What Game Pass subscribers should play for Halloween

October is pretty much the peak of fall game launches, and this year, a stellar bundle of titles is hitting the Game Pass service just in time for Halloween. PC Gamer Portal told us which platforms subscribers should play on this month.

Frostpunk 2 (out now)

The continuation of the post-apocalyptic city-building strategy once again tasks players with saving snowy London from permafrost, but now on a much grander scale. The city manager will have to oversee internal politics and make decisions based on different factions, often adhering to directly opposing ideologies. Frostpunk 2 is a deep yet addictive people management puzzle where just a few mistakes can lead to a successful settlement.

25 minutes — Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Projects under long-standing franchises like Call of Duty vary in quality. And even though the previous installment in the franchise was a bit of a disappointment, many are still hopeful that Black Ops 6 will get back on track. This time around, one of the key features will be updated movement mechanics, allowing you to roll, run backward, and jump over things, just like the action heroes of the 1990s. Modern Warfare 3 has been accused of misusing content from older games, so it's great that Black Ops 6 will offer 16 brand new maps at launch.

Static drive dead

The writers of Dead Static Drive called their project “Grand Theft Cthulhu” – it's hard to think of a more catchy tagline. And the genre of the game is survival horror set in 1980s America, where players must avoid not only the police but also chthonic monsters to find out what happened to the missing parents of the main character. Dead Static Drive also features stealth and survival elements, and the story is inspired by films by Tarantino and David Lynch.

October 31 – Dead Island 2

Dead Island 2 is a fun Halloween treat for zombie action fans. First-person combat, sunny Los Angeles, tons of humorous violence, jokes in the spirit of grindhouse movies, and an optional co-op mode to go through the story with friends. What else do you need for happiness?