The best Xbox One games to play right now

It’s not exactly the most traditional Monster Hunter game, but that’s what makes it so damn good. If you enjoy a good open-world RPG where you can track rare monsters, engage in tough combat, and craft awesome armor out of their remains, then Monster Hunter: World is right up your alley. Monster Hunter: World modernizes a classic RPG and makes it easy for anyone to jump in. It features beautiful zones that feel alive, monsters with improved AI, and cool DLC crossovers with Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, and Horizon Zero Dawn. There’s also a multiplayer mode where up to four players can don their best gear and take down dangerous beasts together. And if you can’t get enough, you should definitely try the Iceborne expansion.

Xbox One fans had to wait more than two years to get their hands on Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky, but the game they eventually received was far better than the one released back in 2016. Multiple updates have overhauled many of the game’s systems, resulting in more engaging adventures that no longer felt like blind busywork. Improvements like base-building allow you to feel like you’re truly living in the game’s enormous universe, rather than merely looking at it from a distance. The biggest addition to the No Man’s Sky, however, was multiplayer. It finally gave players the chance to explore uncharted territory together and attempt to survive the harsh conditions found on many mysterious planets. And now, the game has expanded far beyond what was initially promised, with so much more to do.

If you ever yearned for Fallout in space, this is the closest relative you’ll likely ever see. That’s because the masterminds behind the popular series, Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, are at the helm of this incredible first-person role-playing adventure, The Outer Worlds. The setting is an alternate timeline that sees corporations colonizing other worlds. Your character originates from a colony ship, The Hope, that becomes lost as it travels through space to the Halcyon star system. Scientist Phineas Welles wakes you from cryosleep 100 years later, with a mission to infiltrate the Halcyon colonies and save fellow humans from The Board, a conglomerate of corporations. You eventually gain a ship and travel to various settlements scattered throughout the system. As with any other modern RPG, players gain side missions alongside the main story quests. Your choices heavily dictate how the story unfolds, such as diverting power from a local colony or withholding secrets from The Board. Overall, there’s a definite Fallout feel under all the alien landscapes and technology. What’s missing in the The Outer Worlds is a memorable radio station pumping oldies into our ears.

Taking place after the events of the previous game, The Witcher 3 follows the continuing adventures of Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter searching for his lost lover, Yennefer, and Ciri, his adopted daughter. Although its central plot offers a long and entertaining quest, there’s far more to the game than finding Geralt’s loved ones. The world is massive, dense with characters great and small who have problems they need Geralt to solve. Whether it’s exorcising a spirit haunting a village or helping a blacksmith rebuild his business, there are hundreds of little adventures to go on, and some even intersect in surprising ways. The world of The Witcher is dark. An early scene finds Geralt riding into a war-torn province, the camera pulling back to reveal a massive tree from which prisoners of war have been hanged. It’s a grim image, and it sets the tone for much of what is to follow. Often the game will present choices that can have wide-ranging, unforeseen consequences. Not everyone gets a happy ending. Despite all the gloom, there are moments of warmth: an orphan reunited with relatives, drinking games with Geralt’s war buddies, a night of passion with an old flame, and more. Wildly ambitious and epic in scope, The Witcher 3 is a watershed moment for role-playing games, setting a new gold standard for the genre.