Big sports weekend this weekend, y’all. The 2026 Winter Olympics kicks off Friday in Italy, and hundreds of millions of people will be watching the Seahawks face the Patriots Sunday evening in Super Bowl LX. But the Venn diagram between gamers and sports fans isn’t by any means a circle, meaning plenty of us won’t be watching any sportsball this weekend. What to do instead? Play games, of course. It’s still too frigid out there to go outside.
This week’s Xbox Game Pass recommendations include a zany Yakuza spinoff, a co-op adventure, and a way for football fans to win the Super Bowl themselves.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
Next week, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio will give us a beachside vacation in February with its remake of Yakuza 3. The original game is one of the series’ sunniest installments, with its opening hours spent at a seaside orphanage. If you want to prepare for that trip, it’s a good weekend to hop into another one of the series’ tropical games. Like a Dragon: Yakuza Pirate in Hawaii is a wild and wacky spinoff in which long-time Yakuza antihero Goro Majima gets amnesia and becomes the captain of a pirate crew. It’s completely ridiculous (even by Yakuza standards), but it still has some heartfelt moments that make it just as worthwhile as any other game in the series. Plus, you get to steer a pirate ship and blow up other boats. Eat your heart out, Skull and Bones. —Giovanni Colantonio
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 arrived on Game Pass last week and its short campaign is perfect for a weekend gaming binge. I can’t tell you what exactly happens in the campaign — it didn’t make a lick of sense to me as a first foray into Warhammer. However, that didn’t lessen my enjoyment of Space Marine 2 at all. Like a Gears of War adventure, the whole appeal of this game is shooting hordes of alien enemies in the face. In that aspect, Space Marine 2 delivers in spades, with a variety of firearms and melee weapons to get bloody. Grab a friend or two to hack n’ slash your way through the campaign, and stick around for Space Marine 2‘s other multiplayer modes. —Austin Manchester
Madden NFL 26
If you’re anything like me, you’re just absolutely sick of watching the Patriots win. Seriously, this franchise went from Tom Brady to Drake Maye with only a few Mac Jones years in between? Talk about a spoiled fanbase. If the Pats win da big one on Sunday, they’ll stand alone in the NFL record books with a league-leading seven Super Bowl victories. While you and I may not be able to do anything to prevent that in the real world, we can boot up the latest Madden to crush those pesky Pats virtually now that Madden NFL 26 is on Game Pass. Emerge victorious in a Super Bowl simulation using the Seahawks, or replay the playoffs as the Bills and get Buffalo in the championship round like they should have been all along. (Josh Allen’s never gonna win one, is he?) —Austin Manchester
