Microsoft has officially rolled out Game Pass Standard, the Netflix-like subscription service’s new middle tier, and with it revealed which games will and won’t be included at the start. Among those missing are Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 3, Diablo IV, and some other notable blockbusters like Starfield.
The Week In Games: What’s Coming Out Beyond Starfield
Announced earlier this summer, Game Pass Standard is $15 a month and includes access to online multiplayer as well as a library of hundreds of games that can be downloaded and played on-demand. The big difference between Game Pass Standard and Game Pass Ultimate, the now $20 a month version, is that the former won’t include certain day-one additions to the library until up to 12 months later or even longer in some cases. The most notable example is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which will only be part of Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass PC when it launches on October 25.
But a list of the existing libraries for each tier also reveals other discrepancies for games that already came to the service. Modern Warfare 3, added last month, is notably absent. As is Diablo IV, added in the spring with a new expansion, Vessel of Hatred, coming October 8. Valorant, Riot Games’ hero shooter that recently came to console, is free-to-play but locks certain characters behind a paywall. The Game Pass version that unlocks them all for free is part of Ultimate but not Standard.
There are some smaller day-and-date games missing as well. Flintlock, the colonial-era Soulslike, came to Game Pass in July but isn’t included in Standard’s library. Neither is Another Crab’s Treasure, the cartoony Soulslike that joined in April. Still Wakes The Deep, the horror walking sim that arrived in June, is also absent. It seems like a lot of recent day-one Game Pass releases, including Microsoft’s own Age of Mythology Retold, won’t be hitting Standard anytime soon, despite arriving on the service before the split was official. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II isn’t there either, nor Starfield which came out over a year ago.
When will we see these games and others make it to the middle tier? That’s the most confusing part of all. For now there doesn’t seem to be one standard approach, with all releases being staggered by the same number of months. Even for Microsoft’s own first-party releases, it seems like their arrival on Standard will happens when it happens. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, for example, might not hit Game Pass Standard until it first arrives on PS5 in the spring.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cat Quest III departs from the first two games of this light-hearted action-adventure series in a variety of ways, especially with its pirate-themed naval combat. Still, it also retains a lot of familiar gameplay mechanics and concepts that ensure if you played the previous games, you’ll feel right at home. Whether you’re a returning player well-versed in Cat Quest’s history, or you’re brand new to the franchise, we’ve compiled a solid list of tips to help you get started in this feline-focused adventure. – Billy Givens Read More
We’re about halfway through the summer and I’ve given up on avoiding sweat You’re probably about halfway to giving up on Elden Ring’s Shaddw of the Erdtree DLC, but we can help with that. We’ve also got a tip for a free game for you to snag, and some FF14 advice. Read on for more of this week’s best tips.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtreelaunched some weeks ago, meaning players have hopefully managed to surmount its immensely difficult fights (the last one in particular) and roll credits on the expansion. However, a contingent of players have found themselves underwhelmed by the conclusion, and the expansion’s narrative content as a whole, since Shadow of the Erdtree is Elden Ring’s only DLC and bears the weight of sending off one of the biggest games of our time.
The Most Sought After Elden Ring Sword Has A Storied History
Some have expressed frustration with the ramifications, or lack thereof, of Shadow of the Erdtree. Many expected characters from the base game to return in some way, react to the events of the expansion, or simply play a bigger role in it, especially ones who have close ties to Miquella, the DLC’s central character. The lack of consequence, and the absence of new dialogue that’d further the player’s understanding of the story, have been a sore point for folks who are starved for morsels of Elden Ring’s massive, sometimes inscrutable narrative.
There’s a contingent of folks who are especially disappointed in the final cutscene of the DLC, feeling that it does very little to pay off the experience that preceded it. That sentiment is likely bred from the fact that Shadow of the Erdtree ends in a massive fight. I’m talking, like, a huge pain in the ass that is even rigged against the player thanks to insane hitboxes, seemingly unavoidable attacks, and the kinds of long combos that Elden Ring has become infamous for doubling down on. Once you have beaten that absolute unit of a final boss, there’s a cutscene that can be triggered, and many fans of the game are none too pleased with its brevity and lack of oomph, for lack of a better word.
Spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree’s ending follow.
For many, this ending to Elden Ring’s saga seems like a whimper rather than a triumphant bang. The scene is straightforward enough (or as clean-cut as FromSoftware’s esoterica can be) and that appears to be the source of the tension. Miquella, the quintessential character of the entire expansion, appears for the first time and effectively doubles down on his goal, or at least restates it. There is no pomp to the affair. Miquella is kneeling throughout the scene, which takes place in a void save for the nearby throne of the Elden Lord, and it is over before you know it. It betrays no significant new insight.
I won’t lie: this does kind of suck ass. I actually get the contingent who were maybe expecting more from the end of this DLC. Elden Ring is an epic, and if this is the end of it, yeah, it’s not exactly what I would’ve expected. But while some are fixated on the short nature of the ending, others are pissed because of how little it appears to add to the story, or at the least their understanding of it all.
Elden Ring, like most of FromSoftware’s oeuvre, is fascinating to digest and think about. I love people who sniff out bits of lore and propose theories about the motivations of characters and the larger schemings of the world. I too have fallen asleep to many Vaatividya videos piercing together scraps of item descriptions into a cogent and deeply tragic narrative. However, these practices have also borne a kind of fan that demands “truth” from these games. People who expect answers for their sleuthing and investment. In my humble opinion, those folks are playing these games—and engaging with art—in a reductive manner, and only getting in the way of their own enjoyment.
The absolute truth of these games is supposed to elide you, you dingbats. Whatever absolute meaning you are trying to wring from them flies in the face of the entire point of FromSoft’s preferred method of storytelling. If Miyazaki wanted players to know everything about the game, he and his team could’ve simply written it out for you in a game rich with endless dialogue, exposition, and scenes pontificating on every minute detail. The fact that these games have never fit that mold should have clued you all into an obvious fact: there is no truth waiting for you at the center of Elden Ring or its expansion.
Disgruntled players who can’t believe that Shadow of the Erdtree would end in such an abrupt and curt manner are outright hoping that there’s a secret ending to be uncovered. Though Elden Ring didn’t have a secret one, it did feature multiple endings depending on what quests you completed and what force/faction you ultimately aligned with. Shadow of the Erdtree lacks a similar framework, and Miyazaki has outright stated that the DLC wouldn’t impact the endings already baked into the game, but that hasn’t stopped a select few from praying that those claims were little more than a red herring.
I find how little I understand Elden Ring to be a fucking joy, y’all. When I do come back to it, I love trying to click the puzzle pieces together. Some of them fit, and others don’t. Some of them may never click and that’s okay. I can master the game’s mechanics and dog-walk half of these bosses in my sleep, but there’s something about the fact that I may never really understand all of its mysteries, including Miquella’s motivations for abandoning the Lands Between and seeking godhood, or whatever people are bent out of shape about. I’ll never really stop exploring the larger-than-life cast of Elden Ring and that keeps the thrill of it alive. I don’t need to know everything about Elden Ring to know that I love it and love being engaged by it. Believe it or not, that’s enough.
For years now, Bloodbornefans have wanted the popular PS4-exclusive RPGported to PC, hopefully with performance improvements and graphical options. And while FromSoftware’s president Hidetaka Miyazaki didn’t confirm that such a port is happening, he did say he’s not opposed to it and suggested that many people at the studio want a PC port to happen.
The Most Sought After Elden Ring Sword Has A Storied History
Released nearly a decade ago in 2017 exclusively for PlayStation 4, Bloodborne is one of FromSoftware’s (Dark Souls, Elden Ring) most popular and beloved games. Like many of its other games, Bloodborne is a tough-as-nails action RPG featuring intense boss battles and many secrets. However, unlike many of FromSoftware’s RPGs, Bloodborne has never been ported to other platforms. It remains stuck on PS4. That’s led to people asking over and over again for the Sony-owned Bloodborne to get a PC port. And it sounds like, while Miyazaki doesn’t have anything to announce, he seems into the idea of this fan-favorite RPG finally being playable on something other than a PS4.
