Multiplayer Shooter Insurgency: Sandstorm Added to Xbox Game Pass

First-person shooters can be hit or miss in gaming. You have your cult classic games like GoldenEye 007, Call of Duty and more, but there’s also a lot of games that completely flop for a variety of reasons. It could be unattractive gameplay, a poor plot, bad graphics and other variables, but there’s a lot that goes into creating a game that becomes so large over the years that it’s viewed as a cult classic and respected by both its developer peers and the gaming community.

In this particular case, the original Insurgency was released in 2014 and it did reasonably well all things considered. The sequel, Insurgency: Sandstorm, was released four years later in 2018, and actually built a pretty impressive following, at least large enough to prevent the game from fading out. The tactical first-person shooter focuses on close combat and multiplayer gameplay with a series of objectives, all to be completed via an organized team.

These days it takes a certain element to make your game stand out from competing games in the same genre in order to generate attention and interest. Generally the top companies are best at it not just because they have decades of experience, but also because they can recruit the best and most experienced developers to bring on board for the creation of games. As time passes, this will only become more important considering that the gaming market is not only very relevant still, but it’s thriving and is expected to continue to moving forward as graphics improve and better consoles and games are released.

Insurgency: Sandstorm might not be the caliber of FPS as the real cult classics, but it definitely holds its own and is a pretty reasonable selection to add to Xbox Game Pass for December. The game is available as of yesterday for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and other cloud-compatible devices, and it’s a decent way to start off the last month of 2022.

For subscription holders to expect the best games in the market to be added to Game Pass is a bit ambitious to say the least, especially considering they are free, so when Xbox adds good releases it shouldn’t be taken with a grain of salt. Xbox Game Pass is progressively getting better, which is great news for subscription holders. There were a few months recently where they got rid of several games in addition to adding some, and this trend may continue for a little while longer but it’s definitely on the upswing right now overall as their selection of games is above average and the service provides very good value to members.

Also added recently was Soccer Story, an adventure RPG where players can use their soccer ball to play villains 1-on-1, compete in a variety of sports and solve puzzles and problems. There’s no telling how well this game will do on Game Pass, but it’s definitely much different than Insurgency: Sandstorm, and that’s part of Xbox’s goal to cater to different demographics of gamers by releasing games from vastly different genres for their subscription services.