Here’s the full slate of titles you’ll be able to download and play on November 19:

• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
• Destiny 2: The Collection
• GYLT
• Just Dance 2020
• Kine
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Rise of the Tomb Raider
• Samurai Shodown
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
• Thumper
• Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

The number of titles is expected to double by the end of the year, which is good news for those early adopters. Google also revealed today that Borderlands 3 and Metro Exodus will also be joining the service before the year is out.

Other games heading to Stadia before the year’s end include RAGE 2 and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. As for next year, we can look forward to DOOM: Eternal and Cyberpunk 2077.

The post Google Stadia Launch Lineup Revealed, Includes ‘Mortal Kombat 11’, ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’, ‘Samurai Shodown’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

This week: we talk Resident Evil Zero in HD, Dragon’s Dogma hits PC, the hilarious Deadly Tower of Monsters, and more!

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In this mission, Lara will have to travel to a new section of the map called the Wicked Vale to investigate the existence of the Baba Yaga, a local witch presumed to have killed numerous people. The character is based on the Russian myth, and the story itself goes in some pretty surreal directions, which only adds to the horrific aesthetic.

Though relatively short, Temple of the Witch is a microcosm for what makes Rise of the Tomb Raider great. The supernatural element is ramped up beyond the normal scope of the base game, though it works, due in large part to the way the story makes you question whether what you’re seeing is real or merely a hallucination. That subtlety is something you don’t see in many games dealing with the supernatural.

The DLC’s themes dovetail nicely with Lara’s complicated paternal relationship. Being plagued by a father lost too soon, Lara has to contend with some pretty heavy memories as she treks across this lush mountainous landscape in search of Nadia’s grandfather. The fact that the game goes in such an ethereal direction, beset on all sides by the bizarre and the supernatural, only heightens the sense of turmoil Lara feels about her familial situation.

However, beyond the uncanny premise, Temple of the Witch only goes to highlight what makes Rise of the Tomb Raider such a great game. Players will investigate dank caves, climb ice-covered walls, leap bottomless chasms, and solve pretty basic but entertaining puzzles.

Combat is limited to very controlled, specific points in the story. It’s an exploration-heavy bit of DLC, and that benefits the player. The different areas look simply astounding, and traversing the varied environments is perhaps the most compelling aspect of the game. DLC can be a hit-or-miss scenario, but it’s easy to tell that some time and attention was paid to carefully crafting an interesting bit of content here.

The puzzles, too, are pretty limited, but they work in the context of the game’s brief capacity. You’ll fire arrows, yank down barriers, and turn levers, all the while checking the area for the various collectibles that extend the game’s story elements. However, they provide necessary changes in pace, where environmental interaction is concerned.

I wouldn’t quite say that Temple of the Witch is a lock for anyone who’s played the core game, because it is quite a short bit of story, but it certainly is an interesting addition to what is already one of my favorite gaming experiences of the last few years. Horror fans will appreciate the game’s darker tone and surreal atmosphere, and those just looking for more Tomb Raider will not be disappointed.

The post ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider – Baba Yaga: Temple of the Witch’ Review appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

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Though not a traditional horror game, Rise of the Tomb Raider plays, in many instances, like an uber-violent exploitation flick from the 70s. This Lara Croft is not simply a gun-wielding adventurer, intent on seeking out and unlocking the world’s secrets. No, she is also a grim survivalist, hell-bent on punishing those who ruined her life and sent her on this journey. The new hero of this franchise snatches dudes into watery depths and slices their throats, a la Jason Voorhees, or sneaks up behind them and executes them like James Earl Cash, from Manhunt.

This incarnation of Tomb Raider is very often compared to the wildly popular Uncharted series, but I’ve got a bold claim to make here: save for the writing, I think Rise of the Tomb Raider exceeds the heights of the Uncharted games.

The MacGuffin in this game is more or less the Matrix from the original Transformers animated movie, and it totally works as a means for drawing Lara into this adventure. There are eternal prophets, soulless soldiers, and secretive organizations involved, and that sort of plot is befitting of a Tomb Raider game.

As far as actual writing goes, however, it’s kind of flat. The villain, Konstantin, is barely visible throughout the game, which is both a benefit and a curse. Why would he spend all of his time trying to taunt Lara Croft like a Bond villain? On the other hand, his absence is certainly felt toward the end of the game, when we are supposed to care about this standoff between the adventurer and the secret society wackadoo?