In an interview with Miyazaki, PC Gamer asked the president if he would personally like to see Bloodborneported to PC one day.
“I know for a fact these guys want a Bloodborne PC port,” said Miyazaki in reference to FromSoftware staff sitting with him during the interview. However, he quickly added that if he says he wants a port he’ll “get in trouble” but that he’s not “opposed” to a PC version.
“Obviously, as one of the creators of Bloodborne, my personal, pure honest opinion is I’d love more players to be able to enjoy it,” said Miyazaki. “Especially as a game that is now coming of age, one of those games of the past that gets lost on older hardware—I think any game like that, it’d be nice to have an opportunity for more players to be able to experience that and relive this relic of the past. So as far as I’m concerned, that’s definitely not something I’d be opposed to.”
Of course, while it’s nice to hear that the president of FromSoftware wants a Bloodborne PC port, it doesn’t mean one is happening. Remember, FromSoftware doesn’t own the Bloodborne IP, Sony does. And until Sony decides to fund a port, remaster, or remake, all FromSoftware can do is vaguely go “Yeah, we want one, too!” and that’s it.
Hopefully, as we near the game’s 10th anniversary next year, Sony will realize that they have a literal goldmine on their hands and all the company has to do is post a teaser for Bloodborne on Steam and it will be flooded with pre-orders before it even shares a trailer. At the very least, we know everyone at FromSoftware is down for a port. Now we wait to see what Sony wants…
Have you ever wished you could exercise your Second Amendment right on a formidable video game boss? Well, one upcoming Soulslike will let you pull out a gun and one-tap bosses if it prove too impossible to “git gud” and vanquish them the normal way.
This Brutal Gothic Metroidvania Is Shaping up To Be Something Special
Another Crab’s Treasure, by Going Under developer Aggro Crab, is a 3D “Shellslike” in which you play as a hermit crab named Kril as he scours the land for his long-lost shell. Somewhere along Kril’s journey, you’ll explore the littered ocean floor for a makeshift home and duke it out with other ocean-faring beasties. The game has a Windows demo for Steam Next Fest and is slated to come out sometime next year on the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Now, about the gun thing. Another Crab’s Treasure’s Steam page notes that you can play the game at your own pace, saying it was “designed to be an approachable experience for newer Soulslike players as well as provide a challenge for hardcore fans.” Typically, any online conversation about whether or not a Soulslike game should have lower difficulty option or (gasp) some sort of assist mode is met with vitriol from genre die-hards. Nonetheless Another Crab’s Treasure’sdemo happily showcases one of the game’s apparently many assist modes, which equips Kril with a gun that completely eviscerates his foes.
Aggro Crab definitely buried the lede by omitting the fact that the game offering “something for any level of skill or time commitment” would include a freaking gun available to anyone who tires of panic-rolling with only a rusty spork with which to defend themselves. I don’t have much more commentary to add to the sheer power of the above clip except to say that I hope more video games follow suit by arming players, be they animals or lowly dung-eating swordsmen, with proportionally enormous guns.
Lies of P is a tough game. Everything can kill you, from the hardest of bosses to the most predictable of trash mobs, which is to be expected of a Soulslike game. Although there’s no difficulty setting to make the Bloodborne-inspired RPG any easier, there are some tips you can take with you as you skirmish with the humans and puppets waiting to kill you in this gothic reimagining of Pinocchio.
Like Bloodborne, Lies of P features a regain mechanic in which you can replenish a portion of lost health by attacking the enemy who hurt you. But in addition to regaining your lost health, staying on the offensive slowly builds up your foe’s stagger and, when their health flashes white, leaves them open for a powerful attack that’ll put them into a Groggy state. Essentially, they’re stunned, at which point you can execute a Fatal Attack to deal massive damage. Thus, the game rewards being aggressive if you want to stay alive and quickly defeat your foes. Hesitate, and you’ll die. It’s as simple as that.
