Game Pass November 2024 – Review

Following on from "Black Ops month", November might have struggled to live up to its immediate predecessor, but with Flight Simulator 2024 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 headlining, on paper it was all set to be an even stronger set of Game Pass titles. But how did it finish?

To see last month’s review click here. In summary, while Black Ops 6 landed really well and was a very strong addition, October 2024 paled in comparison to October 2023, with Forza Motorsport launching alongside some big third party games (nearly all of which were very new games). In short, there wasn’t enough variety or quantity compared to prior years. Was November more of the same?

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November 2024 – The Additions

Critical Reception

With S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and Flight Sim at the top of most people’s wishlists from November’s games, it’s fair to say that in the end we were pretty let down in November, with both games having extremely poor launches in terms of stability and quality. While S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 in particular appears to have captured the hearts of many players (especially on PC), glitches with the game and issues with the cloud elements in Flight Sim caused negative initial reviews.

With S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 sitting at a 73 Metacritic score and Flight Sim a 79, neither has hit the heights Xbox would have wanted critically. As a result, this batch of games actually scores marginally lower than the Game Pass average of 77.95 – a disappointment for sure given the hype for both games. Ironically, based on the underlying potential of both games, I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will end up being the more popular game, with its reviews on the Xbox store currently sitting at 3.3 compared to Flight Sim’s 1.9.

At the time of writing (November 30th), however, Flight Sim is an impressive 9th in the UK Most Played charts, while S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is 9th in the US charts, so both do appear to be capturing plenty of players regardless.

In terms of the other games added this month, it’s worth saying Starcraft (85), Nine Sols (83) and the Spyro trilogy (82) are all more than decent games, so do help take the edge of some of the first/second party disappointments.

Recency

As is usually the case, the added games are much newer than the average of those already on Game Pass. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Flight Sim, Metal Slug, Nine Sols, Genshin Impact and Goat Simulator Remastered are all day 1 additions, which is a very good number, making up over half of the additions. Of the rest, the Starcraft games and Spyro understandably increase the age of the games in this month’s list, but you’d have to say it’s worth it to get those games on the service.

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November 2024 – The Leavers

November’s departing games features a lot of titles (15), but overall they’re quite low ranking in terms of critical reception. The biggest hitters are Coral Island (Metacritic 82), Like a Dragon: Ishin! (81), Dicey Dungeons (80), Rollerdrome (79) and Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (78). The two Yakuza games in this list are probably the ones that will generate the most frustration amongst gamers.

Dungeons 4 is actually the highest rated game by Xbox players on the store (4.6), comfortably, followed by Goat Simulator (4.1) (which, to be fair, has been replaced by the remastered version) and Dicey Dungeons (4.0)

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Additions vs Leavers

As has been the pattern for this year so far, we see more games leaving the service than are being added. This, of course, results in a net loss in terms of value to the service, but the main positive is that the new games that are coming in have been rated more highly by Metascore and marginally higher by Xbox players. Starcraft brings the average age of the games being added down, otherwise it would be a positive story on that front too.

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Vs Last Month

Additions

Last month, of course, we had Black Ops 6 at the forefront, which certainly reviewed well and launched in a much better state than either S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 or Flight Sim. Goat Simulator 3, Sifu, Inscryption and South Park: The Fractured But Hole were also decent additions, making October (on paper) look like a stronger month. While two console exclusive games in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and Flight Sim are not to be sniffed at, their launch troubles also can’t be ignored.

The good points in the table above are all down to the extra game coming in this month compared to October, affecting the overall value of the service. Each game is, on average, also worth considerably more – though the total value hasn’t changed that much, with several games either being available for free (Genshin Impact) or not available for purchasing (the Starcraft games).

Leavers

When looking at the games leaving the service, November has been an unfortunately heavy month compared to October, resulting in a negative impact in terms of quantity of games and the value of the service. However, the games leaving are older, and rated less well than those that left in October, so it’s not all bad.

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Vs Last Year

Additions

We’ve only been doing this a couple of months, but this is the first time a comparison is completely red for the current month versus a previous one. Indeed, November 2024 loses out in every single way compared to November 2023. It’s interesting, because if you look at the list of games, not too much stands out in terms of additions for 2024. Football Manager was a good get for UK and European audiences, but it’s the consistently high Metacritic scores for the rest of the titles that’s impressive, with Like a Dragon, Rollerdrome, Thirsty Suitors, both Remnant games and Wild Hearts all scoring over 78.

Leavers

Comparing the Leavers in 2024 with those in November 2023 paints a similar picture, with most categories in the red in the table below. Indeed, while it looks like fewer games left Game Pass, this doesn’t tell the whole story, as several games that were in Game Pass were delisted in November 2023, meaning they don’t show up here (e.g. Football Manager 2023, GRID, ANVIL: Vault Breaker and Rocket Arena), which would bring it much closer to the 2024 figures.

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Conclusions

As with many of the outlets that reviewed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 on day one, this seems like the sort of month that warrants revisiting in a few weeks, once multiple patches are in place for the game (and Flight Sim). However, that’s not where we are yet, and by then Indiana Jones will have released, which we expect to be in a much better state. Whether S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and Flight Sim were rushed out to suit the Game Pass calendar we’ll never know, but let’s hope that wasn’t the case.

Elsewhere, we are still seeing the decline in quantity of games compared to last year, which makes it hard to give a high score for this month. On the positive side, there does seem to be a trend towards better critical responses for Game Pass games, which we hope continues through December and into 2025.

Another month where Xbox-published titles carried the service. Without them it would have been very poor indeed, and with both those games suffering negativity at launch, November can only be viewed as an average month at best.

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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 November 30th 2024.