It’s one of the few knocks I have against this game. The writing, the banter, the characters, they are all so grim and mordant. The game has no sense of self-deprecation or humor at all, and a story that is more or less the retelling of Last Crusade without Sean Connery in a brimmed hat is kind of lacking, to be honest.

The game’s real villain and real sidekick is the environment, and that’s where the tension excels. I’ve never been a huge fan of third person platforming in these games — Uncharted included — but the combination of the puzzles and the feel of the running and jumping in Rise make for some interesting mechanics. The game handles exceptionally well, to the extent that some non-scripted climbing sequences feel as though they are cut scenes designed for the player’s benefit help the cause.

To build on that idea, the visual language of Rise of the Tomb Raider is similarly wonderful. It is built in such a way that you don’t necessarily have to constantly click the right stick to reveal your waypoint. The game naturally guides you in the right direction.

For example, walls that can be scaled are marked with white blazes, and the climbable ice has a different color tint than its surroundings. If you still can’t find your way, the waypoint indicator also reveals points of interest in directing your journey.

Some might see this as hand-holding, but I prefer it to wandering around the landscape without an inkling for where to go. The way the environments are set-up and marked gives the player a rhythm for how to traverse the world, and it becomes less about the puzzle of “Where do I go?”

The different areas are distinct enough, even if they all feel somewhat like “exotic locale” to me. What separates Rise of the Tomb Raider from its contemporaries is that it is neither a linear experience, nor is it an open world game. Unlike Uncharted, each section of the game doesn’t get locked off once you complete the narrative for it.

At the campsites, you can fast travel back to any location and complete any number of quests, tombs, or collectible hunting. The map gives enough detail to drive players to seek out ancillary content without making it seem like it’s necessary. I tooled around with some of the side content, but I basically main-lined the story for the sake of the review, and I felt completely satisfied with both the amount of content and story within the core game, so people looking for plenty more to do can find whatever they want.

The game is also not so open that you feel entirely rudderless. Rather than give you quests within the world that spit you back out into an open world, you engage in sort of linear main quests that connect different sections of the game. They are crucial to building the world and the narrative for you, and they are very often a balance of spelunking / climbing and combat.

Until the end of the game — which I’ll get to in a few paragraphs — I never felt overwhelmed by the amount of combat in this game. The combat encounters always felt necessary, or at the very least, narratively acceptable, so I dug how they were spread out among the platforming elements.

One only need take a look at screenshots or trailers to notice just how amazing Rise looks. Very often, actual gameplay looks better than the cut scenes in most games I’ve played over the last few years. The art style is also a plus. The environments not only look great, they are well designed.

And speaking of things that are well-designed, the puzzles, while simple, are some of my favorites from a game of this type in a long while. There are a few that are quite difficult, but for the most part they are intuitive and easily discernible through a little bit of detection. I found myself kind of amazed at how some of them are constructed, not merely because they are good puzzles, but because they build on the skills of other puzzles. That is really something the designers deserve credit for that I’m sure will go unnoticed.

The crafting and upgrade system was reminiscent of The Last of Us for me, personally. Beyond guns, Lara can craft various explosives from found elements in the world. Trees can be stripped for arrows, and gears help to aid weapons upgrades. It’s a fairly in-depth system, but it never gets over its own head with sophistication. It was just the right amount of added complexity to make character progression feel natural.

In addition, the game’s side content builds on the crafting and upgrade system in such a way that might behoove players to branch out and complete more of it to get their character fully decked out in the three basic skill types: Brawler, Hunting, and Survival.

The story is one of the least interesting elements of the game, but it does a serviceable job of building the story of the 10th century prophet at the heart of the game. I never really cared about any of the characters, save Lara herself, though I did find her arc in Rise fairly compelling. Besides Jonah, her erstwhile companion, I didn’t find myself connected to any major story element.

Which brings me to the third act of the game. Once all hell breaks loose, it really breaks loose. Rise of the Tomb Raider was never that game to me. It was about retrained encounters that were absolutely necessary, and yet the end of the game seems to forget all about that.

The amount of combat in the lead-up to the resolution is ridiculous, and it goes to ridiculous ends. The game seems to bask in a sort of Roland Emmerich style destructothon, much to the game’s detriment. I’m over the overly-epic finale, and I kind of wish this game had sidestepped the worst offenders of the past. AAA games have an insecurity about endings, and it is played out in a big way here.