Keep your weapon sharp
Battling with humans and puppets across the nightmarish city of Krat will eventually leave your weapons dull. Attack enough without addressing its plummeting durability and that blade you’re using will break, which is why it pays to maintain your armaments’ peak sharpness. However, honing your blade with the in-game Grinder does more than just ensure its optimal effectiveness; it can also give you a damage buff once you’ve leveled up the item’s capabilities. Furthermore, equipping the Grinder with an element like fire or poison will imbue your weapon with that same power, giving you an elemental edge over the violence in Krat. Take care of your weapons and they’ll take care of you.
Break your weapon in half
This might sound contradictory to the above tip, but they coexist. Lies of P lets you combine weapons together. By breaking them into their two halves, blade and handle, you can mix and match gear to create something that pairs well with your build. So, say you’re focusing on strength but like the rapier, a dexterity-based weapon. You could take the rapier’s handle, which actually dictates the armament’s attack pattern, and attach it to a blade that scales better with your stats and boom, new weapon unlocked. Now, by sharpening the blade in combat and leveling it up at the main hub world of Hotel Krat, you’re taking care of a weapon that’ll likely carry you through the rest of the game.
Level up your dodge quickly
Following feedback from the summer demo, co-developer Neowiz Games tweaked Lies of P’s sluggish dodge mechanic. Well, it needs to be reworked even more. It’s still imprecise, nonfunctional, and slow—until you level it up, that is. P has P-Organs, artificial components that mimic a real human’s organs, and which can be upgraded with Quartz, a resource you find in certain chests or get when beating bosses. Upgrading your P-Organs will do things like increase the number of healing items you have, or allow you to carry more stat-buffing artifacts. You can also unlock dodge upgrades that let you chain multiple evasive maneuvers together and roll out of a knockdown animation. Silly that you have to upgrade the dodge instead of starting with these abilities off the rip, especially since combat can be so punishing and dodging is a surefire tactic to hit-and-run gameplay. But trust me, you’re going to want to upgrade that dodge. It’ll be easier if you do.
Read those item descriptions
This may come as no surprise to Souls veterans, but Lies of P’s items have descriptions that detail much of the game’s lore. When things went to shit, how violent the puppet massacre was, who lived here and what you’ll find there—all detailed within the notes of the items you pick up around Krat. However, certain Ergo, this game’s rendition of FromSoftware’s souls resource, also contain descriptions that will tell you if a rare trader will want it in exchange for a rarer item. This could be a legendary artifact, a piece of gear that enhances your stats, or a powerful weapon. Of course, you could consume that Ergo for a massive amount of it, which will likely give you enough to level up at least once. But, if you’re willing to take the risk, you could just get a better piece of gear. Besides, defeating enemies gets you Ergo anyway. You can always make it up.
Change your outfits often
Considering Lies of P takes place during France’s opulent Belle Époque, you’ll absolutely see an assortment of beautiful—and bloodied—garments tinged with steampunk accouterments. It can be tempting to dress P up in different outfits as you journey through the darkened Krat. He is a puppet, after all. However, wearing an outfit in the game is about more than just looking stylish. Certain NPCs will interact with you differently based on what you’re wearing. Maybe they’ll attack you on sight or, instead, give you an option to work together, all depending on their relationship to the attire you’ve got on, which you can read up on in the item’s description. What’s that one quote? Knowledge is power?
Work On Your Perfect Guard Skills
So, not only does the dodge not feel that great, but to be totally honest, blocking and parrying aren’t particularly well-executed here either. That said, while the timing can be difficult to nail, mastering the perfect guard will help you go a long way in Lies of P. By pressing the block button right before an attack lands, you’ll perfectly parry your enemy’s strike. No, there’s no satisfying animation a la Sekiro. (There is a loud “clang” as the weapons collide, though.) And no, you won’t leave them immediately off-guard. However, perfect guarding your enemy enough times will increase their stagger, making them more susceptible to the Groggy state and a Fatal Strike, and break their weapon. You’ll probably die a lot on your way to figuring out just how best to perform the perfect guard, and that’s OK because mastering the move is totally worth it.
