Summary
With any console you’ve just picked up for the first time, you’ll want some key games to play first to really showcase or test out what the system can do. For the Xbox Series X|S, there are many games like that.
However, you might also want to play other titles first that are incredible to play specifically on these consoles. Whetheryou want a graphical showcase, test out the HDR, stress test the system, play some Xbox classics, or play Xbox-exclusive gems, there are games to try out first for that purpose.
An essential game to download first on your Xbox Series X|S console is Halo: The Master Chief Collection. You get all six classic Halo games that look better than ever and also have more content than ever before.
You get multiplayer for all the games, too, and Halo MCC is the best Halo multiplayer experience to date, which includes co-op. If you have friends or family over,split-screen co-op always proves to be a good time, being a lot of fun and a great introduction to this console.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is one of the best games of 2024 andlikely the best movie gameto come out in over 15 years. From top to bottom, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a phenomenal adventure game with great exploration and that trademark Indy feel.
The writing, in particular, nails the feel of the Indiana Jones films with likable characters, nasty villains, and a bunch of creepy crawlers to give Indy a bad time. It’s an impressive graphical showcase as well, and with the title being one of the best Xbox games you’re able to play right now, it’s definitely worth trying right away after you get the system.
Yes, the visuals in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are fantastic, but the best graphical showcase to show off the power of these consoles is Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. This game on a Series X has the best-looking human characters in gaming, especially if you look at the faces, which have so much detail. The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered on PS5 Pro is the only other game that comes close.
The opening chapter alone will blow you and anyone watching away. While the visuals make Hellblade 2 a must-checkout title, keep in mind this style of cinematic narrative-focused action game won’t be for everyone. If you’re in that camp, you should play something else; if not, this game needs to be one of the first you try out.
A huge reason to buy an Xbox Series X|S in the first place is to play old games. Many stellar games are most easily played on these consoles, complete with their still active online multiplayer, and a great example is Grand Theft Auto 4. Sure, you can play GTA4 on PC, and while the mods are fun, the PC online multiplayer doesn’t function anymore.
On Xbox, you get all three single-player romps with Niko, Johnny, and Luis running at 60fps and working online. GTA4 still holds up really well, visuals notwithstanding, and you may only get the full experience on Xbox. To be fair, there’s not a lot of people playing online anymore, but another Rockstar game is still highly populated.
Nowadays, Red Dead Redemption has been ported to all modern platforms, but again, the only way to get the full experience remains on Xbox. Playing on Xbox Series X,you’re able to enjoy 4K visuals, but at 30fps compared to 60 on PS5 and PC. The difference maker here is, once again, online multiplayer.
The online multiplayer in Red Dead is one of the best in the history of Rockstar Games, being incredibly content-rich with multiple DLCs, and it was the true stepping stone to what would eventually be GTA Online. It’s still fairly active, and the multiplayer is nonexistent in the PS4/5, Switch, and PC versions, making Xbox the definitive way to play.
While many Xbox 360 classics are some of the first games you should play if you love more retro stuff, there’s also entire Xbox exclusives that are unlikely to ever get ported over. One of them is an all-time great action title: Ninja Gaiden 2. For hardcore action game fans, Ninja Gaiden 2 is not only the first game you should play, but it’s a big reason to buy a Series console in the first place.
On Xbox Series X, it runs at a beautiful 4K resolution, and all the framerate issues in the 360 original are gone. With chaotic fights and high enemy counts, brutal gore that’s slightly more detailed than Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, awesome projectile weapons, and the incredible DLC Survival mode, Ninja Gaiden 2 is leaps ahead of any other version of the game.
Phil Spencer has stated that there are no red lines regarding Xbox exclusives going forward, but when you’re going this far back into the early 360 days, it’s safe to say games like Lost Odyssey will likely remain exclusive. That’s a big deal because Lost Odyssey is one of thebest RPGs ever madein the past two decades.
A four-disc epic with some of the core names from Final Fantasy behind it, including Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu, not many old-school JRPGs get better than this game. Lost Odyssey is undoubtedly a must-play JRPG, and if you’re a genre fan, you must experience Lost Odyssey first on the console.
While graphics certainly push the Xbox Series X|S quite a lot, if you want to push these systems to their absolute limits, the game to play is Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem. There are dozens of enemies on screen most of the time, and if you skip the fights, your console will suffer.
The game slows down to a crawl if you speedrun through it since the enemies never despawn, but there’s a way to tune it up even higher. You can set the enemy multiplier to times two, doubling the amount of enemies present. The framerate can go into the low single digits if you skip everything with enemies set to times two. There’s simply no better benchmark game to test the limits of the Xbox Series X|S.
Whether you pick up an Xbox Series X|S or PS5, one of the first things you need to do is calibrate the HDR to match your TV. After you finish all that, the best game to play to see how the HDR looks has to be Banjo-Kazooie. Once you start exploring Spiral Mountain, the colors should pop gracefully with the vibrantness of the game.
It looks amazing, and if not, that’s probably a sign you need to adjust your HDR settings some more. With its small file size, Banjo-Kazooie is by far the most convenient way to test HDR, and it’s a phenomenal platformer to boot.
Starfield is the best Xbox Series X|S exclusive, at least for now. While it has its issues, particularly exploring random planets with nothing in them, the core questlines retain the A-grade-level design Bethesda is known for.
Some of the quests in Starfield are the best that Bethesda’s ever made, like No Sudden Moves, which has the level of freedom you’d expect in a Hitman mission, and the one where you swap between two dimensions. The faction questlines are stellar as well, especially Ryujin Industries. you’re able to now play Starfield at 60fps, and with mod support on consoles, Starfield is a must-play game on Xbox Series X|S.
