With Vampire Survivors, I finally get the appeal of Xbox Game Pass Cloud Gaming

You know those games that you start up, spend about 20 minutes, and then realize ‘ah crap’. do you have me That is vampire survivors. I arrive at this compelling little sprite-based game as a creature that has sunk for over 1000 hours in The Binding of Isaac on the multiple platforms I have it on – the kind of compulsive gimp who gets distracted by these endless games and boosting uses. as a form of meditation. So, the moment I upgraded my first garlic bulb and started throwing knives at the throbbing undead, I knew I’d been caught.

But I am also 30 years old, I live with my partner and I have responsibilities. So I can’t just sit in my pants, dip bread in something more liquid than bread, drink beer and play all night. I’ve got shit what to do: socialize with my partner, walk the dog, see friends. But how the hell am I supposed to get all my shit what to do done and also score the 1200G of Vampire Survivors in a week? How can I make sure I’m playing at full speed and unlocking all characters while seeing who wins this Bake Off series? I didn’t think there was a clean solution… until Xbox itself sent a push notification to my phone.

“Don’t forget, Dom,” he said (I’m paraphrasing), “that you can play whenever and wherever you want! Sitting in the swamp? In Asda’s queue? Enduring another anecdote from your most milquetoast friend? Download the Xbox Game Pass app now and play wherever you want.” Do you know what I did next? I downloaded the Xbox Game Pass app and have been playing wherever I want ever since.

I don’t think he was really paying attention to who won Bake Off; He was too involved in making sure Poppea could evolve his weapons when he killed the next boss. I don’t think I really realized the impact of Diana setting fire to the royal system in The Crown; I was too focused on making sure my watch lancet was level enough to survive a minute against the Reaper in the Bone Zone.

And you know the best? When I went back to my office to play the game when I should have been working (sorry boss), everything was there: all my upgrades, all my characters, all my progress… everything magically transferred over. to my Xbox Series X. No questions asked. Then when I wanted to play the game on the train on the way to my other partner’s house, I downloaded the game on my laptop. No additional cost. Here I am, using the Vampire Survivors PC version, the Cloud version, and the Xbox version, and I haven’t paid a penny for it. Compare that to pipeline from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5 (where I lost half my save games and nearly ruined my hardware), and the difference is night and day.

Vampire Surivors is there for me. In everything I own, all as part of the Game Pass functionality. If I want a more complicated session, I turn on the Xbox and play it on the big screen. If I want to play it while paying attention to Kevin McCloud in Grand Designs, I can launch it on my phone and play it with one of my spare Xbox pads. If I want to have quick sessions between other activities (like writing news…), it’s ready to go on my PC.

This speaks to the ease of use that Microsoft has placed at the center of its philosophy of late. For all the PR-leaked chatter the company has about “removing the barriers to gaming,” it’s this curious little survival curiosity that really proved it to me, rather than any of its big-budget powerhouses.

Back when this cutting-edge cloud-based streaming technology was being demoed in the UK, I played Destiny 2 on it – I was working in Canary Wharf (the only place in London that supported 5G, at the time) and Destiny would launch. on my phone Friday at 5 pm to go steal Xur’s candy. The technology wasn’t even good enough to support that, at the time. Now, some 3 years later, I can’t put my damn Pixel down, and it’s all because of Vampire Survivors.

It’s safe to say that the indie gem has made me realize just how valuable Xbox Game Pass Cloud Gaming is, now that I can fit it into my life, and I won’t be going back.