Summon—And Then Buff—Your Specter Bestie
As in many FromSoft Souls games, you can summon an AI-controlled NPC just before boss fights, and I highly encourage you to do so. There are some tough battles in Lies of P, with multiple enemies at once or truly, terrifyingly towering foes. It’s overwhelming. The specter you summon—a gorgeous, black armor-clad knight with flowy, snow-white hair—can serve as a distraction when you summon them via Star Fragments, a very common resource found in easy chests and on trash mobs and in vendor shops. This companion is already pretty tanky and can dish out plenty of damage on their own. However, attaching the mythical Wishstone crystals you come across to the Cube that functions as an additional healing item can give your specter—and you—added benefits. You can, say, prevent their death one time with the Indomitable Wishstone. Or, you can temporarily increase their damage or restore their HP with the Frenzy and Friendship Wishstones, respectively. Either way, tweaking the buffs your specter bestie has will do wonders for you.
It’s rough out there for a puppet. Thanks to the puppet frenzy that’s caused the marionettes to go ballistic, no one trusts a doll. It helps to be prepared, so these tips should make your time in the horrific world of Krat a little less frightening.
Lords of the Fallen was already a game, one that came out nearly 10 years ago by developer Deck13 (Atlas Fallen) and publisher CI Games. It was fine, but felt too much like a lackluster facsimile of FromSoftware’s Dark Souls formula to have much of an identity of its own. CI Games is back, though, with newly founded studio Hexworks to take another stab at Lords of the Fallen. And this time around, at least based on the previews, it sounds like a stellar Soulslike might be in the offing.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Out on October 13 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, Lords of the Fallen is a third-person action-RPG with an interesting conceit: With the help of the Umbral lantern, you can reveal secrets hidden in the land of the dead while still traversing the world of the living. But should you die and end up in Umbral—which will happen since this is a Soulslike—you’ll still be able to fight for your life for the chance to return to Axiom. Die here, though, and you’ll start back in the land of the living having lost your XP. Typically Soulslike stuff, but that two-realm implementation offers a new perspective for the genre, something the previews call attention to.
So, considering the game comes out in two months, here’s a roundup of what early players are saying about Lords of the Fallen and how, as many of them purport, it’s sounding like an exciting Soulslike worth paying attention to.
After playing the opening hours of 2023’s Lords of the Fallen, our journey through this nightmarish world was eerily familiar, yet filled with a current-gen polish that games like the Dark Souls trilogy and Bloodborne could only dream of. Our initial impressions were that the game felt a lot like the PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls, which is not a bad thing, but from an aesthetic point of view, Lords of the Fallen leans even more heavily into the grimdark setting.
Image: Hexworks
I’ve played a couple of hours of new Lords of the Fallen and crucially, I can tell you it’s: good. If you’ve played a Soulslike before—or as Hexworks wisely describes the genre, which extends to Nioh, The Surge, and the rest, tactical action-RPGs—it’ll be immediately familiar. You can create a character from one of several preset classes, ranging from glass cannon mages to sword-and-shield warriors, with some more lore-y archetypes in between with a little clan-based backstory behind them: a raven-like archer, a brawler with a twist of wolves.
The moment-to-moment in my Lords of the Fallen demo ticked most of the Souls boxes I have when it comes to combat, but this game distinguishes itself in its concept of dual worlds. Axiom, the land of the living, is more or less the “normal” dimension, but it exists in parallel with the Umbral realm, the land of the dead. The two realms run simultaneously as you play, which takes advantage of tech on latest-gen platforms. It’s similar to The Medium or Titanfall 2‘s Effect and Cause mission, but spread across an entire sprawling dark fantasy world.