Rise of the Tomb Raider works best when it is about exploration, spiked with some combat. When it attempts to become a third-person shooter, it loses some of the magic that made the first three-quarters special.

This is probably the most blatantly unfortunate comparison to be made between Rise of the Tomb Raider and the Uncharted series. For me, the Nathan Drake games could never quite stick the landing. The first two acts were superlative, but the third act always got bogged down in the lore, in supernatural nonsense that felt as though it had to be there to make the story bigger than life, somehow.

Tomb Raider almost avoids that trap, but not quite. Still, it’s better than ninety percent of the games I played in 2015 — I still consider it a 2015 game, despite the 2016 PC release — and so I’ll take it over a milquetoast spy movie any day.

The Final Word:

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best action adventure games out there, and I’d go so far as to say it’s better than any Uncharted game I’ve played.

The post ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ Review: Uncharted Territory appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“Deep in the wilds of Siberia, there is a forbidden forest that no man will enter, where a Soviet expedition vanished without a trace. Lara enters the Wicked Vale in search of a missing man, but what she finds is a nightmare that she cannot explain. Is the witch, Baba Yaga, truly haunting the forbidden forest? Or is there more to the legend?”

A witch with a goofy name, a missing expedition and a forbidden forest that’s home to a nightmare so nightmarish, that it cannot be explained? Surely you’re on the baba-bandwagon by now?

Baba Yaga is more than side story, as it will also come with a special bow and outfit for Lara, frightening new enemies and a tomb filled with puzzles and treasures. It’s coming to Xbox One on Tuesday, January 26. Rise of the Tomb Raider is headed to PC on Jan 28, so a PC release might not be that far off. PS4 owners will have to continue being patient, unfortunately.

The post ‘Tomb Raider’ Enters ‘The Temple of the Witch’ Next Week appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

PONY ISLAND

I usually prefer to ease into the weird stuff, but that’s not possible when we have something like Pony Island coming out in the first week of January. This game injects some suspense into its puzzle-solving, as you use the power of your brain to escape from the malfunctioning arcade cabinet the devil has imprisoned you in.

I love indie games.

Release Date: January 5 (PC)

OXENFREE

Fans of Until Dawn should keep an eye on Night School Studio’s indie horror game Oxenfree. This supernatural teen thriller follows the ghostly residents of a long-hidden phantom dimension as their world suddenly collides with our own thanks to a group of blundering teens — our “protagonists” — forcing these gentle specters to desperately protect their home.

Or maybe it’s about some teens who unintentionally expose a tear in space and time during a night-long island soirée that’s more or less ruined when pissed off poltergeists pour forth and start picking them off one by one.

Release Date: January 15 (PC, XBO)

RESIDENT EVIL 0 HD

You probably know by now that there’s a prequel to the original Resident Evil and that it’s getting a remaster later this month. What you might not know about Resident Evil 0 HD is that it’s coming with a new Wesker Mode so players can step into the skin-tight pants of Albert Wesker (circa Resident Evil 5) so we can disintegrate things with our laser vision.

Release Date: January 19 (PC, PS3, PS4, 360, XBO)

RESIDENT EVIL ORIGINS COLLECTION

The Origins Collection takes all of the hot and steamy eye action we can anticipate from Resident Evil 0 HD and bundles it together with last year’s excellent remaster of the Resident Evil remake.

It will also come with some hilariously awful costumes.

Release Date: January 19 (PS4, XBO)

BABA YAGA: THE TEMPLE OF THE WITCH

We only recently became acquainted with Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch, which is also the first story expansion for the ridiculously good Rise of the Tomb Raider. Lara Croft has been known to dip a toe in the horrific, but it’s never gone full horror. Baba Yaga isn’t likely to change that, but it does look delightfully creepy.

This DLC will come with an additional tomb filled with treasures to plunder (for heroic reasons, of course), and a meaty side story that pits Ms. Croft against “an ancient and mythic evil.” I bet I know what it is.

Unfortunately, while Rise of the Tomb Raider is slated to hit PC later this month, it won’t be arriving on the PS4 until the end of the year and there isn’t currently a PC release date for the Baba Yaga DLC.

