Xbox Game Pass April lineup leads off with a heavy hitter

By Billy Givens Updated April 5, 2022

Microsoft has revealed its Xbox Game Pass lineup for April, and it includes some big games. The list includes some new day-and-date releases and 2021 hidden gems.

Perhaps most notable among this month’s offerings is MLB The Show 22, which is available beginning today, April 5. This yearly baseball sim is a Sony-developed and published title that has historically existed solely on PlayStation consoles, making it a bit surprising as a Day One addition to Microsoft’s subscription service. What this means for the future is uncertain, but it’s an interesting step in a new direction for Sony and Microsoft’s relationship.

Another massive title landing on the service in April is Life is Strange: True Colors, the latest sequel in Square-Enix’s narrative-based exploration franchise. Although it was a bit polarizing with critics overall, it was praised for eschewing the series’ typical staggered chapter release format in favor of a more cohesive experience, and it’s worth checking out for fans of emotionally-charged tales.

Here’s the full list of April’s Game Pass games.

Cricket 22 (Cloud/Console) – April 5
MLB The Show 22 (Cloud/Console) – April 5
Chinatown Detective Agency (Cloud/Console/PC) – April 7
Dragon Age 2 (Cloud via EA Play) – April 7
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare (Cloud via EA Play) – April 7
Star Wars: Squadrons (Cloud via EA Play) – April 7
Life is Strange: True Colors (Cloud/Console/PC) – April 12
Panzer Corps 2 (PC) – April 12
The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk (PC) – April 12
Lost in Random (Cloud/Console/PC via EA Play) – April 14

Unfortunately, every month also brings with it a few losses, and this one’s no different. Game Pass will be losing F1 2019, MLB The Show 21, Pathway, Rain on Your Parade, and The Long Dark throughout the month. If you’re wanting to check any of those out, you have until April 15 for all of them except F1 2019, which will exit the service on April 18.

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Gaming Writer

Billy Givens is a freelance writer with over a decade of experience writing gaming, film, and tech content. His work can be…

Gaming

The best traits to level first in Remnant 2

Three characters shoot at a boss in Remnant 2.

Much of Remnant 2's leveling process is based around increasing the ranks of traits that you'll discover throughout your journe. This will give you plenty of opportunities to build a character that best matches your playstyle. In the game's opening hours, however, each character will begin with just a few traits that can be leveled, and your equally limited trait points can make deciding which of those you want to invest in somewhat of a challenge. In this guide, we'll give you our opinion on which of these are best to focus on for optimizing the early part of your adventure. Here are the best traits to level first in Remnant 2
Best traits to level first in Remnant 2
When beginning the game with a new character, you'll have only five traits – one archetype trait exclusive to the archetype you've chosen and four core traits that every character begins with. Your archetype trait will level automatically as you play with that archetype, so you don't need to do anything with that trait. Instead, let's take a look at the four other core traits and discuss which ones are best to invest in.
Vigor
Vigor improves your overall health, which means you can take more damage before dying. This is likely the most important trait to pump points into, especially when first setting out into the dangerous world of Remnant 2. Enemies hit hard (especially bosses) and you have limited healing options during these opening hours, so you'll need every bit of extra health you can get. It wouldn't hurt to prioritize this trait until you get it to level 10, actually, as you'll be able to get plenty more points as the game progresses, and being able to take a few more hits against the game's first few bosses is immensely helpful. This is even more true for Challengers in team compositions where they'll be tanking and spending a lot of time in melee range.
Endurance
Endurance improves your overall stamina, which will allow you to run and roll more during combat. This is a great option to level up if you're playing a character that is focused on melee, as it will allow you to run more when you get surrounded or roll out of the way of enemy attacks without worrying as much about your stamina meter. For primarily ranged players, though, it's a bit less useful, so you're probably better putting those points elsewhere early on. As with Vigor, though, Challengers will likely benefit most from the trait due to their tendency to be a group's close-quarters combat specialist.
Spirit
Spirit improves your weapon mod power generation. This helps you to earn the ability to use your weapon mods more often in combat, meaning that its usefulness is entirely dependent on how useful your weapon mods are to your build. At the beginning of the game, your weapon mods will be most helpful during boss battles, and you're likely to end them before generating a second use of your mod anyways. Because of this, Spirit is likely better saved for leveling later on so that you can focus on survivability first. Gunslingers, however, are likely to see this as a good option in group settings because they're designed to be a DPS powerhouse.
Expertise
Expertise improves the cooldown speed of your archetype skills. This will aid you in using these skills more frequently, which can be a help against bosses and packs of deadly foes. However, like with Spirit, the usefulness of this trait in the initial few hours of the game is limited due to the already long cooldowns and the speed at which many bosses are likely to fall anyways. While Vigor should still be a priority for most classes, Expertise can be a particularly worthwhile trait for Medics who are playing with a group, as it's vital to keep their healing capabilities available as much as possible.

Gaming

The best upcoming Xbox Series X games: 2023 and beyond

Two Atlas Fallen characters stand together in key art.

The Xbox Series X and Series S have now been out for over two years, bringing better resolution, higher frame rates, and ray tracing to gamers around the world. And the upcoming Xbox Series X games on this list promise to continue to show off all those bells and whistles in fun, new experiences.

If you're eager to find out what Microsoft has in store for the years ahead, we've rounded up every game confirmed so far, including new offerings, franchise installments, and ports of existing titles. We're looking beyond the first-party projects here to encompass all the great games coming to this powerful piece of gaming hardware. Maybe some of them will end up being among the best games on Xbox Series X.
Confirmed 2023 releases
The games listed below either have 100% confirmed release dates or solid release windows that we expect them to hit this year. Anything that's up in the air due to more vague launch predictions or previous delays will be listed under the following header.

Gaming

Your Xbox Live Gold subscription will turn into Xbox Game Pass Core this September

Microsoft finally made the decision to move on from its monthly online-access subscription service Xbox Live Gold. On September 14, Xbox Live Gold will transform into Xbox Game Pass Core, with current Gold subscribers automatically gaining a Game Pass Core subscription.

An Xbox Live subscription tied to online play has existed in some form since Xbox Live launched in 2002, but Xbox Live Gold as we now know it truly came into form in July 2013 when Microsoft started the Games with Gold program that gave subscribers free games each month in addition to that online access. Although Microsoft rolled back some online restrictions in 2021, Games with Gold continues to this day. That will all end when Game Pass Core launches.