What surprises me most, however, is Umbral. This is the realm of the dead and exists parallel to Axiom. It can be accessed at almost any time, in real-time. But, once you’re there, you must fight through its more challenging enemies to reach an access point that brings you back to Axiom. While you can select to explore Umbral on your own, Lords of the Fallen will bring you there almost every time you die. Dying gives you a second chance in Umbral, where, if you survive, you can reach the realm of Axiom once more. This eases the usual challenge of the genre—mind you, Lords of the Fallen is still extremely tough—but also opens up a unique playground for puzzles I welcome.
By tapping into two distinct worlds at once, Hexworks completely revamps how we view death in a Soulslike. Lords of the Fallen turns the most infamously iconic, eternally frustrating thing about a FromSoftware game into more than a second chance: It’s a second world, one that functions entirely differently from the place we start out in. The result is a varied combat experience in a truly untamed universe, one that pulses with unknown wonders and its fair share of chills—no matter your familiarity with the genre.
Image: Hexworks
There’s a great fluidity to Lords of the Fallen’s combat too. You can seamlessly flow from light attacks to heavy attacks, and can even change weapon stance in the middle of a combo as well. I could start with two light attacks, press the stance switch button, and do another light attack, I’d get a unique attack in which my character seamlessly goes from a dual-wielded slash, into a two-handed thrust. This is even better when you add magic to the equation, as you’re able to easily swap between melee and magic attacks even mid-combo. It opens the door for a lot of freedom of expression through combat, which is something you don’t see all too often in the Soulslike genre.
While in the Umbral world, enemies slowly become more aggressive and powerful, but the XP multiplier increases as well, amping up the risks as well as the rewards in an enticing way. Being able to respawn allowed me to progress much faster and alleviated some of the frustrations that come with the genre. The Umbral world also offers access to shortcuts and gives you wild abilities that mirror Jedi powers. Lords of the Fallen is at its strongest when it leans into the mechanics of the Umbral world.
Umbral also softens the difficulty level of its chosen genre—up to a point. If you die in Axiom, you are resurrected in Umbral, then given another chance to defeat your enemy before you give up the ghost completely and need to corpse-run from the last Vestige to reclaim your Vigor (Lords of the Fallen’s souls). This doesn’t refresh your healing items, though, and the longer you spend in Umbral, the more Dread builds up, and the trickier things get. Enemies get tougher, and increasing numbers of zombielike creatures materialize in your path—they’re easy to kill, but their presence complicates the battlefield considerably.
Outside of exploration, you can use the lantern to rend a baddy’s soul from its body, then batter it for extreme damage. You can’t do this all the time, as you’ll need to power the lantern up to do it. This can be done by bursting pustules in the Umbral realm and sucking up the resultant juice, but if you can’t find a pustule, you might encounter an enemy with a blue glow—which means they’re invulnerable unless you reveal their parasitic Umbral companion floating alongside them. Hoover this critter up and not only can it power your soul attack, it will also remove their pal’s aura of invincibility.
Image: Hexworks
The game is not as obscure as its FromSoft progenitors, and that works in its favor, because when you’re being pulled in two directions and interrogating the tension between worlds, you want a sense of what’s going on, and where to go. Lords of the Fallen is all about playing as a heathen, shunned by the world for embracing a dark lantern that allows them to traverse the realms of light and dark. It’s all about being sacrilegious, defying the common knowledge and tasting the forbidden fruit. If you wanted to do away with subtext, you could say it’s what Hexworks is doing in discarding the commonly held beliefs around how death should work in this genre. How traditionally hard it must be. But the studio eschews that. And the result, at least at this early stage, is unique and compelling.
My time with the 2014 version of the game was quite frustrating. While the review is no longer live—the site I wrote it for is now defunct—I essentially said that, although the game had a compelling narrative, its cumbersome gameplay and unintuitive systems made for an ultimately forgettable experience.
The previews of the new Lords of the Fallen reboot are based on just two hours of gameplay, so a lot of questions will remain unanswered until the game drops in October. But based on everything I’ve read so far, Lords of the Fallen is sounding like it’ll be a pretty solid take on the Soulslike style of game.
Lords of the Fallen launches on October 13 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
