion (82), Borderlands 3 (81) and South of Midnight (77) round out the notable games.

In terms of user scores from the Xbox store, Clair Obscur leads the way with a blistering 4.6, shared with Diablo III. GTA only gets a 3.2 here, with the next best actually being Crime Scene Cleaner (4.5), Far Cry 4 (4.4) and South of Midnight (4.3), suggesting the critics may have been a little harsh on Compulsion’s latest project.

Recency

An incredible 8 (eight!) day one games on Game Pass this month, kicking off with South of Midnight, but followed up with the likes of Tempopo, Towerborne (day one on console), Crime Scene Cleaner, Commandos Origins, Blue Prince, Oblivion Remastered and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Just a brilliant month for new releases – and actually you have to feel a little sorry for the likes of Tempopo and Commandos Origins, which are likely to get overlooked (at least initially) amidst the slew of other titles.

April 2025 – The Leavers

The 18 games removed this month puts the 15 additions into perspective, but with that said, I would happily trade those departing for the sheer quality of those that have joined the service. Nonetheless, there are some big games that departed in April, including Jedi: Survivor, LEGO 2K Drive and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, alongside beloved indies Harold Halibut and Another Crab’s Treasure. Other than that, while there are a few that are likely to cause consternation amongst niche audiences, for the most part you’d have to say those who wanted to play these games are likely to have had their fill already.

Additions vs Leavers

Last month we said “this is pretty much the worst month in terms of additions compared to leavers since we started doing these write-ups around six months ago” – conversely, this month is undoubtedly the best. The extra three games leaving compared to joining bring quite a few of the metrics down, but Game Age, Average Value and, crucially, Metacritic Score all get healthy bumps, with a huge disparity in Metacritic Score between the games leaving and those being added.

Vs. April 2024

Unusually, April 2024’s additions were quite a lot worse than this year’s, propped up by some decent indie titles, but with not a lot else.

Coral Island and Botany Manor are both 82 Metacritic games, but the rest were the sort of thing most people will try for an hour or two and then move onto something else. It’s a nice indication of the variety of the service, but there can be no doubt April 2024 was missing a big triple-A or first party title to elevate it.

There weren’t any HUGE departures from the service, with Back 4 Blood and SOMA probably doing the most damage. There were quite a lot leaving, but nothing really stands out.

You can see below just how poor April 2024 was, with lots of red cells showing it definitely had a negative impact on Game Pass as a whole, with more, better quality games leaving than arriving – even the value of each game was higher for those leaving, which is very unusual. So a clear win for 2025!

Conclusions

We’ve been waiting for a month like this for a while. There have been a few that have come close, but Microsoft have absolutely smashed it out of the park with April 2025. A selection of first party games supplemented by the biggest third party game they could get (albeit one that has featured before) and a lovely mix of other titles, without anything major leaving the service.

An incredible month, right up there with the very best Game Pass has ever had.

Some notes on this data: We are only interested in the Game Pass Ultimate tier for this. We may expand to look at other tiers in the future. For the purposes of this exercise, where the console or PC version of a game is already on Game Pass and the other version also joins, we do not count it as an additional game coming to the service. In the same way, if only one version leaves, we don’t count it as a departure. Prices and review scores listed is the data as of the date listed below, meaning the prices & scores of games from the year previously (when used in point of comparison in this article), are likely to be cheaper than they would have been when they actually joined Game Pass and may have different average scores (especially user scores).

For Metacritic scores, we generally take the score from the platform with the most reviews, unless there is a reason not to (e.g. instead of taking Goldeneye 64’s 96 Metacritic score for the recent Xbox re-release, we opt to not give it a score as there are not enough reviews of that version). Data captured May 5th 2025.