One of the best Tomb Raider games is coming to Xbox Game Pass

By Tomas Franzese April 30, 2024

Lara Croft runs from a crashing plane in Tomb Raider. — Crystal Dynamics

Microsoft unveiled the batch of games coming to Xbox Game Pass throughout the first half of May. It’s a smaller group of only four games, but all of them are neat additions to Microsoft’s subscription service. Here’s the full roster of games coming to Xbox Game Pass between May 2 and May 14.

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition — May 2
Kona II: Brume — May 7
Little Kitty, Big City — May 9
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons — May 14

The most notable game in that batch is Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition. Released in 2014, this is the complete version of Crystal Dynamics’ reboot of this iconic action-adventure franchise. It brought the series into the modern gaming era with an intricately crafted and intimate single-player adventure. It, along with games like The Last of Us, helped set the cinematic single-player game standard that countless titles have followed in the decade since. It’s one of the best Tomb Raider games, too, so if you’ve never played it before, now is the time to give it a shot.

As for the other games, Kona II: Brume is a sequel to an eerie and intense adventure game that flew under the radar when it was released last October. Hopefully, its addition to Xbox Game Pass gives it a second lease on life. Then there’s Litty Kitty, Big City, which is a day one Xbox Game Pass title following in the footsteps of Untitled Goose Game that has players explore a city as a cat and mess around with its inhabitants.

Finally, there’s Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, which is an experimental, yet memorable title from now-famous game developer Josef Fares. Oddly enough, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons got a remake in February, but that’s not the version coming to Xbox Game Pass.

You’ll have a good time with any of those four titles coming to Xbox Game Pass, but also keep in mind that several titles will be leaving the service on May 15. It might be worth checking one of these games out immediately so you don’t miss out.

Eastern Exorcist
Eiyuden Chronicle Rising
Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2
Ghostlore
Just Cause 4 Reloaded
Norco
SD Gundam Battle Alliance
Supraland Six Inches Under

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Gaming Staff Writer

Tomas Franzese is a Staff Writer at Digital Trends, where he reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…

Gaming

One of the year’s best reviewed games is coming to Xbox Game Pass

Issac Clarke exploring ruins in Dead Space Remake.

Microsoft revealed the next batch of games coming to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service this October. While no Activision Blizzard games are coming to the service just yet following that acquisition, one of 2023's best-reviewed games is: this year's Dead Space remake.

Dead Space came out in January and is a stunning remake of a 2008 horror classic. The game follows an engineer named Issac Clarke as he searches for his girlfriend Nicole on a gigantic spaceship called the USG Ishimura. It's overrun by disgusting creatures called Necromorphs, though, leading to plenty of horrific situations as Issacs looks for answers on the ship. The original was an atmospheric and tense horror game, and developer EA Motive only enhanced all of that with this remake that updates the game's visuals and makes some other tweaks to bring the experience more in line with future games in its series and other modern horror games.
It's a great choice if you're looking for a new horror game to play this month, so we recommend checking it out when it hits Xbox Game Pass on October 26. It's not the only game coming to the service during the back half of this month, though. Here's the full list of games coming to Xbox Game Pass throughout the rest of October.

Gaming

The impending Xbox 360 Store closure makes me wary of Game Pass’ future

I'm an avid Xbox Game Pass user, often trying almost every game that comes to the service and closely following the games coming to and leaving the service each month. Following some recent announcements by Microsoft, though, I've been thinking a lot more about something else about Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft's current digital-focused Xbox storefronts and ecosystem: what happens when it all goes away?
Microsoft announced last week that it will shut down the Xbox 360 Store in July 2024. After that day, it will be impossible to buy games, movies, or TV shows digitally on the Xbox 360 store; it's just like what happened with the 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year. That announcement also came not long after Microsoft revealed it would replace Xbox Live Gold with Xbox Game Pass Core in September. With these changes, Microsoft is stamping out any support or focus its giving to the Xbox 360's era as a platform. As someone who grew up mostly playing Xbox 360, seeing these things I grew up with go away is saddening. It's also making me think about the day this will eventually happen to Xbox Game Pass or the store on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Frankly, I'm not as concerned that Microsoft is going to do it anytime soon. Microsoft has given no indication that it plans on abandoning Xbox Game Pass. It's a really successful subscription service heavily integrated into all of its current platforms, there are titles confirmed to launch day one on it into 2024 and beyond, and Xbox initiatives like Play Anywhere and Smart Delivery ensure that at least some version of most Xbox games are available on other platforms. While I expect it to be the primary part of Microsoft's gaming strategy over the next decade, as someone who mainly played Xbox 360 growing up and is now seeing its storefront and subscription service go away, I'm now thinking about what the end of the Game Pass era will look like.
These recent actions have indicated that Microsoft will eventually be willing to do the same to the storefronts and subscription service we're currently using. Even after the backlash PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox all faced from these announcements, Sony is the only one that has backtracked its plans to close down older digital storefronts, at least temporarily. Xbox Game Pass is the current hotness for Microsoft, but what happens come the day it isn't? A lot more games are digital-only or tied to a subscription this generation, and those are the games most at risk of being lost if a digital storefront shuts down.
What happens to the Xbox console versions of games like Pentiment or Immortality on Xbox once Xbox Game Pass and the current iteration of the Xbox Store are shuttered? Yes, they can be played on PC, but the Xbox console version will be lost forever. And right now, it doesn't seem like Microsoft has any publicly shared plans to permanently preserve those experiences, nor has it done so for all of the Xbox 360 digital games going away. Game preservation is a significant problem facing the game industry, and Microsoft has just made a move showing that it's on the wrong side of that effort.

Gaming

You can’t play Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox, but you can play these 6 Game Pass RPGs

A player conversation in Baldur's Gate 3.

Baldur's Gate 3 just launched on PC on August 3 and comes to PlayStation 5 shortly on September 6. Unfortunately, an Xbox Series X/S version of the RPG does not have any concrete release date. Developer Larian Studios explained in a community post that this is because it doesn't "want to compromise on quality and feel it would be a shame to downscale to 30 [frames per second, aka fps] or make other compromises to hit an arbitrary date." Still, it's disappointing that Xbox players can't get in on the fun anytime soon. Thankfully, there isn't a shortage of alternatives on Microsoft's gaming platforms.
Xbox Game Pass is home to dozens of RPGs, many of which share the same computer-RPG roots as Baldur's Gate 3. While Xbox players might not be able to enjoy Larian Studios' shockingly thorough and immensely enjoyable Dungeons & Dragons CRPG just yet, they can't go wrong playing these six titles right now.
Fallout: New Vegas

Where Baldur's Gate 3 may be the pinnacle of fantasy RPG games inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, Fallout: New Vegas is that for postapocalyptic RPGs. This game from Obsidian Entertainment and Bethesda Softworks -- both of which are now owned by Microsoft -- first released in 2010. Despite some in-game glitches that still persist, the Xbox 360 version of Fallout: New Vegas on Xbox Game Pass is just as enthralling of a role-playing experience as it was nearly 13 years ago. The Xbox 360 version can even be played at 60 fps on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, thanks to the FPS Boost feature.
Like Baldur's Gate 3, it's a faithful follow-up to some classic CRPGs that give players a massive amount of choice as they complete their adventure however they see fit. You can have endless fun exploring the world and creating experiences that feel personal to you while dealing with its eclectic cast of factions and characters. While it's a bit rough around the edges in certain aspects, New Vegas is still one of the best RPGs ever made. As such, it's worth replaying or trying first the first time if you want to play an RPG, but can't experience Baldur's Gate 3 right now.
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