Release Date: TBA January (360, XBO)

DARQ / SYLVIO 2

These horror games aren’t new releases, but they do have the potential to become that in the future, assuming we’re willing to part with enough of our precious cash monies to help make it happen.

The first crowdfunding campaign to close this month belongs to an open-world horror game by the name of Sylvio 2. After successfully raising over $2,300 a little more than a year ago, Stroboscope is hoping to get $15,289 by January 9. I sincerely hope they’re able to haul ass next week so they can raise the remaining ~$7,000, because I love the idea of “a single-player horror game set in broad daylight, where you record the dead with the help of a video camera and a portable TV.” Don’t you?

Unfold Games is taking the “out-niche the competition” approach with their horror game DARQ. It’s not an easy one to describe, but that’s obviously not going to stop me from trying.

DARQ is a nightmarish 2.5D side-scroller set in the lucid dream of a child protagonist named Lloyd, who quickly realizes he’s been gifted with godlike powers that allow him to manipulate the laws of physics. If that sounds like your idea of a good time, you can support it on Indiegogo.

The post Here’s Your Horror Game Release Schedule for January appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The game’s first story DLC was unveiled earlier tonight at The Game Awards, and it looks freaky.

Inspired by the Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch will introduce hours of gameplay, including a new tomb to plunder. The expansion is included in the game’s season pass. It’s expected to arrive in early 2016.

The post Lara Croft Goes On a Witch Hunt in First ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ DLC appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Happy Thanksgiving week everyone! As many of you probably already know, that means Black Friday is right around the corner. While stores aren’t necessarily as packed as they used to be thanks to online deals and events like Cyber Monday, Black Friday is nonetheless a very stressful and busy day for some people. There are just so many deals to pass up! I don’t know about any of you, but I choose to stay out of the brick-and-mortar stores and stick to online shopping in my pajamas at my home. With that being said, here is a list of some of the must-have horror (or in some cases, horror-ish) video games that we think you should consider purchasing this Black Friday.

Video games are an expensive investment, so while some of the games on this list came out earlier this year (one of them even came out late last year), this list will hopefully serve to remind you of some of the games you skipped out on.

Multi-Platform

Fallout 4

The post-apocalyptic series returns this year with Fallout 4, and apparently everyone took off work and stopped looking at porn to play it. I’ve yet to play the game, but it looks fantastic and will be the one game that I snatch up on Friday.

Resident Evil Revelations 2

Resident Evil Revelations was a worthy, if flawed, entry into the Resident Evil series. Revelations 2 is slightly better, and sees the return of Claire Redfield and the introduction of Moira Burton, Barry Burton’s daughter. It’s not a perfect game, but it’s a fun return to the franchise’s horror roots.

Batman: Arkham Knight

Sure, some people were disappointed with the overabundance of the Batmobile in the game, but like it or not, Batman: Arkham Knight is a fantastic game, and if it doesn’t live up to the remarkably high expectations people set for it, that is no fault of the game’s (or Rocksteady’s). Since it’s been out since June (unless you are the unfortunate owner of a PC), there’s a fairly good chance it might see a decent price drop on Black Friday.

Mortal Kombat X

Do I need to say anything about this game? It’s fantastic, and it’s got Jason Voorhees as a playable character. If you don’t already own it, pick it up this week. That’s an order.

The post Black Friday Chopping List: Video Games appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

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Because the Internet rarely forgives and never forgets, many fans are still upset. At the time of this writing, nearly 12,000 have signed a petition for the arrangement to be rescinded.

This is just all around bad news. It’s bad for Microsoft, which really can’t take more any more bad press, especially now that the Kinect is all but dead and sales of the Xbox One are trailing the PS4 by a wide margin. It’s also bad for Square Enix, which has only recently found success with the Crystal Dynamics developed reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise.

We still don’t know how long this timed exclusive will last. Tomb Raider is a hot property right now, so I imagine the deal was arranged so Microsoft could tout Rise of the Tomb Raider as a holiday exclusive. My guess is the deal will end in early 2016 — or, at least that’s what I hope.

Rise of the Tomb Raider releases in late 2015.

The post ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ is a Timed Xbox Exclusive appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

If you missed the reboot, don’t fret, as Crystal Dynamics recently brought a remastered version called the Definitive Edition to PS4 and Xbox One earlier this year. It’s definitely worth checking out, if you haven’t already.

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