Game Pass March 2025 – Review

Without a big first-party release in March, Atomfall was left as Microsoft's big-hitter. It landed well, but is it enough to earn March a high score in our review?

To see last month’s review click here. February saw Avowed drop onto Game Pass to strong reviews, as you’d expect from an Obsidian game. We always knew March was going to be a little lean compared to February and April in particular, but let’s have a look at exactly how it stacks up.

March 2025 – The Additions

As with February, just 8 games added this month, which, with a lot more leaving (but we’ll get to that), there’s pressure on those that are added to be real stand out entries to the service. Atomfall is a AA day-one release from popular developer Rebellion (known for Sniper Elite, also a Game Pass staple), and definitely leads the charge, but I’ve personally been waiting for 33 Immortals to drop for a long time now following impressive playtests.

There’s also the Blizzard Arcade Collection, which I know people have been excited to get their hands on, and I’ve also heard excellent things about Mullet Madjack, which was another day one release. Enter the Gungeon and Monster Train may be older, but they’re also critically acclaimed additions.

Critical Reception

Quite an impressive month in terms of indies in March, with Mullet Madjack (88) and Monster Train (86) both landing in the high eighties. Mullet Madjack in particular seems to have really made waves so appears to be a great game for Microsoft to have got on the service. Enter the Gungeon (82) is well known as a quality game, while the Blizzard Arcade Collection (79) and Atomfall (75) round out the notable games from a critical perspective.

In terms of user scores from the Xbox Store, it’s much the same, with Mullet Madjack (4.5) again coming out on top, followed by Enter the Gungeon (4.4) and Monster Train (4.3). 33 Immortals (4.0) isn’t eligible for a Metascore yet as it’s in Game Preview, but does well here, with Atomfall faring less well at just 2.8.

Recency

Effectively four day one games this month, with Mullet Madjack, Atomfall, One Lonely Outpost and 33 Immortals a nice mix of double-A and indie games across a range of genres.

Enter the Gungeon brings the average down, being from 2017 originally, while it’s also worth giving a shout out to Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island, which released in December last year so is quite a notable addition. It hasn’t reviewed that well but worth trying out if it looks like your bag.

March 2025 – The Leavers

Another month with a HUGE disparity between games added and games leaving. Unlike some prior months though, March has some high scoring, recent games dropping off, which will be sure to cause some consternation. Probably the biggest, Monster Hunter Rise, will leave many people thinking about buying the game, while multiple Yakuza games have also disappeared (Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami 2, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 6 (all games with a 80+ Metascore).

We’ve also lost the excellent Lil Gator Game, which was a critically acclaimed indie adventure title, as well as No More Heroes III and Hot Wheels Unleashed 2. That’s not even the whole list. In short, it’s extremely likely you have played or continue to play at least one game from this list, which is a sure sign of a bad month for games leaving Game Pass.

Additions vs Leavers

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, with the only positive coming from the “Age” field, which, let’s face it, you’d hope games coming into the service would naturally be winning.

Most of these values are averages as well, so it’s not purely down to the sheer number of titles leaving.

Vs. March 2024

We’ll have a look at March last year now to see how things have changed in the past twelve months and…yeah it’s not great.

Just look at those games! Diablo IV and Control alone make March 2024 better than this year, while the fantastic The Quarry also dropped, alongside No More Heroes III, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2, MLB The Show 24 and NBA 2K4. Quite simply, for variety, quality and quantity, March 2024 was a fantastic month.

As if to rub salt in the wound, we see a very similar story to February (where only four games left Game Pass), with only five games leaving – and two of those (MLB The Show 23 and Hot Wheels Unleashed) were effectively replaced by their sequels! A great turn of events.

As discussed, the table below makes quite grim reading with all the red rows present.

Conclusions

We’ve said before that it’s very challenging for Microsoft to keep Game Pass feeling exciting and fresh when there aren’t any big first party games coming out. It seems as though they were really relying on Atomfall to do the business this month, and while it landed relatively well and seems to have good engagement on Game Pass, one third-party game is always going to find it hard to compete.

A month where it’s pretty cut and dry that Game Pass is weaker at the end of it. While Atomfall in particular is a very welcome addition, overall there’s no denying it’s been a poor month.

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 April 3rd 2025.